Greg was a big guy. Six foot six and pretty good looking too. You might say he had rugged good looks.
He never had a problem with girls. After college he met Meg and they dated for a while. Her parents Bob and Lynne loved Greg as their own and were thrilled when the kids married. They had one child, a daughter named Kimberly who was the image of her mother: slim, with blue eyes and a healthy, wholesome look to her.
Eventually, he and Meg didn’t see eye to eye and they split amicably when Kimmy was 18. Meg moved to New York to be closer to her family and Kimmy stayed in California with Greg. She took it hard at first but when she saw how her parents treated one-another she accepted the arrangement.
Kimmy stayed close to home, commuting to San Diego State, working on a degree in speech pathology. She was a good kid and had no steady boyfriend. That meant that when she wasn’t studying, she and Greg spent a fair amount of time together. A favorite of theirs was walking through Balboa Park, exploring the Palm Canyon and other hidden garden gems in the park.
* * *
Greg’s best friend Mike called him one night. “Hey, this new Brazilian restaurant just opened out in Santa Clara. Wanna give it a try?”
Now, you should know that Greg’s life revolves around food.
Although he was a big guy, Greg wasn’t obese; maybe just a bit porky. He’d always been this way. Never an athlete but well built, Greg’s high school and college coaches always tried to recruit him. It never worked because he just wasn’t sports-oriented. Often, he wondered how his life would have been different if he had pursued college football.
Nowadays his whole life revolved around food. Fresh, fried, frozen, he loved it all. And in large quantities.
Truth be told, Greg is a stress eater. It didn’t help that his job was the trigger for eating. You see, he’s an air traffic controller at Reid-Hillview Airport (IATA code RHV) in San Diego, one of the busiest small airports in the country.
The job of an air traffic controller is stressful enough, but RHV seems permanently short staffed and Greg is always pulling double shifts to help. The fact that last week there was a near miss between a weekend warrior in a Cessna and a Surf Air rental Gulfstream sure didn’t help his nerves.
Mike added, “It’s Churrasco do Brasil, a Brazilian meat restaurant.”
A Brazilian meat restaurant is a style of barbecue where meats are skewered and grilled over an open flame. These restaurants typically offer a variety of meats and traditional Brazilian dishes, often served in a rodizio style, where waiters bring skewers of meat to your table and slice portions directly onto your plate. They give you a disk like a drink coaster with one side red and the other green. The waiters are trained to not serve you when the red side is up. That gives you a chance to regroup for the next onslaught of tasty meat.
They agreed to dinner at 7 the next Wednesday. That worked out fine for Greg because Kimmy had an evening class.
* * *
Churrasco do Brasil was about three quarters full, so they had no trouble getting a table. They were seated in the middle of the dining room which gave them maximum exposure to the waiters.
And what a procession of waiters. There must have been 15, most carrying a skewer with meat on it. Some skewers were three feet long! Other waiters had platters with various fishes like tuna and salmon.
Now, a Brazilian restaurant is like nirvana to a big eater, and Greg was salivating at all the options. Believe it or not, with all this delicious meat being delivered direct to your table, the restaurant had a salad bar. Heresy!
Greg was strategic in his choices. Try a small amount of each offering at first and then zero in on his favorites.
To begin, Greg tried picanha, fraldinha, and alcatra, each various cuts of sirloin. In addition, he sampled frango, a marinated chicken that is barbequed, and porco (pork loin). While there were many side dishes offered, he tried a little eijoada, a black bean stew with pork, sausage, and beef, served with rice.
All of these were washed down with a really nice and somewhat fruity Argentinian malbec.
Over the next 90 minutes Greg did his best to make the restaurant unprofitable that night. He pretty much stayed with the sirloin cuts; the waiters always seemed to come by with a freshly skewered sirloin roast. Once he almost turned his coaster from green to red so he could let his extended belly settle down, but then a waiter came by with garlic camarão (shrimp) and he couldn’t resist.
As full as he was, he had two helpings of a creamy caramel flan called pudim de leite for dessert.
He said goodbye to Mike and headed home. He was excited to tell Kimmy about the restaurant, but when he arrived home Kim was still out.
Feeling like he was going to explode and was close to throwing up, Greg realized that he really overdid it at dinner. But dang, that Brazilian beef was soooo good. He climbed into bed; between the full belly and the wine he fell asleep almost immediately.
* * *
He woke at 1:40 AM with the worst heartburn of his life. Stumbling out of bed he got to the medicine cabinet and swigged a few gulps of Pepto Bismol. That seemed to help a bit.
Returning to bed, he laid there for a few fitful minutes, quickly drifting off to sleep in spite of the crushing pain.
He started dreaming almost immediately. Not the hazy sort of dreams that we all have, but a dream that almost seemed like a movie with a series of scenes.
The first scene was him as a boy. He had a tabby cat named Tommy. Tommy was a sweet boy but Greg teased him. In this movie dream he tied a string to a tin can and tied the other end to Tommy’s tail. The poor cat was terrorized and ran around the house, the can clanging behind, until he collapsed in exhaustion. As Greg remembered it, he laughed so hard he nearly wet his pants. But what he saw in this dream was the cat’s view of it: a person he trusted totally had hurt him badly.
The movie changed to his mother-in-law Lynne. She welcoming him into her home on one of his dates with Meg. The house was exactly as he remembered it, the plaid sofa and the captain’s chairs at the dining room table. He felt Lynne’s happiness for him and her daughter, and that made him think of Meg.
Meg.
The dream began with the day they met. He was enamored with her looks, but in his dream, he sensed her wariness of him – he was too good looking and she felt intimidated. That dream faded and became their wedding day. They were each so happy. Next, he saw her in the hospital room holding Kimmy for the first time.
The next movie scene was their last fight. It was a few months before they divorced. As usual it was about money. Meg wanted to move and Greg was overwhelmed constantly working overtime. The fight was unwinnable and they each said hurtful things that couldn’t be taken back. In his dream Greg actually felt Meg’s pain of love lost.
His dream sort of seemed like he was attending a family reunion of long-lost relatives. He chatted with his grandparents who had passed away 5 or 10 years ago. He bumped into his uncle who he hadn’t seen in years. Old family friends strolled by to say hello.
The dream turned dark. He was looking down on a bedroom. What looked to be paramedics were using “paddles” to shock the poor person in the bed. Off to the side was a young woman crying. He looked closer and it was Kimmy. The paramedics stopped their resuscitation and covered the body. He realized it was his body, but he didn’t care.
He didn’t care because the next scene was a deserted beach on a bright sunny day. It was the most beautiful beach ever. Only on this beach the sun was the most brilliant and the brightest sun he’d ever seen. What was crazy was that as bright as the sun was, he could look directly at it; his eyes didn’t squint or hurt.
This was probably the best dream he could imagine. Most of his dreams were forgotten before he fully awoke. He wanted this one to never end.
He stared at the sun a moment longer, felt one with it and then the dream ended. There was nothing.