Fiction Friday #31

"Okay, Sonya," I said, not feeling comfortable with her name in my mouth. She'd been Mrs. Mayreux for as long as I could remember. Other kids may have been introduced to her as Sonya by their parents, but not mine. They believed that children had to show great respect to adults, especially coworkers and their spouses.

"Thank you," she said, picking up the menu in front of her.

I hadn't looked at mine since the waitress had dropped them on the table. I knew what I was getting. The Killer Burger. It was a one pound hunk of ground beef, twelve strips of bacon, and four different cheeses: cheddar, mozzarella, provolone, and swiss. "Western" style came piled with onion rings and was slathered in an "authentic" Kansas City sauce. "Veggie" style had avocado and sprouts. Me, I liked mine "classic," but with the onions caramelized and piled high. The Killer was so large, that it couldn't be held whole; it collapsed under its own weight. That didn't bother me, though.

The only question that went through my head was whether I was going to save half of it, or eat the whole thing. And that was a problem. I knew that saving some was the smart thing to do; I'd have a meal that I wouldn't have to worry about, but burgers are never as sublime as they are in the minutes after they came from the kitchen. Never again would the bun be absorbing the juices from the patty, mingling the meaty flavor with the slight wheaty sweetness. The bacon would never be as crisp. And the onions were never quite as slimy.

My stomach growled.

Sonya looked up and smiled, "Hungry?"

"I didn't eat this morning," I said.

"Why?"

"Preparing for lunch."

Her smile crinkled up and her brow furrowed.

"Just wait," I said. "You'll understand."

She looked down at her menu.

I dusted the sugar, that I had played with earlier, off the table and on to the bench beside me. I wondered how I'd get out of the booth without getting my butt all sugary.

After a bit, the waitress came back, pulling purple off her lips with her tongue and carrying a glass of water. She put the water down and asked, after her lips were pink again, "Can I get you anything to drink?"

"Iced tea," said Sonya, without looking up, "three lemons, on the side, and some of that raw sugar you have back there for the people who order espresso."

"'Kay," said the waitress, looking at me. "And you?"

"A Coke," I said.

She frowned, "We have Pepsi."

"Didn't you used to have Coke?" I asked. "I could have sworn I got a Coke in here before."

She looked like she wanted to shove her gum in my ears and push it in as far as she could. She knew I was being an ass. At the beginning of the school year, the university went and signed a deal with the Pepsi people to only serve Pepsi products on campus and at campus events. People were upset. Not because they like Coke's stuff so much or hated Pepsi's, but because they lost that choice. It was stupid, but that’s what we did there, make big deals over little things that we couldn't change but thought that maybe we could. It was easier than trying to change big things and being ignored when we knew we couldn't do a thing.

I took a deep breath and sighed. "I suppose Pepsi will do," I said, "but I'd rather have a Coke."

"Yeah," she said rolling her eyes and turning away, "wouldn't we all."

She left and Sonya was still looking at her menu, so I looked out the window and wondered, again, what was going through the head of the people who choose the design of the history department's building. It was a giant cube of concrete flanked on either side by two smaller cubes of concrete, connected by breezeways. Horribly, hideous buildings. Sometimes, though, when I pulled an all-nighter and was exhausted I imagined a giant robot made up of buildings around campus. The main history building was the body and the little ones, shoulders, with two of the silos making up arm; the tall, thin, silvery physics building made up the head, while the rec center and the main dining hall, turned on their ends, were the legs and feet.

Ah, the things that exhaustion and too much coffee caused one to see.