lucyoncolorado

In which I'm unexpectedly in Delhi and have an altercation with a cafe worker...

I'm walking into the airport in Delhi with my backpack and a handbag when I see Sarah Dog wandering around in front of the terminal. This is surprising because we just found her a home in Texas last week, but there is no way she can explain how she got herself all the way to India so I simply try to catch her. She is happy to come to me, but I don't have a leash so I have difficulty making her walk along beside me. Eventually I just lift her up and carry her into the terminal. This is exhausting and cumbersome because I was already loaded down with luggage.

I sit near a stariwell in the waiting room with my backpack in the seat next to me and Sarah Dog on the floor with my finger curled under her collar. Suddenly I see my father coming up the stairs. I'm surprised again as I wonder how he could be in Delhi. In fact, I look away at first, thinking that it is impossible that my father could be here. But then when I look back, he is coming to embrace me and I'm certain it is him. I feel relief replace the confusion- now he can help me get this dog back to Texas.

I ask my father what he is doing here and he says he will explain everything later. He greets Sarah Dog familiarly and at first this surprises me too, but then I remember that I'd brought her to Houston during the time I'd had her. They are old friend. He tells me to run to the cafeteria and get us some coffee and cookies and then we can explain to one another how all three of us ended up in Delhi.

The airport is now laid out like the Riverside Campus, and I'm walking to the horrible little cafe they have there. Once I get there, however, it is run instead by an Indian man and there is a larger variety of delicious food. I get in line and wonder why the Riverside Campus doesn't always employ this cafe instead of the disgusting one they usually have. Then I remember that I'm not at home- I'm in Delhi. For a moment, I start to wonder how I got here, but then I notice that the line is getting shorter and I must order soon. Other patrons are walking off with delicious looking food: wraps, kolaches, samosas, milk shakes, etc. I look at the blackboard menu behind the counter but I can't read any of the words. I try as hard as I can, but I can't make out any familiar marks.

Now it is my turn, but I can't order because I can't read the selection. I try to stall a little and make some indecisive remarks. There is a goth-dressed couple behind me, and they say some insulting comments about me under their breath. I turn around and yell at them. I'm very angry so I lose my cool and cuss at them. Then I realize I sound stupid, and I try to add a witty insult. The best I can come up with is, "and there's no excuse for goth clothes once you're over the age of 14. You look like self-absorbed brats!" They roll their eyes and laugh at me, but I feel better.

I turn back to the man behind the counter, and as I'm trying again to decipher the words on the menu, my eyes stumble upon the cookies next to the register. I had forgotten! My father asked me to get cookies! I order two cookies and two cups of black coffee. I start to worry about how long I've left my father holding on to Sarah Dog and I hope all is well.

The guy behind the counter rings me up for exactly $5.23. I pull out my debit card but he explains that he will only take cash. No problem. I hand him a 20 and he tells me he has no change. This is starting to irritate me, so I give him a 10. He says still that he has no change, and this provokes the release of a violent beast that I normally keep tied up, deep down inside me. I lean across the counter, with one knee actually on the countertop, and I grab the man by the collar and pull him toward me until his face and mine are only inches apart. I scream, red in the face and at the top of my lungs, "How can you expect me to pay with cash when you don't even have change for a 10?" I shake him back and forth, over and over again, shouting, "This doesn't make sense!"

The man tells me to please calm down and explains that I could simply pay with a 5. I slam a fist into his register and scream, "but the bill is MORE THAN 5 dollars. Don't you get it? There is no way to pay with a bill less than 10 unless I walk around with a pocket full of coins." The man acknowledges this, and says that since I neglected to carry around the proper coinage, he would kindly allow me to pay just 5 dollars instead of $5.23.

As the people in line were staring at me amusedly and the other employees looked ready to call the police, I stepped back. I gave the man a 5 and started to feel that I had perhaps over-reacted. He took the 5, and as he opened the drawer to the cash register, I pretended not to see the huge amount of change he had inside. Then he handed me my cookies, two of them soaked to mush and wrapped in wet paper napkins, and my coffee, blonde with a large quantity of added milk*. It's served in a glass with a handle that is too hot to touch. When I taste it, it is sweet like tres leches cake.

I give up. I ask for my 5 dollars back and tell them to just forget it. They respond that they can't give me my money back because I've already received the food I paid for. I scream again, this time jumping up on the counter itself, that they have given me nothing. They point, increduously at the coffee and cookies as if there is nothing at all wrong with them and I'm just being spoiled. I jump off the counter and on to the cashier's side. I grab the cookie mush in one hand and the cashier's shoulder in the other. I'm about to smear the mess on his face, but I notice that another employee is already on the phone with the police. I'm in an airport after all, and I don't want this to be the sort of day in which I wake up expecting a perfectly normal stream of events but then find myself in a life-altering situation that involves jail time or ongoing court cases or an evaluation of my sanity**.

The dream fades here.



*I did not realize this in the dream, but in real life both these things have significance to me. The cookies are from preschool, one of the first embarassing moments of my life. We were served milk in small paper cups and cookies on a napkin every day for snack. Some of the other kids used to enjoy drinking their milk, unwitnessed, until their cup was empty, then wrapping their cookies in a napkin and dipping it into the empty cup. They'd pull it out and say, "Magic! The cookies are still dry!" I tried this trick myself once but forgot to drink the milk. When I pulled out my sad wet napkin, my cookies were wet mush. The preschool teacher made me eat them anyway. I was mortified. As for the milky coffee, it is annoyingly difficult to get a cup of black filter coffee in India with the milk on the side. They want to make instant coffee out of Nescafe or else foam up the milk and pour it into the cup for you or else make you a capuccino or any variety of espressos and other concoctions. But ordering a cup of simple black filter coffee with milk on the side which you can add yourself to your liking is completely foreign at most places in India. They always screw it up and give you some sweet milky monstrosity they call "milk coffee"
** Just to be clear, I've never actually had a day like that, but in my dream I was convinced I had.