rat kings
fried clams and tortilla soup, the breakfast of champions. and at this hour, it would probably be categorized as breakfast. gyro melt and fries, your untouched plate-warmer. and by the time you get around to eating it, itâs going to be cold. this is of no concern to you, apparently. youâve never been one to eat breakfast anyway. though if weâre being fair, this is only the second meal either of us has had since we woke up, which makes it lunch. though if weâre being fair, we probably woke up around the time most people make lunch. brunch is another story. you eat a disproportionate amount of brunch. a good eggs benedict is worth at least five bowls of this soup. this place doesnât have good eggs benedict. they donât have good anything. youâre still talking, but i havenât been listening. iâve been staring at the picture on the wall just behind your head, a photograph of sophia loren giving jayne mansfieldâs bosom the side eye. imagine having cleavage so notably obscene that it is memorialized on the wall of a crappy diner like this one, right up there next to a promotional photograph of the keystone cops and the movie poster for 'find the blackmailer'. do restaurants set out to be tacky like this, or do they just become tacky? youâve noticed. sorry, i was staring at someone staring at someone elseâs tits, what did you say? youâre talking about rat kings, how all of the rats get knotted together by their tails and theyâre trapped in a enormous heap of rats. what on earth could you have possibly been talking about that lead to this? were you discussing the finer points of knots, or perhaps the phenomenon of putting your neatly-bundled headphones into your pocket, only to have them spontaneously and irreversibly tangle two seconds later? was this a discussion about rats, or about ships full of rats, or about the time your cat caught a rat and released it into the house? a discussion about situations best characterized as âa heap of tangled ratsâ? a discussion of personal space and the discomforts that come with its loss? or perhaps this can simply be explained as a discussion of contortionists. iâm not listening again. iâm staring across the restaurant at the back of our waiterâs head, trying to telepathically communicate my need for a beverage refill. lemonade, please, and can i have a plastic cup whose rim isnât mangled with scuffs and pits? i know my mouth isnât actually coming in contact with the cup, but itâs still weirding me out. and why is this straw so long? wouldnât it be cheaper to buy shorter straws that actually fit the plastic cups? iâve been chewing on the end of this absurdly long red straw, and it too is getting mangled. youâve noticed. sorry, i was contemplating the cost of straws, what did you say?