The Proprietress, Part One // Black Bean Chimichangas
The lunch special is always free, but you have to pay attention.
While your meal is being prepared, I have a story for you.
There was once a diner waitress named Babette. Driving down a deserted stretch of highway on her way home from work one evening, she noticed that the farmland around her and the road that stretched before her were growing dark. But it wasn’t a natural dark. Her car’s headlights barely cut through the inky haze. She felt like she was driving through a tunnel.
Babette was more or less a normal woman back then, but she had what you might call a sixth sense. When the dark tunnel around her started to grow spiky cilia, then wiggling tendrils, then shadowy tentacles that pulsed and grasped and reached for her, she didn’t waste any time telling herself she was just seeing things. She could feel the hunger that fueled those writhing shadows.
An exit was coming up on her right. Babette drove this stretch of highway every night; she knew it was there. When the moment came, she grit her teeth and cut the wheel hard right and shot out of the dark tunnel like a bullet.
Babette found herself hurtling down a long country road with winding curves. Her window was rolled down just enough to hear familiar, comforting country noises: frogs courting, crickets fiddling. Twilight had descended normally here, as if the darkness belonged to the highway and couldn’t trespass very far from its parallel borders.
But Babette didn’t relax. She kept her foot on the gas pedal, and wished she had a road flare or a hunting rifle or anything to defend herself with other than a bag of greasy food leftover from her shift.
She knew as soon as it found her. First the crickets fell silent, then the frogs. Babette rolled her window up and looked in her rearview. Darkness was rushing down the country road after her like a flash flood. She could see dark tentacles roiling, reaching as if to snag her back bumper. In her bones Babette knew that if she was caught, those tentacles would crack the metal shell of her car, scrape her out, and gulp her down like an oyster.
But there was no escape. No exits or turn offs, nowhere at all for a car to go except straight ahead, hurtling into the unknown.
When she first glimpsed the light through the dense trees, she thought it was the moon. Only as her tires squealed around the next curve did she realize what she was actually seeing: a tall highway sign, lit up and glowing like a beacon. Somewhere down this road was a gas station or a restaurant—with people.
Could anyone help her, though? If she fled to the shelter of other human beings, she wanted to believe the hungry darkness would disappear like a bad dream at dawn. But maybe not. Maybe she was just leading it to a bigger, more satisfying meal.
Suddenly, Babette noticed something: the winding country road she was on terminated in a dead end. The blacktop gave way to a small parking lot next to an abandoned building. The big oval highway sign she’d mistaken for the moon was dull and dark. There was nothing on three sides but woods and hills. She was rushing into a trap.
Babette gripped the steering wheel and prepared to hook a U-turn. She wouldn’t die like some kind of damn shellfish. She’d charge the darkness head first and ram the Chrysler down its throat if it came to that.
As soon as she crossed into the parking lot, Babette’s car abruptly, inexplicably, ran out of gas. It coasted to a gentle stop next to the abandoned building, and Babette put on the parking brake out of sheer habit.
She sat there for a second, frozen, listening to the plink of the cooling engine. Then there was a sound like a distant train, or like time stretching, a hollow roar that was somehow muffled and distorted as if by a great distance, and also close enough to make the bobblehead dance on Babette’s dashboard. She didn’t have to look in her rearview to know the darkness was on her. She could feel the churning hunger, the desperation to crunch chew mouth slurp swallow. There was no reasoning with such a powerful need, no mercy to beg of so fierce an appetite.
Babette took a deep breath. Then she zipped up her jacket and got out of the car.
There’s more to the story, of course, but your lunch is here. Next time you visit, I’ll tell you the rest.
Today Babette is serving: The Black Bean Chimichangas Lunch Special (original recipe link)
What’s a chimichanga? A burrito, more or less, stuffed with warm, oozy goodness. The tortilla is fried so it’s a little crisp on the outside, golden and spotted. When you drizzle the cheese sauce over the top, the crispy layer absorbs some of it and the texture achieves a perfection rarely seen on earth or in the kitchen. I fold the tortillas into rectangles that feel heavy in the hand. You can eat them that way if you want, like a hand pie, with a cup of the cheese sauce for dipping. Your teeth snick against the tortilla as you bite in, but the outer crisp gives way to a pillowy soft sub layer, before the filling of hearty, spicy black beans blended with creamy, spicy cheese sauce gushes into your mouth.
This has been the lunch special.
Don't forget to take a mint from the dish by the register on your way out. Printed inside the wrapper is a secret message from the kitchen.
Have a hot drink with your ice cream. Alternate bites evenly between the two, chasing hot with cold with hot. Recommended: Earl Grey ice cream from Van Leeuwen, Paris tea from Harney and Sons. Or a good plain chocolate ice cream and strong black coffee