Lindsay Kaplan
The sun had settled into the icy mud hours ago. Night can be black or navy or even silver lined, but that particular night took on the splotchy brown hue of salted, slushy pavement, no matter how many times I washed my windshield. Maybe if we had made this excursion last year at this time, we would have taken a joint and drove along in a blissful near-stupor. But after a tiring day of classes, we tried making an event of just driving to Taco Bell. I drove, even though I hate Massachusetts streets and signs and just about anything that has to do with operating a motor vehicle in this state. I say 'driving to Taco Bell' because Dave forgot the directions. We got lost, of course. After a fifty-minute detour, we ended up back on Main Street and attempted to salvage our highly publicized Taco Night by turning it into Burger Night at Wendy's.
We discussed global politics over classic double cheese burgers with everything. We debated labor laws over spicy chicken sandwiches until I grew bored with the conversation. Eventually, I let the other three talk while I concentrated on getting enough ketchup on each fry. I couldn't participate in the Word Bank debate when part of me wanted to discuss the bigger picture, the death of God in our society, remorse, and the rise and fall of greed. Or something like that. A larger part of me wished I was at Taco Bell. I sat silently, eating my hamburger and french fries and chicken nuggets and worrying that I was putting on weight. I licked the salt off my fingers and noticed the man across from us, on the other side of the practically empty room. He was eating alone, his coat unzipped, his keys on the gray plastic table next to his yellow combo meal. He concentrated on his hamburger as one might concentrate on reading a book. He looked so sad, his eyebrows narrowed over his food, so alone and so middle aged. As if his wife had left him and he worked nine to five everyday in a cubicle where his own boss didn't know how to spell his last name and his children resented him and he came here to get away, to eat dinner because she stopped cooking for him years ago and he was sick of the diner with the waitresses who sympathized with him and served him extra mashed potatoes with his meat loaf and here I was, pity welling up in my eyes and staring into his reflection in the glass so as not to look like I was staring at him, at his solemn severity of eating a hamburger alone on a Thursday night. I didnt want to talk about third world labor laws or what Arjun's politics professor had said about medical coverage in Canada. I was sick of everyone regurgitating what their professors had said in class. I wanted to sit with Mr. Hamburger and ask him why he chose tonight to skip out on his usual date with the Waltham Diner, why I kept eating even though I wasn't hungry anymore, why I felt just as alone as him. Why I maybe felt even more alone.
So, I wept a little, salted my french fries and wished I had more ketchup.
Quinn looked up from her chicken sandwich and rolled her eyes. ''Are you crying? You are... Oh lord.'' She handed me a paper napkin to dab my eyes with while Arjun refused to acknowledge my embarrassing behavior by carrying on with the conversation. Dave handed me his last chicken nugget.
When we rose to leave, I saw that the man had finished, too, but remained sitting, staring at his crumbs, unable to take his eyes off anything else but his own hands. Maybe he wished he had more ketchup, too. Maybe he wished he could eat whatever was left of his life and then throw himself away along with the other fast food nightmares. My friends and I chucked the greasy paper in the trash and gathered our coats up in our hands. We held our stomachs and allowed the icy January air to rush up all around us, to turn our breath into clouds that clung to the cold and hung off our salty lips like ghosts of unspoken words.