the missing steak knife

I flew to a wedding in Mexico a few years ago, and stayed at a swank and fancy resort for several days.

We drank and laughed and enjoyed ourselves, as we celebrated the festivities.

And as we sat down to eat an elaborate dinner one night, for all of our meals were both included and sumptuous, suddenly we had discovered that the waitress had failed to provide a steak knife for one of the place settings at our table.

The rebukes of that waitress by some of the people at my table soon followed.

Mere moments before this discovery by the people at my table, however, I had watched the face of that waitress turn to horror as she had discovered the very same thing for herself. And doing so, she rushed off (presumably) to retrieve one.

And as a couple of people at my table took turns burning the effigy of this waitress with their words, I began to write on my napkin, the way I imagined Henri Toulouse Lautrec would begin to sketch with his pencil, while sitting in a crowded brothel in Paris a century ago.

And when someone else asked what I was writing, I said.

“Our waitress had noticed the missing steak knife mere moments before we did, and with horror on her face, she rushed off to get one before we had discovered this for ourselves. And when she did, I thought of the many shacks that I saw dotting the hills all around the airport when we flew into Mexico, which was only a thirty minute drive from our resort. 

 And I wondered if maybe she lived in one of them, and if the horror on her face was for fear that if one of us complained to her manager about the missing steak knife, she wouldn't even be able to afford to live in that place."

Then they stopped asking me what I was writing.