A Plague Upon Your Family zf-2 Read online

  “You want me to take over driving?” I asked her.

  Tracy turned to me. Grim determination and concern mixed in with a heavy dose of anxiety spilled out of her features. “Do you mind? I don’t feel right driving without you bleeding.” We both laughed, the tiny little release of endorphins was like a surge of adrenaline to my flagging spirits.

  Ten minutes later and a bunch of potty breaks we were back on the road. The natural order of the universe was restored as I cruised down the highway at a more respectable 75mph. Any faster than that and the Terrible Teal machine began to shudder in protest. How I had got this bucket to 120 was beyond my comprehension.

  My stomach grumbled as we passed one of those blue highway information signs. You know the kind that tell you gas, food and lodging are up ahead. This one had the big ‘M’ logo for McDonalds on it. A quarter pounder with cheese, large fries and a thirst quenching Coke sounded like the best thing in the world.

  “Oh man I could go for a juicy quarter pounder, aw man with that dripping cheese and sesame seed bun. I’d put a layer of golden French fries on top of the cheese and I’d eat that thing in like a minute in a half.” I know Henry understood what I was talking about because his head was tilted and he had a little drivel coming out of his maw. I scratched his head. “You know what I’m talking about, don’t you my good boy.” His small tail wagged vigorously, the better to disperse the deadly gas that exuded from his kiester. “Henry! You’re ruining my fantasy.” I said. The van swerved as I did my best to find the electric window control. I was frantic, the edges of my vision were beginning to blur as I held on tight to the only good air within breathable proximity.

  “Oh God, Talbot! Did you run over a zombie?” BT said sitting bolt upright from his nap. Not a pleasant way to return to the world of the awoken. “I can’t breathe.” He hitched.

  Tommy smiled as he stuffed a marshmallow up his nose. “Iths noth so badth.”

  Tracy once again saved the day as all the windows in the van simultaneously rolled down. Brendon’s van swayed slightly as they passed through the toxic cloud that leaked out from our van. I’d freeze to death before I had to breathe in another piece of Henry’s airified excrement. It was another two or three miles before the last remnants of Henry’s oily feculence made rolling the windows up a doable possibility. It still smelled like dirty feet and burnt Fritos but it was passable. All thoughts of food had been wiped cleanly from my mind.

  But again back to the basics, I’m a guy. If not in survival mode (and then sometimes even then) my mind has about three factors that contend with each other. Hunker down ladies because if you’re reading this with your man in some safe zone. I am about to give you all the knowledge you will ever need. If ten thoughts were to pass through your man’s mind it would look like this: sex, sex, sex, food, sex, sex, football, sex, food, sleep, sex. (Did you count? I really put down 11 thoughts. Yup, that’s how important sex is to us.) We’ll only sleep if you’re not offering sex or a sandwich. All that other bullshit we used to do in our ‘regular’ lives, like going to work, or painting the bathroom, or going to the fucking art museum, or seeing ANY chick flick, we did that so we could POSSIBLY get into your pants. Plain and simple. I don’t at this point see any reason to mince words. We love sex in all its pure and depraved forms. Why this most basic of all animalistic rituals has thus far mostly eluded the feminine persuasion is beyond me. I would clean gutters in a hail storm, in my underwear at midnight, if it meant I MIGHT get to have sex. (I’d do all of the above BUT in my regular clothes for an awesome Philly Cheese steak.) And that my dear lady survivors is ALL you will ever need to know about that big, dumb, hairy animal snoring next to you. Sorry guys, I didn’t mean to let the cat out of the bag, but rapid procreation might be the only way we can stave off extinction.

  “Don’t you remember what happened the last time you went to McDonald’s?” Tracy asked circling back to my initial intercourse. (Doesn’t seem like the right word to use here, but somehow it does.)

  “What about…oh yeah.” I answered.

  CHAPTER 16 – THE CUT AWAY

  It was a brutally hot day in July when I had received my layoff notice. I had called Tracy to let her know that she needed to stop the order we had put in for the hot tub in the backyard. I could ‘feel’ the tension and anger that she emitted right through the phone. “Fine.” She had answered me in the curt tone that drove me friggen nuts. (In a bad way.)

  “Everything alright?” I asked like an idiot.

  “Everything’s peachy.” She had replied. (Just so you know ‘peachy’ means anything but.) “The kids want McDonalds for dinner, and Nicole and Brendon are over.”

  Now was not the time but I wanted to tell her that maybe we should start to tighten the belt up a little. “The usual?” I asked abashed.

  “What do you think?” She said, and then she hung up.

  I would have smashed my phone against a wall if I had the income to replace it. I was screaming in my head. ‘FUCK does she think I fired myself! Yeah it must be all my FUCKEN fault!’ It was with this attitude that I rolled on up to the McDonalds drive thru. You kind of see where this is going? Okay just a little backfill so you can really get a grasp of where I’m coming from. During my Marine Corps days I worked on an airfield and because of this I had lost no small measure of my hearing. Couple that with a cheap ass speaker system at any fast food drive thru and we were already in the midst of a communication barrier. Add to the fact that on that fateful night, Samir from the great republic of India had just got off a plane from his native country and had begun working the ‘hole’ as they call the place where your drive thru order is taken.

  The dialog you are about to read is ‘After’ I had put my order in for the third time, and Samir had botched it for the third time.

  “No listen! I want a fucking quarter pounder with cheese AND FUCKING extra pickles!”

  “You would like a cheeseburger with no cheese then sir?”

  “Are you fucking with me?” I was near screaming. “A fucking cheeseburger without cheese is a hamburger, where the fuck are you from?” Although it would have been impossible not to tell where he was from, unless of course you have not used ANY customer support line in the last 5 years.

  “I am from Bangladesh sir.”

  “You don’t say?! Listen, I want a quarter pounder with cheese and extra pickles.”

  “Okay a large French fried with mustard then?”

  “Do you smoke crack, Babacunousch?”

  “Samir sir.”

  “What?”

  My name is Samir, sir. And no I have never smoked anything sir.”

  “Oh for the love of all that is holy.”

  “Would you like to pray sir?”

  I just wanted to back the car up and drive forward, running over the speaker. I couldn’t stop looking at the box like it and not money was the root of all evil in the world.

  “Sir I have your order for four Mint McShakes, 2 small Dr. Pepper’s. A cheeseburger with no cheese, two quarter pounders with cheese one with extra onions and one without buns, a girl toy chicken mcnugget happy meal with apple slices, and 2 Big McMacs and 18 super sized frenched fries with mustard.”

  Not one order, not one fucking order was right. I had nothing left, Samir had beat me.

  “Is that not correct sir?” When I did not answer him, he finished. “That will be $52.75 sir.”

  I was numb as I pulled my car up to the first window, groping for my wallet. The next car in the growing line pulled up to the box, even from this distance, I could hear that I had in no way been singled out.

  “NO! Not a McFlurrie with bacon!”

  I pulled up to the first window, hoping beyond hope that I would find an ally to help me through these troubling times. Pimply faced ‘Becka’ was not going to be that person. She was busy talking to, I believe, ‘Tonya’ about what a jerk some guy named Spence was, through her Bluetooth headset.

  She didn’t so much as look at me when she fairl
y demanded the money. “That’s 52.75, oh my gawd he’s the biggest jerk ever.”

  “Excuse me miss?”

  “So then he says to me, ‘Did you see what Darla was wearing?’ And I’m like why would I care what that bee-itch had on.” She rethrust her hand out seeking something I wasn’t willing to entrust to her.

  “Excuse me miss?” I asked again, I would have had an easier time getting a response from Samir. I shuddered at that thought.

  When Becka realized that I hadn’t paid yet, she finally looked at me with that condescending teenager look that says I know everything and why are you still breathing? Don’t you have a coffin to fill? (I hate teenage girls, is there any species more foreign on this planet?)

  “That’s 52.75.” She said again, this time with less veneer. Not that she was laying the ‘nice’ on too heavy to begin with.

  “Miss, I had some problems with the drive through.”

  Apparently Tonya came back with some profound insight, because Becka once again completely forgot that I existed. “I know right?!” She replied.

  How could Samir all of a sudden become the good employee in all of this? At least he paid me attention even if he had no clue.

  “Yeah so then I sort of…oh wait Tonya.” She said turning to me again. “This guy is at my window and won’t leave. Yeah I don’t think he has any money. Oh Gross Tonya! No he’s not cute, he’s like 65 or something.”

  Did she think I couldn’t hear her end of the conversation? Did she care? 65? And I am kind of cute…aren’t I? Why am I letting Becka make me doubt everything that I am? The human-ego is very delicate, more like a thin-skinned tomato than the hardy coconut. It can be bruised easily with little more than some mishandling.

  “Miss.” I said. “My order isn’t right.”

  “Hold on Tonya. Didn’t you just make it at the speaker? Gad Tonya some of these people can be such dolts.” She finished, looking straight at me.

  Did she think she was texting? This couldn’t be happening, could it? I was on Punked or something. Someone must be making a YouTube video. “Where’s the camera?” I asked in the hopes that this was some masterful prank and not the true state of the world.

  “No he’s still here. I think he may be a ‘tard’.”

  “Are you fucking kidding me? What is your problem.” Bruised ego or not, there was only so much I could take.

  “Geez there’s no reason to get all hostile and stuff, it’s not my fault you couldn’t make your order right the first time.”

  I would have peeled away leaving a trail of rubber, but that’s not really a specialty of Jeeps. I did drive away from the window and I did entertain the thought of just leaving and trying my luck at Burger King. Odds were today though that I would encounter more of the same. Had I the clairvoyance to have checked my horoscope this morning I would have known how this day was going to turn out. It read just one word ‘HIDE’.

  If I went home now, empty handed, Tracy would make Becka’s mishandling of my ego seem like a feather’s caress. Nearly every fiber of my being revolted at the thought of going into the lion’s den. I parked the car, stepped out and onto five or six ketchup packets that had been strategically placed for just this effect. Red sticky liquid nearly made it to the knee of my tan Dockers, my expensive Italian leather shoes looking like I had just followed OJ through a crime scene. Ronald mocked me with his feral grin sitting on his bench all smug and self-centered.

  Two of the largest women I had ever seen in my life nearly bowled me over as I tried to gain entrance into the inner sanctum of absurdity. Twins they were, but not of the ‘doublemint’ variety. One was swathed in head to toe spandex. Anything resembling my appetite was lost. Her sister had on a skirt that struggled for all it was worth to stay attached at the seams. The skirt barely covered massive varicose stained thighs. It looked like the world’s most detailed map had been tattooed on her, but I really had my doubts that it led to anything resembling treasure.

  “Oh he looks good enough to eat.” I heard one of the sisters mutter to the other.

  The other sister, placed her hand to her mouth and tittered. She looked about as dainty as a hippo.

  Like I said though, egos are fragile and tender. As easily as they can be broken they can be propped up. Now I wouldn’t touch either one of these girls with a stick to see if they were alive, but still, at least one of them thought I was cute. Does ‘good enough to eat’ equal cute? It did in my world.

  “Ladies.” I said with my cheesiest grin as I held the door open. This time they both tittered. I felt magnanimous. I didn’t have the slightest clue then, that in just a few short months from now I was going to expend a magazine of high caliber rounds into each corpulent sibling.

  It was with this much-improved demeanor that I walked into the restaurant and up to the counter. My mood was only slightly diminished as I felt the tackiness of my red sauce covered shoe as it tried to adhere itself to the less than sanitary flooring. One young harried mother was at the counter ordering, two of her children were running around like they had just sucked down a couple of Red Bulls. Her third child was busy picking up errant French fries that had ended up on the deck. I cringed as she placed these ‘floor prizes’ into her mouth.

  “Lexus!” She screamed. “Stop that I’m ordering your supper right now!”

  Wait so she wasn’t upset that ‘Lexus’ was eating food off of a disgusting floor, but rather that she would ruin her appetite? Lexus didn’t heed her mother’s words as she placed another dirt encrusted something into her mouth, I don’t think it was a French fry, but I tell myself that it was, so that I can make it through the day without dry-heaving. The germaphobe in me would have had to disown this kid if she was mine.

  “Lexus, Mercedes, Fred come on! I’ve got Happy Meals.” The young mother yelled.

  All three stopped, even Lexus with what appeared to be the mid-section of a cockroach halfway to her mouth. The offending insect was discarded and rapidly forgotten as Lexus screamed merrily about getting a princess toy. My earlier merriment was completely destroyed as I stepped up to the counter. A sad faced man named Don (The shift supervisor), greeted me. I was to learn rather quickly that Don’s day had pretty much paralleled my own (except for the part about losing his job, but that part would come later after I left.)

  “Sir how may I help you?” Don asked. Doing his best to hold on to what little remained of his dignity.

  I’m not proud of some of the things I have done in my life. You could count this encounter as one of them. I am one of those people that is quick to anger and then let slide something that should have never left my brain to begin with. Quick to react, slow to think. Unfortunately this was something my Nicole had picked up on early in life. She would scream bloody murder and I would come running. Justin usually became the hapless victim in this game as I would punish him before I even knew what was going on. If my daughter wrote that story she could probably call it, ‘The Manipulation of Michael Talbot’. And then the worst part of this whole affair would be the swallowing of my pride and then admitting to my son that I was wrong. This was a shortcoming that had been a work in progress with me for years. That day I slid a long way back down the progress path.

  Maybe it was the way he looked so pathetic, like he had already given up, that made me act the way I did. Maybe it was a baser evolutionary thing like the strong dominating the weak. I’m not saying I was right or trying to justify my actions, I’m just making an observation. You can be the judge if you want. But remember, I had just lost my job, my wife was pissed at me, it was 102 degrees out, Samir and his partner in crime Becka had conspired to make my trip to a fast food restaurant into an epic adventure worthy of any M. Night Shyamalan movie. I had ketchup half way up my pants. My expensive shoes were ruined. A giant fat lady wanted to eat me. I had just witnessed the singular most disgusting culinary experience in my life and now Don the Defeated was going to champion my cause? I think not.

  All of this was going through my head
as I formulated my reply to Don. “Fuck you!” Yep that’s how I started off. Proud? Not a chance. Don’s demeanor dipped even a little farther, but I thought I caught a glimpse of something else. I think my words sparked a flame of defiance in him.

  “Sir?” He asked incredulously. Don’s day had been shit thus far, but I was the first to cross the usually uncrossable unseen civilized barrier.

  I knew in my heart of hearts that ‘fuck you’ was as inappropriate a response as I could go with, except maybe something about his mother. But again my emotions were ruling my higher functioning. So when I told him to ‘Go fuck himself!’ I had once again taken a giant step against mankind. I’ll give it to the guy though he wasn’t quite ready to throw the towel in yet and step down into the primordial soup with me.

  “Sir, if you could just please keep your voice down and keep the language more appropriate I think we can resolve whatever problem you may be having.”

  At this point my loftier self was actually able to step away from the situation and take a more objective look at what was happening here. Some ketchup stained guy, that appears to have just smoked some bad crack comes into a family oriented restaurant throwing profanity around like a hooker throws pussy around at a dentist convention. That Don hadn’t gone screaming into the rear of the store looking for a weapon was a testament to his inner strength, OR more likely I wasn’t the first person that had come in after dealing with the dynamic duo of dipshits at the drive thru.

  His words were actually having the desired effect. He had not escalated the confrontation. The more time he was giving me to reflect on my actions the better able I was to bridle my mental state, such as it was. I actually might have been able to salvage this encounter, if Becka’s pimply-faced countenance hadn’t taken this inopportune time to peek out from her workstation.

  “Oh shit Tonya. The half-wit came in the store! You should see his clothes, he looks like he’s eaten but couldn’t tell exactly where his mouth was. I know right?’ She laughed. “He’s got ketchup all down his legs! It’s hilarious, Tonya. Hold on I’m going to take a picture and send it to you.”