A boring food story

Where’s the Bacon, Motherfucker?

This is what happens when someone brings you the wrong sandwich

It was Sunday, and having walked into town past the church, I went into my favourite café, and ordered a bacon sandwich.

Ten minutes later it arrived along with a coffee that was cold. My usual waitress replaced by a boy-kid with a thin moustache on his upper lip as though auditioning for the role of Errol Flynn.

He plonked the plate down heavily in front of me like he was serving me divorce papers, and asked if I wanted anything else.

I wasn’t sure. Something wasn’t right. The smell. Too salady. I peeled back the bread to reveal a bed of tomato and lettuce. No bacon.

‘Where’s the bacon?’ I asked.

‘I dunno,’ he replied.

‘You dunno? Did it go for a walk?’

I could tell he found my quip vaguely amusing. But refused to smile in order to preserve his hard-nut gangster image he was trying to foster in front of two people: me, and a well-dressed lady in her seventies sitting a few tables away.

‘I’ll go and ask.’ He shuffled off to the kitchen like he was in a gangland rap video.

Not prepared to wait, I bit into the sandwich. I was expecting it to taste like a Big Mac with the burgers removed. But I was wrong. With salt and pepper, it tasted heavenly.

Then I noticed the elderly lady staring at me. I wasn’t sure if she was smiling or grimacing. She was of a certain age and class who wore so much foundation that her face gave nothing away except the toneless pallor of old age.

Saying that, she did seem semi-glamorous in her light blue summer suit and her newly permed grey hair. Maybe she was waiting for someone and was simply checking who I was.

Then Al Capone rushed out again. ‘Yo, man,’ he said like a fucking idiot. ‘That sandwich was for the lady.’ He was about to take it from me when he realized it was half-eaten. ‘Agh, why did you do that?’

‘If you brought me a loaded gun to blow my brains out with, would you expect me to wait for the next course.’

Now he laughed but was abruptly cut off by the old lady. ‘Excuse me, waiter,’ she inquired. ‘Is that my sandwich?’

‘No,’ the kid replied, and for a second I thought he was going to whip out a machine gun and nail her to the cross in the churchyard with a volley of lead. ‘Yours is coming.’

A few minutes later, the kid brought out her plate and plonked it down in front of her. The lady peeled back the bread to reveal a row of sizzling bacon.

‘I think he’s brought you mine,’ I declared. ‘I ordered a bacon sandwich but got tomato.’

‘I ordered without,’ she confirmed, ‘the bacon gets stuck in my throat, but what the hell.’

I gazed at her as she took an enormous bite of her sandwich. Her jaw almost reptilian in its design, opening like a car hatch on a ferry and devouring half of it in one chomp.

It was time to leave. I had no intention of watching an elderly lady chew half a loaf of bread in her tumble dryer of a mouth. So I paid and left.

Two weeks later, I’m in the same café when a new but equally dumb waiter brings me a bacon sandwich and a cold coffee. Unimpressed by the shocking service again, I ask him if he could bring me another one, preferably hot.

He argues it was hot when he brought it, but eventually agrees to get me a new one. As he picks up my cup, I ask him what happened to the other waiter, ‘the one with the wispy moustache.’

‘Oh him,’ the new kid enthusiastically says. ‘This old dear choked to death on a bacon sandwich a few weeks ago. And they put the blame on him. Terrible really, as it turns out she’d just won the lottery, and was out celebrating.’

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