Executive Pizza

"Appetite, a universal wolf."
-William Shakespeare

We spent a long while today at the hospital. I got, as expected, jabbed and prodded and advised and vaccinated, and at the end of it all Spouse and I were both desperately in need of some dinner.
Any scrap, anything would have sufficed, but we were confused, seeking all sorts of restaurant signs where there really were none, and Spouse reminded me of an occasion some years ago in which he was more ravenous than usual.
In downtown Chicago Spouse was accompanied by a starving student friend, and they hovered about the streets, bellies growling, the evening wearing on and patience growing thin.
"Ah," cried Spouse at last, spotting a sign: "Executive Pizza!"
Whatever that sort of name indicated, it primarily meant food, and the pair stumbled in the direction of the neon sign that offered so much promise.
It turned out, much to their bitter discontent, that the word 'plaza' can cunningly disguise itself as 'pizza' when one is especially determined to find food.
It appears to work equally well the other way: Spouse and I drove for miles this evening in our quest for a morsel of food, streaming past a tiny, nondescript place called Financial Bagel and wondering to ourselves who would name a bank after a circular bread.
As it happens, a fellow named Finagel just might, minus the bank element and with the addition of a cafe.
Whole novels ought to be written by famished men out on the road seeking a crust of bread- wondrous and inventive tomes, thunderous, complex works of literature and fragments of the imagination that might never ripen if everyone had their supper on time.