Spit in my soup. It’s been a few minutes since we were served, but it only took me an instant to see it: spit in my soup. My date, so far unaware, is enjoying the start of her meal while I’m stuck trying to figure out why I’m in this situation—why I’m sitting across from this near-stranger while someone waits for me to swallow up their ugly little glob of sputum. So I sit here—like an idiot—perplexed and just faintly upset. Part of me wonders whether I did something to the waitress, and another part of me starts forming the words that I’ll have to say to this girl who’s gaily eating across from me.

I try to replay every moment up until now: walking in, being seated, speaking to the waitress, waiting here in awkward pre-dinner communion, then being served. In it all I fail to see the moment when I suddenly set things off. It might just be the way I look, or something about my demeanour. So now I pick apart every little bit of my exterior: the clothes I’m wearing, the way I’m sitting, my manner of speaking, how I walk. Though I continue to reach dead-ends on why I’d be singled out, I arrive at one conclusion: I deserve this. Not that I want it, no, but that something about me exudes weakness, that I let someone think they could do this to me. So I start to feel differently, but still I just want out.

Finally my date clues in. Half-jokingly, she asks “Is there something wrong with your soup?”

“Yeah . . .” and I hush my voice, “I think someone spit in it.” It comes out almost pleading, as if I’m begging her to tell me what to do.

Immediately her brow crinkles, while her mouth twists into a little grimace around an urgent “What?” and that’s when the waitress comes back.

“How is everything so far?”

When I turn to look at her I search for something in her face that’ll tell me whether she’s in on this. That searching turns into a confused hesitance while my date waits for me to act and I wait for the waitress to crack. And it still feels like I deserve this, like I’m waiting on this woman to tell me what sin I’ve committed. Then my silent beseeching is interrupted: a little sibilance cuts through the formal murmur of the restaurant, like a hose sputtering steam. For a second I think the waitress has started to hiss at me, but then I see past her. On the other side of the room is a door to the kitchen, which for a moment is broken open by a waiter shuffling plates. Through the doorway I catch a glimpse at a line cook whose eyes are fixed on me as he stifles giggles behind an ugly, mocking sneer.

At that I feel a pang shoot through me. The obvious first words, “There’s spit in my soup,” come out with accidental, haughty indignance, which transforms my confusion into typical impotence as I stand up in a rush and make the standard declaration that I won’t be paying for this. My date is taking a back seat to it all, and she might as well; I’m the one making a scene, and she’s stuck going along with it because there’s no recourse from these sorts of things.

The waitress gives me an “Excuse me, sir?” with a shocked, unbelieving air—taken aback as if I’d just uttered a threat. But then she makes a quick study of the soup and the all-too-obvious slime shifts her tone to supplicating.

I look to my date: “I’m leaving. We’re leaving,” and while she hurriedly, awkwardly grabs her jacket, I can’t help but glower at the kitchen door. Her little hand at my back urges me towards the exit and I feel myself bristle at the assertion. But I avert my gaze and do my part, nearly leaving my date behind as I stride away from the situation. My teeth are grit. I see myself suddenly becoming the stereotypical offended wimp who huffs and leaves. In retrospect, I can see it on myself from the moment I came in. I see what the cook saw, and I get why he thought he could do this. I see the universal contempt that I made myself a vessel for—made by being so terribly weak.

While I make my escape the sound behind me changes. It’s not the subdued chuckling from before, but a whole swell of laughter that overtakes the restive din. It shocks me and I give a start, stopping in place. For a moment I believe it’s the entire restaurant erupting at me, but really it’s just one voice, just the line cook. A flush of heat runs over my back and through my chest up to my face. I feel a little tingling premonition in my shoulders. My right leg won’t stop shaking. It’s at the door that I turn back.

I’m standing in place when I bellow out. A short, echoless “Fuck you!” that dies on the wooden walls. It fills up the whole room like a black cloud, out of which eyes suddenly stare, transfixed on the scene between me and the cook. Whoever wasn’t already clued in starts to whisper about what the hell is going on, but nobody really knows. Even I don’t get it, nor do I see where it’s headed. The waitress makes a move to get away, pulling her little notepad up to her chest like a rosary. From my sides a manager with a stern face and the biggest waiter seem to be closing in on me—ready to sweep me out the door, as if I’d be cowed so easily. Ahead of me is the rising, wailing laughter still spewing from the apron’d hyena who’s now standing in the doorway of the kitchen. His whole chest heaves in rapturous gasping as he directs all the air in the room down onto my head. No one knows what to do about him. Then there’s me. From somewhere beyond me I hear a low and serious “Sir,” but they don’t catch me as I close the distance to the kitchen.

There the cook is still in his giddy hysterics, propped up on the jamb of the door while he clutches at his chest and howls from under his involuntary squint. I’m just an arm’s-length away and closing the gap with an angle from elbow to knuckle up into his jaw that sends his opposite temple into the edge of the frame. And then he’s below me, no longer doubled over but crumpled up. He’s now limp, and I see a little trickle of red coming from his temple. Rage gives way to reason while I stand over him. Everything condenses as I hear the shrieking or shouting all around and I feel various hands grip my shoulders and I’m no longer in control and I wonder:

Why did he spit in my soup?