Living Things

Instance 2: Lunch

There is a time in every life that things become focused and clear. With this clarity, decisions are made that hold the key to happiness and contentment, or disappointment and poverty. That time is called lunch.

It was just past 9:30 in the morning when Kevin McK, deciding to meet the challenge head-on, turned to Huffy and asked, “What are we doing for lunch?” Over the past several months, one of the four in the corner would ask earlier each day, thereby passing the critical decision to one or the other. The simple rule: If you asked, you didn’t have to come to any sort of conclusion.

Huffy, in turn, passed the buck to KevCan, saying, “I dunno. KevCan, what are we doing for lunch?”

KevCan, hunched over his keyboard with his glasses off, snorted, “I don’t know. It’s not even ten yet.” KevCan knew the rules, though, which he helped establish as well as any of them. “Princess?” he called over the cubicle, lowering the volume of the Depeche Mode that was playing through the tinny speaker of his computer.

“Yes?”

“What are we doing for lunch?” This was a cursory gesture at best, because the eating habits of Princess could only be vaguely fathomed by the other men. Sometimes, Princess ate the same things that they did, but she was more particular than the boys who would eat food that could not rot simply because mold spores had no desire to land and grow on such chemical monstrosities. The occasional times that Princess would walk around the partition to have a chocolate-covered calorie ball were far between, but, when she did, the others would feel a guilty thrill that Princess would share in their foodstuffs.

This day, Princess said she felt like Chinese. It was something that everyone could choose from, so the major hurdle of the day was crossed painlessly, and was not spoken about again until noon.