...you want fries with that? 
by Imajiru 
imajiru@mindspring.com 
March 30, 1996



"Welcome to Chunks O'Chicken, can I take your order please?"  
The phrase was etched upon his memory, so much so that he'd 
been told that he sometimes uttered it in his sleep.

"Yeah... um... gimme a second..."  The scratchy, static-
distorted voice on the other end was disrupted by a long, 
loud belch and a feminine giggle -- at least someone on this 
planet was enjoying their Friday night.

No matter how much knowledge one might possess, it was 
nearly impossible to secure a decent job without references 
-- and that was an option he didn't have; he'd left his 
previous life (lives) behind, fled swiftly and without a 
trace.  No chance of securing a letter of recommendation 
from previous employers, no college degrees (none with a 
suitable date, at least), not so much as a proper birth 
certificate; and it was far too risky to attempt to access 
any of his bank accounts, he was certain that they were 
being monitored...

"I want, uhmmm, two Chik-a-poo Platters... no, make that 
three..."

"You want fries with that?"  He could still remember a time 
when he'd been delighted by his first taste of french-fried 
potatoes -- but now, working under a franchise manager who 
counted every frozen chicken patty at the end of the day, 
french fries were the main staple of his diet; and if he had 
had the option of permanently eradicating all potato-based 
products from the face of the earth, he would have done so 
without a second thought.

Eight hundred years of civilization, of struggling with 
moral dilemmas, of searching for his lost humanity -- and it 
had all, in the end, come down to this: an ill-fitting 
polyester uniform bearing a picture of a cartoon chicken, 
constant new burns from the eternally-splattering deep-
fryer, and the everpresent smell of fast food surrounding 
him... so much a part of his life that he was hard-pressed, 
at the end of his shift, to scrub the odor from his skin.

And the worst part was, the only openings Chunks o'Chicken 
had had were for closers -- he couldn't get away from the 
night shift; he hadn't seen the light of day in weeks.

He tapped the order into the register automatically, spoke 
into the mike, "That'll be twelve-forty two, please drive up 
to the window..."

...turned around, and there she was, standing at the 
counter, waiting for him.

She looked tired, so tired.  In the few months since their 
desperate flight from Toronto, she'd aged several years -- 
well, the stress had taken its toll.  And she was in the 
same boat he was in, unable to admit to her identity, her 
skills... she was cleaning houses for some of the rich folks 
over on the 'other side of the tracks'; good money in it, 
better than he was earning, but one hell of a comedown for a 
doctor.

"I need money," she said shortly, without preamble.

Silently, he dug into his pants pocket, withdrew a handful 
of crumpled bills -- the sum total of the paycheck he'd 
received and cashed earlier that evening.  "I may be getting 
extra hours," he told her, rubbing at his weary eyes with 
one hand.

"Good.  Haskins is getting edgy about the back rent."  She 
yawned widely, not bothering to cover her mouth, as if the 
effort of raising her hand to do so was just more than she 
could handle.

"We'll cover it," he said, though he hadn't the faintest 
idea how.

She hesitated.  "Mrs. Olssen is getting a new living room 
suite," she said slowly, watching him closely to gauge his 
reaction.  "She wants to know if we want the old one."

He sighed.  "Tell her yes," he said.  "We can't afford to be 
proud.  Even if she is a snobby old..." and curtailed the 
rest of his remark with heroic restraint.

"We can pick it up on Saturday, when the new furniture is 
delivered. Assuming it's not raining, at least.  I know that 
the truck won't run in the rain."

"Not without stalling," he said grimly, remembering one 
frightening incident when the battered old pickup had 
stalled and died just after he'd merged into the slow lane 
of the interstate: the first time it had really registered 
what mortality meant, that he could actually *die* now...

She twined a ringlet of hair around one finger.  "Is your 
back going to be up to the lifting?"

"It'll have to be, won't it?  We can't pass up an offer like 
this -- not when we can't even afford to buy furniture at 
Goodwill prices..."

"Hey, Knight!" called the night manager, a skinny acne-
ridden adolescence whose very youth was an affront -- 
especially when coupled with the tone of superiority with 
which he addressed his employee.  "Back to work, huh? You've 
spent enough time goofing off."

For a moment, he wished for the luxury of immortality, of 
fangs, with which he might tear at the youngster's neck, 
ending his miserable existence and making life safe once 
more for all Chunks o'Chicken employees... and then he 
looked at her.

And she gazed back at him, and she smiled; her whole face 
seemed to soften, to brighten, with unspoken warmth that 
penetrated straight through him, soaking into his very soul.

"I'll see you later, okay?" she murmured.

He reached out, caught a lock of her hair with one finger, 
formed it into a neat ringlet that coiled around his 
fingertip.  "Wait up for me?"

Amazing, how even in the sickly fluorescent lighting, he 
could see her eyes shining with love.  "Don't I always?" she 
said.

An answering smile stretched across his face of its own 
accord, and he leaned across the counter and kissed her; 
watched as she departed the Chunks o'Chicken, exiting via 
the front door and turning left, toward the bus stop on the 
corner that would take her back to their shabby apartment.

And then he turned back to his job, to his world: to the 
deep-fried stench of the Chunks o'Chicken, to the garbled 
voices emerging from the speaker set into the wall by the 
drive-thru window.

It wasn't a perfect world.  Not even remotely close.

And yet, it was everything he'd ever wanted.

And he was content.

"Welcome to Chunks O'Chicken," he said, into the microphone, 
smiling for no good reason at a cockroach scuttling up the 
tiled wall.  "Can I take your order please?"



...an' extra mayo on the Chick-o-burger 
(sequel, "...you want fries with that?") 
by Imajiru 
March 31,1996



..."Welcome to Chunks O'Chicken," he said, into the 
microphone, smiling for no good reason at a cockroach 
scuttling up the tiled wall.  "Can I take your order 
please?"

The voice on the other end rattled off a lengthy order, 
ending with the demand, "...an' extra mayo on the Chick-o-
burger, you got that?  Last time, you guys forgot the mayo."

"Yes, sir, will that be all, sir?"  He wasn't paying 
attention, beyond the bare minimum of retaining the 
information long enough to key it into the register.  
Instead, his mind was on the clock, and its relentless 
chronicling of the passage of the day.  Three hours and 
twenty-seven minutes left to his shift.  Three hours and 
twenty-seven minutes, and it would be time to get into the 
rusted, battered old pickup he'd bought with the last of the 
money he'd gotten for the sale of the caddy -- time to drive 
across town to the 'projects', to the tiny apartment with 
the peeling paint and the leaky pipe under the kitchen sink 
and the cracked toilet seat that he'd managed to repair with 
Krazygloo -- time to strip off the uncomfortable polyester 
uniform and wash away the smell of salt and grease, apply 
burn cream and bandages to the blisters he'd accumulated 
from the faulty deep-fryer -- time to crawl under the 
blankets and stretch out on the lumpy mattress, and feel the 
sweet warmth of her embrace, her body snuggled beside him, 
her lips curving into a happy smile and greeting him with 
kisses...  Time to remember exactly what made this life 
worth living: what kept him working at a job in which 
'tedium' would have been a promotion, what made him willing 
to slave at that work through long hours, even requesting 
overtime, just so that he might have a few extra dollars 
with which to buy her a gift, a trinket, or perhaps steak-
instead-of-ground-beef for Sunday dinner.

Three hours and twenty-seven minutes, and humanity would 
seem worthwhile.

Until then, it was just another rotten night at the Chunks 
O'Chicken.

With the ease of long practice, he packed the order -- not 
carelessly, as the younger employees were always being 
reprimanded for doing, but with some thought as to how the 
various items might be bagged so that nothing would spill or 
be squashed; it might be a lousy job, but it was still a 
job, and as such, worth doing well.  Automatically, he held 
the paper cup under the dispensers: ice, then soda, then the 
cover, all habit, simple to the point of screaming boredom.  
And not for the first time, he considered that perhaps his 
erstwhile master wasn't searching for him after all; perhaps 
LaCroix considered it an apt enough revenge that after 
centuries of yearning for mortality, it had been achieved at 
the cost of the last shreds of his wayward son's dignity...

The thought brought an ironic smile to his face, for he had 
long ago decided that dignity didn't matter.  His demeaning 
job, his beat-up old pickup truck, the $22.94 balance in his 
checking account and the threadbare spots in his one decent 
pair of jeans, none of that mattered.  Humanity mattered.  
Natalie mattered.  That was all.

Not necessarily in that order.

He brought the bag to the window, shoved the sliding panel 
aside.  "That'll be fifteen-seventy-six," he said, and the 
driver of the car extended a handful of bills.

Nick took them.  And stared.

The driver stared back; and for a long moment, they simply 
regarded each other in stunned surprise.

Finally, the occupant of the late-model car spoke.  "You 
remembered the mayo," he said, "right?" as a slow smile 
spread across his face.

A wave of amazement and delight and utter relief washed over 
him; and Nick laughed, and could not stop laughing.

-------

"Kinda like the witness protection program," said his old 
friend casually; and Nick knew better than to press for 
details.  "You?"

"Sort of the same thing," he hedged, and took a sip of his 
coffee, delivered to the room courtesy of the efficient 
hotel staff.  It was excellent coffee, not at all like the 
generic stuff that was all he and Nat could afford.

The newly-renamed John Schneider shook his head.  "But fast 
food?  Come on, Nick," he scolded, "you can do better than 
that."

"I don't have a lot of choice," he sighed.  "Technically, 
I'm an illegal alien here, and so is Nat."

"Well, we can do something about that," the other man said 
confidently. "Especially since you already have that food-
service experience going."  He grinned widely.  "You are 
looking at the proud owner of the best restaurant in 
Springfield.  Our moussaka is to die for.  And we need a 
bookkeeper." His eyebrows lifted.  "You can do bookkeeping?"

"I can add, I can subtract, I know the difference between 
dollars and cents.  Is there more to it than that?"  
Already, the dark cloud that lived at the edge of his 
consciousness was dissipating; it was just so good to see 
his friend again...

"Nothing you can't learn as you go along.  More coffee?"

"Please."  He'd learned to love the stuff, even when it was 
bitter and harsh; it had been the first thing he'd ingested 
as a newly-human man, and somehow the taste of it still 
evoked memories of the insane rush of joy he'd known at that 
fateful moment.

And there was something comforting in the ritual, something 
satisfying, about drinking coffee in this man's company; how 
many nights had he sat behind the wheel of the Caddy, 
watching him drink coffee, yearning to possess that simple 
human ability for himself?  Now they were two of a kind: 
both human among humans, both hiding their true identities 
before strangers -- there was an odd synchronicity in it, as 
if their worlds had merged into something wholly new that 
included them both.

"Myra... I mean, Mary... man oh man, will she ever be glad 
to see you two again.  And Raven sure misses her Uncle 
Nick..."

Nick nearly choked on his coffee.  "Raven?" he gasped.

The father of the flower in question merely shrugged.  "We 
let her pick her own new name," he answered philosophically, 
"an' that was the one she wanted."  He smiled a little.  "I 
think she regretted her choice the first day at her new 
school, the first time a teacher called her name out loud. 
But she got over it; and the other kids all call her Rave, 
now."  All at once, his gaze was piercing.  "Funny that you 
didn't change your name," he remarked.

"Our situation isn't exactly analogous with yours," Nick 
hedged, watching his ex-partner's reaction closely.  "In our 
case, it wouldn't have mattered."

He could see the other considering that, could see the 
questions forming in the intelligent dark eyes -- then saw 
those questions being dismissed, discarded, in favor of the 
simple fact of their longstanding friendship; and closed his 
own eyes briefly, in silent gratitude.

That gesture was acknowledged with the barest flicker of a 
glance... an entire exchange passing between them in 
seconds, conveyed solely by expressions and glances.  Such a 
friendship they'd had; and he'd always taken it for granted.  
But not again, he vowed.  Never again.

"Besides," he continued, more light-hearted now in the face 
of the other's quiet acceptance, "Natalie told me in no 
uncertain terms that she waited a very long time to become 
Mrs. Knight; and I haven't the heart to disappoint her."

His companion nodded sagely.  "Wise move," he commented.  
"So when's the big day gonna be?"

Nick sighed again.  "As soon as we have the money to do it 
properly," he said.  "I've been saving up for a ring -- I 
have one on layaway.  Not a diamond, but one of your better 
varieties of cubic zirconia."  And for years, he had had the 
option of buying her jewels, any sort she might want... but 
all she had ever wanted was him.

Now she had that, and not much else... and he had to wonder: 
for Natalie, had it been a fair trade?  For himself, always 
-- but there was so much he could have given her then, 
things he couldn't provide for her now...

"Cubic zirconia?" His friend pronounced the words with 
evident distaste. "No, no, no.  No way.  Not for Natalie."

"I can't afford anything better," said Nick, almost angrily; 
for it bothered him greatly that this should be so.

"Stick with me, pal, and you will."  A strong, well-padded 
hand settled firmly on his forearm.  "I've got some 
investments, some things going... I'm doing okay, Nick.  I'm 
doing very okay.  And it would be my pleasure to help you 
guys find your feet."

"Look, Sch..."  He caught his mistake before it could 
progress further. "John..."

"It would be my pleasure," repeated the man who by-any-
other-name was still one of the best friends he'd ever had.  
"You can repay me by letting My, um, Mary help plan the 
wedding; she loves that stuff.  And Raven can be the flower 
girl."  The bright smile faded, just a bit.  "Nick, um... 
it's not just for you, y'know?  I mean... me and the family, 
we have no history anymore.  We had to leave everything we 
had, everything we were; it's like we're brand-new... and 
sometimes it's just good to have someone around who *knows*, 
y'know?"  His gaze was sheepish.  "You know?"

"Yeah," Nick murmured.  "I know."

"Then it's settled," said 'John', with an air of satisfied 
finality.  "I'll finish up the drive home tomorrow, tell 'em 
the news, and we'll start making arrangements.  Nat'll go 
for this, right?"

"She will," said Nick.  "I mean... I can't speak for her, 
and I'll have to talk to her, but I think she will."  It 
would mean an end to Nat's career as cleaning-woman, an end 
to the wearying labor and the dishpan-chapping of her 
surgeon's hands -- he wanted that for her, desperately; 
wanted for her to have, if not the opportunity to work in 
her chosen field, at least the leisure to *not* have to work 
at something she loathed.  "Speaking of which... can I use 
your phone?"

"Of course."  The other man nodded.  "Dial nine for an 
outside line.  It'll be good to have you guys around," he 
reiterated.  "Like family, y'know?"

Nick smiled, sipped at his coffee.  "I know," he said.

'John' grinned back, took a bite of his chicken sandwich.  
Frowned.  Turned to Nick, eyes accusing.  "You forgot the 
extra mayo," he said severely.

The smile on Nick's face grew a little wider as he 
contemplated the termination of his employment with Chunks 
O'Chicken.  "Oops," he said, not at all repentant, and 
punched in the last few digits of his phone number, eagerly 
anticipating the sound of her sleepy voice, and the pleasure 
of telling her the good news... that they were moving up and 
out of this mess; and that apparently, even human mortality 
had its exceptions.



-------end/im