I sat on an empty seat facing the small table on a corner near the curtained entrance to the pantry. I twitched the red and white checkered table-cloth as I waited for my order to be served. I examined the patrons sitting across the tables. There was a group of uniformed women chattering against the cold bottles of Coke and soiled china plates. One woman with a pony tailed hair was relishing the smoke she drew from her Marlboro lights. Another woman with a thick lipstick was biting the edge of the straw from her bottled soft drink. The bold SOLTEX print at the back of their green uniforms suggests that they are production workers in the nearby CAMINO Slippers factory. I shifted my eyes to the busy people and the honking cars and jeepneys outside the carinderia. It’s ten on the wall clock and the sun rose on top of the huge HSBC building in the Cyberzone at the west.
My order arrived at exactly ten minutes after a successful haggling with the Mona Lisa resembling counter lady who seemed so strained of persistence by the stingy customers.. As soon as the bowl of dish was set on my table, I smelled the brackish reek of shrimp paste on the sautéed water spinach and frowned at the stench of garlic, vinegar and soy sauce. My stomach felt scathed. I remembered I didn’t eat anything for supper last night except for a two hundred and thirty-seven millilitres of Pepsi. I devoured the cheap meal with a satisfying three cups of NFA rice cooked with pandan leaves without minding the people who might’ve been aware of my indolence for table etiquette. My spoon and fork clanked with the china plate creating a disturbing noise against the chattering voices and roaring jeepneys. I ignored how briny or bland the food was; all I thought of that moment was to satisfy my craving for sustenance.
I swallowed up everything on the china plate in just five minutes. I grabbed an empty water-glass from the tray behind the Coca Cola fridge and went to the nearby drinking fountain. I turned the knob of its faucet in a clockwise motion. A sudden thin push of cold water slowly filled my glass. Its coldness produced a sharp sting upon my gripping fingers that my throat felt dry in an instant. I engulfed a glassful and yearned for another. Suddenly, my stomach tightened. A limp of air clogged somewhere between my throat and esophagus. Without restrain, I let out a loud burp. It was catharsis. I went back to my seat and played the toothpick with my teeth.
I was about to leave when I felt a wrenching pain on my loins. I understood I ate a hefty meal so I had to dispose of some wastes. I rushed to the comfort room behind the pantry and opened the cubicle that hides the toilet bowl. I inhaled the acridness of Muriatic Acid from the tiled floor. A sudden prick of coldness wrapped my abdomen. There were perspiration on my forehead, on my noise and everywhere on my face. My palms were sweating and my stomach shivered in turbulence. My taste buds savored a faint taste of gastric acid coming from my stomach. Before I could hold it back, a rush of putrid fluid with bits of undigested food came out of my mouth flowing at once to the toilet bowl. I saw the overcooked leaves of water spinach still intact with its stems floating on the stagnant water. The regurgitated food appeared blurry and dim to my eyes. A cool wind struck my head painfully like a thick foliage and all of a sudden everything went dark.
