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What's it been now, three weeks? Or so, yeah, three weeks. Some things are settling in. Wearing jeans in 80 degree weather. Bought a dresser, finally. But home is still just doors and windows, and I just bounce back and forth from condo to cubicle, not sure yet this is real.
Furr's Cafeteria doesn't help matters much. There's a tiled atrium with benches and that win-a-prize-with-a-little-forklift game they have in bowling alleys. Fifty people could wait there. Inside there are maybe thirty. The first face I see is waxy white, a caricature of a morbidly obese American. But she's not a cartoon, she's sitting right there, giving me the stink eye over her chicken piccata. The girl running the buffet line asks over and over again, "And what else?" until there's nothing else, just pre-plated Jello cheesecake and sweet tea with free refills.
In the corner it smells like hospital disinfectant, not really covering the smell of piss. So I push the food-jelly around on its plates, eat half of everything like someone I knew back home who applied that lesson impartially to both pancakes and broccoli, trying to lose a little holiday weight.
Out the window the thick spring leaves are rustling under a sky that goes from dark grey to sunbreak and back. I didn't know Texas would be so windy. Whenever I walk anywhere beyond the brick confines of my building it seems a strong wind picks up coming from whichever direction I'm going, strong enough to straighten out my hair like a flag as the blast hits and blow dust into my eyes. I hear the whistle of old westerns and a voice telling me I've come to the wrong place and I should turn back. Too late now.
Work is unsatisfying and the evening is too short. I find I've fallen back on old habits trying to make the surreal feel familiar. There's was a point to all this, but I lost it. I got sucked into one of two Furr's Cafeterias here off the intersection of several overhead state routes and the wind is blowing too hard to leave and there's nothing to do but go back for more.
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