Akhmed and the Atomic Matzo Balls. Gary Buslik

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СКАЧАТЬ made on Popsie (being Republicans was abominable enough, but chartering a giant cruise ship for their exclusive use as a bridal suite was beyond the solar system in over-consumptive insufferability).

      Nevertheless, Leslie Fenwich, Ph.D.—Professor Leslie Fenwich—had always wondered what it would be like to have dinner at a decadent bourgeois trough like Seasons, overlooking this boulevardian emblem of conspicuous self-indulgence (until now he had dared not try the experiment; aside from the cost, there was always the risk that someone from the university, perhaps sightseeing on Michigan Avenue after having had a properly proletarian Gino’s pizza, would connoiter him leaving said decadent bourgeois trough, imperiling his reputation as a committed proponent of wealth redistribution and dashing his pedagogical ambitions), so Angus’s invitation had held a certain fascination. If anyone from the English Department did happen to spot him, he had only to tell the truth—that he was enduring the unendurable as a sacrifice to the welfare of the university; that to attract big money, you sometimes had to jump into slop with swine. It was disgusting, and average college administrators wouldn’t do it, but, of course, Leslie Fenwich wasn’t average. Whatever he did, he did to perfection—with, as he would sniff to chancellor Beebe, while scrubbing her back in the shower, “full devotion to the cause.”

      In preparation for this dinner, he’d had his blazer cleaned and pressed—menial work that marginalized and degraded Third World subalterns, who had immigrated to America hoping to find freedom, only to be forced into a life of unfulfilling labor and subservience to middle-class, white-customer oppressors, forced to adhere to historically Eurocentric, repressive standards of commerce, such as competitive pricing, guarantee of quality, an unblocked fire exit, and rat-free premises; not only did they have to touch their so-called superiors’ personal garments (sometimes of a most metonymically demeaning nature—e.g., pantyhose), they were forced to call them “Mr.” and “Mrs.” (in Les’s case, “Dr.”) and actually thank them for their business, as if they were serfs thanking their feudal lords for not pillorying them in the public square or strapping them to a tree to be eaten alive by hounds. What’s more, also in preparation for this meet-up, having discovered that he had no shirts without secretion stains in the nipple areas, Les had rushed out to Marshall Field’s to buy a new button-down-collar long-sleeve, only to discover that the beloved emporium was no longer Field’s but—get this—Macy’s, the flagship brand of the national corporate behemoth, Federated Department Stores, which unsentimentally devoured venerable regional treasures the way barracuda devour shrimp.

      Which was precisely the menu item—shrimp, not barracuda—the Professor now screwed his eyes into on the Season’s appetizer list. North Atlantic jumbo shrimp, detailed and shucked, served on shaved ice with Thousand Island-cilantro dressing and wedge of lemon. Yum. His glance minueting to the right side of the menu, he began to salivate at the description of the various steak dishes. At first he thought he might select the Delmonico New York sirloin au poivre with cognac sauce, but that city reminded him of Macy’s, which was not only the standard bearer of the aforesaid Federated corporate monster but which sponsored the Fifth Avenue Christmas Day parade. Sponsoring anything remotely to do with religion he found so repulsive that his salivary glands immediately shut down, his throat closed up, and he had to quell his gag reflex. What’s more, he recalled his recent shirt-buying excursion, in which, instead of nostalgically finding the cozy and comforting—despite its annual Christmas tree—Marshall Field’s, he had come face to face with the conglomerate-spawned Macy’s, and further in which, being thus forced to suffer the grim truth that nothing was more sacred in corporate America than the almighty bottom line, he had dejectedly shuffled over to Carson Pirie Scott, where instead of that hometown favorite, he found only a boarded-up former department store, now ententacled in construction scaffolding at the bottom of which a gargantuan sign announced the coming of luxury condominiums, starting at “only” $750,000! Good God, who made that kind of money? Not anyone in the damn English Department.

      Which was why, despite its come-hither delineation, he now decided to take a pass on the New York pepper steak and order the house specialty instead. That description was no slouch: “Two-inch thick prime Kobe beef, brushed with a light honey glaze, nestled in caramelized onions and knighted with cross-swords of asparagus.” Who wrote this stuff, anyway? Starving linguistics majors?

      Unlike the Delmonico, this Kobe meat sat well with Les’s conscience. Kobe was Japanese beef, from Japanese cows that had been fed only the finest grains, never force-fed, never rushed to market. True, at a gazillion dollars a pound (this he knew from listening to National Public Radio, not from the menu, because, in fact, his had no prices listed, Angus having made self-aggrandizingly sure the waiter knew that he was host), the meat did seem a bit pricey, but didn’t we owe them that? Didn’t we racistly and cruelly intern Japanese-Americans at the start of World War II? Didn’t we murder, maim, and genetically deform thousands of their civilians—the elderly, women, children, handicapped—by dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki—vile, unnecessary, barbarous acts whose only true motive was a show of force that would ensure the supremacy of the American military-industrial complex? Not to mention that sickening newsreel footage of the mushroom cloud rising behind the Enola Gay, shown in every theater in the United States, reducing unspeakable and gratuitous human suffering to petty bourgeois entertainment? See melting flesh, pop a licorice. Not that anyone could ever make up for that savagery or the hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of innocent lives America had destroyed in its wars of military occupation, cultural hegemony, and economic imperialism, but didn’t the collectively and historically culpable have the responsibility to at least try? Wouldn’t ordering Japanese meat be the least Professor Leslie Fenwich could do? Not that Les himself, personally, was guilty, of course. Anyone who knew him would understand that he was thinking synecdochically—which he liked to do.

      So he was all set to order the Kobe, his salivary glands once more in full shock and awe, his fingernails scraping the silk-lined menu in happy and (after his department-store running-around, shirt-buying ordeal) ravenous anticipation, his throat again as wide and wet as Tokyo Bay, when Diane furtively leaned over to him and whispered, “Don’t forget, strictly vegetarian.”

      A blinding flash of light. Reflexively, he looked up from his menu to the other side of the table, but it was only Angus smiling fatuously at his soon-to-be bride, who was gulping her Dom P. with one hand and pointing at her dinner roll with the other, indicating to soon-to-be Mr. Karma to butter her a morsel.

      “What?” Leslie whispered back.

      “Don’t order any meat.” Diane nodded at their daughter. “We have to set a good example.”

      And so, trembling with Kobe-anticipation-deficiency—a term he immediately coined and about which he might write a scholarly article for Verbatim: The Language Bi-Quarterly , either from his office or, if he failed to finish dinner without murdering all three of these horrible creatures, his prison cell—he wound up ordering the pasta Olivia with broccoli and pigeon peas with a side of potatoes au gratin, holding the cheese because cheese comes from cows, and it’s not enough not to eat the goddamn cows, no ma’am, you also can’t eat their goddamn cheese—like they even care. Like it’s not a tad too late for Democrat Mom to be setting a good example for Republican daughter—the same daughter who currently wouldn’t stop complaining, loudly enough for the entire restaurant to hear, about everything in sight, including but not limited to the awful service, the stink of the waiter, his unpolished fingernails, the anemic shrimp, wilted lettuce, dry tomatoes, tasteless carrots, unabsorbent napkin, cheap perfume of the “low-class bitch” sitting two tables over, inadequate leg room, inane Muzak, clanking dishes, streaked windows, dusty chandelier, tarnished silverware, thin salad dressing, hard rolls, tasteless tie on the “appliance salesman” sitting at the next table, improperly deflected air conditioning, and rancid breath of said daughter’s fiancé.

      In the meantime, lovesick, puppy-eyed, obsequious Angus—butter-spreading-for-his-betrothed, humongous-blood-diamond-ring-giving, O’Reilly Factor-watching, Armani-tie-wearing, Polo-argyle-sock-wearing, СКАЧАТЬ