Thirty-eight Kinds of Blessing
Leny D. pitched at the angle of the rusted streetlamp nearby. His body was analogizing. He pointed his u-reader at the address of the doorless doorway and it emitted a complaining noise. Broken bottle glass and bits of ground up asphalt popped and stuttered under his boots as he trudged into the restaurant. The night sky beamed smoggy orange hues onto the vinyl floor, which was shaking from the vibrations of a motor somewhere, probably a sewer pump.
Leny's upper sinuses had become congested and caused him painful head pressure. A manatee sized and shaped woman dressed all in dingy white came out of the kitchen. Leny wondered at the appropriate custom as the woman stood mute and eyeballed Leny, and her insides seemed energetic and vibrant. Her nose was as pimpled and darkly red as an overripe strawberry and it was what Leny addressed as he requested a menu.
She dealt him a sheet of pulped plastic with the following printed on it. He moved out of the orange doorway and sat at a table and bench set, dazedly the way people do in movies when they hear bad news in hospitals. The table and bench were as dingy white as everything else in the dining room, except the menu, which was maybe burnt orange. She loomed above him like an ICBM, her nose whistling. The menu read:
HUNGRY PALACETHIRST 4
PARCHED 6
HUNGER 10
STARVATION 16
"Um," Leny said.
"Do you need a minute?" the ICBM lady murmured prettily.
"It's just that . . ." Leny said without finishing.
He started up again, looking up past her nose to her blue eyes, all of which had the effect of watching the twin rising moons over the mountain range of some desert planet: "What kind of food do you serve here?"
"We don't serve food here at Hunger Palace. We serve hunger." Her voice was as melodious as harp glissandi.
"Oh, well." Leny pondered. "So why would someone come here instead of taking a hunger pill?"
"We believe the real thing to be much better for you."
"Oh. I'll try a thirsty."
The woman left the menu and went to the kitchen before eventually returning with a glass. Condensation spotted it all around in deepening grades toward its bottom, and inside two pieces of ice, apparently formerly cubes but now softly rounded and shiny and wet, lay in a small puddle-like formation of water. A bendy straw with an indentation of teeth at one end stood wedged between the ice pieces.
"Thanks," Leny said.
"You're welcome," the woman sang, and then she asked if he would like anything else.
"No, this is quite all right."
She left for the kitchen, advising him to call on her if he needed anything else.
He sucked a little on the straw and it and the glass and the water made a staticky sucking noise. Deny sure was thirsty.
― bamcquern, Saturday, 25 July 2009 20:17 (fifteen years ago)