August 13, 2009

• The Invasion

  I like to live dangerously, so sometimes I will sneak food from one restaurant into another restaurant and eat it there.  This sort of dangerous living is also highly convenient if your friend wants to eat at a restaurant which you don’t particularly care for.

  The host was easy enough to get by; his monomaniacal preoccupation with counting people and scanning the room for an appropriately sized table would have provided cover for wheeling an entire refrigerator with us to the table. 

  Once at the table, the secret mission entered phase two: eating my sandwich along with my friend’s dinner while not being spotted during any sudden drive by ‘Everything taste alright?’ inquiries from our guard that night, Mariah.  Here we were, in the heart of the enemy’s fortress, harboring rival goods which would have exploded the quiet dining scene into a chaotic riot like the sight of a human in Monster’s Inc.  Amidst such high tensions, I could easily imagine a sharp glance from Mariah upon not ordering anything, so to quell suspicions I got a hot tea.

  She took our orders and left.  I still hadn’t devised any means of cover from sudden appearances during Mariah’s patrol duty while we were eating.  But then, a break came when Mariah delivered the tea and a basket of sweet rolls to my friend.  The basket would work perfectly.  I pulled out  my sandwich and began unwrapping it when suddenly—BAM—Mariah reappeared, saying to my friend, ‘Hey honey, your pot pie comes with another side, you can get anything on this list here.’  Upon impact, I had lurched forward to obstruct the sight of the beloved sandwich, and, realizing the unnatural position I was now in hunched over the table, immediately feigned an interest in the list of sides which my friend was now examining while Mariah waited for him. 

  ‘I usually get the, uh—’ I began, trailing off when I couldn’t think of anything in the panic of the moment.  ‘The what?’ my friend prompted nonchalantly, still looking over the list.  His decision seemed forever in coming.  He was, to all appearances, completely oblivious to the fact that I was leaning awkwardly over the table for a reason, and in eager desire for him to quickly choose a side to dispel the guard.  I knew I couldn’t look at her, for then all would be ruined.  Several geological epochs ensued, and then he picked the fried onions and she left.

  The close shave avoided, the mission seemed bound for success.  The basket proved a convenient cover for the sandwich, which rested unassumingly under a napkin which we naturally would have just placed on top of the basket anyways.  At least, as conspicuous as it was, our guard had other tables to patrol and other duties to perform.  As long as she didn’t appear while the sandwich was in the open, the rest of the dinner seemed destined to go smoothly.

  And smoothly it went.  I finished the sandwich, leaving the wrapper on the table partly as a calling card for the rival restaurant, partly for my surreptitious invasion of their heavily guarded redoubt. 

  To the register we went, where the host soon arrived with the dutiful question, ‘And how was everything this evening?’  ‘Oh man, I am stuffed,’ I began answering out of instinct while handing him my receipt, ‘It was all too good.  Need to exercise some moderation next time, probably.’  He glanced up from the receipt and asked, ‘A hot tea?’ with a tone and appearance of deeply confused skepticism.  I then realized what was on my receipt, which made it difficult to keep my composure as he stood there waiting for some kind of response.  ‘Yes,’ I stammered.  ‘The tea was excellent.’ 

  Mumbling some other things about the quality of the tea and its liability to fill one up on a cold summer night, we left the restaurant in earnest, not afraid of close shaves, of living lives of foolish abandon, nor most of all of in everything living a tad dangerously. 

  • 5:34 pm
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