Everyday, I eat my first meal — I’m hesitant to call it breakfast, because I sometimes get out of bed at 3 — at a local diner, where I know the menu by heart and have decided on my meal before I get there. I left the house at around 9 today, and, while walking, settled on pancakes with strawberries (microwaved, but still frozen in the centers) and sausage patties. But Wesley Clark decided to use my diner for a morning meet-and-greet before his speech later today at the University, and the crowd spilled out onto the street: posters, film crews, no strawberries for Nathalie.
So, for breakfast, I had to go to my diner’s neighboring diner, which is run by an old fat blond and a hunchback. A couple small dead flies are stuck to the tape on the window’s display menu. The blond wears, depending on the day, a pink or purple short-jumpsuit, which exposes bulging varicose veins and induces a deep wedgie. The glasses always have orange food-like flakes stuck to them and the entire place smells of rotten meat. I kept looking at the hunchback, thinking, deformity kills appetite. Don’t they know that?