A thumbnail sketch.

My first time.

I entered cautiously.

There had been rumors.

I was almost afraid, but I was also hungry. I thought, “What could go wrong?”

How little did I know in those early days, how little.

I remained as alert as I could manage to be, noting the signs everywhere. When I entered, I saw that an entrance fee had already been assigned to my tracking number. I almost turned around and left on the spot, except that another sign announced an exit fee to be assigned to my bank account, augmented by an avoidance fee and pre-emptive legal costs should they become necessary.

So I took a tray, almost hearing the clicking as the tray fee was added to my invisible but already growing tally. I slid the tray along the rail.

I came to the salad bowls and made my choice. The bowls were proliferated, ranging from plastic to metal to ceramic to glass. I could not afford the golden bowl, and took the glass, like a cheap diamond.

I had long since given up resistance, and I had only just started, no longer trying to assess, calculate, or react to the range of costs, fees, surcharges. The warning signs seemed to appear and disappear just for me, coming out of nowhere, registering the warning fee, the appearance fee, the disappearance fee, the replacement fee, the explanation fee (“This is only a small percentage of the total cost” and “The fees add up.”).

I heard voices around me, mostly newcomers like myself, exclaiming things like, “What?” and “Whaaat?” and “Highway robbery!” and “There ought to be a law!”

Each outburst elicited an outburst fee, modified when the outbursts were toned down to mutterings under the breath, triggering a diminution fee, and the transitory sign proclaiming, “See! You CAN learn after all!” which came with its education fee, imposed by the defunct Department of Education which kept charging anyway, and AI which charged additionally for A and I separately, and then the fee for silent resistance because “We know what you’re thinking!”

I never before realized that mere dinner, the process of acquiring and subsuming food, could be so expensive and so exhausting.

It all became a blur as I reached the lettuce. The panoply of choices was both satisfying and overwhelming. I chose baby spinach. I added a pinch of arugula, and I do mean a pinch, as I used the tongs which added a tong charge.

I was urged not to linger and hold up the line as a voice came out of the air, this time not just for me alone, and said, “Move along!”

I saw hills and mountains of ingredients assembled and displayed by kind and color. Red tomatoes, yellow tomatoes, purple tomatoes, green tomatoes. Roma tomatoes, and varieties from other Italian provinces, the Florence tomatoes, the Perugian, the balsamic tomatoes from Modena, the tomatoes from Sorrento that made you want to come back for more.

Mushrooms, from baby to old age, from button to maturity, displaying the underside where the umbrella opens from the stem, a selective choice because some people like their food aged, as if they could chew and swallow and digest wisdom.

There was corn, with the signs superscribed by “No joke.”

There were artichoke hearts, marinated. I had always loved them after I discovered them, and I felt a sympathetic constriction in my chest.

I came to olives, and looked for tree-ripened. I wanted Graber olives, but they have ceased to exist as the company went out of business and, like so many things, are now just a memory, fading, as the present becomes the past and the past disappears into non-existence without a trace and never was, because the archives have been closed down.

At the cash register my tally was reviewed. The five dollar bowl-rental fee, the three dollar bowl-cleaning fee, the hidden tax which kept going up even as we spoke, the surcharges, the egg fee which covered the cost of law enforcement against those who tried to hide eggs in their pockets to smuggle them out, but were stopped at the border, and I had to pay for that, the border police who could have been used to enforce other laws, but eggs had become a national focus deserving their own blog.

And the automatic gratuity, 20%, and the question, “Would you like to add a custom tip?” and my answer, “I gave already.”

And my serious internal questioned conflict, “Do I need to mortgage my house to eat this meal?”

And the bill, “Would you like a printed receipt for an additional charge?” and I said, “Yes, please,” showing my manners and my acquiescent docility. $365 itemized, the attempted joke, “A year’s worth in a single meal,” little messages on the receipt, like what you find in a fortune cookie, like “Good luck!” and “Your Government at work with the private sector together again at last and always,” and “We’ve got your back AND your front.”

And I was exhausted, almost nothing left, like my bank account, and I just wanted to lie down, not to die, but like an old soldier, just fade away.

But I knew there would be an additional charge for the cliché.