supper at the best table: the bodies that can't take the table
once fell off his bike onto his head and received a tiny lesion-type brain injury after which all food everywhere tastes horrible to him. His clearest explanation of the way food tastes to him is that it tastes the way vomit smells.
Context
Refueling assumes a body that works, and around the edges of the best table sit the ones that don't. Axford's brain lesion means "all food everywhere tastes horrible to him" — it "tastes the way vomit smells" — so he fuels holding his nose, joyless, like "somebody dispensing fuel into his car." The machine that can't process its fuel still has to run. And the machine that's too "constitutionally delicate" gets culled: Makulic, "not long for E.T.A.," throws up "in a silky tan cataract" mid-supper, chairs scooting away in a star pattern. The washout is written on the body first — the delicate ones vomit, and vomiting here is a verdict.