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China Star

2022-12-18

The restaurant sign is tucked behind the overhang of Food Lion; from the main road you'd never know of it's existence. I walk in and tell the woman that I'm picking up the bean curd homestyle. "Have a seat, it will be a few minutes." I am the only customer. I step back and begin to silently absorb everything around me.

The tile floor is cracked and the grout is black with decades of dirt. It's functional but not pretty; a few pieces of tile are held in with blue painter's tape. The drinks refrigerator in the corner glows. Cans $1.25. Bottles $1.50. Snapple $2.00. Snapple is in plastic now. I thought Snapple always came in glass.

A boy about 12 years old comes in the door and I watch him cross the otherwise empty restaurant floor. He doesn't notice me, or pretends not to. His T-shirt says "Rules are for fools" with some kind of cartoon character on it. His pants are pajamas. When he arrives at the counter he holds up a new iPhone 14 to the woman and says "this is what my mom wants." The woman squints as she reads the phone, nods, and steps back into the kitchen. The fluorescent lights flicker and their buzz envelops the atmosphere. The boy and I wait.

I notice the homemade system of cheap IP cameras placed around the store with wires taped to the wall. The boy moves his gaze from the floor to the ceiling and back again. As I follow the the wires along the wall, I see a collection of plants on the floor by the front windows; one is kept in a plastic clamshell cupcake package from the grocer next door. I look at the door. It is covered in stickers indicating the restaurant's business license status with the county dating back to 2001. The older the sticker, the more cracked and faded it is. The county chooses a different color for each year; the door is a translucent rainbow mosaic. Trash catches my eye as it blows across the parking lot outside.

The boy's food is ready. My eyes readjust to the darkness inside as I turn back to observe the transaction. He pays with a card. In a motherly manner the woman instructs him to keep the bag of food upright, tipping it slightly sideways to indicate how not to carry it. There's soup in there. The boy leaves. I study the menu constructed above the counter. Not a simple board, but a large box about 20 feet wide made of 80's corporate textured blue laminate that matches the counter. Two rows of photos on acrylic are backlit by more flickering fluorescent. The dishes are elegant and presented like high-end luxury from the 80's, but the photos are oversaturated and blurry from years of decay and a little crooked in their frames. $19.97. The year my brother was born.

My food is ready, I pay and thank the woman. She has on a cute sweater. I imagine her life outside of the restaurant, this "liminal space."

I leave one abyss and enter another.