Moderizta

Driving in a car with Dad. We are looking for a restaurant. Each time we approach one, we slow down to look it over. We finally walk into a place that looks more like a market or upscale grocery store. We stand just inside the entryway looking at the wicker baskets full of cheese nestled in beds of straw and bottles of wine in black wire racks. There is music playing and a French voice comes on. I can’t tell if it is singing or talking. The labels of products on the shelf are in French also. One bottle of wine and a silver bag of something that reads Moderizta. Mom and Stacy pull into the parking lot. I see the back of their heads through the store window and the back window of the car as they pull into a parking space across the small lot.

I am leaving a cafe in a mall. As I walk up to pay, the cashier begins playing the register like a piano. His fingers flow across the plastic keys of number pad and piano music fills the room. He looks like David Letterman. Across from his counter is another register where an old woman begins playing along. An old man stands besides her rocking to the music, awaiting his turn to play.

I walk into an industrial kitchen where a giant hunk of meat 3 or 4 feet high is sitting simmering on a wide flat steel grill. A chef in a stained white apron and coat comes in and grabs the meat off the grill with giant tongs. He lifts it to a nearby table and sets it in a large tray. He slices into the meat, cutting it open into the center. He intends to cut out the parts of the meat that are still good. But the outer edges don’t look that burnt to me. The chef says that he must save it. I look to the right behind a rack or a glass door of a cooler I see what looks like faces like cows pressing against glass trying to look in. The meat on the tray throbs and pumps like a giant heart.