Print night.” She was staring out her window, watching the palm trees rapidly passing by. “Do you think we can stop for breakfast soon?" she asked. "I’m getting kind of hungry."

 

Eating hadn’t even occurred to him. “There’s a little breakfast place on Marathon Bob told me about. It’s only a couple of minutes up the road.”

 

“I like Bob. Why don’t we have him over more often.”

 

“Bob’s an idiot.”

 

“He’s pretty nice for a boss. What’ve you got against him?”

 

“He knows how bad I’ve been feeling lately. He could’ve asked one of the other guys to take this load, and let me have that nice Williamsburg run. We would’ve been home yesterday afternoon. Then you wouldn’t have had to sleep on that hotel mattress last night, and your back wouldn’t be hurting you right now.”

 

“I still think he’s pretty nice for a boss,” she said.

 

“Yeah, well if he was pretty nice, he’d have given me the advance I asked for. Then we’d have some money for this trip,” George said as he steered the semi truck into the parking lot of Stout’s: mile marker #50.

 

“Did Bob tell you what to try?” Eleanore asked after they were seated.

 

“He said everything’s good.” Although nothing looked appetizing at the moment, he thought. He slipped his right hand under the table and started feeling the lump in his belly again. If I squish it against my ribs it doesn’t even hurt. What the hell is this thing?

 

“What’ll you have,” asked the forties, white, burned out looking waiter, as he poured coffee into the cups in front of them.

 

“I’ll have the Flagler flapjacks, please,” Eleanore said without hesitation.

 

When George weighed himself on their bathroom scale in July, he was two hundred and seventy pounds. Last night, he found a scale in the bathroom of that sad little hotel and he was down to two-seventeen; it was only mid-October. Eleanore hasn’t noticed yet, he thought. But if I stop eating she will.

 

“Give me your Oven-Mit Special,” he said, reading off the first thing he saw.

 

She looked back at her menu, “Diced sausage and ham over hash browns, smothered in country gravy, oh man, I should’ve gotten that.”

 

George continued fingering the mass in his abdomen while she talked, not really hearing her and not really wanting to; this thing was starting to bother him.

 

A few minutes later, the waiter returned with burned, stained oven-mits over his hands, and dropped a skillet on the table in front of George. Gravy bubbled and dried to a dark brown when it touched the sides of the plate.

 

“Careful, it’s hot,” he said.

 

The smell punched George in the nose like a prize-fighter’s jab. His stomach twisted and turned. This is going to be tough, he thought grabbing his fork.

 

The first bite was bad. Every one after that was worse, but he bravely stuffed the fork in his mouth, forcing back the urge to vomit behind mouthfuls of potato and meat, until he was finished. He dropped his fork and pushed his chair away.

 

"I’m gonna use the bathroom,” he said.

 

Inside, he saw two stalls, both with the doors opened part way, and there was no one standing at the pair of urinals against the wall. Mercifully, he was alone.

 

After throwing up so hard the muscles of his eyes strained against his skull, George went to the sink and, leaning his elbows on the porcelain, scooped handfuls of water from the tap into his mouth. When he stood up, he caught sight of his reflection in the mirror. What he saw frightened him.

 

His eyes were heavy, surrounded by dark rings, the whites no longer white, but the color of a discarded filter-tip cigarette and streaked with burst blood vessels from his forceful vomiting. His wrinkled skin was pale yellow and hung from his face like it was one size too big, or the bones of his skull were one size too small. This has got to be the worst case of the flu I’ve ever had, he thought, as he dried his face on his shirt.

 

“You feeling okay, George?” Eleanore asked when he returned to the table.

 

“Yeah, this flu’s really getting to me. You ready?”

 

“I guess,” she said, even though her coffee cup had just