Untitled Segment of A Story: Chinese Restaurant

He stopped at the town's only Chinese restaurant for lunch. He had been walking the streets in town all day and the night before - people and things and buildings and even the pack of dogs swirled around him in a peculiar sort of tunnel vision...it reminded him of his childhood - vague and detailed at once, or rather details popping up of the oddest things - an oil slick on a puddle in a parking lot, for example, or...

"Yessirhello," the tuxedo-clad waiter leaned over him. "WhatcanIgetfoyoutoday." The words seemed to come out of the waiters mouth before he himself had even thought of them.

He took the menu and began glancing through it and wondered where waiters in Chinese restaurants got their tuxes. It seemed they always were wearing them. He discarded that train of thought, although pursuing it was infinitely more appealing than having to make a decision of any magnitude, much less something as seemingly unimportant and non-threatening as what to eat. He took another glance at the menu, and the first thing his eyes fell upon was

"Fried rice, um, chicken - no, combination." Unable to decide on any specific item, he chose all of the above.

"Yesthankyouverymuchsir." The waiter left and returned a minute later with a stainless steel pot of tea which he poured into a smallish handleless cup on the table.

The arrival of the tea disturbed him vaguely, upset the balance of the table somehow, so he picked up the cup, felt momentary comfort in the warmth against his hand, the smooth easy curves of the cup against his palm and took a sip. The combination of those things - the cup, the warmth and the clutter - made him happy somewhere far away inside him - took his mind over in a slight unassuming manner and shifted the tunnelvision to the white cup and the dark circle of tea in it. He forgot the pain (real or imagined? he wasn't sure) he had felt in his chest since the door had slammed some hours before.

He drifted, able at last to turn his thoughts, constant, from the tortously inward path they had been taking.

He surveyed the restaurant, realizing he had taken a seat in the booth nearest the door and glass storefront, which would have bothered him had he stopped to think about it. The booths themselves were mid-50s chrome and leatherette (dark green) - standard luncheonette fare. Curious, he thought, until he registered the counter and stools in the back where his waiter and other Asians were huddled, speaking quickly and quietly in their singsong native tongues and realized that this probably had been an authentic small town cafe of the sort where farmers would come on rainy days and in the afternoon when chores were done and knowingly or unknowingly contribute to the same spread that had started with the arrival of the tractor with a slice of pie and a cup of coffee. He pictured the place as it might have been - brighter, minus the ersatz chinese tapestries, replaced by calendars and with a bevy of round men with mesh baseball caps and fading denim overalls, each with a cup of coffee with a saucer and a slice of the day's pie a la mode in front of them on the speckled formica countertop (now covered with cheap linen tablecloths and paper placemats outlining the bare basics of Chinese astrology) instead of the tweeded, bearded and bespectacled man on the left speaking with a plump woman wearing a bright purple suit or the two carefully made up and coiffed teenage girls - nearly identically dressed in plain white blouses who sat in front of him.

He heard the two speaking and looked again at them - forgetting his pained heart long enough to quickly size her up for any further possibility - matrimony? deep friends? feverish tussling on an elevator in some mid-atlantic coastal city?

They shared a booth - a mane of long straw-colored hair draped over shoulders wearing a white cotton blouse was all he could see of the louder of the two. Her voice was lusty and deep enough that when he heard, really heard, her speak for the first time, he had to look more closely at the hair to see if he had mistaken snow for straw and if she was a mother taking her daughter for some sort of afterschool treat. He stopped looking and listened to the conversation for a moment. It became apparent they were indeed high school aged girls - they seemed to be discussing some sort of faux pas someone - maybe one of them - had made in the library. He stopped avidly listening and looked at the girl facing him, casting his eyes from left to right and up and down like a cat following the bounce of a rubber ball, catching glimpses of her as his eyes went by rather than risk direct eye contact. She had largish eyes. He was reminded, not unpleasantly, of the paintings he had seen in thrift stores of orphans and clowns with oversized, pleading eyes. The eyes, like the rest of her face, was expertly - if somewhat heavier than he preferred - made up. Mascara thickened and emphasized her eyelashes, which in turn made her eyes seem even bigger. Her lips were dark red and seemed impossibly moist, although, he realized, this could be from the food. Her hair was long and dark brown, hanging to a point on her chest just above where he imagined her breasts began underneath her shirt. He thought briefly of her breasts, young and firm and probably held in place by a new white cotton bra - like a model in the Sears catalog. No woman he had known ever had a bra so clean and white as the models in Sears - nor, he thought, did he own any underwear which he would be unembarassed by at an accident scene. His mother would be ashamed of him, although surely she would not approve of him stopping emergency medical technicians and ambulance drivers from feverishly applying first aid to a wound in his torso or head to show off his clean and white underwear with a faint smile.

He held to the thought of the girls breast-and-bra for a moment, unsure what to think of next when their conversation drew his attention again.

"Those were the saddest two months of my life," said the one with her back to him.

"It was the most boring two months I've ever spent," replied the one facing him, even as he quickly figured a rough percentage of two months in her life as compared to his. (They were, hmm, 17. 17=10+5+2 ((10yrs.x12mos.= 120)+(5yrs.x12mos.= 60)+(2yrs.x12mos. = 24)). 120+60+24=214 months total life.) A little less than 1%. He sensed they were talking about breaking up - for no other reason but that was the only reason he could think of that would make a seventeen-year old girl sad. Wait a minute, he wanted to scream, you don't know what sadness is! You don't know what boredom is! You couldn't believe how little a breakup will mean to you when you're my age, or even next year or even next week! You won't know what boredom is until you have to spend each day in a job that makes minutes seem like hours only to see the money go for things you never had to pay for when you were in the split-level secondary womb your parents provided for you in the suburbs. You begin to understand why they weren't as happy as you were all the time. There'll come a time when you really resent people - kids - for the fun they can have while your heart is crushed and your spirit broken by the huge cogs and wheels of societal machinery! Don't worry! Enjoy! Enjoy! Enjoy! "Enjoy!"

It took a moment to realize that the word wasn't spoken by him, but by the waiter placing his rice in front of him. He thanked the waiter and turned his attention to the mound of fried rice in front of him.