“Oasis”
They tell you an oasis could come in any form out in the ‘Spirit Wastes’, I just wasn’t expecting a Culver’s.
“Jesus Christ, there’s even a packed drive through.”
It was out some a few hundred yards, the image of it shimmering above the black sands as if dancing in front of a used car lot. The smell of ground beef tickled my nostrils and even so far out I could taste on my tongue a hint of butter.
I turned to my guru, who I still at this point was not sure was there or not. “I’ve never even had Culver’s before.”
The guru, a brown man of vague, implacable West or South Asian origin, with white hair and yellow teeth, smiled wide, and said, “And how long have you lived in Wisconsin?”
Four years was the answer. I know, not very Midwest of me, but I just never got around to it.
“Should we go in?” I said.
We were about twenty yards now standing in a cracked parking lot that materialized beneath my feet more than it shifted. Everything told me that this place should have long evaporated into the thin air. It wasn’t even the first oasis I’d seen on this ‘soul journey’. There was the mermaid, which I mean, I should have known better. The Magic: the Gathering convention complete with exposed butt-cracks. The spring water bottling plant was just a cruel prank. But despite the expectation that this burger joint would vanish like all the rest, that was real asphalt I was feeling beneath my toes. Those were ‘real’ ‘customers’ inside on their phones and laughing at nothing.
The guru shrugged, and said, “Why not? I’m hungry, are you?”
And I didn’t know how to answer.
Stepping inside was tough, the cold metal of the commercial door an icy omen holding me at bay.
Was I hungry? Was I anything?
I felt hunger pangs on this ‘spirit trek’. I thought I would die, but if anything I would have died of dehydration long before I starved and yet my legs moved. Still I could spit and think and breathe. So something was up, that despite the very intense physical sensations I very much experienced, I was alive. What even was hunger, after a trip like this?
“Say it how you feel, that’s the whole of it.”
I nodded, and said. “I don’t know.”
The guru nodded and said, “then let’s go in.”
And we did.
If there was one thing that was more a relief than that intoxicating feeling of knowing you’re close to a satisfying meal in distance and temporal, was the more real sensation of being in a suddenly cool space. The skin about my body easing. Each step I took lighter than the last.
There wasn’t much else to describe. The other diners were muted, there and not there. Images of people as made by an animation that didn’t quite have the budget to shell out on a flashback sequence.
But the cashier was all high definition, baby.
She smiled wide, a black woman with the aura of suburbia, curly hairs tied into a ponytail. Looking at us, she didn’t talk. No welcome, just that attentive smile as she stood over the POS system.
“What do you want?” I asked the guru.
He yawned. “Everything. Nothing.”
“Very esoteric.”
“A butter burger with curds.”
“No drink?”
“Water will suffice.”
“Very worldly.”
“Actually, perhaps I’ll have a custard.”
I reached for my wallet, and sighed, remembering I was very much naked. “I left it at home.”
“And where is that?”
I blinked. “Where the heart is, I imagine.”
“A common misconception,” the guru said, elaborating no further. “I’ve got this. What will you have?”
The question was daunting. The menu above suddenly inscrutable and large. And well, from my own knowledge, it kind of was even in the ‘real’ ‘world’, but in that moment it was gargantuan. Maybe a thousand items. Or, like, forty-two.
“A chicken sandwich?” I stammered.
“No fries?”
“No.”
“No drink?”
“Water?”
And the guru nodded and stepped forward.
In no time at all we were seated in a booth bordering the windows.
Outside, the black desert, the ‘Ethereal Wilds,’ stretched for what I was told was an eternity. Great spires of onyx and menacing pillars of salt broke the line, like claws cutting through flesh.
I looked down and before me was my chicken sandwich.
The guru smiled. “Have a bite.”
“Is it safe?”
“Is anything?” he said.
I shook my head and the guru continued. “You can continue on this path. But I think you’ve learned enough. Struggled enough. Have a bite. Enjoy yourself.”
“But I will have lost all this knowledge. It would have been for nothing.”
“Would it have?”
I paused. Would it have?
I didn’t know.
“Then have a bite.”
I nodded.
It was good.
I opened my eyes, and the Culver’s wasn’t so special, anymore. The nondescript faces of the other diners suddenly very descript. Still lost in their own worlds, but a world I also inhabited.
