“Thank you,” she said softly.
The ancient Cadillac with the couple in their eighties: window so low they had to reach up from inside. The woman’s hand trembled as she grabbed her milkshake. “They built these for trucks now,” she told Marcus. “In my day, you pulled up and looked a cashier in the eye.” drive thru window height
“He was a truck driver,” she continued. “Drove an eighteen-wheeler for forty years. Used to say the best part of his day was the drive-thru—something normal after being up so high for so long.” “Thank you,” she said softly
“Sorry,” she said. “The suspension on this thing is shot. Sits even lower than stock.” “They built these for trucks now,” she told Marcus
Now Marcus was nineteen, six-foot-three, and standing on the other side of that same window. He worked the 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. shift at a twenty-four-hour Burger Barn, and the drive-thru window was his portal to a strange, liminal America.
“Sorry,” she’d said. “I forget how low these things are.”
She drove off slowly, coffee in one hand, the hearse’s tired suspension groaning over every bump. Marcus stepped back inside, folded the stool, and tucked it under the counter. The next car was already pulling up—a lowered Honda Civic, driver invisible except for a hand holding a ten-dollar bill.