How could some people own so much when others could barely survive? Malee tried to answer but couldn’t. She was slowly beginning to understand why everyone they had met since the morning looked frightened when they saw Mary. They inherently understood that the person following her must be one of the family. Even she was mistaken for one of them by the staff in the shop.
“Are you coming?”
Malee suddenly noticed she was standing in the middle of the shop with opened mouth and both Mary and Georgia was looking at her in amusement.
“Yes. Sorry.” Malee quickly walked out of the door and followed Georgia and Mary to the outside. There was already a queue forming outside of the shop waiting for their turn to enter the shop. Malee looked at them and remembered the times those people would not even think of coming close to her without pinching their nose and yet they in turn must wait for Georgia. Some of them looked at her with wide-eyes and opened mouth. Malee realised it would be norm for people to look at her if she had to continue following Georgia and her brother. Then she saw a man coming down from the side of the shop in a hurry and greeted Georgia.
“He is the general manager of the building.” whispered Mary to Malee, who was wondering if they would be able to go anywhere without people coming to meet them. The man bowed and left as Georgia turned around to Mary and Malee.
“Lets go. We have lunch at the usual place.” said Georgia as she followed the man.
So there were 3 of them, looking like models from the movies and everyone else staring at them. Soon, they reached the end of the path and took the lift to the upper floor where two ladies awaited them in front of a big wooden door. They smiled as soon as they saw the general manager and opened the door for them to go in and Malee found herself facing an endless row of food surrounded by almost empty chairs. It was a restaurant but without much patrons.
“How is the business?” asked Georgia to the man they called the general manager.
“Great.” replied the manager. Malee wondered how could the business be doing great with so much food yet so little customers in the shop. She counted less than 10 diners with almost twice the number of staff serving them. They went into a room with a view of the city underneath and a large table in the middle of it. As Georgia and the man sat on the chair, Mary signalled Malee to follow her outside the room.
“He is a distant uncle of her. She will be fine. Lets go get the food.” said Mary. Having to wake up before the sun had risen on the horizon as well as driving to and from the beach must have made her hungry. So was Malee. She nodded and followed Mary to the rows of food.
“What should we take?” asked Malee.
“Anything you want. I will take for Georgia.” said Mary as she took a plate and started to walk along the aisle. Malee too took an empty plate and started to follow Mary along the path. There were rows of seafood as well as assorted side dishes , some of them she was familiar with but others she had never seen before. She decided to try out a few of them and scoop them into her plate. Once she was done, she looked up and found Mary has already disappeared back into the room. She looked around for other items and found a drink station with several of the cola drinks and she took an empty glass and filled it with her fav drink, pepsi cola.
Her arrival with plate full of food on the right hand as well as the cola glass on the other hand was met with astounded look from Georgia. Her plate , which Mary brought for her had less than a few pieces of fishes and sauce. She wondered how can a girl about her age could gorge as much as Malee. Malee too started at the plate in front Georgia with the thoughts of how could someone eat so little.