Twenty dollar dish

I dreamt that I was in Costa Rica. My dad and I had wandered into a little group of restaurants. One restaurant had an extravagant dish sitting in its window, and my dad told me that he wanted to try it out. I followed him into the restaurant, but since I had somehow gotten stuck in a side hallway, I was not able to be there when he ordered the dish.

When I finally got to the table he was sitting at, I asked him how he liked it. “It’s really good,” he said. It looked like a large apple that had been carved to look like it had been eaten. It lay on top of a conch shell, which is what had caught our attention in the first place.

I asked the waiter how much it cost.

“Veinte,” he said.

“Dolares?” I asked.

“Yes,” he replied.

I asked him about four more times, in both Spanish and English. And, in both Spanish and English, his answer was always the same: twenty dollars.

I gave up trying to hear a better answer from him, and asked him what it was.

“It’s grilled mango,” he said.

I took a closer look, and sure enough, the fruit had blackened marks across its orange, juicy flesh. My dad had only taken a few bites, and had pushed the plate aside. I felt obligated to try it out, so I did. It tasted pretty good. Not worth twenty bucks though.

A waitress now stood in front of me.

“How do you like it?” she asked in perfect English.

“It’s really good,” I said. “De verdad, esta fruta cuesta veinte dolares?”

“Si, ella cuesta veinte dolares,” she replied, confirming what the other waiter had said. Even though she looked like a local, her Spanish sounded very gringo, and was easy to understand.

“That’s pretty expensive, don’t you think?” I asked.

“You should be here early in the morning when they start making it. They grill the mango, and then pour sauce over it.”

“What, is the sauce made of gold?” I joked.

“Maybe,” she replied.

I was beginning to like this girl.

“So tell me,” she said, “what’s one American food that you will never eat?”

“Rattlesnake soup,” I replied. “I refuse to eat that.”

She laughed.

“It’s ironic cause I’m from Tucson,” I said.

“Oh, so you’re Canadian?” she asked.

“No,” I replied.

The fruit had by now evolved into slabs of mango, wrapped halfway around tile. I had to carve off the skin (which closely resembled white bathroom tile) in order to eat it.

I felt that I was about to wake up, but I took a second to think about it first.

“If I wake up,” I thought, “I won’t ever see this girl again.” She was a pretty girl, and fun to be around.

“At the same time though,” I continued, “I won’t have to pay the twenty bucks.”

After a moment’s deliberation, I decided to wake up.