The boy laughed with a feral, garrulous confidence. "Now it's my eyes out.
Before it was gettin' hair on my chest if I ate your stuff."
She smiled. "You remember. It was called 'Shit on a Shingle.' To MF she explained, "That's a nickname for one of my domestic dishes. It's also known as beef and gravy on toast." To Rick she added, "And given time it will grow hair on your chest. I promise." She began eating her veggie burger.
"Mrs. Sangfroid," said Rick, "what are you eating? It's orange."
She looked at the edge of her burger. "More like raw sienna, golden ochre, cadmium yellow, and goldenrod dark…hard to explain the color. Saffron the closer you dig into the corn. This vegetarian hamburger probably isn't all that nutritious fried with hamburgers but here we are as guinea pigs within modern existence."
"That's a heavy one from a sandwich. Tell me what you mean," said MF.
"Well, I mean that we don't grow our own food so we are reliant on what others present to us as good and we follow the masses into places like this out of convenience and laziness. We are like cognizant teddy bears on an assembly line to have our apertures plugged up with plastic eyes but there is nothing we can do about it. Anyhow, two cheers for Burger King. Hip hip hurray! Hip hip hurray!" She laughed, more amused and interested in herself than anyone else.
"You don't eat meat, Gabriele?"
"Not much," she said.
"Okay," MF said disapprovingly.
"Whether or not animals have any value outside of becoming a product to serve to us doesn't matter so much to me. I think what I think but you can't prove it one way or the other. I just feel that having the attitude that everything exists to serve human pleasures and appetites stunts any enlightenment one might hope to get on this planet. It's not the animal rights perspective but my own."