In article<b9e50dcd.0212181324.6a7308cf@posting.google.com>, Rene Descartes <renedescartes00@hotmail.com> writes:

>[snip]

It was like a scene out of a Twilight Zone episode. My friend Jim and I were walking down 39th street and the far side of the rail tracks which is mostly derelict, but a good place to take a doberman a long walk, when we at the end of the parking lot a brand new Mystery Sandwich shop. We weren't much hungry at all, but we were curious who might have opened a diner to passing trade where almost no trade passed. That might have been the end of it except for this guy who barged into our way with a mystery-sandwich clipboard, and asked us if we would like to do a sandwich attitude test. You could see that every part of skin, hair, and clothes had been carefully scrubbed, patched, and groomed, though without the things that go with it like smart watch, new clothes, or aftershave. His clothes looked like they had been old when he got them second hand, and were now at the limit of scrupulous care keeping them in one piece.

Anyway, he gave us a lot of schpiel about whether we were really content with our lives until we doubted we were, so we went back to the shop and sat at a table by the kitchen and spent ten minutes filling in this long questionaire. Looking round the shop, I thought we were in with some queer characters. One guy was sat at a table staring direct at his friend, who was muttering softly under his breath what sounded like an endless stream of obscenities and insults. Another guy's red ketchup tomato had rolled over on its side, and he kept saying to it "stand up, stand up, stand up." Finally a waiter came by and discretely stood it up for him, and he said "thank you" -- but, disconcertingly, he said it to the plastic tomato rather than the waiter. The one thing we couldn't see was anything that might be described as a sandwich. Of bread, cheese, ham, bacon, mayo, or the like, there was not a saussage.

Anyway the guy came back and marked my test -- a seedy looking older woman took Jim into another cubicle to mark his. He kept telling me the reason I was still sad because my dad died last year was inadequate diet, and the only thing that would cure it was a mystery sandwich. He took me over to the till, where Jim had reappeared with his interviewer. Just like me, he was anxiously searching his wallet. Turned out we both needed an hour in private with the sandwich chef so he could make us a super-invisible BLT, but the cheapest sale price for this was $64.99... and neither of us had quite as much as fifty in our wallets. We hadn't been hungry and we hadn't seen one of these sandwiches, but by now we really felt we must be in need of one if everybody else thought so. We walked out of the side door and across the tarmac lot feeling we had somehow missed out, when we bumped into this other clipboarder. He was almost as shabbily genteel as the first, but he seemed friendlier if a little confused.

For some reason he had a multimeter and soldering iron slung on a tool-belt, and he had a beanie with a motorised propeller which slowly rotated powered by a small battery in his top pocket.

He said he too had a need for mystery sandwiches at an affordable price, and led us to a battered old hamburger van marked "Greasy Bill's Free-Lance Mystery Sandwich Van". He said he could provide the necessary for an affordable price, though he had to charge a little to cover the price of ingredients.

Hesitantly, we said we could just about spare five dollars each.

He agreed eagerly, and we came inside the van. After a few minutes being interviewed on rudiments, he brought forth with a flourish two fine china plates containing absolutely nothing visible, and set them down on the stained gingham tablecloth. We were a bit bemused at first but, following his lead, we took up the handful of imperceptible sandwich off the empty plate, and bit into it enthusiastically, trying to believe it was the greatest thing we had ever feasted on. But, in fact, it tasted suspiciously like nothing. Still, we reflected, as we walked back down the boarded up street, we had got our nothing at a knock down price. "Come back whenever you feel the need for more," Greasy Bill had said, shaking hands with us eagerly. But is was over a month before we had an entirely idle Sunday and walked down 39th street again: the mystery sandwich shop was boarded up like the rest, and Bill's van long departed from the parking lot leaving only an oilstain behind.

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