An Existential Voyage to Lunch - Winner of an Old Pistol from a Strange Man

Cliff had driven drunk hundreds of times but still, it helped that it was one in the afternoon. Driving drunk in the daylight was like doing so under the cover of disguise. A completely unnecessary disguise like putting on a fake nose to steal a library book or embalming yourself to sleep in a coffin because Cliff was a tremendous driver. He’d become a master of the weight of his prosthetic right foot on the gas pedal. All aluminum, no lead. Delicately pressed, maintaining gear, hovering at thirty-five miles per hour. It was pressure in the knee rather than the ankle. He drove in silence and lowered the windows to feel the revitalizing air. With it came the whoosh of engines and the smell of exhaust.

He yawned it all in.

He just needed to make it to the double cheeseburger. He was getting lunch. It’d been awhile since he’d eaten lunch. He usually ate one meal a day. This was self-improvement. Self-care. Taking better care of himself even if no one else cared. It’d been longer than his last lunch since he’d seen a friend. Another eight days since his phone last buzzed with a personal notification. That’s an extra long week without mail. Homeless shelters received more letters. What was the point of paying a phone bill? Eighty more dollars a month in his bank account to buy . . . what?

More lunches, more self-care. He congratulated himself on slowing down to pass a playground. Good driving. Real nice driving there. Children skidded down a slide in need of oil. Parents watched from picnic tables. People with things to do on a Saturday. A year and a half ago Cliff may have been going to the zoo, or the indoor trampoline land. Him, a step-boyfriend/father to a divorced woman and her two young children with plenty of things to do every weekend. Well, I’m getting lunch. That’s doing something.

Damn those kids screaming for fun and he turned on the stereo. A song came on that he’d first heard over twenty years ago. Fifteen seconds of it was enough to pass the playground and remind Cliff why he hated music. What was music but soda can flavors of nostalgia and yearning? Associated pasts. And he was too cynical for anything modern. He turned it off in disgust.

Memory, nostalgia, yearning, fake. Fake. It had all been fake. Fake father, fake kids, a fake three years of sobriety. The number of times he’d said to her, these aren’t my kids, I don’t need your shit, I can walk away any time and be free again.

Until she said, you’re right. And walked away. Kids waving that they’d see Cliff tomorrow. Still waiting on tomorrow if they weren’t so easily distracted.

Yes, so fake, so easily done away with. As fake as my prosthetic foot. It’s a haunting metaphor I can never escape from. He laughed and laid on the horn at some driver creeping over the center line.

“Don’t drive if you can’t drive!”

She left him with the freedom he’d threatened her with and he was left with what? Children he’d raised with no claim to, like a passing preschool teacher. Friends with wives, careers, families, and no time. And he, drawing disability and pretending to write. A disabled writer. Romantically unemployed. Artist living alone, you’d think he’d be crafting something monumental with such unlimited freedom. It eased the pressure that there was no one around to see that he hadn’t completed even a short poem in years. It was like drinking again: who was there to know? My greatest feat is walking twenty yards in the rain and not being hit by a drop. What a way to feel like a sad ghost. Even the rain forgets you. No umbrellas needed, my tombstone will say, he stood beside no one, and leaves behind no one, but don’t feel too bad for him, for her regularly masturbated three times a day. Enough to pop the toes of his phantom foot. His life was not full of joy per se but it was full of many orgasms. Yes, what an epitaph. See? He was writing again. Everything was fine.

His phone buzzed between his crotch.

Heat Advisory.

It was this thing that really made a person lonelier than they needed to be and he tossed the phone onto the expressway.

More freedom. He needed to get lunch more often. He took the exit. Made an elderly right turn into the fast food parking lot, naturally rolled into the drive-thru lane and thought better of it.

He was out. Today was for getting out there. He felt a surge of warmth at the idea of going inside. Ordering inside. Making small talk with the clerk.

How about this heat?

He parked square between two slanted lines. Forty proof sweat ran down his face. He nearly tripped over the curb as he went for the door. Inside, a short line started at the counter. In front, an old man counted coins. Behind him, a mother waited with her two young children, both younger than five by Cliff’s estimate. The girl matched mother’s clothing, in a green tank top and black sweatpants. She hopped on one foot from tile to tile in an improvised game of hopscotch. The boy looked to have dressed himself, in polka dot pajama bottoms and a t-shirt designed like a cartoon sheriff’s vest. The little girl hopped next to the old man; the mother grabbed her by the shoulder.

“Willow-Jean, stop that.”

Cliff leaned forward, his breath the practical vapors of a saliva mixed whiskey sour.

“It’s such a great age, isn’t it? They’re so funny.”

He did his best to control the shape of his words.

She turned to his bloodshot eyes, the dry, pale, scaly cheeks.

“Willow-Jean, that’s a sweet name,” he said. “Are you getting ready for school?”

“I’m about to turn five!”

“Five! Do you know how many that is?”

She held up a full hand.

“She isn’t about to turn five, her birthday’s in November,” said the mother.

“Never too early to celebrate,” said Cliff.

“Yes, I can tell.”

“So stubborn, aren’t they?” said Cliff.

The mother stepped forward to order. Behind her, Cliff and the girl engaged in a one-upmanship of silly faces, while the boy hugged closer to mommy.

Tray in hand, she herded her children to a table.

“Sure is hot out,” said Cliff to the clerk. “I need a double cheeseburger. With bacon. And a vanilla shake. And a large fry. And do your kid’s meals come with a toy? They do? I’ll take one of those. Can I pick the toy? Okay then, bagger’s choice. Yes, to-go.”

On receiving the bag, Cliff walked to the family’s table. The mother was sorting fries between the children.

“Going to the playground today?” asked Cliff.

The kids looked to their mother with surprised anticipation.

“I found something at the bottom of my bag. Must’ve been a mistake.”

Cliff revealed a cheap figurine sealed in plastic.

“Thank you, we’re just trying to eat our lunch,” said the mother.

“Right. If not the playground, then bath time. Bath time needs toys, right? Right, sheriff?”

The mother’s nostrils twitched; she looked ahead, not at Cliff, but as if pulled over by a police officer.

“They don’t need more toys.”

“I don’t need it either. And I can’t throw it away. Think of all the starving kids in Africa who don’t have toys.”

“What happened to your foot?” asked the girl.

“Willow-Jean, don’t ask questions like that.”

“I lost it chasing someone who looked like you!” said Cliff, wearing a wicked smile.

“Please, let us eat,” said the mother, squirming in her seat as if the officer had touched her thigh.

“Maybe I’ll see you all soon then, I’ll be coming around more often now. Take care of your mommy.”

“Mommy takes care of me!”

“They’re so funny, aren’t they?” said Cliff.

He exited the restaurant, proud to have kept himself upright, without a single slip of speech—so successful no one even suspected he’d had a drink. He started the car and merged into traffic with extra confidence in his steady hands on the wheel. It was okay, it was all okay, he just needed to get out more. He just needed to go to lunch. Starting today. Continuing tomorrow. It all started with a good lunch. The people who said breakfast was the most important meal, they were wrong. It’s lunch that’s most important meal of the day. Things were getting back on track. What incredible wisdom he’d discovered.

On entering his apartment, he dropped the bag on the kitchen table and poured a double shot—solely for the sake of good digestion, he told himself. Downed it, felt the room spin, and collapsed on the sofa, lunch untouched.