Sunday afternoons are when the real work tends to happen in our house. Friday nights are split between winding down from the week and planning for the days off. Saturday is when we do the things we actually want to do: shopping, watching a movie, hanging out with people. Sunday mornings, we look at what needs to get done and face facts. We pretty much knuckle down. It’s homey and comfortable, but not exciting. It’s the opposite of exciting. It grounds us for the coming week.

This Sunday is the first reasonably nice Sunday of the year. We’re not out there enjoying it. G is downstairs reorganizing the basement, replacing the old fold-out with a decent futon that she bought for a steal the day before. I’m there to help lift heavy stuff and perform any tasks I might be useful for. Organization and decoration play more to her strengths than mine. I try not to get in the way.

Mostly, I am revising my book. I can’t tell if it’s getting better or worse. I know that it won’t fix itself. I know this because I’ve tried that already. Six months later, it’s still full of plot holes, typos, and just plain clumsy writing. So here I am. It’s hard to come back to something I’ve written. Every flaw feels like a cigarette burn to the eye. Sometimes I get a moment of glee, a line that rings exactly the way I want but that I’d forgotten writing. They’re few and far between. 

Writing isn’t glamourous, and if you want to do it, you’d better enjoy self-examination. If I’d realized how much my daddy issues were on display as I’d written this book, I might have censored myself more. That wouldn’t have improved anything, I’m sure, but it would be easier for me right now. It’s enough to stare down my own mistakes for hours on end, let alone revisit all my little damage. 

Suddenly, it’s 6:30. G comes upstairs. She’s an impatient person, so she’s covered with bruises. Skin will heal, and she wants the box on the shelf right now. She looks tired and thirsty. She tells me I’m possibly being a bit hard on my book. I ask her if she wants to go and grab a bite. She’s not hungry, but needs caffeine desperately. So, off we go, headed to the 7-11. We drive for five minutes, and she turns to me.

“Shit,” she says. “Now I’m hungry. Do you mind if we hit the Wendy’s?”

I look at her as though she is crazy. I weigh 300 and change. I have never turned down fast food in my life, and it’s about all we can handle as far as customer/clerk interactions go right now. We are too burnt-out to deal with the complications of ordering in a real restaurant. Bland, boring junk it is.

When we arrive, she asks if I will run in and grab her usual. I’m happy to. She’ll have the grilled chicken with no sauce and a plain baked potato. I will have the Baconator. Stupid. She could stand to gain a pound or two these days and, as I walk in, I think, yet again, about what a fat, doughy bastard I am.

I walk into the place, plastic as usual. Something is Wrong. Capital-W Wrong. The overhead fluorescent lights are flickering and jittery in a David Lynch-y, seizure-inducing way. The sound is like the rattle of a moth trapped in a lampshade. There’s no queue. I proceed to the counter. The clerk is trying to keep his cool, but he’s sweating, not from the heat. The LEDs on his register are blinking and scrambled. It takes him a few tries to take the order. 

I can hear them talking in the kitchen.

“We need to close, man,” says a young girl. “This is crazy!”

“This fucking fryer just talked to me,” says another guy. The clerk taking my order looks his way, then back to me. He gives me a half-smile.

“Nice night, huh?” I ask. He shrugs. It’s not a bit insolent. He has no idea what to make of this.

“I heard it, too,” says another guy. “This is fucked up.”

It is. He’s not wrong. This Wendy’s is having a haunting or a serious electrical problem, and either way, the staff is rightfully freaking out. I’d ask more questions, but I don’t want to annoy the guy.

As I reach the car, I’m editing again. Wrong choice. Could I have been any more annoying than a talking fryer?

I tell G the story as we drive home.

“The Wendy’s is frakkin’ haunted,” she says, nerd that she is. “That is awesome.”

She’s right. She usually is.