Elina

The succulent smell of roasting lamb and warm tzatziki is making me weak in the knees. I honestly can’t believe I’m this ravenous—didn’t think I’d be able to eat at all. Digging into the past felt a lot like scooping out my guts and presenting them for inspection. I’d never really talked about my humiliation before. Never had anyone who wanted to hear it.

“Didn’t think it’d be this...hipsterish.”

I startle a bit. “Mm?”

Nick gestures wide. “The décor; the... My God, are they eating off chopping boards?”

I hadn’t noticed. But...yep. Those would be chopping boards. And Mason jars. And—

“Sorry—I haven’t actually been here before. Someone at work said it was great, and, uh....” His train of thought gets derailed by a waitress carrying a soup-filled fishbowl. “Did I just see—?”

It’s ridiculous, all right, but all I can concentrate on is the rich, sharp smell. “Avgolemono. In a goldfish bowl.”

“We don’t have to eat here.”

“I don’t know—it smells pretty good. The presentation might be a bit—“

“Wack?”

“Yeah—wack—but the food still seems fine.” Besides, I’m way too hungry to leave. I didn’t have time for breakfast, and by the time lunch rolled around, my stomach was in nervous knots.

He pulls a face. “It does smell delicious. Just... Don’t start thinking I’m one of those food snobs who won’t eat anything that isn’t, like, locally-grown quinoa on an organic avocado bun.”

The hostess is looking our way, so I hide my laughter behind my hand. “I...don’t think that’s a thing. And besides, weren’t we originally going to do McDonald’s, before you heard about this place?”

“Good point.”

We end up seated in a quiet booth, tucked away behind a concrete column. When our food comes out, we barely manage to rein in our laughter till the waiter’s out of earshot.

“What...in the actual fuck is that supposed to be?” Nick’s eyeing up my Greek salad—or rather, my large cube of feta cheese, my snifter of chopped vegetables, my raw onion flower, and my glass of vinaigrette dressing.

“How do I even eat this?” I poke at the cube of feta to break it up. It crumbles messily off the side of my chopping board. There’s no spoon to sprinkle it over the vegetables—or am I supposed to dump everything out on the board? Won’t the dressing get everywhere?

“Maybe you do it like a body shot? Like, you lick the cheese, take a gulp of the dressing, and bite on a cherry tomato?”

“Oh, that’s gross!” I’m laughing too hard to even try. “And didn’t you order the gyros?”

“I thought I did.” Nick pokes at his appetizer. “This is...kind of a bread bowl? Filled with, uh...grated lamb? Tzatziki? And a pickle?”

“Think there’s some lettuce round the edges.”

“And this lonely tomato cube.” He lifts up a leaf of lettuce to reveal what does, indeed, appear to be a tomato cut into a cube. “Why? Seriously, why?”

“Wanna just scarf down our, uh...whatever these are...and hit the nearest McDonald’s?”

“God, yes!” Nick tries a cautious bite. “It doesn’t taste terrible, but I don’t think I could handle two more courses of this.”

“Me neither.” I end up pouring the dressing over the vegetables, and ignoring the feta and onions entirely. I may be turning over a whole new, less self-conscious, leaf, but this—this is too messy to attempt. Especially in front of someone I’m really starting to like.

Munching Big Macs in his car isn’t necessarily less messy, but the last of the bubbling tension seems to ebb away as we mock the “secret sauce” for obviously being Thousand Island dressing, and speculate on how most people probably like McDonald’s because it makes them nostalgic.

“It’s totally a childhood food,” says Nick. He takes a sip from his soda. “Mm. Their Coke is amazing. But it’s like... Where did you go, when you were a kid, out with your friends, and you got hungry? The one place you could afford, and the one place you kind of weren’t supposed to go, ‘cause it’s cheap crap.” He motions with his burger. It gloops secret sauce on his cuff. “Shit. Oh, well. I take a bite of this, and I’m twelve again. I can practically feel the curb outside the arcade digging into my ass.”

“Now you’re making me nostalgic.”

He grins. “Remember when their menu had maybe ten different things?—hamburger, cheeseburger, Big Mac—and those scalding hot apple pies?”

“I remember those. And their pancakes.”

“They have pancakes?”

“Yeah—those are my big McDonald’s memory. My mama—she’s this amazing cook, so, like... If I asked for McDonald’s, she’d take it as a personal affront. Like I was saying, I preferred fast food to her cooking. But once a year, we’d drive out to Indiana to see my aunt. It’s a twelve-hour trip, so we’d set off about five in the morning. And when the sun started to come up, we’d pull over for a McDonald’s breakfast. Pancakes and sausages.”

“They have sausages?”

“Menu’s totally different if you go in the morning.”

“It’s like... My world’s been turned upside-down.”

His world.... “You know... It occurs to me, I still don’t know that much about you.” I stir the ice cubes around with my straw, suddenly nervous. “I mean... You volunteer at the food pantry, you like Christmas, you do something involving banking, and you’re kind of a slob.”

“And ruggedly handsome.”

“And—“ I can’t repeat that back to him with a straight face. He’s definitely handsome, but the lumberjack type he’s not. More...polished. Refined. With a hidden steel underneath. “You’re very handsome. Really.”

“That didn’t sound so sincere!”

“It’s the rugged part, not the handsome part. Maybe if you had a five o’clock shadow, one of those Clint Eastwood growls—“

He looms over me suddenly, the effect only slightly spoiled by the burger he’s still brandishing. “Well...all I have to say to that is... This is a Big Mac, the most powerful burger in the world. It’d blow your tastebuds clean off. You’ve got to ask yourself one question: do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?”

I shove him off, laughing. “You sound more like Batman than Clint Eastwood.”

“Ohhhh; clipped my funnybone on the steering wheel!” He rubs at his elbow.

“That’s what you get, trying to be all manly in confined spaces.”

“Way I remember it, you liked me getting manly in this particular confined space.” He raises one eyebrow. I feel myself reddening.

“Well... Now you’re just changing the subject.”

“What do you want to know?”

I have to think about that for a moment—not because I can’t think of anything to ask, but because I don’t know where to start. The remark he made earlier about a rough childhood springs to mind, so I go with that. “Where’d you grow up?”

He gestures at the window. “Here. The city. Around.” If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was avoiding the question. He takes a big bite of his burger—now I know there’s something he’s not telling me. I’m curious, but we’re having too good a time. Don’t want to risk pushing and spoiling the mood.

“All right: what kind of music are you into?”

“Well, I like—“ He cocks his head suddenly. “Actually, y’know....” He digs in his pocket and fishes out a brazen red iPod. “Do you have one of these?”

I nod and hold up my purse. “In here.”

“Okay—let’s trade. Just till our next date. You listen to mine, I’ll listen to yours—no going through camera rolls, or anything personal.”

“No camera, no problem.” I fork mine over. It’s the original video iPod, nothing on it but music.

“Shit—haven’t seen one of these in years!”

“I’ve been insanely careful with it.” I really have: this’ll be the first time it’s been out of my reach since...since I can’t even remember. There’ve been times when it’s been more or less my only comfort, my only escape. I don’t tell him that.

“I’ll tell you one thing: I’m a big music lover. I’m... I have, like, a soundtrack for every era of my life—does that make any sense?”

“You mean, songs you were listening to back then, and when you hear them, it all comes rushing back?”

Nick nods. “Only, more than that. I swear, there were certain songs, certain times—I’d be holding onto them like lifelines; maybe you....” He shakes his head rapidly, like he’s trying to clear it. “Sorry. That probably sounded more intense than it should’ve.”

“No, I....” I do know what he’s talking about. “Hell, by the Squirrel Nut Zippers—whenever I was freaking out about something, it used to start playing in my head. And it was so cheery, so silly, I’d start to calm down in spite of myself. It got to be part of my chilling out routine, like before a job interview, or if I had to do something I didn’t want to.”

“That Eminem song with the falling rain in the background, for me—the one he did with Dido. It was just the one line, though, about it not being so bad—don’t think I ever learned the rest of the lyrics.”

“Oh, yeah, I know that one: years go by; something-something...get out of bed....” I realize that’s all I know. “Guess I never learned the rest either.”

He nudges my foot with his. “Pretty sure there’s no line in that song, or any song ever written, that goes like that.”

“It is calming, though. Just that part. Not the whole Eminem part, with the murdered girlfriend.”

“Yeah, I pretend that part doesn’t exist.”

I take my time polishing off the last of my fries. The last of the sunset’s faded from the sky, and I’m cutting it fine with the babysitter. I said I’d be home by seven. The dashboard clock’s flashing six forty-five.

I can’t put it off any longer. One more sip of Coke—mostly water, by now—and it’s time to go. It shouldn’t be this hard to tear myself away. Obviously we’re going to see each other again: we’ve got each other’s iPods. But I can’t shake the feeling there’s a timer somewhere, ticking down the seconds on our romance.

I barely register Nick’s lingering kiss goodbye: I’m off in my own little world, wondering if we’ll ever have the technology to save a memory like a file on a computer, play it over and over and over again. Put it on repeat and live in it.

My walk home is short, but by the time I’m paying Maria and getting Joey ready for his bath, the full weight of my worries is back on my shoulders.