CHEATIN’ BURGERS

 

by Carolyn McGovern

 

 

Lucy has gotten herself into another fine mess.  That’s when the fat man comes to see me.  He stuffs his enormous body into a booth near the kitchen.  I make him wait. 

 

Lucy is disguised as a man in a Barber Shop Quartet.  She should know that sneaking into another one of Ricky’s shows is gonna make him mad. 

 

I smack my leg hard.  “Oh, look!  Ricky knows it’s her…she’s in trouble now!”  I say that out loud and look around.  Just Drooling-Ken and Asking-Al, sitting on their usual stools at the counter.  Drooling-Ken continues to drool.  Asking-Al asks me why Lucy wants so bad to be in the show.  Why can’t she get her own life?  

 

“I don’t know why.  Maybe it’s because she wants to follow that Ricky around to make sure he ain’t cheatin’ on her.  Because if he is cheatin’, Lucy’s gonna chop him up and eat him for dinner.”  Asking-Al stops asking and shakes his head. 

 

I get up to go see the fat man.  Fat Suzanne’s husband.    

 

I take a seat across from him.  His face is red and sweaty.  He says, “Please tell me.  What did you do with my Suzanne?”  His eyes plead with me to tell him he didn’t eat his Suzanne for dinner.  His eyes tell me he knows.  After the Bob-burger incident, what could he possibly think? All the tests proved that all those people had in fact eaten a human being.  My Bob.

 

Who could blame a gal?  Her husband cheats on her with a big fat nurse named Suzanne, he’s bound to get chopped into burgers and served up for dinner.  Same thing goes for that fat Suzanne.  Inevitable.

 

I tell the fat man sitting before me what he wants to hear.  “The ocean.  I placed her into the ocean.”  I say placed to be kind.  I see his chest sigh with relief.  I don’t know if he is relieved because it was the ocean instead of his gut, or if he is relieved that I placed her into the ocean instead of just throwing her in like a whale.  If he thought about it he would know that it’s impossible to place anyone the size of Suzanne into the ocean.  You’d have to throw her in like a

whale.  Just have to. 

 

The fat man leaves, his head down, his shoulders rounded with the weight of his Suzanne.  I know what that feels like.  I mean, I have to wonder if my Bob isn’t right now with Fat Suzanne for eternity.  Ain’t that a kick in the butt.  If I had thought about it hard enough I would have planned better.  Maybe if I had taken my blue pills my mind would have been clearer and I would

have known that I was sending my Bob right into the arms of Fat Suzanne forever.  Life sure ain’t fair.