Since getting out, the biggest change Henry’s noticed is how everyone stares at their palms now, their heads constantly bowing to handheld screens as if in prayer. But when had they switched out all the overhead menus for plasma displays? Each time he looks back up, it seems he’s just lost the Value Menu to dessert options or an inflated photo of a Big Mac, glossed up like a centerfold.

A manager is calling out order numbers, her accent curling digits into melodies. The top half of an employee disappears out the drive-through window. A sizzling metal basket is lifted out of the deep fryer, excess oil rattled off before french fries get dumped into a heat-lamped basin where they’re sifted with a tool—half hand shovel, half funnel—and chuted into red cardboard sleeves. Even over all the commotion, Henry can still hear the salt sprinkling, and his nostrils fill with a scent that’s got no name, only a color: gold.

Henry is now welcomed to McDonald’s, asked permission to take his order. He can’t bring himself to look at this acned, stretched-out version of his son, and such sour aversion to the poor kid’s face only makes him feel worse. It’s bad that he doesn’t want a burger-flipping future for his son. Even worse that he thinks himself better than a greasy, minimum-wage job when he doesn’t have even that. The last field of every job application. Check the box. Admit to convicted felon status. This bars him from so much more than nine-to-fives and food stamps.

Only after Junior confirms the price and orders a Happy Meal do Henry’s eyes meet the clerk’s.

“No,” he says. “Make that a Big Mac, a meal. And Supersize it.”

“No pickles, please,” Junior says.

No pickles, Henry repeats, then orders himself a McChicken off the Value Menu. He scoops out a mound of coins and splashes them onto the countertop. His index finger slides coin after coin—four pennies, seven nickels, two dimes, eight quarters—across the counter. Turning over three singles and a fiver isn’t exactly pleasant, but it’s a relief to shed that heavy pocketful of coins, rattling after each step like tiny shackles.

$79.00

Henry sends Junior to wash his hands before squaring up at the soda fountain. He fills the cup with thirty-two ounces of Coca-Cola, takes two deep, fizzy gulps that tickle all the way down, then tops the cup off again. He peeks over his shoulder and—coast clear—heaps three greedy fistfuls of ketchup packets onto their tray.