Thursday, July 16, 2020

I walk in, meaning to get a mushroom burger. I change my mind when I see the workers near the front of the shop putting beef burgers together. They look too good to pass up. The man at the counter looks up at me, ready to take my order. The phone rings. He signals for me to wait, then picks up the phone and takes the order. Whoever is calling is getting six very different burgers. They’re being finicky about it. He rings up the order, takes a photo of the receipt with his cell phone, and turns back to me. The phone rings again. He gestures again and takes the order. This one is simple. He turns back to me. I ask for a burger in Hebrew. He responds in English. I realize that, while I had the words right, I used the American “b’rg’r” rather than the Israeli “Boorgehr,” and I failed to swallow my “r”s. I finish ordering, get my soda immediately, and sit outside to wait. About half of the tables are taken. At the table next to mine, two young girls alternate taking selfies. Each clowns in the other’s background. They argue about the meanings of the English words “crunchy” and “clicky”. Or maybe it’s “cliquey.” Those are the only words I can identify. They emit a rapid stream of chirps, glottal sounds, extended vowels, and giggles. I imagine that this is how a language written entirely in emoji might sound. I take a writing guide that I’m reading out of my bag. I rest my arms on the table. My right arm doesn’t feel right. I look down. Someone had spilled a chocolate shake and hadn’t cleaned all of it up. Some of it got on my sleeve. So be it. I hear a worker call my name from within the shop. I go inside. My burger is on the tray, but my sweet potato fries aren’t. The worker who took my order trots up to the counter with them. “We didn’t have enough sweet potato fries, so I put an added serving of regular fries in with it. Bon appetit.” I take the tray to my table. I carefully set it down on the spilled shake so I won’t dredge the muck with my sleeve again. I unwrap the burger and take a bite. I’m disappointed. It looked far better than it tastes. I now know to stick to the mushrooms.