Saving the Meat

She’s the New Intern but not hot. She has hair like fifth grade. Low-talker with no bass in her voice. Jean skirt, lavender blouse gathered all up to her neck. She must wear granny panties over a bushel of pubic hair.

Whatshername, not New Intern, brags on and on during lunch about her two hours at the gym every am—an hour spin class, then weights and lower abs. Her abs are killing her. I look at her upper arms exploding off her shoulders like thighs. They have the diameter, radius, and circumference of the liter bottles of Collins mix I keep at home to feed my gin. I telepathed to her that she ought to work on her upper arms more...maybe give the ole up-n-down-up-n-down to some five-pound weights. The more she blathers on while shoving her face full of pasta bukkaked with cream sauce, the more I don’t believe she spends more than thirty minutes in the gym.

No, twenty.

New Intern eats a beef stir-fry sans rice and talks about things and won’t be interrupted. This annoys me. Her low tone is fucked. Especially in a restaurant. And she’s by my bad ear.

Imagining I’m in a movie or a sitcom, I eat my sandwich and drink a diet coke with lemon.

I get a ribbon from the Clean Plate Club as does Whatshername who thinks she works out for two hours. New Intern, the bitch, eats all her veggies and leaves the meat slices swimming at the bottom of her dish. There are five slices, I counted them. They’re approximately one by one-and-a-half inches. She asks for a to-go container. It's made of clear plastic. She lifts the slices one by one with her chopsticks, carefully—like painting nails—and places them—like Operation the board-game—into the container. Insanity.

The slices sit alone in the middle, huddling like prisoners against an anticipated stoning. I feel sorry for them because I know they felt more secure in their warm, brown, sesame-seeded pool. I want to tell New Intern she should just leave them there, that they were not worth the plastic they were housed in.

Instead I let her take the meat away in the plastic container and curse her imagined granny panties and abundant pubic hair under my breath. Who takes home five tiny meat slices?

On the drive home, I make a silent plan to save the slices. Come midnight, penlight in mouth, I'll jump over the razor wire and come courageous.