American Paranoid Restaurant

A meditation on identity, consumption, and pareidolia. Ninety-five percent true by semi-exact count, contains the word “boudoir” twice, “polaroid” and “french fries” six times apiece, and “ejecta” only once. There are three scenes featuring jazz quintets, two featuring market-research brainstorming, and one each featuring thrift stores, dumpster diving, and internet pornography.When Petra Baron goes into the fortuneteller’s tent at a Renaissance fair, she expects to leave with a date to prom. Instead, she walks out into Elizabethan England, where she meets gypsies, a demon dog and a kindred spirit in Emory Ravenswood. Emory must thwart the plans of religious zealots. His mission is dangerous, his enemies are fanatical, and Petra Baron is a complication that Heaven only knows he does not need. Or does he? Although Emory is on Heaven’s errand, he learned long ago that Heaven does not always play fair. As Petra slowly falls for Emory, she wonders if he really is who he seems, or if he is just as lost as she is. How can they have a future while trapped in the past? Or is anything possible Beyond the Fortuneteller’s Tent?