Super-Meals: Part One

It was the pickles and mustard that pushed him over the edge.

            Walter Elliot had decided he wanted a bit of a snack on his way home from work, and since he wanted it “his way,” he ordered a cheerful meal of cheeseburger, fries, and a soda.

            The cheeseburgers’ default serving was bottom bun, patty, one slice cheese, one click of ketchup, two slices pickles, sprinkle of chopped onions, top bun.

            Walter didn’t like ketchup, the aftertaste lingered like tomato bubblegum.

            Walter ordered mustard, instead.

            The woman taking his order didn’t make a note of the special order. She was forty-six, looked fifty-six, and was tired from having to work six hours of unpaid overtime this week due to her manager clocking her out for lunch breaks she wasn’t allowed to take, but couldn’t get paid for because it would put the store over its hours budget.

            Instead, she took Walter’s money, handed him his change, then yelled back at the sixteen year old girl who had started putting the meal together.

            “Hey, Laney, no ketchup on that cheeseburger. Sub mustard.”

            “What?” asked the girl.

            The register worker sighed. “I said no ketchup, sub mustard on that cheeseburger.”

            Laney, who was sixteen, had two tests coming up, and was working a double shift because her younger brother needed braces, also sighed. Then she took the half-completed burger to a different prep station (which was literally 36 inches away, but, according to Laney, “It’s, like, WAY over there, and it’s SUCH a pain in the ass whenever I have to make something special.”), added the mustard, then rolled it up in a sheet of waxed paper.

            The burger was added to a paper bag, along with a sleeve of lukewarm French fries, and then a small soda was placed on top of it, dripping condensation onto the wrapper and making the French fries soggy.

            The bag passed from Laney to the register woman to Walter, who took it to a plastic and pressboard table next to a cloudy window and sat down on an inflexible plastic stool to eat.

            Walter wasn’t a big man, but the burger was almost comically small by modern standards, and it took more effort to take many small bites than to simply down it in four (and even that was probably one too many). He polished off the burger, shoved a handful of fries in his mouth, then tossed the paper in the trash while sipping his soda and walking to his car.

            He felt the burger hit his stomach like he’d swallowed a shot-put. His knees buckled and his eyes crossed, and he leaned against the bicycle rack (forever abandoned and untouched) outside of the front door, regaining his composure.

            When he stood up again, he failed to notice the handprint he’d gripped into the steel bars.

            His feet came back to him quickly and his eyesight sharpened once again, and he finished the short trek across the parking lot to his car as the last bit of soda slurped away. He took a quick glance around the parking lot to see if anybody was looking, and when he was satisfied that nobody could see him, he tucked the ice-filled cup behind the tire of the car next to his.

            He unlocked his door.

            He grasped the handle and prepared to wrestle with it. His ’87 Oldsmobile had a dent in the door that pinched the front seam and made it stick sometimes.

            He thumbed the door latch and gave a sharp yank.

            The door came off in his hands.