Hungry

I’m hungry. Sam isn’t.

“Order what you want,” he says. “I’ll eat some of it.”

Okay, then. I walk inside and the little café is packed. The line loops around and I take my place at the end of it. Since I am, like I said, hungry, I opt for speed and walk over to the prepared food case. I grab a tub of tarragon chicken salad and some mixed greens and get back in line.

“You go ahead,” a guy in a windbreaker beckons me. He looks pleasant, with the red nose of a heavy drinker.

“I haven’t ordered yet,” an attractive woman in yoga pants and a stick up her ass protests.

By her side is her even more annoyed compadre, rattling a bag of chips. “I was here first, and I have to pay for these.”

“Of course,” I say, stepping aside.

The teen cashier looks terrified. “Which one of you is next?”

I point to yoga pants lady’s evil sidekick and her bag of salt and vinegar chips.

When I get outside with my food, Sam and Charlie are waiting under a tree. We walk back to the car, passing my two new enemies, sitting at a table to wait for their order. They have opened the chips and are munching away, laughing. Psychos, I think, taking a bite of chicken salad and simultaneously realizing we were all just hungry.