Verge: Stories

DRIVE THROUGH

In your car. Your red Toyota Corolla. Exhaust hums in front of you, behind you. Small voices scratch out of giant boxes with writing on them. Drivers dig through pockets, ready their money. The sun dips down into her wallow; evening descends on a line of cars in the drive-thru at McDonald’s.

A tiny man in the distance. You can see him in the rearview, just above the words OBJECTS IN MIRROR ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR. He is on the move, window to window, car to car. In the rearview you can see the faces of other drivers pinch up as he nears their cars. They dread him. Already they are cringing, scrunching up their shoulders, locking their doors, working buttonholes with their asses in the vinyl seats, trying desperately to look at something else. Anything but the approaching man, bearded, hair knotted, slightly dirty, clothes rumpled and clearly week-worn. White male, thirty-five, maybe forty-five.

By the time you get to the young black man in the first window, huge waves of relief send a shiver up your back. You’ve made it, goddammit, and an angel has appeared to take your money. There is no room for the nasty white man begging money to come around to your driver’s-side window, he could never fit between the ledge of the window with the guardian angel and the safety of your car, your finger on the button to raise your window should danger appear. The young man takes your money and returns your change, asks you what kind of sauce you want, gives it to you in a beautiful little white bag with golden arches on it, why, it’s heaven, it’s just like being in heaven, the delight is filling your whole body now, earlier you thought you had to pee and the line of cars seemed unbearable, but now, now you are making an exchange that is simple and good and profound in its truth. The young man smiles and waves as you head slowly to the second window, his salary doesn’t even enter your mind, you are free, you are on the way to the second window.

Surely he is at one of the cars behind you. Surely things will get held up there, someone will refuse to open their window and he will knock on it, or he will appear inside the frame of the front windshield and the driver will avert her gaze, he will give up and move on, or back, or away. You risk a quick look in your rearview—nothing nothing nothing, like pennies from heaven.

Your car glides almost magically to the second window, its opening apparent, hands visible, a bag of food bulging and white and smelling of good oil—all vegetable oil—and fried things. Your family is waiting at home. Your car is filled with gas. Your money has been paid.

A pimply-faced girl with headgear and braces hands you your bag, and you see capitalism and youth emerging from the window, you see her first summer job, her first lessons at responsibility and a savings account and taking care of herself, you see her on her way to college, yes, that’s it, the summer before college, the lessons she is learning, what a good student she will make, how she will excel in school, how she will learn well, how she will enter the workforce with a good head on her shoulders. And then there is a rapping at your window on the passenger side, and strange how you forgot, isn’t it? And your head swivels over out of dumb instinct, and there he is, his bad teeth and leathery skin and marble-blurred eyes filling the window, like a close-up, magnified, terrifying. His horrible mouth is opening and closing, he is saying something to you, he is talking to you, his muffled voice breaking through the glass shelter, now he is yelling, you are clutching your bag for dear life, you are putting your car in drive, his fingers at the ledge of your world, your own body like a snake’s: all spine and nerve.

Then a new image: From the front window, you see a man in uniform, my God, an older man with a McDonald’s uniform complete with cap and manager’s badge is running toward your car, he is waving his arms, he is shouting. With one hand you are clutching your steering wheel as in a near-miss accident, and with the other hand you are clutching your white bag of food, heavy and full, and your eyes are like a frozen deer’s, and your body is taut, and your nipples are hard as little stones. Your mouth is dry, and you are as alert as you are capable of being. The manager yells at the shitty little begging white man, You go now! You go now! You outta here now! Shithead! Motherfucking! You go! No slaving here! His slip of the tongue doesn’t even faze you. You are with him. United. You are grateful. There is no dividing you. The two of you are in it together, you are saving each other, you are making the world a better place, you are the American way embodied, you are at each other’s back, you are two hundred billion served.