Burger Wuss (18 page)

As I drove along, I wondered nervously if whatever happened would be my fault. The insults, the paid-off umpire, the stolen drive-thru speaker — I hadn’t done any of them. But they were all the result of me having stolen the troll. Maybe they would have happened anyway. I hadn’t created the rivalry in the first place. Turner would have stolen the troll himself if he’d thought of it. He hated BQ. If he had stolen the troll, everything would have turned out just like it did. It wasn’t really me who had destroyed his car.

What an idiot I was. I could have banged my head against the steering wheel, except most of it was the horn.

The O’Dermott’s parking lot was full. I parked along the road. There were big trucks with cables. People had
come from all around to see the cast and crew. There were mothers and daughters. There were old men and women. There were Cub Scouts. Turner was striding around like lord of the manor. He was followed by three friends who worked grill.

Rick and Jenn were there. They waved and I walked over. Rick said, “Thanks for taking my brother home last night.”

“He okay?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” said Rick miserably.

“What happened after I left?”

“No one found the BQ crew,” said Jenn. “Turner and a couple of other guys went and threw rocks through BQ’s windows.”

“There’s a big thing about it in the paper,” said Rick. “Look at these security guards.”

Security guards were walking on the sidewalk, talking into walkie-talkies. They were drinking coffee. They were lighting each other’s cigarettes.

They walked through the crowd, keeping an eye open. Occasionally, they’d say something like, “You’ll have to remove the baby during the taping, ma’am.” The crowd was held back by cones. Management had ordered their Staff to dress in white overalls and spear wrappers in the bushes. The Staff moved along slowly, raking the woodchips after they passed. They were making everything tidy.

Suddenly, I spotted Diana. She was leaning against the wooden fence with some friends. She tossed back her hair with her hand. They weren’t her BQ friends. I didn’t recognize them. Maybe they were visiting from
out of town. I saw her flinch, and suddenly turn her face like she’d been hit. No. She was trying to hide.

She had seen Turner. She whispered something to one of her friends. They put their arms around her, one on each side, and they quickly walked away. I watched Turner. He hadn’t seen them. He was talking to one of the film crew. I decided I better keep out of Turner’s way, too. I went around the corner of the building. Spectators were setting up lawn chairs and settling in for the day. There were little kids crying to know when they’d meet Kermit O’Dermott. There were senior citizens trying to score coffee. There were men and women dressed in dentist’s clothes.

Shunt was having a conversation with one of the guys from Management.

“What’s your annual salary, sir? Rounding down?”

“Mike said you know where the paper goods are kept.”

“Just tell me your salary. I’m curious.”

“Could you get me one of those packets of napkins?”

“Here’s what I’m wondering: I’ll bet you make at least five or six times what I make in a year —”

“You know, those refill packets for the dispensers?”

“— and yet, and yet, you don’t have to put up with the noise, the constant shouting, the grease, the all-day idiocy of the condiment routine, the uncertain hours, the bitching, the monotony, the constant standing, the heat of the grill for ten, sometimes eleven hours.”

“Mike said you know where the napkins are kept.”

“I guess what I’m saying is I’m wondering why I’m getting minimum wage for a job that is more dangerous,
more monotonous, and closer to the customer than yours is.”

“We need these dispensers to be full.”

“If my job is more difficult, shouldn’t I get paid more instead of less?”

“Look. I’m paid for my expertise. I’m paid to think. You’re paid to work manually. I’m like the brain and you’re like the muscle. There’s no better or worse. We work together. Now. Napkins?”

“But I actually think a lot when I’m on the job. I’m thinking all the time.”

“Could you get me one of the packets they use to refill the dispensers?”

“Would you say that my brain is an unnecessary byproduct? Would that be fair?”

“You must have a supply closet somewhere.”

“Would you sell my brain if you could? For a profit?”

“Look, fine. I’ll get my own goddamn napkins. Thanks for nothing, kid.”

Someone somewhere was talking into a loudspeaker. I couldn’t hear the words. A truck was backing into the driveway, beeping. People scattered away from it. I couldn’t see what was happening inside the building. There were flashes of light in the windows. I went around the corner.

A path to a side door surrounded by shrubs and woodchips had been marked off with yellow tape. They were getting ready to film a scene there. People were crowded up against the tape, watching.

Some of the guys from BQ were standing near a split-rail
fence. I recognized Johnny Fletcher and Kid. Johnny dribbled a Coke can between his feet. Kid passed out pieces of grape Bubblicious.

Cameras were set up in the parking lot. Two girls in blue polyester graduation gowns were being coached. A man yelled at them, “Keep thinking: This is the first day of the rest of my life!” They were supposed to be laughing and stumbling out of the glass doors. In one hand they held their mortarboards. In the other they held O’Dermott’s bags. A prop man was filling up the bags with more paper. I guess he didn’t fill them with real food because the grease might bleed. I watched the girls put out their cigarettes and, after one coughed a few times, they suddenly were happy. They jostled each other. They practiced throwing their mortarboards up in the air. The director asked if they could get more spin. The prop guy came out and I could see him showing them a wrist action. The yellow tape rippled in the breeze. The director yelled that he wanted to try a take. One of the girls yelled back that she still didn’t get it with the mortarboards, was it overhand or underhand. The other one yelled that she had a migraine.

Suddenly I felt someone at my elbow. My co-conspirator.

“Top o’ the morning,” said Shunt.

“It went off great,” I said.

“We rule.”

“I’m feeling kind of guilty.”

“Guilt’s for the weak.”

“A lot of damage has been done.”

“To multinational corporations. Cry me a river.”

“No, not that. More Turner. I feel like I became what I hate most. But a clumsy, stupid version.”

“Heads up.”

“Hm? I’m saying I think my greatest enemy was really myself.”

“Heads up.”

“It was stupid, what I did to Turner.”

“Um, enjoy the ride,” Shunt said, and stepped backward.

Someone grabbed my neck. My shoulders hunched. A voice said near my ear, “Hey, bendy-boy. How’s my girlfriend?”

“Turner!” I choked.

“I heard about everything. You have made a really, really big mistake.”

“A really big mistake,” echoed one of his friends.

He shoved me hard. I staggered and almost fell. I caught myself and stood.

“I’m gonna beat you so hard, crap’s gonna come out your nose and ears.”

“Turner —” I said.

But it was a fight. There was nothing I could do. I tried to think of something funny to say, but there wasn’t time. His friends were clearing room. He was putting up his fists. He had a stance.

I saw faces collecting around us. I heard shouts. The director was screaming at us. Then the first fist fell. It slammed across my cheek like nothing I’d ever felt. I couldn’t breathe. I reeled. I tried swinging. Nothing
there. Another punch in the gut. I choked. I gagged. I bent over. Everything else, that had just been bully fighting. This was the real thing.

He wanted blood.

I stood. He was waiting. I shot toward him, hit his arm. Didn’t even faze him. He grabbed my wrist. With the other fist, slammed me full in the face. My head shot back. Fresh feeling all across my nose. Numbness. Blood. My neck was what hurt. Lips buzzing.

He was holding me up. My legs limp. Arm wrenched. Diana’s face, mouth open.

He pummeled my trunk. I felt the knuckles in the ribs. Little blasts of pain. Blood on my shirt. Stumbled back against the tape. Snapped it. Slapped at him. Felt the contact with his cheek. His head hardly budged.

He threw me down.

The voice of Kid — “Hey, Turner!” — voice of Fletcher — “Turner! Payback!” — Turner yelling something at them.

Rage as I lay there. Saw Turner’s work boots, big and stupid. Grabbed his ankles. Yanked. He fell.

Wrestling. Now I got his neck. A hold. My contortion paying off. He gasped. His head in my locked arms. Banged it again and again against the pavement. Him blinking. His neck in my hands. Thumbs jabbing the throat. Kid and Fletcher looming.

Knee in my groin. Saw stars. Black ones glittering. Fell to the side. Smelled the grass. Freshly mown. Fletcher’s heel whacking my gut. Turner yanking away from Kid on the ground. Clawing toward me. Fletcher’s heel. My ribs.

Anytime,
I thought.
Anytime, just let me pass out.
I couldn’t take it anymore.

Fingers holding my chin. Felt his forehead slam mine. Turner. Head butt. Held me steady. Slammed again.
I’m going.
Held me steady. Slammed again.
Going.
Held. Slammed.
Gone.

And there was a voice from above us on high that said, “No. Stop. What is the meaning of this?”

I started to breathe again. He didn’t move. They didn’t move. My eyes were closed. I smelled my steely blood.

And the voice above us spoke again, saying, “Stop fighting right now.”

And I opened my eyes to see who it had come from; I opened them to see before me, toes turned up, the massive elfin shoes of Kermit O’Dermott.

He towered above us, looking down. His face was a face of anger. He didn’t have his harp, with which he would often charm the fries to dance. He said to us, lying before him, “Order must be restored.”

And Management came behind him. They were clothed in dark suits. They spoke, giving directions, and said to their Staff, “Pick them up. Get security over here. Send these boys on their way.”

Their paid servants came, clothed in white. They extended their hands to us. They picked us up from the earth. They set us on our feet.

I could hear Shunt proclaiming loudly to reporters, “Gentlemen, I think I speak for myself and other upstanding suburbanites when I declare emphatically that this goes beyond the limits of healthy competition.
That’s Cyril with a
C,
Einstein. And I think the dazed, anemic-looking kid’s named Anthony something. Sirs, I’m all for a free market, but when it becomes violent in a way which disrupts my hard-earned bourgeois spending patterns, I know things have gone too far. Everyone in town thinks that’s what’s happened here between these two brutal franchises, and though I know none of the participants personally, frankly the whole sordid scene shocks me — shocks me! — as a responsible citizen just trying to do my job peacefully and occasionally purchase some animal flesh soldered into disks by cash-hungry imperialists. You getting all this?”

Rick and Jenn were on either side of me. “My God,” Jenn was saying. “My God, my God. Are you hurt?”

“Thanks, guys,” I said. My nose and mouth were stinging. I could feel them starting to puff. I was wet with blood. My head hurt badly.

Diana was standing in front of me. I tried to smile with my broken lips. I held my scarecrow arms out to her. “Diana,” I said. “Diana.” I loved the name, and wanted to repeat it. “Diana,” I said warmly, “I did this all for you.”

“I know,” she said. “You really are an idiot.”

“You’ve seen me only in the getting beaten up parts. But really, I —”

“Do I want to know? No. I’m telling you, you’re an idiot.”

“Everything I’ve done, I did because I love you.”

“You really think I’m going to be flattered by this? Think about it, Anthony.”

“Diana, I was getting revenge. I couldn’t stand that he’d stolen you.”

She jabbed her finger into my chest. Rick and Jenn followed it with their eyes. “That’s exactly the problem,” she said. “Did you ever think about this, Anthony: Turner didn’t steal me. I’m not a piece of furniture. I went to him. It may have been stupid. It was stupid. But that was my choice.”

“But when I felt so —”

“Listen. He didn’t take me. It’s not between you and him. It was my choice. And I’m finished with both of you. This is gross. This is totally repulsive. You are both completely pathetic.”

And with that, she left.

“Diana?” I whined.

“Buck up, pal,” said Shunt. “The hemorrhaging will stop eventually.”

He looked grim, but satisfied. He was watching the elf.

“Well,” he said. “Mission accomplished.”

I shook my head. “I’m sorry, Shunt,” I said. “I used the cause to get back at Turner. That’s what it was really about.”

“Don’t sweat it. I knew you thought that’s what it was about. But it wasn’t about you or your problems. They’re tiny. It was all for the cause. Disrupt the filming. Show people the fangs behind the bright O’Dermott’s smile. Stir up local indignation. I thought it was pretty likely there’d be a high-profile fistfight today on camera between Turner and either you or me. Glad it was you. I
took the liberty of inviting our friends from BQ. Anything to discredit the system.”

We watched Diana and her friends get into a car. They drove off. She looked sorry for everything. Everything in the world.

“I loved her,” I said.

Shunt gave me a weak smile. He looked down at the ground. It was the first time I had ever seen him look nervous. He looked back at me. He said, “Love is just a myth made up by the middle class to convince themselves they have an inner life. To convince themselves they’re more than the meat they eat.” He looked fiercer and more vulnerable than I had ever seen him look. “See you, man,” he said. “I follow elf-boy wherever he goes.”

With that, he dodged off into the crowd.

“Geez,” joked Jenn, to break the silence once he’d gone, “I wonder what was eating him.”