The grill at Big Buck's had been hot for eleven hours when Tommy Briggs noticed that the grease trap was overflowing again. He had noticed it at eleven, at twelve, at one, and at two, and each time he had decided to deal with it later, which meant he was not going to deal with it at all, which meant it would overflow onto the floor, which meant Sharon would yell at him, which meant he would stand there and take the yelling because yelling was something that happened to other people and he was Tommy Briggs and this was what he was for.

He dealt with it at three. He scooped the grease into a black plastic bag, the kind that would probably burst if you looked at it wrong, and he carried it to the back door and he set it down and he went back to the grill and he flipped another batch of burgers and the grease splashed his forearm and he did not flinch because he had been splashed before and he would be splashed again and the splashing was not a problem so much as it was a fact, like rain or gravity or the fact that his car was going to fail its inspection next month and he was going to let it fail because the inspection cost eighty dollars and eighty dollars was two days of groceries for a house that did not include him anymore.

The grill beeped. He flipped the burgers. That was the job. Beep, flip. Beep, flip. The universe could be reduced to this pattern if you were honest about it.

---

The food blogger came on a Tuesday in July and Tommy was working the closing shift, which meant he was there from four in the afternoon until midnight, which meant he was there before his daughter went to school and after she went to bed and on the days when he saw her, which was every other day according to the custody agreement he had signed two years ago and had not read because he knew what it said and reading it would not change it.

The blogger was a young woman with a camera and a microphone and a smile that showed too many teeth and asked Tommy too many questions. "What's your secret?" she said, and Tommy said "There is no secret," and she said "That's the secret!" and laughed, and Tommy did not laugh because he did not know what was funny but he had learned that laughing was not required and he was under no obligation to perform happiness for people who did not understand the difference between a joke and an observation.

She filmed him flipping burgers. She filmed him scooping fries. She filmed him pouring a soda into a cup that was already full of ice and watching it overflow. "See this?" she said to the camera. "This is authenticity. This is a man who takes pride in his work even when nobody's watching."

Somebody was watching. Tommy was watching. But he did not take pride in his work. He took responsibility for it, which was different. Pride was something you felt when you had done something well. Responsibility was something you felt when you had done something poorly and someone else had to clean it up.

The video went online that night. By morning, it had four thousand views. By afternoon, it had forty thousand. By the end of the week, Big Buck's had a line out the door every lunch hour, and Sharon was so happy she bought everyone pizza, which was ironic, because the pizza from the place down the street was objectively worse than the burgers from Big Buck's, but Sharon did not care about objective anymore. She cared about volume. Volume was good. Volume meant tips. Tips meant she could fix the coffee machine.

Tommy did not care about volume. Volume meant more burgers to flip. More fries to scoop. More sodas to pour. He flipped more burgers. He scooped more fries. He poured more sodas. His forearms were splashed more often. The black plastic bags in the grease trap multiplied.

---

The video was old news by the third week. Forty thousand views became thirty, then twenty, then ten, and the line at Big Buck's returned to its normal length, which was zero, because people had discovered that the video was funny but the burgers were the same burgers they could get anywhere, which was not a criticism so much as it was a statement of fact. The burgers were not bad. They were not good. They were burgers.

Tommy noticed something else. The people who had come because of the video—they had come once, and they were not coming back. Not because the food was bad. Because the food was exactly what they expected. A burger was a burger. A fry was a fry. A soda was a soda. The video had promised authenticity, and authenticity was just a word for things that were exactly what they were and nothing more.

His father had worked at the steel plant for twenty-three years. Tommy had visited him there once, when he was sixteen, and stood at the gate and watched the men come out at the end of a shift, their bodies grey with metal dust, their faces grey with metal dust, their eyes grey with the knowledge that they would be grey with metal dust tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that until they were too old to stand and then they would go home and they would sit in chairs that were not their chairs and they would watch television that was not their television and they would die and their bodies would be taken from the house by men in black suits who would not be grey because they had never worked in steel.

His father had stood at that gate every day for twenty-three years. He had not flipped burgers. He had done something harder. He had stood in a room that was hotter than the kitchen at Big Buck's and he had moved metal that was hotter than the grill and he had done it every day for twenty-three years and he had come home and he had sat in a chair that was not his chair and he had watched television that was not his and he had died.

"Don't be like me," his father had said, and Tommy had nodded, and he had meant to nod seriously, but it had come out casual, which was what Tommy did with serious things—he made them casual so they would not hurt as much.

He was thirty-four years old. He had not been like his father. He was his father.

---

It was a Tuesday in November when everything returned to normal. The video was a memory. The line was gone. The pizza was eaten. Sharon was back to yelling at him about the grease trap, which was overflowing again, which it always was, which it would continue to be until someone decided to fix it properly, which was not going to happen because fixing it properly cost money and money was not available and Sharon knew this and Tommy knew this and they both knew it and neither of them said anything because saying it would not change it.

Tommy closed the restaurant at ten. He turned off the lights. He locked the door. He walked to his car, which was parked in the lot behind the restaurant, next to a dumpster that smelled like old food and old decisions.

He got in the car. He started the engine. The engine made a sound that it had been making for three years and would continue to make for three more years, and then it would not make that sound anymore, and he would have to decide whether to fix it or not, and he would probably not fix it, or he would fix it and it would break again in six months and he would spend six months worrying about whether to fix it again.

He drove home. He drove through streets that were dark except for the streetlights that worked and the ones that did not work and the ones that worked only on certain nights and he could not tell you which ones those were because he had never bothered to learn.

He arrived home. He parked. He went inside. The house was quiet. His ex-wife had taken the daughter to her mother's for the weekend. The daughter had hugged him at the door, and he had hugged her back, and he had felt the smallness of her body against his body and he had thought, for exactly one second, that he was failing her, and then he had thought, for exactly one second more, that he was doing the best he could, and then he had thought, for the rest of the weekend and the weekend after that and the weekend after that, that those two things were probably the same thing.

He went to bed. He lay down. He closed his eyes. He did not dream. He had stopped dreaming three years ago, on a Tuesday, in a kitchen that smelled like grease and bad decisions and the word Tuesday, which was just a word for a day that came between Monday and Wednesday and had no more meaning than any other day except the days when something happened, and nothing had happened on Tuesdays for a long time.

Tomorrow he would be at Big Buck's at four in the afternoon. He would flip burgers. He would scoop fries. He would pour sodas. He would be splashed with grease. He would deal with the grease trap at three in the morning, which meant he was not going to deal with it at all.

He closed his eyes further. The dark behind his eyelids was the same dark as the dark in his room. The dark in his room was the same dark as the dark in his car. The dark in his car was the same dark as the dark in his father's eyes.

He slept.