I was in a place that felt like a lower level, perhaps the basement in a large office or retail building.  It had a low ceiling.  It felt very informal, somewhat akin to being on the street in an urban area where there might be a ‘hole-in-the-wall’ restaurant, something very short-order-esque, where zero was paid to decor or aesthetic quality.  As I stood in the standing area next to the counter, waiting for my order, I observed the place in general, then saw a server drop a burrito on the ground.  I watched to see whether he would just put it back on the plate and serve it anyway– to me it would have been a big clue about the overall quality of the outfit.  He just tossed it into the waste bin without remorse or much thought, which was a bit of a relief for me.  Apparently some woman had ordered on my behalf, so when the cook put up and called the chimichanga order, I just knew it was mine.  I confirmed with the guy that I had that order, and just noticed it on the plate with a bit of the excess tortilla making a veritable flap, and wondered how that element might differentiate it from a general burrito.

Once I had the plate, the objective was to find a place to sit.  I saw a small table relatively close to the pick-up counter; I walked towards it, and then recalled that I was there with someone who I’m pretty sure was Phil Ivey.  My sense was that this particular table would be too small for the two of us, so I suggested that we go into the other, adjacent area, which was through a hallway and around to the left.  We arrived quickly and sat down at what appeared to be an unoccupied larger white table.  Once seated I realized I needed some utensils.  At the same time, a dude sat down next to me on my right side.  There was some conversation with him which gave me the impression that this adjacent seating area was something like a prison cafeteria.  The guy was kind of grizzled, somewhat old looking for only being in his late-30’s to early 40’s, and he made a comment which related to why we were there at the same time, which was we liked to do things the hard way.

Back to the focus on utensils, I flipped up a desk, or pulled out a drawer which had a bundle of normal forks inside, but I got some sense that those particular ones were off-limits; maybe they were being saved, or hidden, or had already been claimed/spoken for, so I decided not to take the risk of pissing off anyone in that crowd, and instead went over to the counters on the side of the room which looked like a promising place to find one.  I was hoping to find the typical white plastic, disposable stuff, and did discover a cylinder which had some individually wrapped pieces, but it only had knives.  Fortunately I was able to find a metal fork on an adjacent counter.

I went back to sit down, and was a bit surprised to see that some random guy had sat down on the left side of the table, oriented to face my seat more than the middle of the table.  That gave me a tinge of caution.  After a few moments, I guess the paranoia got to me, because basically I was convinced I was the target of some nefarious plot that would potentially leave me dead.  I didn’t know why I was targeted, nor the details of their plan; I just assumed I was an outsider and not of the same ‘ilk’ as these guys, which was enough to warrant stabbing someone for no particular reason in their minds.

I imagined that there would be some kind of cue or signal for them to commence with the violence against me, so rather than wait for it, I sprung up and sprinted back toward the original area where the pick-up counter was.  Maybe they just knew I would be sensitive to the intimidation, and all they wanted was my chimichanga, but I wasn’t willing to stick around long enough to understand the extent of their plan, if they even had one.  I quickly made it to the door and hallway separating the two areas, and just experienced some slowness as I had to negotiate other people walking in that tight space.  Despite making a successful ‘getaway’ I wasn’t sure if anyone had followed me; I never looked back.  Once through the hallway a bit more, noticing it was dimly lit, I shouted for help and suddenly discovered my mom was there too.

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