Food For The Ages.
The wind was hot and dry, and it blew stinging red dust in flurries along the street. On a canteen stool, a figure sat hunched. He leaned heavily over a menu on the table, and his thick black coat made the sound of desert rain as the needling dust pelted against it. The collar shielded his face from the dust, but in his thick black hair it pooled and ran like broad drifts in an hourglass.
Goop. Food of the ages. He squinted hard at the menu. Was there any discernible difference from one picture to the next? Try something new! read a curl of red letters in the corner of the page. What — the, he thought. How did this get four and a half stars?
The phone buzzed, and he sat up a little and he leaned his head over slightly. The dust in his hair ran like a river down the back of his neck. Something clicked, and the hissing sound of distance came into his ears and the roar of the desert was gone.
And a clear voice said, “hey, what are you doing?”
“I’m thinking,” said the figure, his voice was gruff and dark, and he didn’t need to raise his voice above the wind.
A pause. “Ohh — kay,” said the voice. “Well, are you sitting down?”
The dust ran down his neck like a little river. It ran down the curve of his back, and it fell beneath the seam of his pants and into the cleft of his buttocks, and a little rivulet fell, and the dust piled in the seat of his underpants. “Yes. I am sitting.”
“Okay. Well — listen,” said the voice. “I don’t really know how tell you this.” A pause. “So — I guess I’ll just tell you. Your, uh. Your — um.”
His head, slowly coming up.
“Your building is burning down. Your apartment building. Your apartment. There are flames.”
A long pause now. And the line was crisp and quiet. At length the figure’s dark voice returned. “And it will burn?” he said.
“Oh — yup,” said the clear voice. “The whole city is ablaze! It’s too hot! There’s nobody ever going to put this ou— ” the voice clicked out and the sound of the howling desert returned.
The figure on the canteen stool hunched over, and the collar kept his face from the onslaught of dust and wind. He shifted in his seat. There was something making shadows in the corner of his mind. And he wondered if there might be something he could do. What was I getting, he thought to himself. Oh, yes. Maybe, I’ll try something new.
He pressed a picture on the menu and a little door opened in the top of the table. A plastic cup with a little peel-off lid popped out and landed on the table, and the little door closed. He picked up the cup and peeled off the lid and he dropped the lid on the table. And for a moment it danced in the turbulent air, and then it disappeared into the wind.
