?Interrobang! · Track 83 · middle

Which Encounters Were the Real Meal

OBJECT (intimate, what Sisukiro found): meaningful business cards with notes on the back. OWNER (re-linked by Sisukiro): Fast Food Fred — fine-dining chef for dogs from San Francisco; note the irony of the name. FOUND AT: the harsh atoll of Clipperton Island. THE (UN)LIKELY STORY & THE UNANSWERABLE QUESTION: Fred cooks gourmet meals for dogs though he's Fast Food; left his box of meaningful business-cards on a desolate atoll. Which encounters were the real meal?

Lyrics

[Intro]
Clipperton Island. 10 degrees north.
The heat just sits on your skin.
Ammonia from the guano, salt from the spray.
And here, half-buried in the coral grit… a box.

[Verse 1]
They called you Fast Food Fred.
I imagine you laughing at that, back in San Francisco.
Wiping your hands on a clean white apron.
Slicing pan-seared duck for a Golden Retriever.
A tiny sprig of parsley for a King Charles Spaniel.
You cooked with more care for them than most people get in a lifetime.

[Chorus]
And you left this box of paper ghosts.
A Rolodex of everyone you ever met.
Your menu of a life, served on cardstock.
But the question you carried all the way to this wreck of an island…
Fast Food Fred… which encounters were the real meal?

[Verse 2]
This one is heavy, linen finish. Embossed.
Some venture capitalist, I suppose.
But on the back, your handwriting in blue ballpoint.
'Laughed about the fog, June 2017.'
Another one, flimsy, from a print shop.
A barista named Maria.
'Said my name like it was a song.'
Each one a taste, a single bite of another soul.

[Chorus]
It's a box of paper ghosts.
A Rolodex of everyone you ever met.
Your menu of a life, served on cardstock.
But the question that burns here, under the French flag no one sees…
Fast Food Fred… which encounters were the real meal?

[Bridge]
Did you stand here and watch the masked boobies?
Did you see the land crabs at night, dragging the dead things home?
This is a place for what's left over. What's been mined and abandoned.
Did you think these names would wash away?
Become guano? Or just… nothing?

[Outro]
I'm holding one now.
It just says 'Ana.' No title, no number.
On the back, you wrote… 'She saw me.'
Was that it, Fred?
Was that the one?