Wednesday, March 24, 2004

Basket Cases

Five blocks from my house there’s a seedy little joint that makes a terrific burger, and the best fresh potato chips I’ve ever encountered.  It’s a great take-out place, close enough to home that I get back with the thick juicy burgers still warm and fragrant. It’s not such a nice place to eat in, though - tiny, sub-minimally decorated, fluorescently bright and furnished with uncomfortable seats.  Regardless, sometimes that’s exactly the sort of place I need to reconnect with some inner font of grit and misery, so I went there a few weeks ago on a night home alone and I got my burger in a plastic basket instead of a paper bag.

Upon ordering I noticed a man in his 50s, not quite short nor fat but almost both, in a windbreaker and unpressed chinos.  He stood at the counter as I ordered; a well-filled paper bag - clearly his own food - sat neatly folded at eye level in front of him.  He smiled very broadly, his small eyes burrowing deep behind his fat fleshy cheeks.  As I finished ordering and took a stool by the front window I honed in on his conversation.  He chuckled a lot as he chatted, rocking back and forth on his heels.  He was talking about coconut milk, trying to explain what it was to the two south-east asian types who worked there, describing how it’s obtained, how it tastes… the woman behind the counter kept saying, “it’s not really milk you know,” and the man with the bag just chuckled and rocked back and said, “They call - they call it coconut milk though - you’re not making fun of me are you?” It was clear that he was lingering; once coconuts were exhausted as a topic of conversation he talked similarly about baseball, the fry oil, the darkness of the night - always with that chuckle, rocking back; always asking, “You’re not making fun of me, are you?” As he finally shuffled out to the street with his bag of food in his chubby grip he tried to catch my eye, but I gazed soulfully into my hamburger and eluded him. 

Next up was a very tidy old woman in an overcoat and babushka.  She stomped her way along the sidewalk to a small trashcan by the door; then she put down her several bulging canvas bags and began to work through the garbage.  The can was tiny but she wrestled with its meager contents for several minutes, her face a study in aggravotration.  After investing far too much time she carried a single soda can to the curb and furiously shook it out, then stuffed it bitterly into one of the canvas bags.  Then she went back to the trash bucket and continued to excavate inside it.  A few more scowling minutes later she had a plastic water bottle to shake out and add to her collection.  Then she moved on to an ever smaller, almost empty wastebasket next to the first one, working through it with redoubled grimness and determination.  It seemed to take her forever. 

Then, having gleaned what she could outside, she moved into the shop, leaving her canvas bags of recycling on the sidewalk.  She lifted the top off of one of the two standard waist-tall garbage cans serving the café, methodically going through every item in it, slowly burrowing to the bottom, once in a great while pulling out a can or a bottle for shaking and stuffing.  Each time she went to step out with a can she’d turn to face us at the threshold and mutter “thankyou” in an alum voice.  Having bent double into the garbage can to appraise the soiled refuse even in its furthest reaches, she replaced the top on it and moved on to a second, identical can.  Once she’d finally, painstakingly pulled out all the recycling she could find, she began reorganizing the restaurant garbage, filling one can with the contents of the other.  Then she grabbed the liner out of the empty can and packed it in her bag, replaced it with a new clean one from a roll on a shelf just above her coiffed grey bun and kerchief.  She scorched the air with one more glare around the small café, spat out a final “thankyou”, bowed derisively, and left. 

All this time one guy had been sitting at a table behind me.  He had long stringy hair and a long stringy beard, worn out denim and canvas clothes; he seemed tall and skinny as he huddled over his basket of food.  A first cursory glance had led me to think he was the hippie who ran the pet food store, all shrugged up over the table as he read something with which he violent disagreed; as time wore on and he never changed his position or turned the page, I began to doubt that identification as well as his status, mental and physical.  He hunched and shuddered, shook and cowered, his rude tresses draping his grizzled face.  At one point he shouted to – well, it seemed, to heaven, but it was probably to the guys behind the counter: “Isn’t there any ketchup anywhere around here?” The fry cook stepped out and moved a jar of ketchup that stood on his small table closer to him.  In a quieter voice he replied, “I can’t hardly see anyway.” I finished my burger and chips and left before he did. 

One burger and one order of delicious chips; side of three lost souls.  That’s why this is mainly a take-out place.