Burger Wuss (9 page)

“Like the font,” said Shunt.

“Well, that’s something.”

“It’s not often you find a font that can simulate hate mail.”

“I’m bad with scissors.”

“I don’t mean to bitch. Given the circs, I think this’ll be perfect.”

“So you like it?”

“Sure. Looks fine, for subterfuge.”

This was good. Shunt was an important ally. He had to believe that we were doing this all for a good cause. That we were trying to remain anonymous because we wanted the BQ franchise to think the whole O’Dermott’s franchise was responsible for whatever went wrong. He wanted to raise the pitch of the battle between BQ and O’Dermott’s, so they would destroy each other. Shunt had to believe that this was what I was interested in too.

It seemed to be working out. Except that Shunt was getting excited about parts of the plan that didn’t mean much to me. “What I can’t wait for,” he said, “is for when the movement’s spread and we can drop the anonymity. Let them have it. Point out the wage slavery. The enfeeblement of the American mind. The corruption of the corporate structure. The commodity fetishism of the marketplace.”

“The fact their fries suck.”

“You aren’t like taking this seriously.”

“Well, maybe I’d take it seriously if you talked like someone who’d gotten all the necessary tetanus shots.”

“Oh, man. Oh, man!”

“Don’t freak out.”

He made a
pffffff! pffffff!
sound while he scrubbed his hands back across his blank scalp. He scrubbed two times. He mashed his palms against his eyes. Then he looked up. “Okay, dude, so I’m going to send this.”

“Yeah. Send that, and then, as time goes on, we’ll start to point out all the . . . that stuff. You know. Like the enfeeblement and fetishes and everything.”

“All right. Out of here. I’m headed back to the shrubs.”

“Man,” I said. “How long are you going to live in the shrubs?”

“That’s an indefinite arrangement. Hi, Turner,” said Shunt, taking the letter from me.

I jumped. Turner was standing beside me.

“What’re you boys doing?” said Turner.

“Writing you love sonnets,” said Shunt. He blew Turner a kiss on his middle finger. With his other hand, he held the letter under the level of the counter. I was glad that he could be a very sneaky anarchist. He said to me, “Later.” He left. The decals on the door flashed as he went out.

Turner leaned against the counter, grinning at me.

I stood. I tried not to stand like I was nervous. My weight was on one foot. I shifted to the other foot. As a foot, it seemed less nervous.

“That Shunt,” said Turner. “He’s a character.”

I couldn’t decide if it would be less nervous to have my arm up on the counter or just hanging. I tried it both ways. Turner didn’t move. A customer came. I took her
order. I was grateful I didn’t have to look at Turner. He was still standing next to me. After I’d told the woman her total, I turned around to get a cup and start the drink flowing. Turner walked by my side. He said, “Question for you, Little Miss Wuss.”

I shoveled some ice into the cup. “What is it, Turner?” I hit the button for medium Sprite.

“You play softball?”

“No.”

“Come on, man. Everybody plays softball.”

“I have, but I don’t. What do you want?”

“Wait till you’ve got the fries.”

“Okay,” I said. I went and got her Big O, then the fries. I came back for the drink. Turner was fitting the lid. I hoped he hadn’t spat into it or something. I went back to the counter. I gave her the food and the drink. She paid.

Turner said, “The softball game against Burger Queen. We need players bad. You’re pretty fit. You could play.”

“Thank you, ma’am. Six thirty-one is your change.”

“Have a nice day,” said Turner to her, smiling. He turned to me. The smile was gone. “What do you say?”

“No way, Turner.”

“Look, man, I’m sorry about the graveyard. That what you want to hear? I’m sorry. It was completely bastardly of me. You’re kind of a wuss, but I . . .” He shrugged. “Look, all I’m saying is, you went out in that graveyard last week and you stood up and took it like a man.”

That was a funny way to describe crawling on all fours and groveling for mercy, but I wasn’t going to argue. “Thanks,” I said. “You have . . . well, like you have been kind of a jerk.”

He nodded and shrugged. “I have. I am a jerk. I can’t deny it. Yeah?” He gave me a playful shove. It almost dislocated my shoulder. He said, “That’s what I am. Still, man. You took it. I’ll lay off you for a while. Now what do you say to the team?”

“You’re not captain, are you?”

“No. Mike is. He runs the whole show. He asked me to ask you.”

“Is there a practice or something?”

“Sure,” said Turner. “Saturday. Then next Saturday is the game.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“You do that,” he said, pointing to my head. He leaned next to my register. “I’ll just stand here while you think.”

I served a couple of people. Turner followed me around.

Finally I said, “Okay, I’ll play. Now will you stop following me?”

“Customer,” said Turner. His smile was suddenly huge and enthusiastic. “Hello, sir. How may we best serve your chowing needs?”

Once I agreed to play on the softball team, Turner made a gruesome effort to be nice to me. Maybe his
team spirit was stronger than his bully instinct. In any case, he would lean up against the counter near my register and talk to me about his car, Margot, when he had free moments. He was much nicer, even though he still called me Little Miss Wuss. “I’m thinking about getting Margot vanity plates,” he would say, or, “What are those reflecting things on the road called? You run over those things quick enough, man, I love them. They sound like the road has a heartbeat and it’s only getting faster.” And once, with no explanation, “You know it’s a crime in this state to run over a cat and not tell the owner?”

Shunt and I were sitting at a table. We were on break.

Usually Shunt spent his breaks in back listening to the radio. He would hear about an explosion in Mexico or a company that fired a guy for getting an arm torn off in machinery. He would sit slumped in the staff room with his face in his hands. He would murmur, “My god. My god.” Two forty-year-old men who worked grill would stand on either side of him, giggling silently and taping a “Kick me” sign to his back. Shunt took it hard.

One day we decided to go on break at the same time. Now that I worked mornings, our shifts only just overlapped. We both had fifteen minutes for break. We were sitting at a table. We were talking. Each employee was allowed five dollars worth of O’Dermott’s food a day. I used mine on a Big O and fries for lunch. Shunt had gotten an Apple O’Pie slice. He was burning it. He fed pieces into a flame in an ashtray.

“Turner’s trying to be nice to me,” I said.

“Oh yeah?”

“He talks to me. The other day he was boasting about playing Cockney Roulette.”

Shunt raised his eyebrows. A trail of greasy smoke rose between us.

“It’s a night-driving game,” I explained. “You turn off your headlights, talk in an English accent, and drive on the wrong side of the road.”

Shunt nodded. “That’s about the limit of European culture in this town.” He fed his fire another hunk of pie. The syrup put the fire out. He said, “Ma and Pa Butthole are off in Europe right now.”

“Who?”

“My folks. Jack ’n’ Jill Suburb. The Middle-Management Twins. You know. They who spawned me one night when Johnny Carson was canceled.”

I stared at his pie. It was a ruin. He still had half left to burn. The syrup had burned down to toxic candy.

I spun the ashtray slowly with a finger. Finally, I asked, “What’s up with your parents?”

He didn’t answer at first.

I said, “I mean, why . . . you know. Why you and the bushes?”

Suddenly he sang, “High-ho-ho, high-hee-hee. I hate them, and they hate me.” He stood up and swept all the trash into his hand. He threw it away. “Lunch break’s over,” he said. “Last one to the vomitorium’s a rotten egg.”

“Shunt, I was just asking,” I said.

“Well, I was just telling.”

We went back to our stations. I only had another hour. I could hear Shunt in the back. One of the guys on grill had come in stoned, and was telling everyone knock-knock jokes. People back there were laughing at him. Shunt laughed loudest of all. He laughed like they were the funniest things he’d ever heard.

“Orange you glad I didn’t say banana again” is just not that funny.

One day, I decided to test Turner to see how far his new nice went. I tried to start a whole conversation with him.

“So where . . . I mean, how did the whole friendly rivalry thing start with BQ?”

“It’s not friendly. I hate their goddamn guts. I want to see them bleed.”

“What did they do to you?”

“What? Why does someone have to do anything? I just hate them.”

“It must have begun somewhere.”

“They do stuff to us, we do stuff to them. Hate. It’s that simple.”

“But, I mean, how did the thing start?”

Turner shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“But when? I mean, it must go way back.”

“I don’t know.”

“There must be like old stories. There must be lore.”

“Lore? What’s lore?”

“Stories.”

“Stories? Hey!” he snapped. “Does this look like story hour? Do I look like an educational lamb-puppet?” He stared at me with a sneer. I could see each blackhead on his nose. He had acne scars around his chin and neck.

“No,” I admitted. “You don’t look like an educational lamb-puppet.” I was cowering.

“I didn’t think so,” he said. “Now will you shut up? This is not a place for stories. There are no stories here. Free time? You should be wiping down surfaces. Goddamn, this team spirit thing, I’m trying to be nice to you, but it’s difficult not to kick your ass.” He swiveled on his heel. He rubbed his baseball cap. To the wall, he said, “You gonna replace the shake mix, or we gonna run dry?”

I backed away. I was heading for the cooler when Rick’s brother came in. He was very tall and awkward. He slouched. He was wearing a brightly colored shirt, buttoned up to the top button.

“Excuse me,” he whispered to me. “Is Rick Piccone here?”

“Hey, hi. It’s me, Anthony. How are you?”

“I’m fine,” he whispered. “It’s nice to see you, Anthony.”

“How are you doing? Rick told me you . . . weren’t feeling good.”

“I’m fine.”

“Great, great, man,” I said, patting him on the arm. “Rick was really worried about you.”

He nodded his big head. “For a while, I wasn’t well. I
thought everything was soot. That made me cry. I washed and washed myself. They took me to the hospital. I was medicated. Now I am hunky-dory.”

“That’s good to hear.”

“I feel like a million dollars,” he whispered, and grabbed onto my arm with both hands so hard the blood stopped.

“Uh, hey, why don’t I just go back and get Rick?”

He let go. He smiled. “I am running some errands. I can do things for my mother and help around the house.”

“I’ll send Rick up.”

I went to the back. Rick and Jenn were cleaning trays. They were getting hyper with the spray nozzle.

“Who knows where Serpico the Serpent will strike next?” said Rick. “Vvvvat! Vvvvvvat!”

“Oh, Rick! Rick! Ricky Blicky, don’t! Don’t!”

“Rick,” I said, “your brother is up front.”

“Rick, did you hear that? Put down the nozzle!”

“Abrupt wet T-shirt contest!”

“Thanks, Rick,” I said. I wrung out my tunic.

“I think Anthony wins the wet T-shirt contest,” said Rick.

“Rick,” I said, “your brother’s up front. Polyester doesn’t melt in water, does it?”

“Catch you two drones later.” Rick left.

Jenn and I were left alone. Both of us were kind of wet. Jenn was laughing. She shut off the water in the stainless steel sink. When the water stopped, the spigot creaked.

“He is so funny,” she said.

“Yeah,” I said. “He’s a riot.”

She creased her brow. “What do you mean by that?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t seen him much since you two started mashing up against each other.”

She looked up at me. She looked a little concerned. “You’re kind of feeling like a third wheel.”

I shrugged. “Naw,” I said. “I don’t even feel like I’m close to the bicycle.”

“It’s not that we don’t think about you. We mean to call. I’m really sorry.”

“That’s fine. I spend my free time walking in the municipal car park and hatching evil schemes.”

She laughed a little. “You’re still the same old Anthony.”

“No,” I said. “I don’t think I am.”

She looked down at the tile floor for a minute. Then she looked up. “You’re still pretty cut up about the Diana-meister, aren’t you?”

“I’m pretty cut up about that.”

Jenn patted me on the arm. “I’m sorry, Anthony. We’re still your friends.” She leaned back against the sink. She shook her head. “I’m sorry. It can’t be easy to watch people as in love as the Rick-bear and me are when you’re feeling so alone.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’ve hardly seen you, except at work.”

“I mean, because we’re so cuddly and happy.”

“And because when you kiss it sounds like someone stirring Jell-O?”

She said earnestly, “You and Rick should go have a boys’ day out. You could go hiking or something. You could talk boy stuff.”

I waited for a minute. I asked softly, “Do you ever talk to Diana?” Jenn didn’t answer immediately. She put her hands behind her on the rim of the sink. “Yeah,” she said. “Not as much as I used to. I thought she was pretty mean to you. Do you talk to her?”

“No. I don’t want to call and bother her.”

“Do you think it would be bothering?”

“I don’t want to be a stalker.”

“Anthony,” said Jenn, “nobody thinks you’re a stalker. I know how it is, when you don’t want to seem pathetic.”

“That’s how it is right now.”

“You’re not pathetic, Anthony. She really screwed you over.”

“What does she . . . you don’t have to tell me, but does she say anything about me?”

Jenn thought about it for a minute. Then she nodded. “She’s talked about you a couple of times.” She kept on nodding.