I've been driving for five hours and I roll into this place just hoping, praying for some relief. I can't believe I thought I could make this drive in one day. It's time to eat dinner and then start thinking about how I need to lie down. Oh heck, I need to lie down. I need to lie down so much. I haven't been horizontal enough this week. My ankles are swollen, for the first time in my life. I can barely walk.
Shawarma sounds good. I look at the menu. My head is swimming, a little bit. The lady ahead of me orders a wrap. I just do the same thing. I haven't been able to think for myself since the summer of two thousand--maybe not even then. A guy walks out from the back. He looks at me. I can't explain the look in this guy's eyes. He's a cartoon character. He looks like Senshi from Dungeon Meshi, but without the beard. Big, round eyes, all the way open, earnestly commanding my every scrap of attention.
He stares me down the entire time he's filling the pita. He holds up a big white squirt bottle of something, and he asks me a question I can't hear. I think he's asking me if I want that on my wrap. "Yeah," I say, "Give me everything someone normal gets on one of these." I don't know what it is. Middle Eastern mayonnaise? I mean, probably. Right?
He squirts it, not too generously, but you know, he gets it on there. He puts the bottle down and picks up a red one. "Spicy?" "Yeah. I like spicy." He's still staring at me. Like he's taking a final exam. He's defending his dissertation, right now, with this wrap. He squirts the spicy onto the wrap. I am excited.
I take the wrapped wrap over to the seating area and unwrap the wrap from around the wrap. I begin eating. Yes, this is Middle Eastern Food. I have been to the Middle East. I remember now. I was baptized in the Jordan River. I learned to speak Turkish. I've perused aquamarine jewelry in Smyrna. I floated on top of the Dead Sea.
Suddenly, the next table over having recently been vacated, a Cleanliness Goblin sprays some Windex or some Quaternary Sanitizer or something onto it. The artifice of fans conspires to blow the atomized chemicals directly into my mouth, onto my glasses, into my wrap. I look over. The goblin doesn't notice. I almost scream. Scream, really scream, maybe for the first time since I finally realized what someone else had done to me, that kind of scream, the sort of thing you reserve for body horror, for violation of the most serious kind. I quickly realize that I am overreacting. It happens a lot. My squick meter is not calibrated correctly. I don't scream at her. I don't scream at all.
I sigh and finish the wrap. What else is there to eat in this oasis? Pretzels? Subway? Give me a break. This is the only real food you're going to get here. It's good. Eat it. Eat it read more