Before You Go (3 page)

“Almost forgot,” Jessup said. “Here are your hats. Wear them at all times when you’re working the counter.”

He handed the boys two flat, folded pieces of thick white paper. Roberto pulled it open and stuck it on his head. The hat didn’t sit well on his squarish skull. He eyed himself in the reflection of a glass fridge.

Jude laughed at him. “Dude, that’s a bad look.”

“You kidding?” Roberto said, face brightening. “On a guy like me, with the shape of my face? This hat is a babe magnet. Those girls out there will see me in this hat and think,
Fat guy, paper hat, I gotta get me some of that.
It’s all over, fellas. I’m going to be punching fresh numbers into my cell all day long.” He tapped an index finger into his palm for emphasis.

“Save a few girls for the rest of us, huh?” Jessup said, finally loosening up.

Jude held the hat in front of him. “Do we
really
have to wear these?”

“This is food service,” Jessup said, no longer smiling. “Heads must be covered. It’s state law.”

“What if I wore, like, a baseball cap,” Jude ventured, “or some other kind of—”

“Oh, you mean, as a way to express your individuality?” Jessup asked. “Would you prefer a red beret? You want to stand out from the rest of the crew?”

“Actually, I was thinking of something a little less hardcore dork,” Jude offered.

Jessup laughed. “Put on the paper hat, Mr. Fox, and welcome to West End Two.”

FOUR

The next few hours rolled in like a big wave, a tsunami of new responsibilities. The work crew grew in size—a diverse group of characters, white, black, Hispanic, all young, all wearing paper hats—and yet they soon grew overwhelmed by the demands of the hungry, sun-kissed hordes. The customers came in droves, tanned and muscular, gorgeous and lean, fat and T-shirted, wanting burgers, wanting drinks, wanting service, now, now, now.

Jude spent a long stretch hunched over the hamburger grill beside a more experienced worker, Billy Motchsweller, curly-haired and rail thin, with lightning-fast, caffeine-fueled hands. Sweat dripped off Jude’s face, ran off the tip of his nose like a leaking faucet. On Billy’s instructions, Jude hustled to the back for more burgers, trays of buns. But he didn’t know where those things were kept, got turned around, made wrong guesses, wasted time, and pissed off Billy. “No, no, not these, shit for brains. These burgers are frozen solid.” He grabbed two patties and clanged them together to make his point. “Go to the back fridge, not the freezer up front. There should be burgers that were thawed out last night.…”

Jude nodded and hurried and earnestly tried not to screw up. He’d bump into someone, knock a drink out of another’s hand, slip on the greasy floor, and feel confused and pathetic. Of course, Billy was mistaken; no one had thought to thaw out the burgers last night, hauling the boxes from the freezer to the fridge. Billy shrugged. “Then let’s fire up those hockey pucks. It’s not like we’ve got a choice.”

Jude now had to pry apart the burgers, chopping at them with a knife while trying not to cut off any of his ten digits. He lined the burgers up in rows on the grill, straight columns of five up and down. At the peak times, there were up to forty burgers cooking at once—sizzling, thawing, bleeding, burning. At the side nearest Billy, the burgers were completely cooked; at the other, raw and hard red discs. Meanwhile, Jude had to open and arrange the buns to meet Billy’s precise specifications. He preferred the bun warmed, not burned. Billy moved like a Japanese hibachi chef, flashing his silver spatula with dazzling dexterity. The guy was fast, a gunslinger of the Wild West. Billy made it look easy, piling up paper plates with burgers, yelling, “Come on, take it and move along!” verbally prodding customers on their way like cattle.

“Fun, huh?” bloodshot Billy commented right in the middle of the worst of it, the building packed with people. Jude could see that it wasn’t a joke. Billy enjoyed the frenzied scramble, the long lines of beef-starved customers. “Time flies when you’re in the weeds,” Billy told Jude. “You’ll get used to it.”

When Billy disappeared to take a break, it was Roberto’s turn to wilt over the hot grill. Jude worked at his side, on bun detail. Jude figured he wouldn’t touch another burger for at least a year, maybe two. Working with fast food does that to a guy. Nothing kills an appetite faster than an overweight kid with a spatula.

Thing is, nobody cared—business boomed. The sun-dried mob demanded grease for their gullets. People were out of their minds with hunger, and the concession stand was the only source of food on the horizon.

Roberto paused to take a drink. “Damn, it’s hotter than Hoth around here.”

“Hoth?” Jude asked.

“Ironic
Star Wars
reference,” Roberto explained. “A planet covered with ice and snow, native creatures include the tauntaun and the wampa. The Rebel Fleet had a base there, code name Echo.”

“Oh my God,” Jude said as he realized it, “you’re a
Star Wars
geek.”

“
Was
,” Roberto said. “Now I’m more of a Comic-Con kind of guy. But, yeah, definitely. I’m into all that stuff, Dungeons and Dragons, anime—”

Jessup stopped by, tapped Jude on the shoulder. “Ivan will take your spot. I want you to work security.”

“You’re putting this skinny guy on security?” Roberto chimed in, smiling broadly. “Oh, this’ll be good.”

“What?” Jude asked. He didn’t know what any of it meant.

“We’re getting ripped off blind,” Jessup observed.

Jude glanced out at the crowd of milling customers. He could see that it was probably true, teenage boys concealing food under their towels, or snarfing down hot dogs before they reached the cashier.

“Seriously?” he asked. “What am I supposed to do?”

“You’re the new guy, Mr. Fox. Do you want to keep your job, or do I need to find somebody else?” Jessup was once again enjoying his position of authority.

So Jude followed his manager into the open area, a few feet before the row of cashiers, amid the slow-moving clutter of customers. “Okay, stand here. Spread your feet like this.” Jessup kicked at Jude’s feet. “Cross your arms and look like you mean business.”

Jude felt embarrassed, sensed a few of the cashiers watching from behind. He didn’t like to be made to look foolish. It stung.

“It’s prevention,” Jessup explained. “Don’t worry. If they see you, most people won’t try anything.”

“What do I do if I catch somebody?”

“Just ask ’em to put it back,” Jessup said. “Trust me. Nobody will mess with a tough guy like you.”

Jude stood about four inches shorter and fifty pounds lighter than Jessup. “Look at me,” Jude said. “I’m not going to scare anybody. You really think they’re going to listen to me?”

Jessup didn’t answer, just returned to his office behind the counter.

Roberto called out to Jude, “Hey, Jude! Hey, Judy, Judy! Don’t stress, my brother, if there’s any trouble, we got your back!” The way he laughed along with Ivan and a couple of other guys, Jude was pretty sure the exact opposite was true.

There wasn’t much to it, actually. Jude wasn’t a security guard by nature; he wasn’t going to go out of his way to catch offenders. But Jessup was right—by merely standing
there,
a frowning presence, Jude deterred most of the amateur felons, the hot-dog wranglers and burger burglars. The cashiers behind him received a steady flow of customers. Jude caught one cashier in the middle booth watching him with a look of amusement. Her eyes were wide set; her hair, black whorls and corkscrews and curlicues. Skin olive-inflected and smooth. Jude grinned, a little goofily, and she gave him a sympathetic shrug.

Each cashier at West End Two was female—it must have been corporate policy. A large, lumpen girl was stationed at the extreme left cashier’s booth—Jude hadn’t learned her name yet; Billy hadn’t bothered to give Jude the lowdown on her, unlike the others—and she sat, frowning and bored, obviously miserable, with all the charisma of a garden slug. Daphne was next, a pale small blonde with bee-stung lips and dark bags under her eyes. She was either sick, undernourished, or a future runway model. Roberto had already joked that he couldn’t decide whether he wanted to bang Daphne or rush her to the emergency room. Which was pretty funny if you asked Jude. The girl in the middle booth, aside from a few glances Jude’s way, worked steadily. Billy had told Jude her name.
What was it again?
Jude remembered: Becka something. She looked great without trying, smiled at patrons, competent at her job. The fourth booth was closed, with a girl named Kath at the farthest booth to the right. There was something unnerving about her, with frizzy black hair, large bust, and tight pants. Even from a distance, everything about her cried, “
loves sex
.” No, that wasn’t entirely true. Because after her body cried “
loves sex
,” the expression on her face added, “
but not with you
.” This made her an early target of fascination among the guys behind the counter. Honestly, she scared the bejeezus out of Jude. Kath looked like the black widow of minimum-wage cashiers.

Trouble took the forbidding form of three tattooed bodybuilders, ridiculously jacked guys with military haircuts. College guys, probably, former high school football players, almost certainly. Jude watched as they piled cardboard trays high with burgers, pizza, soft drinks, and pretzels. Gathered in front of Jude, out in the open for everyone to see, they began to wolf down the food before reaching the cashiers. Their arrogance annoyed Jude; they didn’t even try to hide it. Jude stepped toward them, and in the friendly tone of a co-conspirator suggested that maybe they try to be more subtle about it. You know, wink-wink,
keep it on the down low
. He explained that it was his job to work security, and he hoped they’d understand.

The biggest one, with pectorals the size of hubcaps, swiveled his thick neck to Jude and said, “Huh? What?”

Jude glanced from this Cro-Magnon to his steroidal buddies. “I’m just saying, could you maybe try to be more discreet about it. It’s my first day on the job and—”

The mouth-breathing behemoth, under heavy lids and dead eyes, finished chomping on his burger. His hands were huge. He swilled a large soda. “I’m still hungry,” he growled to his pals, smacking one of them in the chest. “Food here sucks, though. Right?”

“Yeah, you shouldn’t eat that stuff.” Jude forced a chuckle, interjecting himself into the conversation (such as it was). “People have actually
died
from eating those burgers.” Jude really, really didn’t want to get punched in the face. But at the same time, some shred of dignity kept him from backing off.

The mouth breather grew tired of Jude’s presence. He defiantly stuffed half of a soft pretzel into his gaping gob. “Whaddayagonnadoaboutit?” he challenged Jude. Very
Jersey Shore
. Then he did the puffy-chest dance that guys like him do, his shoulders stiffening, one step forward into Jude’s space, a vein in his forehead pulsing with animal hostility. It was a dance he had probably performed hundreds of times—before pummeling his hapless victims. Jude wondered if his adversary took human-growth hormone. Or horse steroids. Or whatever else those weight lifters took to grow so freakishly scary-looking.

How had he gotten himself into this mess?

Jude glanced toward the front counter; Roberto cautiously inched around the corner. He had a spatula still in his hand, as if it might be an effective weapon. He might as well have been carrying a flyswatter.

A voice called out from behind Jude. “Hey, you guys, come on, hurry up, this way.”

It was the middle cashier, Becka, gesturing impatiently to the trio of bodybuilders. She waved them through the line, moving them along quickly. She looked across the room for any sign of Jessup, then said to Jude, “It’s okay, these guys already paid.”

The three incredible hulks, agog and somewhat bewildered, shuffled their way past the line and out of the building. “Yeah, what she said,” one of them muttered, looking back scornfully at Jude.

“Are you out of your mind?” Becka asked Jude after they left. “Do you want to get yourself killed?”

“What?” Jude said. “You think I couldn’t handle those guys?”

She laughed. “Right, with guns like those…”

Jude flexed his biceps. “You kidding me? Sun’s out, guns out. I have to register these babies with the FBI,” he joked. “These are considered lethal weapons in seventeen states.”

Becka shook her head, rang up the next customer, and said, “He was going to squash you like a bug.”

“I know,” Jude admitted.

“Not very smart, are you?”

“I hoped I could reason with him,” Jude explained. “But it was like talking quantum physics with a water buffalo.”

She touched Jude’s forearm, like a concerned sister. “This is only a summer job. No one expects you to get killed for it.”

Jude nodded. “Right, no, right, it was totally dumb. I don’t even know what I was thinking. I guess I figured the guys behind the counter would have my back.”

“Yeah, sure,” she said. “What were they going to do? Throw hand grenades?”

Jude grinned. More customers pressed forward, impatiently waiting. “Thanks,” he said. “I guess I owe you.”

“Considering I just saved your life? Yeah, I think so,” she smiled. “Maybe I’ll let you buy me a pretzel someday.”

Jude assured Becka that he would. After all, he was already in love with her, and the pretzels were free.

FIVE

Jude stank of hamburger. He could barely stand it: the reek of cooked cow that clung to his clothes on the long bus ride home. He couldn’t wait to shower, rejoin the human race.

He saw his father out by the street in a skintight pair of Lycra running shorts, stretching his Achilles tendon with one foot against the curb. Way more of Dad’s butt than anybody needed to see.

“Hey, Jude,” his father greeted him. “I was just going out for a run. Want to join me?”

He always asked. Jude and his father hadn’t run together in years, but he always asked. It was almost sweet. And each time when Jude declined, there was a fleeting look of disappointment in his father’s eyes. But there was no way Jude could do it. When it came to running, they were complete opposites.