Night at the Buffet

out until there was one; the flickering light at the end of the hall. Below: is the painting that was out of focus. Arms outstretched, she slid her fingers along the hallway as she walked towards the last flickering light. Heat exuded from her fingertips as she dragged a rainbow of blue, yellow, purple, black, red, green, and white along the walls as she inched towards the out-of-focus painting. As she neared, the image began to fade. Within a butterfly-patterned black frame rested a blank canvas. Elizabeth stood before it and felt clarity that had eluded her since the death of her husband. She placed her hands upon the frame, feeling its smooth texture. Her hands found the roughness of the blank slate. As she brushed her fingers upon its blank and rigid surface, the paint began to bleed onto the white until an image emerged --a woman, old and withered, lying in a bed. She has searched for peace all her life, and when she finally found it, it was stripped from her. So, she lied and waited. She lay in a bed, surrounded by a decaying world, scared by its cruelty. Waiting for death to free her soul. The image that appeared before her wasn ’t that of a broken woman; it was of a woman who was free. A woman who has found desire, who has finally discovered love ’ s embrace. No longer is she lying in wait; she is reaching towards destiny. She is ready to depart.

DanielWebre

The space itself was like a stockade for animals. As soon as you entered, you were herded off into a system of wooden fences that terminated at the register. My shoes stuck to the linoleum.

“No, Pepsi’ s not okay. Give me Dr. Pepper, then, ” said the man in front of me.

“Leave the drawer open. I want some change, ” said the woman behind me as I paid.

The Wayne Literary Review: Escapism

The dining room was vast, though divided into four sections with wooden partitions topped with plastic plants. I chose a table close to the buffet area so that I could observe the workers chopping vegetables. I marveled at the abundance of the place.

This was the produce section. You could build a salad from the ground up or start with a quarter wedge of lettuce in a bowl and add on from there. As healthy as these options appeared, I didn ’t think I could spare the room in my stomach. There was too much other food to sample. But I liked being here in view of all these fresh vegetables. In fact, the whole back wall of this enclosure was a supermarket-style refrigerated case where piles of cucumbers, cauliflowers and other veggies awaited selection by the chefs. It was a garden oasis amid an otherwise meat-market atmosphere. But don ’t misunderstand --I had come here to eat.

My first plate was piled so high a piece of fried fish flipped right off and onto the floor. Whether I picked it up or left it there, it would be rude either way. But I opted to retrieve it with a paper napkin and turn it over to the waitress, who had seen what I had done. I aimed to eat everything else on my plate and had plans to refill it, except some of my selections proved poor. These I broke into pieces and scattered them about, covering the larger bits with a napkin.

The white napkin on my plate must have beaconed to the waitress like a flag of surrender because she approached my table for the first time that evening.

“Have a good night, ” she said.

And I said, “I intend to . . . right here at this table. ”

Irene smiled and took the plate but seemed confused by what I had just said. She must have caught on when I returned from the bar with another heaping plate.

With my initial hunger quelled, I felt at leisure to key in on what was happening right in front of me in the produce staging area.

The Wayne Literary Review: Escapism

In addition to the constant chopping, another employee was tending a barrel-shaped piece of machinery made of gleaming stainless steel that perched on a countertop and discharged amber-colored water into a sink. I watched in fascination as my teeth battled a piece of chewy steak. What sort of device was this? I had never seen the likes of it. The mystery was soon solved when another lady approached from the kitchen, opened a compartment, and began unloading golden potatoes that had been scoured clean of their skins. As she carried away the tub of abraded tubers, I could see that the stream of water spewing from the device ’ s side no longer ran amber but had clarified. Soon the lady returned. This time her basin was loaded with unpeeled potatoes, which she placed one by one into the open maw of the machine. She closed the door and flicked a switch, and the whole assembly began to rattle and shake, and the water darkened again. It was a miracle.

A woman in loose-fitting clothes slowly entered my field of vision, almost gliding, with no discernable pumping of her arms. The billowing folds of her white garment perhaps made her appear more massive than she might have otherwise been. I just could distinguish the steady shuffling of her feet. The whole effect—white bulk juxtaposed with such an image of plenty all around me—reminded me of ocean traffic. Specifically the extraordinary cruise ships that left port down by the Convention Center, their movement so slow and dreamlike that the thought even now transported me to some idea of a Caribbean paradise.

“Eddie? Is that you?” I heard my name and realized it was coming from the person pausing before me, prompting me to remember where I was, and I felt a brief wave of shame as I recognized my friend Barbara.

“What are you doing here?” said Barbara.

I told her what seemed to me was the truth: “I am feasting. ”

“Why, of course. I just meant --well, you don ’t live around here, do you?”

“No, not really, ” I said. “But places like this don ’t exist in the city. ”

“I suppose not, ” she said.

The Wayne Literary Review: Escapism

I had her with that one. Something must have caught her eye, though, because she smiled, and drifted off again in the direction of the carving station. Barbara was a nice woman, a good woman. They don ’t make many Barbaras anymore, I concluded. My attention returned to the gleaming potato peeler, and suddenly I felt the urge to tell Barbara: “We live in an age of abundance. ” But I was sure Barbara had other things on her mind. I resolved to tell her another time.

I became so engrossed with the potato peeler dancing its little jig upon the countertop that I did not realize someone spoke to me. I thought it might be Barbara stopping over on her return passage. But this was a strange, hairy man.

“Hey, Bub, ” he said when I first noticed him. “You dropped this. ”

He held out a steak knife.

“No, sir, ” I said to him.

“Mine ’ s right here, ” and I gestured toward my steak knife balanced properly across the upper right-hand portion of my plate. That’ s when he introduced himself as Felix. I said, “Pleased to meet you, Felix, ” but I really wasn ’t, and I didn ’t offer him my name. He could call me Bub if he wanted to.

Then Felix said,

“I guess I’ll go on back to my table, then, ” and I told Felix that sounded like a fine idea.

The potato peeler had lost its luster, and the two heaping plates had started to settle and maybe swell up a bit in my system. I had lost my momentum, and my plans for feasting all evening no longer seemed compelling.

At first, I blamed Felix. Irene could easily have sent him over to scuttle my plans for a third plate. I imagined him shedding hair all over the food bar, and my stomach seized. I turned in my chair as though stretching casually between rounds of the meal, and there was Felix sitting two tables over, watching. He smiled and sent a small wave of good fellow feeling in my direction. I nodded and rotated back toward my plate.

It seemed that Felix ate alone at the buffet, too, but I didn ’t want him to conclude that we were birds of a feather or cut from the same

The Wayne Literary Review: Escapism