Burger Wuss (6 page)

She looked at her daughter. “Take your burger,” she said. “Put it under your shirt and let’s go.”

“No, ma’am,” I said. “The burger would still be toxic under her shirt. I apologize, but it is now coated with ammonium dihydrogen phosphate, a fire-retardant. We’re going to have to close down for the day.”

I could hear Turner laughing himself silly over by the registers. He was bellowing, “Store closed! Everything’s poison! Poison orders only! Well done, Anthony my man! You are a genius!”

“Sir,” I said to someone. “Please put down the coffee and leave the premises. I apologize. Because of
me, your coffee is toxic coffee. Sir, because of me, that is toxic Sweet’n Low you’re pouring into it.”

So we got all the customers to leave. We locked the doors. All surfaces had to be cleaned. All the food had to be destroyed.

“Anthony,” said Mike. “This was your first lunch rush. But you acted without thinking. Do you know what that was? Stupid. That was just plain stupid. I don’t often call anyone an idiot, but look around you and see what we’re going to spend the rest of the day doing. We will be working on our hands and knees. We will make no profit. In fact, we will make negative profit. I want you to think about that while you’re wiping things down. Maybe you’ll learn to ask questions the next time. Let me tell you an anecdote which may shed some light on the situation: My wife sometimes says to me, ‘You’re a complete idiot.’ I take it as it’s meant: constructive criticism. Okay?”

I considered telling him it was Turner. But I didn’t think he’d believe me. And I thought this just added more fuel to the fire. I looked at Turner’s sneer. He chuckled like a madman whenever he passed us.

Occasionally he’d say something. He’d stand next to me and polish. He would whisper things like, “Had to clean Margot like this last night. Really thorough. Takes a lot of Lysol to get wimp-stench off upholstery. Can’t have the smell of wimp all stenching up my Olds.”

So while I scrubbed and shined, I thought of ways to get even. One thing started to connect with another. I sprayed and wiped the metal surfaces. I thought about the things Turner would hate most in the world. I
thought about how I could make them happen. I rubbed and scraped. I thought about hatred.

I thought about who could help me. At first, I thought of Rick. Rick felt sympathy for me. He would give me a hand. When I got together with Diana, he’d been pretty smug about the power of love. He was the obvious choice to help.

But then I looked over at him. He and Jenn were scrubbing with their sponge arms interwoven. They talked quietly to each other.

“You’re the bestest at detoxifying.”

“No, you are. You’re the very bestest-beasty-estest.”

Maybe not.

Dearly beloved brethren, we are here to mourn the passing of Richard Piccone’s brain. Many of us remember Rick as an energetic, youthful boy with a strong interest in feats of endurance and the stupider of acrobatic stunts. Many of us recall with a smile Rick’s enthusiasm for kung fu movies and his deep and reverent appreciation for airbrush portraits of barbarian warlords. We remember Rick the mountain hiker, Rick the devoted friend, Rick the concerned brother of a boy who won’t get out of the bathtub. But no more. Rick was cut down in the flower of his youth, struck down by that scourge of manhood, that most repulsive of afflictions, called, in the medical community, lovey-dovey-cutesy-wa-wa. It ate through his brain like circus peanuts. Let us mourn him who is with us no more. Rick’s brain is survived by his parents, his older brother, and his body. Please rise and sing the hymn.

Rick was out. That was fine. I would find someone else. I looked around the room. One of the cooks was an old stoner with stringy hair that was either brown, blond, or gray. I’d never met him. The woman working the
window had kids. No help there. The other guy working register spent his free time selling his mother’s prescription drugs to people working double shifts. He’d been fired from Burger Queen when he was caught trading amphetamines for chicken nuggets. He was easily angered and a biter. No help there either. I racked my brain. I washed and stewed. Then it hit me who. It all hit me at once.

Finally, I had a plan.

It was an elaborate plan. It was perhaps not the easiest plan to pull off. But it would be beautiful. It would be huge and ornate, like a torture machine. It would be inescapable, and would hurt poor Turner in many, many spots at once. It was the perfect plan for revenge.

So when I saw Shunt tying up the garbage and heading outside, I said, “Could I go out with you and see the trash compactor?”

And when we were alone there, I paused while the machine snapped and ground. Then I drew Shunt into conversation. He was saying, “You smell that smell? O’Dermott’s garbage. A reek they try to hide. Distinctive. The secret rot of a multinational corporation. Ask: What I cook, how does it convert into this smell? The answer: mayonnaise in the Super Sauce. Going off. Like a sore they hide. Stink will out.”

I said, “I hear you have an organization to undermine the fast-food chains.”

He nodded. “I do. Burger Proletariat. You in?”

“I’m in,” I said. “I have an idea.”

“Oh?”

“For an operation. I know just where we can start.”

“Okay.”

“The first step involves a kidnapping.”

“Hardcore.”

“I can explain it all.”

“Tell me,” said Shunt.

So I did.

No one could hear us. The trash compactor banged and scraped. The scent of aging mayonnaise hung on the muggy summer air. Bees flew in and out of the palings of the fence. A few minutes later, we gave each other the high-five.

Then, agreed, we went back inside to scrub.

S
ome days seem perfect. By this, I guess I mean they seem like television. I thought a lot about the day when Diana and I went canoeing. When we stole apples together. Things had seemed perfect then.

The houses on the riverside had been well-painted. We could hear a lawn mower over the dribble of water from our paddles. As we went around a bend, we saw a house with pillars. A man was mowing the lawn with a beer-holder-hat on. A woman with her arm out stiff was crossing the grass in a negligee.

The apples rolled on the floor of the canoe. A spider was on one of them. When we rocked the boat and the apples clunked, the spider ran up the side of the hull.

Farther up the river, there were no houses. There were tall rushes. On either bank, there were just trees. Occasionally we saw a carton or a child’s toy draped in dead weeds. The water stank like poison.

“Swamp gas,” she said. “At night it lights up. They used to think it was the spirits of the dead.”

We washed apples in the river and ate them. The river water on the skin added a delicate hint of muck and gasoline. The spider was back on the apples.

There was a slow and steady rhythm of dipping the oars. We went under bridges. They were concrete. Usually, there was graffiti underneath. Often it was years.
’76. ’87. Class of ’92.
Sometimes it was about romance.
K.L. + Anita, happy 4-eva. Rhonda, I love you. Cheryl, your for me, Bob,
corrected by someone to
Cheryl, you’re for me.

“I am like filled with awe,” said Diana. “We’re in the complete presence of history.” Her voice echoed hugely.

“Yeah,” I said, looking up at the years floating past in green and blue.

“Nineteen seventy-six. Can you imagine it? Dating in nineteen seventy-six? Graduating from high school and you think feathered hair will never go out of style.”

“Where are they now?”

“I bet they have a flip.”

It was like we were surrounded by the ghosts of fifties guys in cars with fins, sixties girls with long-dead flowers in their hair and orthodontic headgear. People now gone, now old, now working. I looked at Diana’s back. The way stripes of light fell on it. Her arms were very real. Her hand cupped the head of the paddle. There she was, in solid flesh. Generations of American teenagerhood were telling me to seize the day before we became abbreviated numbers on the wall.

We came out into the light.

Cars rumbled on the bridge behind us.

Farther up the river, there was a factory that had been turned into offices. The river came out of a passage underneath the building where it used to turn a mill wheel. The river was very shallow. We could see the rocks and pebbles wobbling right under the canoe. The river moved faster here. We had to jam our paddles against the rocks so we wouldn’t be swept backward.

“Should we go in?” I said. “There are probably weird chemicals.”

“Sounds good to me,” she said.

We forced our way up against the current.

It was tough going. The current was strong. We had to paddle hard. We kicked up a lot of spray. We knocked the paddles against rocks. I was afraid we would break them. They were my parents’ paddles. I didn’t want to say anything to her. There was no light inside the tunnel. The bottom of the boat scraped rock. It was aluminum, and squealed when it was scratched.

We dug our paddles into the riverbed and tried to crawl upstream. We couldn’t see a thing. I couldn’t see her. I assumed she was still sitting up there. I kept thinking about the metal things, the rusted things, that could be sticking out into the passage.

I looked behind us. The opening to the passage was just a small bright square. The noise of the river was big all around us. There was a stink of oil and rot. The canoe was too light. We were being shoved to the side. We were swiveling.

“I said,” yelled Diana, “let’s turn around!” She was standing right next to me.

“Sit down!” I said. “You’re insane!”

With that, my paddle slipped, and the boat shot sideways back down the tunnel. Diana lurched and fell onto me. The boat hit rocks with a clatter. The river was rushing all around us. The spray splashed us. I reached up and tangled my fingers in her hair. I wondered if she’d fallen on purpose. She was breathing on my neck. We were both laughing.

“Diana?” I said.

“Ow,” she said. “Your knee is like right in my stomach.”

We shot out into daylight.

I was sitting up carefully. I didn’t want to bruise her or anything. She was crawling backward. A few people from the office building were dangling their legs over the river, eating bag lunches. Diana was straightening her shirt.

“I’m sorry,” I said quickly. “I’m really sorry.”

I grabbed my paddle and started to fix our course.

The river slowed.

She had dropped her paddle. It was floating off to the side. It had gotten caught on a fallen tree. I steered us toward it.

I hoped she admired my j-stroke.

I said I could maneuver us alongside it, but she wanted to wade. I brought us to the bank. She stepped out of the boat. She walked carefully. She wheeled her arms to keep her balance on the pebbles. I could tell they were cutting at her feet. I guessed her feet were soft.

She reached out for the paddle.

Her calves glittered in the sun.

It had only been a week later that she’d draped Turner’s jacket around her shoulders and rolled on a couch while they were drunk. That day with the canoe seemed like a perfect day to me. I don’t know whether it seemed perfect to her. Later I had to ask myself: The whole time, was I just a paddling fool? Or did she have as much fun as I did? She was laughing. That’s proof. Laughing is fun.

I wondered what she was thinking as she lay on top of me in the dark. Did she expect something I didn’t do? Was she disgusted, thinking I was taking the chance to grope her? Did she think I was this clumsy sicko, trying something on? Or did I seem too clean, too slow? I didn’t know what she had thought. I didn’t know what Turner had done to get her to do what he wanted. I didn’t know what I had wanted that day on the river.

When you’ve spent a perfect day, how could it improve?

When I am feeling rotten, I like to walk. When you walk, there’s a kind of rhythm. Your mind slows down to match your body. Your thoughts start to go in lazy, comfortable circles. I like to walk in the woods especially. Sometimes hiking through the forest you can see a doe or a hoot owl out by day.

I was walking through level B of the municipal car park. The halogen lamps buzzed. Moths nuzzled them. Big floppy-legged mosquitos were hanging on the walls. My footsteps echoed even down on level A.

There was a guard box on level A. Cars paid there. Level D was open to the air. You could get your ticket validated at one of our many excellent local businesses. You could park here up to a full day. The whole place was made of concrete and tar. I walked the height of it, all the way up to D, and down again. I had come to feel sorrow.

Diana and I had picnicked here together. We had spread the blanket on level C, near the wheelchair ramp. We had eaten egg salad sandwiches by candlelight. She had worn a red-checked shirt and ponytails to look like a girl advertising margarine. I had worn a strobing plaid. We curled our fingers together and read bumper stickers at eye level. We watched the senior citizens of the local euchre club file past like swans. We lay side-by-side, holding hands, humming the song “Memory” from
Cats
in unison until the exhaust got the better of us and we had to go retch on the roof.