Laurence Klavan ~ The Food Court

It wasn’t real­ly a food court, which was a bunch of restau­rants in a mall or a build­ing lob­by. This was a buf­fet, dif­fer­ent offer­ings set up in a sin­gle din­ing space, a meal includ­ed in the price of a room, here in the hotel.

“It’s a typ­i­cal mod­ern mis­use of lan­guage,” Shea said to the woman. “People say the lan­guage is ‘evolv­ing’ but it’s real­ly just lazi­ness and igno­rance. For instance, ‘bom­bas­tic’ is now used to mean explo­sive, like a bomb, when it real­ly means over-the-top, loud, and brag­gy, right? The oth­er day, I saw ‘floun­der’ used to mean ‘squan­der,’ and no one cares. You know?”

Replacing a pil­low­case, which she was hold­ing beneath her chin, the clean­ing woman looked at him, blankly, then shrugged.

Shea knew he could be off-putting, though that wasn’t the rea­son he’d been laid off or not the only rea­son, any­way. His com­pa­ny had down­sized, and he’d been part of their “bloat,” they said, as if he were a bulging mid­sec­tion and not a man. Over forty, and, he admit­ted, gar­ru­lous, he’d had trou­ble get­ting anoth­er job, and his unem­ploy­ment ben­e­fits had run out. So, Shea had been hid­ing in the house where he lived alone, going hungry.

Out of options, he had seen a food deliv­ery box dropped at the house across the street, which hap­pened often. He knew that his neigh­bor, Marlon—who still had a job and was rich from a fam­i­ly inher­i­tance, anyway—didn’t get home until six. So, he’d stolen the box, con­tain­ing nox­ious but nutri­tious veg­an food­stuffs, and sur­vived anoth­er day. Shea had done it twice more before Marlon pulled back the cur­tain on his first floor, where he’d been lying in wait to catch the thief, and the two locked eyes. Holding up his phone, Marlon shrieked he was “call­ing the cops!” or words to that effect, his voice silenced by lay­ers of secu­ri­ty glass, Shea read­ing his lips, at which he didn’t excel but it didn’t mat­ter, under the cir­cum­stances. Then he had fled to his car, sev­er­al pay­ments on which were due, and dri­ven away, run­ning two red lights in his haste.

Shea had had no clear des­ti­na­tion in mind. A cli­mate-com­pli­cat­ed down­pour drenched the roads and reduced his vis­i­bil­i­ty to noth­ing. Feeling like a mix­ture of Jean Valjean and Marion Crane, a mod­ern man made up of fic­tion­al peo­ple from the past, Shea had pulled into a hotel flash­ing a dig­i­tal “Vacancy” sign.

The place was pecu­liar­ly opu­lent and mar­bleized. He was informed by a desk clerk a sin­gle room was still being made up, but Shea said he didn’t mind. This was when the guy men­tioned their hav­ing a food court. Shea real­ized the term was wrong when he walked into the room and told the clean­ing woman, who didn’t care, or so he had thought.

Now she stran­gled a sheet to death with a hos­pi­tal corner.

“It is a food court,” she said.

“Excuse me?”

“That’s what the oth­ers said,” the woman went on. “The men who had this room before you.”

Studying her, Shea couldn’t tell her age, hair col­or or even race: from one angle, she looked one way, from anoth­er, anoth­er. Even her accent, if she had one, seemed to fluctuate.

“What do you mean…who had the room before me?”

“It’s always crooks and creeps,” she said, tug­ging the blan­ket over the sheet with final­i­ty, as if cov­er­ing a corpse. “No-goods.”

Shea didn’t reply.

“One had punched some­body in the street,” she said, “just because he was angry at the world. Another had kid­napped his own kid, to get back at his wife. Still anoth­er, drunk, had run down a dog in the road and then tak­en off, telling no one.”

“Terrible,” Shea said.

He felt she stared at him strange­ly after­wards. Was she lump­ing him in with those mis­cre­ants? Then she segued into the next stage of her story.

“Each said there’d been a spread wait­ing for them in the lob­by, when they woke up.”

“A buf­fet?”

“No,” and there was impa­tience in her tone now. “A food court. Which ren­dered a judg­ment on them.”

“That’s goofy,” Shea thought but didn’t say, for he could make out mus­cles in the woman’s arms he hadn’t noticed before, and they made him cautious.

“All right, I’ll bite,” he said, the only one chuck­ling at his humor­ous turn of phrase, giv­en the sub­ject mat­ter. “What was the court’s ‘ver­dict’ on them?”

“It was dif­fer­ent for each creep,” she said.

“Different pun­ish­ments?”

“No. The punch­er was served deli­cious meals he’d nev­er had before. The kid­nap­per was giv­en fan­cy treats he nev­er could have afford­ed. And the dog killer ate only things that brought back won­der­ful mem­o­ries, like in that bor­ing book by…”

“Proust?”

“Yeah.”

Shea was silent again, for the infor­ma­tion sur­prised him.

“I don’t get it,” he blurt­ed out.

The woman rolled her eyes, giv­ing up. She bunched up the dirty bed­dings and tossed them over her shoul­der, as if they were car­cass­es of ani­mals she’d killed.

“Bön appetite,” she said.

Thoughtfully, Shea closed the door. He was still fam­ished, could not wait to eat and not just because he felt phys­i­cal­ly deplet­ed. He under­stood the hotel was where all was for­giv­en, he had not pulled into it by acci­dent. As he fell asleep on the new­ly made bed, Shea felt the phys­i­cal pain of star­va­tion as an ecsta­t­ic empti­ness, and he would soon be filled to over­flow­ing with love.

Shea slept so close to the sur­face of con­scious­ness, he was awak­ened by the swish of an invi­ta­tion to break­fast, pushed under the door. With no razor, tooth­brush, or change of clothes, with his five o’clock shad­ow and wrin­kled shirt, he thought he resem­bled a man head­ed to his last meal. Yet he knew it would be the first of his reborn life.

In the cav­ernous lob­by, Shea was the only cus­tomer of, yes, a buf­fet but also a—this was the cor­rect term—steam table. Steel con­tain­ers set in slots held smok­ing selec­tions of… stand­ing at a small dis­tance, shy or per­haps unset­tled, Shea couldn’t tell what it was.

A sin­gle female serv­er over­saw every­thing, wear­ing a black apron and gray sur­gi­cal mask. For a sec­ond, Shea thought it was the clean­ing woman, but that was sil­ly, and, besides, he couldn’t see her face.

“What’s good?” he asked, a gag, as was his wont, he alone appreciated.

The serv­er threw up her hands, giv­ing atti­tude, say­ing, take a look for your­self, smart guy. Shea looked: pip­ing on the tables was some sort of stew, with bub­bling liq­uid and white lumps like stones in a bay ablaze. Shea stepped to the sec­ond and third sta­tions and saw the same dish.

“It’s all one thing,” the serv­er said.

What gives? Shea want­ed to ask, before the serv­er snapped her fin­gers to him to grab a bowl and lift a ladle.

Shea woke up in his room, hours lat­er, still starved. Though he had bare­ly tak­en a bite, he had a torched taste in his mouth, as if his lips had a lit match held to them. There were no water glass­es in the bath­room and forc­ing his head beneath the faucet, he found both taps hot, and cursed aloud to no one except him­self. His beard had grown heav­ier, and his shirt stank.

An invi­ta­tion to lunch lay under the door like an extend­ed tongue.

“What’s good?” Shea asked the same serv­er moments lat­er, but the words got stuck in his singed and puffy lips. Stabbing a fin­ger as if to poke his eye, she indi­cat­ed the same tables, emit­ting the same smoke.

Shea couldn’t keep from step­ping for­ward, des­per­ate to at least eat some­thing. Then, grab­bing a ladle, he was stopped.

“One’s poi­soned, by the way,” the serv­er said. “But which one?”

The ladle was so hot Shea flung it to the floor, where it echoed, deafeningly.

On his bed, Shea had only just shut his eyes and heard a din­ner invi­ta­tion. When he stum­bled down­stairs, the serv­er was the same, the sta­tions, the smoke. Shea stared at the fig­ure for instruc­tions but only received information.

“It’s all poi­soned now,” she said.

Shea stood still for but a sec­ond, yet he sensed the sun ris­ing and falling in the sky. He was too hun­gry to resist and dipped a sear­ing ladle down, down, down to the bot­tom before lift­ing it to his lips.

Afterwards, on the floor, foam­ing and twitch­ing, he won­dered: why me? What did I do that was worse than the oth­ers? I might have been annoy­ing but not immoral. Why was I sin­gled out? I was sim­ply starving.

Shea’s eye­sight grew blurred. Swimming into view was that day’s menu, crude­ly scrawled and attached by tape to a shaky stand. He expect­ed to see an expla­na­tion or at least his own name. Then he under­stood. All it said, as it had for every­one, was the day of the week and “Today’s Special.”

~

Laurence Klavan wrote the sto­ry col­lec­tion, The Family Unit’ and Other Fantasies, pub­lished by Chizine in Canada. His novel­la, Albertine, was pub­lished by Leamington Books in Scotland. An Edgar Award-win­ner, he received two Drama Desk nom­i­na­tions for the book and lyrics of “Bed and Sofa,” the musi­cal pro­duced by the Vineyard Theater in New York and the Finborough Theatre in London. His Web site is www.laurenceklavan.com.