over easy

fictional musings on disordered eating & overconsumption

The vibrant yellow oozes from the center of the egg I’ve stabbed in a small act of rebellion. I asked for it to be cooked over easy. I use one fork prong to swirl yolk around the plate full of food in front of me. I smear it across crisped bacon and mash it into the potatoes. A knob of butter melts atop a slice of rye toast on a separate plate.

“Eyes were bigger than your stomach? You don’t have to finish it,” the woman at the counter probes. I lift my gaze to meet her questioning expression and offer nothing but silence. I count the wrinkles on her cheeks like rings in a tree trunk and venture to guess she’s worked here for twenty years.

She tilts her head. She’s not going to back down. I sigh and glance at the tag pinned to her blouse.

“The thing is, Betsy… Can I call you Betsy?

She nods.

“The thing is, Betsy, I’m so fucking full of shit. I don’t think I meant to order any of this. You know how life just has a way of shoving more and more into your mouth and down your throat until you choke? Until you have no room left for anything?”

She nods again, softer this time. My eyes drift back down to the egg yolk. I didn’t think it could have been any less appealing but it’s hardening on the plate and I work hard to swallow the gag rising in my throat. Betsy’s not so bad. I shouldn’t have counted the wrinkles on her face like that.

“My break’s in ten minutes. You smoke?”

I nod. Finally, something worth craving.

I spend the next eight minutes pushing the food around the plate some more. I know how long it’s been because the butter on the toast stopped shining. I cut the two eggs apart and place them on either side of the plate. The one with the broken yolk on the left, the one intact on the right. The broken yolk leaves a trail no matter where I move it. I nudge the intact one a bit farther to the right. I spread the pile of potatoes around the perimeter of the plate. I cover the toast with a napkin and break up the bacon. I lay the pieces in a downturned semicircle. It looks like this ;(

Betsy interrupts my work with a snap of her fingers. I close my eyes and huff in her direction. I wasn’t done. It needed tears of ketchup streaming down its face. But my craving for nicotine always seems to win, so I follow when she gestures toward the kitchen. We walk through toward the back door. The cooks pay us no mind. They’re furiously flipping more eggs and bacon and I hope for their sake that someone else comes in with the intention of eating some of it. A mix of one too many smells rising from the burners brings the gag back. I let it happen this time and vomit into the dumpster out back.

After spitting my mouth clean, Betsy and I light up and take a drag together in silence. The sun has barely risen in the sky. I’ve been seeing the sun rise a lot. I’m always staying up too late or waking up too early.

Betsy’s voice pierces through the silence like my fork through the yolk, “Honey, I’ve cleaned enough bathrooms to know that eventually, it all comes back up. It all comes back up, hard and fast, until you’re emptied out.”

I take another drag. The nice thing about smoke is that it comes back up without a fuss. Through my exhale I almost laugh, “It feels nice after. Until life nudges another plate full of everything I never ordered toward my seat. I was the one who begged to sit at the table, you know.”

The light on the Exit sign sputters above Betsy’s head. She flicks her cigarette off to the side and looks me in the eye. I want to ask her if she knows we can only ever look into one eye at a time when we look at each other like this. She lifts a bony finger to my face and says, “Wipe the chunks from your face and throw the plate against the wall. Place an order you actually want.”

I reach for the stick of spearmint gum in my pocket, but instead light up another cigarette. As I turn to leave, I look back at Betsy with my finger pointed back at her stupid wrinkled face, “Seriously, Betsy, I’m not fucking hungry.”