Strange women

Steve was a beautiful and kind soul, working at a dive bar as the head chef of things people used to put in their mouths while drinking. He never asked for such great responsibility and had left San Francisco as a man who was forced to chop vegetables for ten years, so many vegetable deaths at that time. Now we kept him close, a veteran, and promised to never make him hear the screams of onions again.

To this end, all of agree that we would only order real meat and bread that had never shown to have a soul. There’s an anciet yogihitstu machine that can hear plants scream when you pluck them. We didn’t want to know the trauma of lettuce on trying to be lettuce. Didin’t want to know how one carrot might tell his brethren that he was runty and small. The fact is radishes are angry little beast who dare people like Steve to cut them thin and make their body shaping perfect. The glamour of being a garnish is almost repressive.

“Hey Steve, I’ll take one of those all meat buritos please.”

He looke shakily around the corner, “Did you need salsa with that? “ I could tell he was very tense. Steve had been trying to desensitize over weeks of counseling but he wasn’t ready to pour salsa even if it was executed and pulverized by others.

“Nah, Steve. I prefer it dry,” I lied.

Steve went back to his little closet kitchen and felt that he was loved and respected for keeping us with food while the alcohol tried to effect those faster who had no food. Steve was good for busines and the old timers tipped their beers for my kindness.

Everything was going to be fine because the old timers taught me to poor bloody marry’s over the meat only burrito so it wasn’t so dry. They claimed, “If you wash it down with a margarita you will won’t miss anything afer a few bites. “

I thanked them. We were all in this social experiment called life together.

Just then… The mean drunken skanky woman came flopping in from the casino side of the bar. We try to keep the ladies restrooms looking like a tijuana prison cell to avoid such types. She was obviously impervious to our warning signs about hygiene and bitter masculinity and plopped down her dangling tennis bracelet to scratch the surface of our holy bar.

“Hey you, i know you…” Stefania was known by all becaues she was kind and had began to really glow from the mass ammounts of meat that Steve served. I think she used the employee only restroom because she was a civilized person.

“This woman took out a fancy vape hooka from the city and we had to tell her that smoking is only allowed outside because some of the drinkers are federal workers. She did’t care. Then she dangld her arm and almost lost her balance bobbing her head and said the most terrible thing anyone had said in years: “I want one of those Chef Salads with Kael.”

We all froze.

Even my dog put down his tail. I let him come into the bar to smell people’s breath. He wags his tail if they are under the legal limit to drive home. It’s actually legal to drink before driving but it is not legal to ignore the signs of drunkenness. Caspian is their sign.

No one wanted to break Steve’s sobriety but it fell on the lovely Stefani to walk the order back to Steve. She tried to redirect, tried to tell the woman she would look gorgeous with a side of frozen fries with ranch sauce? The fries that Steve doesn’t have to kill seem to affect him less. This woman wasn’t doing – she said that french fries would hurt her complexion that she needed young baby greens and she needed them NOW!

I swear this woman brought her own fork out of her purse. It is what the English might call “a salad fork” but most americans are weary of food that needs its own silver. Also, this woman was around seven or eight months pregnant and we all grimaced because she might need to eat the vegetables like some people eat dirt during pregnancy.

She waited around the bar, tapping her long fingernail of death and telling all the men what they were doing wrong. She said to Vern, “I bet you have a wife at home and you’re sitting her drinking.”

Vern didn’t have a wife but he just said flatly, “She died.” (as if he had assisted).

That didn’t stop this woman though, she told my dog that he suffered from bloat because he ate too much cheese and pasta. (Caspian prefers italian food to kibble). She told Tanzu, the dealer just trying to get a coke for his client, that the acid would probably ruin the player’s teeth. “That’s why no one smiles at your table; your horrible”

The woman wasn’t making any points.

But when Steve came out all trembling because we knew how hard it must have been to dice those bodies. You could tell that he had been crying into her salad, on the counter, the man was way too empathetic – he felt everything, and then Steve laid down the little glass bowl that was cooled like it had been sitting in a mortuary chamber. He took off his glasses and wiped his eyes and said, “His name was Ralph.”

We didn’t know what that could mean at the time. (God rest Ralph).

This woman took her trident of death and poked it right in that glass coffin of baby spring greens, the arugula slopping out of her monster mouth, the kael trembling and I know it was trying to ball itself up to choke that devil woman. She actually smiled and showed us the evidence of the green corpse evidence on her teeth. Those wicked wasteful teeth. It would have been better if she tripped and lost them all.

Then this woman stole my beer. She just took a swig and laughed, bent over, hand on the peanut laden floor and knuckle walked toward the evil place set aside for women. We don’t allow gender neutrality in there but have supplied a 5 gallon bucket for full men and let those undecided have the former men’s room.

We heard the walls shake, like two giants were having police/robber sex in the back of a police car with one of them very obese. It was terrible and all of the gamblers had to stop counting cards. Stefani wrung the bell and said, “We survived another one.”

We all thought it was an earthquake and forgot to sooth our pal Steve who was crunched in a ball, having broken his oath to no longer do harm. Vern ordered his first shot in ten years because he wanted to forget and this woman came out of the restroom holding a malformed fetus which had fell came out by the vegetarian ipecac compounds in the dead baby salad.

She flopped this thing on the bar and hitched up her skirt. “Give me a beer!” she slammed her fist down.

We all turned away from the little blob on the bar and Stefani didn’t know if she could serve anymore by Health Code because this woman had ruined the night. “What? “

We were not a happy bar anymore.

“You have to call the 911 because it is illegal to dispose of partial births. … havent’ you ever been to San Francisco?”

We were all disgusted that the Golden State had become so much less. So very much less. It used to be that people were proud to have California in their United States.

Many of us joined Steve, and took him in the corner, unknotted his apron and gave him a great big hug. No one should have to deal with what he had to deal with. It was foul.

Stefani called the local police, whispered in the phone, repeated that she could not give the woman a beer, and motioned for security to come over. She had to call the owner, who was calling remediation, who asked if the bar contaminant was like rotten green waste or …?

We asked all officials to come at once because this was beyond our experience and many people had survived earthquakes and other acts of God. Vegans are beyond our scope.

STeve was hollering, he had seen too many things, we tried to calm him with whiskey snuck under our shirts in the far back closet kitchen so that this strange woman wouldn’t see and complain that the bar was closed. She hit her hand on the counter again and again and Steve shook like a former victim of some abuse.

Unfortunately,

I had time to think while we were all waiting for the authorities, Irish Coffee can linger in the system and give the user bad advice. The security guards kept this woman from leaving and Office Daryl had a yellow bag for biological material and moved us all ten feet away and cordoned off the alcohol with DO NOT CROSS tape.

I waited till Officer Daryl came over for witness testimony and then said, “She tried to kill my kid on purpose.”

He wrote this down.

“What do you mean by that?”

I pointed to Steve who was all crumpled up and talking to his dead mother after several shots. They were arguing and he was whimpering that he was tired of going back to the basement. “Please don’t chain me, “ he kept calling.

I pointed right at the San Francisco woman and said, “She purposely killed our kid with Kael.”

The officer went right over to the woman and put her in handcuffs while she was screaming that she wanted her Manhattan. This officer put her in the back of the car and said he was going to take her to processing.

We all nodded as the officer instructed us that if we couldn’t get a biological remediation company then we should use a ton of bleach and drink on the patio for a few hours. It sounded like good advice because the unborn wasn’t big enough to need legal ambulatory for a funeral home. He asked me if I wanted to pay for a service and I looked at STeve crying in the corner. “Sure.”

As the officer left, I knew that she wouldn’t get charged with mishandling a corpse, I knew that no one would really care if future father’s don’t have a voice in the eating of salads. But the real problem? I had to learn her name before going forward.

‘Hey Steff? Did she pay by card

by chance? “

Stefani looked through her receipts and realzied she didn’t pay at all.