The new sauce at Bigfoot Burgers was making me horny. It was the same basic color as fry sauce, only a brighter, hotter pink. It almost had the same taste as the Mac sauce on a Big-Mac, only tangier; you could feel it in your nostrils. They called it Skunk Ape Sauce.

               I was in school for English. I’d hit up Bigfoot after class. Sit and read, eat, then go home to continue reading in bed while I finished my refilled soda. Since they came out with the Skunk Ape Sauce, I’d get home and pound my sheets until I came, nap, then wake to finish drinking my now flat, watered-down refill.

               My life was pretty boring.

               Bigfoot Burgers had opened in April right before the end of the spring semester. It was the rebirth of a local chain that had capitalized on a monster scare this town experienced back in the 70’s. The Hairy Peeper. The Peeper was tall, hairy, ape like and tended to stand at windows and gaze in. It brought a lot of attention from the media and that brought attention from blood thirsty rednecks who wanted to hunt it. They shot at a lot of people who startled them but never did bag the Peeper. Some TRVL Channel hack wrote a book about the whole thing. Every bookstore in town still had a million signed copies.

               Everything in the Bigfoot Burgers dining room was blinding white. It was the perfect projection for the floaters swimming around my eyeballs. The mascot was a smiling Bigfoot wearing overalls and a straw hat. A long piece of grass always hanging from his lips. I’d say the food was mid-level. Decently priced but not as good as Red Robin. There was McDonalds, Subway, Taco Bell and Jimmy Johns all in the vicinity of campus and my apartment. But I was tired of McDonalds, the last time I ate Jimmy Johns there was a hair in my freaky fast sandwich, and Taco Bell made me feel like I’d squeezed a tube of slightly Mexican flavored tooth paste down my throat.

               The woman behind the counter was cute. Skinny with pale skin and the tattooed head of a sea monster poking out from the collar of her work shirt. Her blonde hair was in dreadlocks. I’ll admit I thought about her sometimes.  She had a circular mark on her neck that made me think of a bullet hole. But it didn’t look like a scar so probably a birthmark. Anyway, I wanted to kiss it.

               “Always reading,” she said when it was my turn to order.

               “Yep,” I said and ordered the Honey Island Swamp chicken sandwich. Which was honey glazed chicken breast with a kind of relish coleslaw. Plus, fries and a drink and two sides of Skunk Ape Sauce.

               “What are you reading today?” she said.

               “Moby-Dick,” I said. “For a class.”  

               “Ohh fancy,” she said. “Any good?”

               “No,” I said. “It’s all over the place. Really kicking my ass.” I’d started it when the fall semester started and here at the end of September I still wasn’t finished.  

               Another Bigfoot employee brought my food out of the kitchen and called my number. “Have a good lunch,” the woman behind the counter said and winked at me.

               I looked at her name tag. Morgan. “Thanks, Morgan,” I said.

               I lived alone. My girlfriend Jeannie and I had broken up at the end of the spring semester. I missed her some. Missed her share of the rent, though I was managing with loans and the money I saved working construction over the summer. We’d had a good rapport Jeannie and I. We’d met in a Cormac McCarthy class and stated talking after I made a crack about being a snake handler and the Professor saying I wasn’t as funny as I thought I was. Our first date had been an open mic night at a dive bar called Little Buddha. The comedy sucked bad but when Jeannie laughed, I laughed.

               I don’t think we’d ever been in love the way TV, Movies and groups of friends thought of love as this all-encompassing, most important, thing. For a while after we broke up, we still lived together, occasionally slept together. Then she dumped her job at Barnes and Noble and moved to Spokane with some dude from her improv group.

               I went on a lot of walks. It started when Jeannie had her book group over. All her friends were huge into the comedy scene, so the books tended to be by Chelsea Handler and Tucker Max. I joined in at first, tried hard to get into the hilarity but couldn’t make the leap to seeing stand-ups as gods. So, I would leave them to it and wander. After Jeannie left, I kept it up.

               That night I left late. After my nap I’d put Wagner’s Rings Cycle on my computer and tried to power through as many pages of Moby-Dick as possible. I went for thirty. I also opened some windows. Since Jeannie my place constantly smelled like a combo of farts and chocolate chip muffins.  

               The frat house down the street was pumping. A drunk kid was lying on the front lawn all by himself. His clothes all soaked. I assumed his brothers had turned the hose on him. Lucky it was still fairly warm. He opened his eyes when I walked by. “Fuck you,” he said.

               “Fuck you,” I said. “Do you need me to help you inside?”

               “Just leave me to die.”

 “Can do.” 

               I explored the neighborhood until I was behind Bigfoot Burgers. They closed the drive-thru at midnight and it was all dark now.

               After Jeannie moved to Spokane, I became almost sexless. If I masturbated it was a tepid affair done to porn, like watching a movie you used to like but have seen too many fucking times. The first day I saw the display of the Sasquatch in overalls promoting a new dipping sauce I gave it a try. Thought it was pretty good. At home I was reading in bed when my penis surged to life. I undid my pants, jerked on it. I could taste the Skunk Ape Sauce in my mouth. Feel it in my nostrils. When I came I thought my urethra might have split.

               Now I always order two sides of the sauce. One for my fries. The other to slather all over my sandwich.

               I was about to start heading home when I smelled it. Easter dinner. Deviled eggs like tar, ham glazed in baby wipes, Peeps, all of it soaked in wet dog. I gagged. Retched. Then I saw it. Standing by Bigfoot’s dumpster. It was tall. Covered in long dark hair. The only thing of a face I could see were bright red eyes looking at me. I retched again. It bolted one way and I bolted the other.

               The Melville class I was in could be interesting. The professor could tie Ahab’s obsession in with so many moments of American history. Joe McCarthy and the communists. LBJ and the Kennedy’s. Nixon and everybody. Regan and the Russians. Bush 43 and Saddam Hussein since Saddam wanted to kill Bush 41. Trump and the NFL since the NFL wouldn’t let him own the Buffalo Bills. But sometimes it seemed we spent too much time gossiping over the idea that Melville might have hooked up with Nathaniel Hawthorne.

               “And then,” the Professor said, “they took a walk in the Holy Land.”

               I assumed this was yet another 19th century euphemism for two men enjoying each other. I couldn’t pay attention. The girl in the seat in front of me was arched in such a way that her purple t-shirt rode up the small of her back and I could see the beginning of ass crack rising from her jeans. I tried not to look. But every time I did, I couldn’t help but imagine Skunk Ape Sauce running down her skin and me licking it off before it reached her ass.

               “Hey Fella,” a voice in my head said. “You doing all right?”

               After class I couldn’t decide if I should go to lunch or go home and take care of business.

               I went to lunch.

               Standing in line I would get my boner to go away for a little bit but then it would ram painfully into my jeans. Morgan wasn’t working, which was disappointing, but probably for the best. I ate quickly, not even bothering to take Moby-Dick out of my backpack. A few times I had to stop chewing and take a few deep breaths. Afraid I might pop right there in the restaurant.

               Somehow, I made it home.

               I slammed the door threw my backpack on the couch thrust myself right there on the floor. After, I felt a genuine dismay for how my life was going. But the warm smear in my boxers was comforting and soon enough I was napping.

               I wasn’t the only one who saw it. Whatever it was. Hairy Peeper. Bigfoot. Sasquatch. Abominable Snowman. Skunk Ape. Almas. Grassman. Widman. Minnesota Iceman. Interdimensional Hairy Trickster. They had a segment on the news in the three minutes between sports and the start of Saturday Night Live. The college paper had an article about it called “Has the Hairy Peeper come back?” The article featured an overabundance of exclamation marks. One couple had pulled into Taco Bell around 11pm to think outside the bun. The Peeper was standing in the drive thru. Wouldn’t let them in. So, they turned around and got Bigfoot instead. Or, one morning the old folk that went to McDonalds to drink coffee, read the paper and bitch about America not being sufficiently Christian, found the MacD’s reeked so hard of wet dog that they went to Bigfoot to drink their coffee. People were also seeing UFOs in the sky and there were rumors that an exorcism had been performed at the campus Catholic center but those were probably bullshit.

               One day, after ordering the Yowie burger with fries and three sides of Skunk Ape, I asked Morgan if she wanted to get coffee sometime.

               “Hey, great,” she said. “How about when I get off work.”

               It surprised me how excited she seemed. “That works for me.”

               So, a few hours later I met Morgan outside Bigfoot. She still had on her greasy work pants and a light green sweatshirt. We walked to the Starbucks across the street. Both of us ordered Pumpkin Spice Lattes.

               “It’s not a bad job for fast food,” Morgan said. “It has its perks. School still seems stupid to me and I’m not really into making any hardcore plans.”

               “I hear that,” I said. The first sip of Pumpkin Spice singed my tongue.

               “You’re in school at least. You could teach or something.”

               I told her about the chapter in Moby-Dick when they cut up a sperm whale and one of the guys wraps himself up in whale penis and turns himself into a human condom.

               “Gross,” she said. “But wouldn’t he just be a whale penis? You don’t wrap your penis up in another penis.”

               “Oh,” I said. “I think I’ve been doing it wrong.” I took a second sip. The Pumpkin Spice was already cold. “Have you ever seen the Hairy Peeper?”

               “A couple of times,” Morgan said. “Have you?”

               “I think so,” I said. “Sometimes I see him at night, and I walk up and ask, ‘who we peepin?’”

               “Don’t be stupid,” she said. And laughed.

               We drank our drinks. Made small talk.

               Outside she said,” See you at Bigfoot?”

               “Probably tomorrow,” I said.

               Morgan hugged me then. I hadn’t been touched by another human since Jeannie left. The warmth felt so good I almost forgot to hug her back. She headed back to Bigfoot where her car was parked. I turned toward my apartment but made no movement. I could have stood there for long time, letting the feel of her slowly fade.

               Meanwhile, I kept eating Bigfoot Burgers. I’d see couples fooling around in the cars parked in the parking lot. Watch couples push each other against the wall of the restaurant and eat face. Inside the lines kept getting longer, the people less patient for their food. More than once someone (usually older) would cut in when I was trying to order and demand more sauce. One day they even ran out, but Morgan hooked me up from the employee stash. We met at Starbucks a few more times for Pumpkin Spice. I kept masturbating. Kept reading Moby-Dick.

               That day I reached the last three chapters of Moby-Dick. The part where shit actually happens. Morgan was behind the counter when I went in for lunch.        

               “Finished yet?” she said.

               “Last three chapters,” I said. “Finally hunting that great white bastard down.”

               “Then what?”

               “Christ,” I said. “I might never read again.”

               I ordered the Fort Worth, a hamburger topped in onion rings and drenched in Texas BBQ. Minus the Texas BBQ. Fries and four sides of Skunk Ape Sauce.

               “They want to get rid of it,” Morgan said. “The State Legislature.”

               “Ha,” I said. “Ha ha hilarious. The State Legislature.”       

               “I’m serious.”

               “Nope.”

               “Next couple of shipments and that might be it. If they vote to ban it.”

               “They have the votes?”

               “Looks like it.”

               It was like all the suns that had ever risen on humanity had gone behind the clouds.

               “They think people are becoming addicted. I mean, sure, I’ve found people screwing in the bathrooms and its gross but they’re not hurting anyone. And that’s the main thing. The only thing the State Legislature can stand about sex is the possibility of fetus.”

               I looked around. The restaurant smelled of fries and ice cream. That song from Tootsie, “It Might be You” played from overhead speakers. The patrons ate and sweated and grunted. Occasionally moaned. All of them had at least one hand under the table. An older woman in a pink zip up sat with her eyes closed, the sinews of her neck taught as she willed her body into intense pleasure. Just another day at Bigfoot.

               “Do you have any to-go packets I could take with me?” I said.

               “You like it,” she said with a smile on her face.

               “I’m loving it,” I said. “If,” I swallowed, “if they get rid of it will I still see you?”

               Morgan leaned closer to me. “I love it too,” she whispered in my ear. Put her hand on my hand. “Show up here after everyone is gone. Around one. They can do what they want. I got the hookup.”

               And at one I was there. After probably the most frustrating afternoon of my life. I’d masturbated and showered twice since lunch. Morgan let me in the back door. Her Bigfoot uniform was unbuttoned and opened. Underneath she wore a maroon tank top. I could see almost the entirety of her sea monster tattoo.

               “What do you think?” she said.

               I thought she meant the back room of Bigfoot. Unlike the dining room it was mostly brown colors. It smelled like garbage. The drain under the sink looked clogged with the remains of some awful cabbage. It wasn’t much different than the Burger King I’d worked at in high school.

               “It’s okay,” I said. “The front of the restaurant is nicer.”

               “Look,” she said. “I like you. You seem a little dorky for Moby-Dick. But that’s okay.” She looked away from me and gazed at some dirty dishes. “I’m thinking it might be fun if we decided to dip each other in the sauce.”

               For a second, I couldn’t breathe. All my earlier pleasure mattered little. I was once again hard as hell.

               “Thank god,” I said. “I mean, I’m open to that.”

               She laughed.

               We started making out. Made ourselves naked. I won’t get into it too much. I ate pickle chips off her nipples; she ate pickle chips off the tip of my penis. We stood together and lifted a bucket of Skunk Ape Sauce over our heads and let it pour all over us. Then we fucked.

               We slept on the kitchen floor of Bigfoot Burgers. Both of us crusty with Skunk Ape Sauce but too spent to care. I wasn’t sure how she’d ever get all that sauce out of her dreads.

               A sound woke me. The back door was open. Light from the streetlamps poured in. I couldn’t see it, but I could smell it. That same horrible Easter dinner smell. My eyes adjusted. It was in the corner, all hair but for the red eyes gazing down on us.

               I gagged.

               Morgan elbowed me. “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “He’s just dropping off the shipment for tomorrow.”

                “Oh,” I said. “Oh.”

               The Hairy Peeper went outside and came back in with some boxes. He placed them in the corner. Grunted in our direction. Closed the door behind him when he left. I waited for the smell to dissipate and allowed myself to breath. I licked at a spot of sauce on Morgan’s shoulder and went back to sleep.

                I never did finish Moby-Dick.

Ross Hargreaves has an MFA from the University of Idaho. His work has appeared in Mikrokosmos. He lives and writes in Idaho.