The Night of the Big Salad

A story loosely based on Daniel One

by Bob Freye
 

It was a bad place for a meeting. The neon glare from the street below didn’t quite reach up to the observation deck, six floors above the pavement. Pockets of deep shadow lined the thin, grey walkway. I kept a hand out to feel my way around. A careless step might lead me smack into a wall, or worse yet, over the rail and down.

They were having fun down there, among the rows of bistros and clubs. The sound carried, even though the light did not. Laughter and music seemed to wrap around me like a warm sweater, adding an unreal sense of amusement to what could have been the last minutes of my life.

I walked along the rail until I noticed him, leaning heavily against the wall of the building, safely back from the edge. He was almost covered in shadow, but I recognized the raspy wheeze of his breathing. He said something to me, but I didn’t catch it. The words were covered up by a sudden cough.

More than likely, he had called out my name. It was all new to me, this word that they had chosen to call me. Sometimes I didn’t answer, but not because I didn’t want to. The word sounded like any one of a thousand phrases that could only be comfortable to someone born into this language and time.

I was neither. I had been dragged here.

Standing in the night air, six floors above the pavement, I was aware that it could all end in an instant. It all depended on this meeting. This might be a good thing, if the man with the raspy breathing was in a good mood. But it was probably something very, very bad.

“I have a problem,” the man said from the shadows.

It was a bad thing. Very, very bad.

“Is there something I can do to help?” I asked.

“You can have dinner,” the man coughed, “on me.”

The shadows tended to play tricks on the eye, but I was beginning to think that someone else was up on the observation deck. I caught a hint of movement off to one side, lost in the darkness. It was something large, I was certain. And if it chose to hide in the shadow, then it was probably dangerous, for me.

“Thanks,” I told the man. “That’s very generous.”

“I tell you, though,” he said, “I got a reason. I hear you don’t eat much, and that bothers me.”

If he was bothered, then I was bothered.

“You been given a great opportunity here,” he said, repeating a lecture that I had heard when I first arrived in Wonderland. “A great opportunity, and I don’t want you to waste it.”

“Look, I really appreciate all you’ve done,” I told him, but he didn’t give me a chance to finish.

“You don’t eat meat, you don’t eat cheese, you don’t eat anything barbecued or deep fat fried,” he ticked the items off on his fingers, “you don’t drink the wine we give you—the best wine that anyone can hope to buy anywhere in the city, and you don’t drink it!”

His voice rose as his anger began to boil.

“Is this how you repay us for all we do for you?”

I tried to answer, but apparently it was one of those rhetorical questions, like when your parents ask if you’ll ever amount to anything. They don’t really want you to tell them. They’ve already made up their mind.

“All I want you to do is eat a good meal,” he said, his voice resuming its normal illusion of calm. “I took the liberty of ordering for you.”

He waved a hand, and a petite young woman stepped out of the shadows. This was the dangerous shape I had seen. She was little more than five feet tall, and rail-thin. In her hands, she carried a flat box with the words Wonderland’s Best scrawled across the top. An aroma of baked meat mixed with the more delicate smells that drifted up from the restaurants beneath us.

“I have a large three-cheese pizza with all the meats,” she announced, adding with an air of disdain, “with heavy anchovies.”

She stood there, waiting, expecting me to step forward and take the box.

“Sorry,” I said. “I can’t.”

The man leaned his head back against the stone wall and closed his eyes.

“Here’s the thing,” he said quietly. “You gotta be strong.”

“I am strong,” I said.

“No, no,” he objected. “You gotta be healthy and strong, because they only take the best.”

I knew that. They explained all that. But I had something else in mind.

“Are you willing to try an experiment?” I asked.

The railing was just a few feet away. Around here, you didn’t ask for favors, or you stood a good chance of disappearing in the night. It would be easy. They would just toss me over the side, and that would be that. 

“What kind of experiment?”

Or maybe I would live a while longer.

“I’ve had good results with this diet I’m on,” I explained. “Let me stay with it for a week, and then let’s talk. If it works, then you don’t have to worry about ordering any more pizza for me.”

“And if it doesn’t?” he growled. “Then you’re out of the program. And I’ll be out, too, for letting you try something so stupid.”

Funny. In my mind, it didn’t seem like much of a risk. It was going to work.  

“Test me! If this works, you’ll look like a genius!” It was all I could do. He had to say yes.

But he didn’t. Not right away. I stood there listening to the distant sound of drunk patrons from below and the slow cadence of his labored breathing.

“What’s your diet?” he asked, after a while.

Now to convince him with my carefully constructed scheme, one that was too meticulously crafted to fail.

“Vegetables, mostly.”

Breathing out, breathing in.

“I eat a lot of salads,” I added.

“We have recently added three delicious salads to our take-out line,” the woman chirped. “We have the small salad, the medium salad, and the large.” She held up fingers in succession to articulate the remarkable diversity of the new salad menu.

“See,” I said, pointing to the pizza box with the attached delivery person. “Salads! They’re catching on.”

Breathing.

“You think you can live on this—rabbit food?” he snorted.

“Yes,” I told him, “I think I can.”

It was a wild idea, but God was doing something in Wonderland. And he was doing something in me. Why not try something bold? Why not try to do what was right? What could it cost me?

“If it doesn’t work—“ he began.

I didn’t ask him to finish the sentence.

“Are you still paying for dinner?” I asked. “If you are, then I’ll take the big salad.”

The petite woman wrote the order on a pad of paper. “Anything else?” she asked.

“Sure,” I said. “I’ll take it to go.”
 

[-] © 2006