Burger Wuss

by M. T. Anderson

  “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.”r />
  “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.

  I nodded back.

  Finally, I said, “Okay. What did she say? Can you tell me?”

  “She said she was really sorry. I think she is. She said she —”

  “Anthony!” said Mike, walking around the fryer. “Explanation as to why you are not at the register? Explanation about the shake mix? Which you were supposed to get? Hello, hello, Anthony!”

  “Oh, man, Mike. I’m sorry. I’ll go right now and —”

  “No, Anthony. Turner will send Rick to get the shake mix. Rick will work a register. You’re going to have a little talk with me.”

  “Oh.”

  “We’re going to have a little talk about team spirit. Would you come into the office?”

  I went into the office.

  “Anthony,” said Mike, “I’d ask you to take a seat, but this is a five by seven cubicle with only one chair.” Mike thought for a minute. He felt his mustache with his finger. He stopped feeling his mustache. “Anthony, we have a problem. We have a problem, don’t we?”

  “No. No, sir.”

  “Yes, Anthony. A problem is exactly what we are having. Let’s look at you for a second, Anthony. Let’s look at the person you are. You’re a person who can’t be relied on, because you won’t go back and get the shake mix. Instead of that mix, you start flirting.”

  “I wasn’t flirt —”

  “Tsh!” he hissed, holding his finger up to his lips. “Tsh! You’re a person whose uniform is wet. Who wants to see a wet uniform? People will think, ‘Look at that boy. I bet he wets the nuggets.’ You’re a person — here, look here — you’re the person who — look at this past week in the log book. Look at it, Anthony. We’re talking shortages. Major, major shortages in your drawer. Fifteen to twenty dollars almost every day. A few more days like this, and we’re going to have to let you go. Are you bad at math? I mean, really, really bad? Or are you stealing? That’s something we have to establish.”

  I felt sick to my stomach. “Mike,” I said, “I’m pretty good at math. I don’t understand. I’m pretty good at it.” I put my hand on my stomach.

  “Think, Anthony. Maybe thinking will clarify the problem. For example: I can’t say I’m good at everything. I can’t ride a horse. I can’t shoot a rocket to the moon. We can’t be good at everything, Anthony, that’s what I’m saying. So think about it. Go home at the end of your shift today. Go upstairs to your room. Look in the mirror. Ask yourself: ‘Am I really, really bad at math?’ If the answer is yes, we’d better do something about it.”

  “How did you know my room is upstairs?”

  “See? Y
ou’re the kind of person who develops paranoia. Anthony, everyone’s room is upstairs.”

  “Look, I don’t understand what’s happening.”

  “That’s exactly the kind of lack of awareness I’m criticizing. You are not someone who takes stock of your surroundings. But you have to take stock. Taking stock is what it means to be part of a team. Part of a family. Part, specifically, of Team O’Dermott’s. Okay? Got it, Anthony? I don’t mean to be harsh. But I like to run a tight ship. I like everything to be spick-and-span. Clean as a whistle. Is that understood?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “No: Is it understood?”

  “It’s really understood, Mike. I’m really sorry about the shortages. I honestly don’t know where they’ve —”

  “I’m sure you don’t, Anthony. But that’s not good enough. I’m going to be revising your schedule. You’re going to be coming in for the early morning shift. You’ll hear about it. Now go out there and move some product.”

  I went out to the counters. A bus of senior citizens had just arrived. They kept Rick, Turner, and me busy for a while. We got them all coffees. A lot of them wanted fries or hamburgers, too. The whole time, I was thinking about how much I was screwing up. I felt like I was going crazy. All I wanted was Diana. Somehow I thought if I were kissing her again, and telling jokes, everything would be all right. I pictured us watching some comedy, some zany comedy, with our arms around each other on the sofa.

  “Hey,” said Rick, shaking my arm. “You zoned.”

  “Sorry,” I said. Now I was screwing up because I was standing around thinking about screwing up. There was no time to think. I struggled to get the lid on a coffee. The coffee spilled down the sides. It browned the gutter. It stung my fingers. I took a napkin and daubed the cup. I took the cup to the register. I counted the change exactly. I didn’t make any mistakes.

  The next person wanted a Big O Meal. After that, a hamburger Happy Lunch. After that, a cheeseburger. After that, a Big O Meal, a Chicken Special Meal, and a medium fries. After that, four iced teas.

  The lines went back, and back, and back. More people kept coming in. Young and old. They yelled to each other. They gave each other the high-five. They cried in highchairs. They argued about directions. They didn’t know what they wanted. Some of them were in families. Some of them were alone. The lines kept growing. I ran for the drinks. I got them fries.