CanIHelpYou?
I’m in a tunnel. It’s like a submarine—a large, oval gunmetal-gray pipe just tall enough for me to stand up but confining enough so I have to hunch down to walk in it. There are beams I have to watch out for so I don’t hit my head.
Sometimes the tunnel gets smaller. Sometimes I have to get on my hands and knees to get through the narrow spots.
Sometimes someone chases me and I have to run through the tunnel, crawl fast through the narrowness to escape. It’s a stranger, but I know to run.
I’ve explained all this to my guidance counselor at school. She calls me in sometimes to talk because she thinks I’m a mystery. The day I told her about the tunnel I asked what she thought about it. She picked at her index fingernail and said, “Never get a manicure in Wichita.” That’s it. Never get a manicure in Wichita.
“Welcome to Arby’s Drive-Thru,” I say. “Can I help you?”
I work today. I work every day I can because it gets me out of my house and today is Saturday, so I’m working.
I’m the one you talk to through the little speaker at the Drive-Thru. You’re in my head, cushioned by foam around my earphones. You say things like, “Gimme a cheeseburger and fries with a Coke.” You say it like you’re talking to the speaker and not a human being on the other side. You bark it sometimes. Windy night, busy inside with the din of eat-in customers, and I get your order wrong. You say, “No! I said LARGE, not SMALL!” You ask me if I’m deaf sometimes. You lament the future of our country with people like me in charge.
In charge? Since when does running the Drive-Thru qualify me for being in charge? I want to say things to you—to all of you—but I don’t. I like being nice to your face once you turn the corner and meet me at the window.
You never have your money ready. You check your change. You inspect your receipt. You feel ripped off when the order comes to anything over twenty dollars as if you didn’t know that fast food is a racket when you pulled up to the little speaker. As if you didn’t add up the prices on the enormous menu board. Not my fault you can’t do math.
When I smile at you, I’m being sincere because I pity you.
I pity anyone who says gimme.
The world is going to be a giant disappointment for you.
All you’ll ever get is the kindness of the Drive-Thru girl after growling your entitled order into my head. Gimme-gimme-gimme: the battle cry of millions of people every day. People who want.
You’re a case study, an interesting specimen.
You don’t scare me. Not even when you threaten to talk to my boss because your fries weren’t the temperature you expected them to be.
“I paid almost thirty bucks for this and now the fries are cold?”
I only wish I could take you by the hand through life. I only wish to be there when the real disappointments come. The ones that don’t involve a deep fat fryer. The ones that don’t involve how much ice I put in your Sprite. You never hear a stranger chasing you. You don’t even think you’re alone in the world.
But we all are.
We’re all products of convenience. I don’t judge. I like potato cakes and curly fries as much as the next person. I understand you don’t have time to make dinner. I see your kids in the back seat in their football gear, in their field hockey kilts, next to their pom-poms and their baritone cases. Parades and pep rallies and high school clubs. You parents do what you can.
Six Drive-Thru windows in a mile stretch. Maybe eight. Six pizza places, five that deliver. We’ve been ordering groceries on the Internet and getting them delivered right to our door for three years now.
Ian works at the Weis Market and shops for other people. One time he accidentally got the wrong kind of cat litter for some woman, and she tried to get him fired because she said her cat broke out in hives. This happens more often with Ian than the other personal shoppers at Weis. Probably because Ian isn’t white.
“Why do people care so much about stupid shit?” he asked me last week.
“Maybe they don’t have any real problems,” I answered.
“Everyone has problems.”
“Everyone,” I echoed.
“The wrong brand of yogurt—that was today’s drama.” He shakes his head. “You know Gemma’s dad? She’s taking pills and shoplifting and shit, and he’s worried about dairy?”
“Yeah. I know. Gemma’s a client.”
“Dairy,” he said.
Ian is my best friend. Everyone thinks that one day we’ll get married and have babies and live a happy life. But the fact is that Ian and I are best friends. Since fourth grade. And neither of us can live a happy life. At least, not here. In this town when your mother is white and your father is black, people can only see the father’s side—that’s Ian’s reason. My reason is different and not as easy to spot at the annual block party.
We’re both off work at eight and he wants to go to a movie but I have to go see three clients before nine. Saturday night. Everyone wants to get wasted.
The beep sounds.
“Hi! Welcome to Arby’s Drive-Thru. We have two new flavors of smoothies! Would you like to try a mango-and-pineapple today?”
“Gimme a Classic meal, large.”
“What drink would you like with that?”
“Coffee. You got coffee?”
“Cream and sugar with that?”
“Black.”
“Your total is seven oh five. Please drive to the first window.”
“Seven bucks? Menu says it’s five fifty nine.”
“The coffee replacement for a soft drink costs a bit extra, sir.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that?”
“Would you like a Coke instead?”
“I want coffee.”
“Okay, sir, drive to the first window please.”
“No. I want coffee instead of the Coke. And I want it to cost the same thing.”
“I’ll arrange for the manager to meet you at the first window, sir.”
“Fine.”
I get Len. He’s the owner and he usually doesn’t stoop to work here but the actual manager called off, and Len has to fill in for two hours. It’s impossible to pry him from the mirror behind the fry station. Every minute of his “shift” he smooths his hair and looks at it from every angle. If there is a god, I’d like to put my order in now for Len going bald before age forty, please.
“Guy wants coffee with his meal but doesn’t want to pay for the change,” I say.
“You told him it’s policy?”
“He wants to talk to you,” I say.
I stand behind him to see how he negotiates. I can’t figure it out. I’ve been doing the exact same thing for a year and it never works for me. Men are always trying to talk me into things at the Drive-Thru window. Free stuff, usually. A guy asked me if I could give him a case of straws one time. He told me that ours were his favorite straws. He said, “The ones from McDonald’s are too wide. Yours are just right.” I told him I couldn’t. He shrugged and said okay, and then he asked me for extra straws. Fifty extra. “Sorry, I can give you maybe ten.” He pouted. Only after I threw in a wad of napkins and several handfuls of condiments was he happy enough with ten.
This guy isn’t happy about his coffee, though. Len isn’t helping. He’s coming up with solutions that don’t solve anything. He says, “I can give you a large coffee if you want.” He says, “I can pour the coffee into a regular cup.” He says, “Like iced coffee!” The guy just wants the menu to be fair to him.
My pity is enormous. It’s bigger than a case of straws and a large iced coffee and our new mango-and-pineapple smoothie. Larger than the pile of dishes in the back sink that I’ll have to do before I leave at eight.
In the end, the coffee guy yells at Len and Len doesn’t charge him for the coffee, and gets a large Coke for the wife so the guy doesn’t have to pay for something he didn’t get.
When he drives away, I see his bumper stickers. One says I LOVE MY RESCUED YORKIE! The other says SUPPORT OUR POLICE!
I get a half hour for lunch. I start with a cigarette break out by the dumpster because I started smoking again. It’s something I do twice a month—quit then start, quit then start. I have an addiction situation. I was born with it. My birth canal was coated in cravings. And now I cater to my clients who were born the same way. In third grade I said I wanted to be a pharmacist. My dreams have come true.
I check my phone. Two texts from Ian about people who complained about him today. Three texts from clients. Coded. I need one page of chem notes. Can you bring me a large bag of cat food? How much for five more of those lollipops? An email from my mother—a forwarded email from the school automated system. The subject says Missing Assignment Report.
I don’t need an email.
I know I don’t do my work.
What’s the point?