What a scam, Ed thought. Here he ate a dish cooked by foreigners trying to emulate a dish which was only a backwards central attempt at being northerners. It’s not even real egg noodles; they threw some turmeric on the regular ones!
“Everyone’s a fraud except me! Let’s get out of here, man – too many phonies. Can you spot me?”
“Yeah, hold on a second. I need to figure out how much to tip. Let’s see… double the tax, two-fifty-eigh—”
“Oh come on! Just drop a buck for each of us and let’s jet.” Ed got up abruptly, folded his semi-crumpled napkin in half to hide any visible particles of food and placed it genteelly on the table. A high-pitched noise of contempt threw itself up from his mouth, a mixture of his disdain for the food and the people sitting in the restaurant. He looked around at the other patrons, enjoying their respite from the work day. Commoners, he said to himself, just looking at them makes me sweaty.
On the drive back, Ed scrolled through the radio stations, stopping only to let the station settle briefly like a damselfly before the cacophony of notes spurred it to set aloft once more.
“Not a damn good thing on the radio anymore,” Ed vented to his friend Will who was focused on the new convertible two cars in front of them. “What’s happened, man?” Hearing that Ed was addressing him, Will snapped back to reality after having imagined himself as the driver of the shiny coupe ahead.
“Yeah man. I don’t know – it’s not that bad. Kind of catchy, you know?” Will was one of the only friends Ed still had upon moving back. He was a nice guy, but always going with the flow, taking the world as it was in its appearances. Typical of the common people, but that would change some day with the wonders of technology.
Until it did, Ed simply replied “I guess” and they spent the remainder of the drive listening to a song they assumed was about love due to its imagery of spray adhesive and beached whales. A few minutes later, Will pulled up into the driveway of Ed’s mother’s house. Ed got out, made a firm gesture with his hand (as is the propensity of the common people) to signal farewell to his chum. He sighed and went indoors.
Upon seeing her son, Ed’s mother asked “How was lunch?” in a motherly, stretched out way to signify she cared about the well-being of her only son. He half-mumbled what she could make out to be not so good a time. He resigned himself to his room and plopped himself into the chair. Not satisfied with the response Ed gave, she appeared at his doorway and asked about where the job search had led.
“Mother, jobs are not for a twenty-first century man. What sort of educated person actually works in this day and age?”
“So not good?”
“Not at all.”
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