I Turned My Lover Into a McRib
The McDonald’s Boyfriend
When I wake up, Kai has a hump jutting out of his back. Except, when I wipe the sleep from my face, I see the hump is a McDonald’s restaurant about the size of a backpack. He’s bent over in the snail position, naked except for a pair of boxers, inspecting himself in the mirror door, his face creased with concentration.
I love McDonald’s. I love it so much, in fact, I use it as an emotional measuring stick. For example, I do this thing where I say I’d rather have McDonald’s than X, where X is a variable, which stands for someone or something unpleasant. Usually, the X is also someone or something of considerable importance. Last night, the X was Kai.
He got home two hours late from the video game night with his friends and, to top it off, he forgot it was his turn to pick up dinner.
“We were stuck on the final boss,” he said. “The guys get weird when I bail.”
Recently he’s been pulling these stunts a lot. So I threw the TV remote across the room and stormed off to fill my wine glass in the kitchen. There, propped against the counter, I fed him my favorite line, implied a McRib and order for French fries would offer more emotional fulfillment than him.
“Anybody in there?” he asks, neck craned at the building in the mirror.
I slump off the mattress and crawl over beside him. My fingernail taps one of the tiny glass windows. Inside, there are booths, ivory plants, a pair of soda fountains, trash cans with plastic trays stacked on top, a counter, and overhead menus.
“I didn’t mean what I said last night. About the McDonald’s and McRib. I didn’t think my wish would come true.”
“What are you talking about?” Kai asks. “What wish? I got out of bed and this growth was coming out of my back, but I think it’s starting to look like a building.”
“Do you want me to call for help?” I ask. “This seems serious.”
“Saw is in the garage. We can cut it off.”
Of course, in this instance, “we” means “you,” as in me.
“Let me move you to the backyard,” I say, grabbing his foot. “Weather’s beautiful this afternoon.” I drag him outside into the grass. He grunts and wheezes, but he doesn’t protest.
Despite my apprehension, Kai seems unperturbed by me playing surgeon. I pour beer in a glass and set it beside his arms. I’ve brought out some of his favorite comics, so he can distract himself while I work. He wiggles his arms and tells me not to worry.
He smells like cheeseburgers and dollar-menu apple pies; much better than the cologne he wears. He’s radiating familiar warmth, which reminds me of what it feels like inside a busy kitchen. Unlike his usual aroma, it’s comforting.
I nurse him some beer and torture the jagged blade across the building’s base. Metal grinds against brick and he yelps like an injured dog. My breathing grows labored. This goes on for twenty minutes and I don’t make a scratch.
“Coming along great,” I lie.
He’s started to stretch like he’s a bear skin rug with a coffee table in the center, except the coffee table is a McDonald’s. Little ceiling lights have illuminated the restaurant’s interior and I see uniformed employees at the registers. Their faces are too small to discern, but they wave like they want me to open the door.
Kai grunts my name and tips over the beer glass. He looks up to meet my face, but his head has gone pancake flat like it’s sinking into the lawn.
“I’m almost out of beer,” he says.
I want to say I love you, but the lie pushes beyond the bounds of my comfort zone.
So I grab him another beer. While he dozes, I prop his head atop his favorite comic book. “I’m sorry I wished for the McDonald’s,” I say, and as I say it, I wonder if it’s true.
Back inside the house, I call up my old work friend, Vanessa. She has an interest in manifestation, intention setting, wishes. She’s not full-blown new age, but she does tarot and astrology readings. She claims she manifested an ex’s orgasm from five hundred miles away. One time, when money was tight, she purchased a jacket containing a stack of one-hundred-dollar bills in the pocket, a wish she’d been making for weeks.
“Is it possible to manifest a person into something else by accident,” I ask. “Kai’s had a bad morning.”
Unfortunately, my question prompts an interrogation. Vanessa doesn’t believe in accidental manifestation. She volunteers to lend me some books from her library, let me do some independent research if I’d rather not go into detail, but without specifics, she can’t share insight.
“I think my boyfriend is turning into a McDonald’s,” I say.
“Oh, I used to date a man like that. He went through an Arby’s phase. Couldn’t get him to eat anything else. Doubt it involves a wish or intention. Give it a month, and if he doesn’t change up his diet, consider an intervention. A lot of guys are resistant to therapy, but if he’s depressed, maybe you can talk him into group therapy. Remember to visualize him as the best version of himself, and when you visualize, express gratitude. Gratitude’s important.”
“Thanks, I’ll give it a shot.”
When I hang up, I try to visualize Kai, the wish, and taking back the wish, but I never ate breakfast, and lunch time has passed. My stomach gurgles and I visualize a McDonald’s quarter-pounder haloed by a golden glow. Each time I attempt to picture my boyfriend, the image sharpens, and the light intensifies.
Is it normal to get hungry during a crisis?
I Google the question, but I refresh the search page before the results can populate, because I don’t want to know the answer.
By the time I return to the backyard, the McDonald’s is as big as a shed. Kai’s feet stick out from the bottom, like the building fell on him, like he’s the dead witch in The Wizard of Oz. There’s a flowerbed, containing his favorite comic nestled inside some petunias, at the part of the building where his head used to rest. His limbs must’ve sunken into the gravel parking lot or fed into the grass medians around the perimeter. The Golden M sign grows out of the spot where his left hand had been placed and, beside it, the glass of beer I poured for him sits untouched.
I sniff around the restaurant’s dumpster, the hedges, and black-top oil slicks, searching for the scent of him, a clue he was here and I didn’t make it up, but the whole yard smells of grease and grilled meat, salty French fries. It smells like McDonald’s. I cup my hands around my mouth and call his name, ask him to let me know if he’s okay, though I don’t anticipate a response and, after an hour, my voice grows weak.
It takes a long time of sitting there brooding on the gravel to accept my situation. It takes me longer to stand and work up the nerve to pass through the glass doors. Sundown, and Kai is the same size as any McDonald’s across America.
“It’s the smell,” I say to the cashier, when she asks what brought me here this evening. She looks like Kai. All the employees look like Kai, or watered-down clones of Kai. Or I miss him. Or I love McDonald’s and he has become McDonald’s, so in a way I have come to love him and my memories of him too.
“Are there any other customers?” I ask.
“No, but there will be other customers.”
“But what if I don’t want to share?”
“Then don’t. This is your McDonald’s.”
I don’t know if there’s any grief to eat my way out of, because right now, for the first time in a while, I feel content. I order a McRib, the extra-large fries I’ve been craving all day, a large fountain soda, and two of the dollar-menu apple pies. The restaurant is open twenty-four hours. It has reliable wifi, immaculate bathrooms. It will keep me fed and see to my needs regardless of circumstances. I wish I could speak to Kai over the intercom, hear his voice, but I take it back, because I know I’m better off longing after the possibility, letting it linger like an echo in my mind while I dine in the peace of a corner booth, feet kicked up on the table. I slurp through my straw, nibble on my pie, yawn like I have nowhere to go.
I figure this is good a place as any to stay the night.