The Eggplant Incident

The Eggplant Incident

The hotel reception was unusually quiet for a Friday afternoon.

“Hey there, young man,” snapped me out of yet another idle round of solitaire on the front desk computer. It was Mr. Lukemon, towering over the concierge booth.

“Could I leave this cake for you to refrigerate for me?”

“Why certainly, Sir. I will bring it to our kitchen right away. We will keep it refrigerated in your usual spot.”

Mr. Lukemon has been a hotel regular for the last thirty years or so. His life, as I imagined it, was a routine on a loop—scripted, uneventful, void of surprises, and never straying from his daily string of tasks.

Turning on his heel and glancing back, Mr. Lukemon matter-of-factly informed the air between us, “I will pick it up later tonight. I have a dinner to attend.”

I nodded in response as if I didn’t already know that every second Friday of the month since I was born, he’s had a dinner to attend with the town’s butcher.

And right on cue, off he went to the town’s barbershop for his monthly haircut and snipping of nose hairs—to make a good impression on the butcher and his wife, no doubt.

As I carried the same-as-always rectangular-shaped box, containing the same-as-always rolled cake, with the same-as-always frozen whipped cream filling, from the same-as-always corner pastry shop, something caught my eye in the counter fronting the aisle of industrial-sized stainless-steel refrigerators. Eggplants, heaps of them, in all shapes and sizes.

Mindless hours at the front desk and the stale air that Mr. Lukemon’s existence seemed to trail behind him sparked my ever-latent prankster mood. Carefully undoing the brown ribbon that held the cake box shut, I gently slid the cream roll out and laid it on the eggplant colony counter.

Aghast that there were no willful eggplant volunteers for the role, I took matters into my own hands and reached out for the most elongated one, with just the right diameter. With surgical precision, I shoved the block-frozen whipped cream out and, in its stead, neatly slid the eggplant in, like it had been nestled there from inception.

With a sense of a job well done, the cake went back into its container, the brown ribbon nicely laced up and into the refrigerator, waiting to be summoned. Curtain call was at 6:25 p.m.

**********

The following morning, Mr. Lukemon walked past the front desk with his usual, even-toned “Good morning.”

“Good morning, Sir. How was your dinner last night at the butcher’s?” I asked nonchalantly, harboring great expectations for my supreme act of mischief.

“Good, good,” brushing off any further conversation, his mind clearly elsewhere.

Surely the eggplant incident did not go unnoticed?

Certain that they must have had fits of laughter at my caprice, I leaned in with obvious excitement in my voice, “So everything went well? As always?”

“Yes, yes. All well,” he waved his hand dismissively, already drifting toward the hotel’s breakfast area.

At the risk of being impertinent—and a complaint to management—I pressed on. “Nothing out of the ordinary happened?”

And just like that, Mr. Lukemon snapped out of his routine-induced stupor. He turned to face me and lifted his gaze, looking at me as if for the very first time in his life. Blinking, once, twice, thrice, dumbstruck.

“So that was you?” he slowly uttered, as if all the puzzle pieces were suddenly falling into place.

“So that was YOU?!” he barked, louder now, pacing angrily back and forth across the lobby, shaking his head in furious disapproval.

**********

“It’s good to see you Camilo. He’s in the yard, having a beer, waiting for you. You know the way,” said Evelyn, the butcher’s wife, pointing perfunctorily toward the back of the house.

Evelyn was the town’s Sofia Loren—a curvy, small-waisted sassy brunette, with almond-shaped dark eyes and rouge, voluminous lips to match the crimson polka dots evenly scattered across her white, flouncy summer dress.

“I brought you this”, mumbled Camilo, skirting her hypnotic glance. As he handed her the rectangular box, he thoughtfully added, “I know Antonio likes this.”

Dinner was as uneventful as always, broaching the usual conversations—how the town no longer was what it used to be, the disrespectful youth, and nostalgic reminiscing of their childhood—all while Evelyn served their customary dinner, baked potatoes, grilled steak, and a hefty serving of salad on the side.

“Camilo brought your favorite...” Evelyn announced as she laid the cake on the table. “…Dessert?”, her voice faltered as she suddenly noticed the stem of the eggplant protruding from one side of the roll and the tip of the nightshade poking from the other.

In an instant, her face flushed a bright hue of scarlet.

“How could you?” Evelyn thought. Surely Camilo was the only one who knew about her husband’s… condition. It was never mentioned, let alone made a mockery of.

Dodging her husband’s glare, mortified, Evelyn darted to the kitchen with the prankster cream roll and returned moments later with the exact same cake—but this one she had bought earlier that day for her lunch tomorrow at her mother’s.

She set it atop the dining table as if nothing had happened.

Waking from his initial shock, the butcher’s face was now contorted in rage. What was this sick joke his wife was playing on him, embarrassing him in this way in front of his long-time friend? And what was she trying to say?

He rose to his feet and left the dinner table and without uttering a single word, stormed out of the front door, slamming it shut behind him.

Feeling for his friend and visibly stunned, Camilo shot Evelyn a chastising look. He grabbed his light jacket and followed suit, purposely leaving the butcher’s wife alone at the dinner table to reflect on her actions.

What lack of judgment, he thought. He hadn’t pinned her for being so distasteful and tactless. After all, it was the town’s worst-kept secret…

…that the butcher was impotent.