Crunch

# Cold cut chicken breast pieces (four or five maybe)
# one cup creamy mayonnaise or Caesar sauce splattered over its contents
# half lettuce head torn to pieces
# sliced tomatoes
# sliced red and green bell pepper
# grated Parmesan cheese
# salt,pepper and the likes.
I dug deeper into the my chicken Caesar salad. This was the first time I'd managed to get hold of a salad for lunch all by myself with my parents watching and not doubting my anorexic tendencies.'Healthy' was in. It was a substantial amount of salad anyway and as I toyed around with it I imagined the chef hurrying carelessly to gather the contents of it and then putting them together while other important dishes played at the back of his mind. My salad was not one of them, it was just another obligation that would win the restaurant another seventy odd pricey bucks.

And while our conversations didn't focus much beyond the unusual granite surface of the table, my career that was going nowhere, the elections and the unbearable heat of summer.. something that did capture my interest in the due course of time were the people sitting at the table to our left.
The table accommodated one man and seven women if I counted correctly.The slightly over dressed women with their hair oiled together and tied down by the weight of sweet smelling flowers,their bangles clattering against each other..they formed quite a chatty bunch.
(Now this aspect of being a writer I can never quite understand...ostentatiously elaborating things that don't quite get my attention or affection.)
What interested me was the diligence that the lone male entity commanded at the table.He reminded me of a king surrounded by eager wives trying their hardest to make the best impression.Ofcourse he wasn't king and obviously most of the women could have been his immediate family...but there was something so alluring about the awkward pride that he cultivated deep within himself.You had to see it to believe it.This odd mix of chivalry and gawkiness.
'These are my women...' I could almost hear him say..'They laugh when I laugh,they listen to what I have to say- it is important to them,and look how tremendously pleased they are when I address even one of them in public.'

'These are my women..' and the look on his face is even more interesting than the meek impersonation of a Giacometti painting that hung above him.
Giacometti and his remarkably twisted lonely figures.Isolated,oddly shaped,intense and anything but forgettable.
The immediate question following the work of of an artist that pops up into my brain dead head is..well..How did s/he die? I ridiculously can't stop myself from doing that or wanting to know that..I just have to know it.
Giacometti died of percarditis and chronic bronchitis. What were you expecting ?? Suicide??
Shame.That's all I can say.Shame.

'My women..' he still held his head high.
'Well..as long as you pay the bills..' I thought and continued to dig at my caesar salad for more chicken.