Black Box 86ed (3 page)

The bottom of the bun drops... ahem getting back to my topic. I suppose that if I
were
to take cues from movies the next logical step would be friends with benefits anyways. I could get use to that.

Dam the top of the bun must be stuck; I think karate chopping the ‘caution hot as fuck’ sign on the toaster, its metal frame rattling with each blow.

Then one day she would become so overwhelmed with feelings for me that she would run to the airport right as I was about to board my plane across the country. Begging me to stay, that she couldn’t live without me. I would say yes of course but only after a long dramatic pause causing the heartstrings of everyone within a twenty-foot radius to snap like rubber bands.

Seems like a stretch but I think it would be a fitting. Dam maybe I should see a shrink. The top bun finally drops out burnt and cajuny. I'm not obsessed am I? I wonder as I bring both buns to rest in a Large Mark box. How thick is the line between just being in love with someone and being in love with someone and it becoming a problem? Grabbing a hand full of lettuce placing it on both buns. I should watch more movies. Wait, no I should read more books. They would be more descriptive, more relatable. Grabbing for the Mark sauce I drown it in thousand-isle goodness. I guess that if I even feel the need to ask if I’m obsessed I already have the answer. I should take a break maybe. I’ll skip the party and see how she reacts, and I'll be distant tonight. Just to see just to see the look in her eyes.

“Heyyy,” a voice serenades behind me, as arms reach around grabbing the Large Mark box. It's Grace and before I can even test out my new found plan, all I can think about is how my reflection in her huge round blue eyes, are capturing an idiot trying to keep his insides from becoming outsides.

“Thanks for making me dinner Willy!” She smiles taking the big m
ark box.

“Who do you think you are?” I ask smiling as I reach for the box. I feel myself slowly sinking back into the personal niche
I’ve carved into her
head.

She quickly raises it over said
head. “O you have to be quicker than that,” she laughs.

“Hey I have no problem putting a woman in her place.”

“Whoa, whoa look who grew some balls?”

God what do I do? I think to myself. This is not a situation where you can just shrug off, where you can just act nonchalant.

“Some boss you are picking on your employees.”

“O like you listen to me anyways you just go out and smoke all day while you make poor me watch the whole store.
Look I’m already breaking a sweat trying to keep my subordinates from stealing company product.”

“Subordinates!
Look who’s been watching those manager videos again.”

“Why yes I have, they aren’t too bad after a few shots, o that reminds me.” She waves me to the back room.

I turn the corner as she produces a fifth of cheap whiskey
from her purse. “Ok well we can trade the Large Mark for the bottle.”

A sly smile crossing her face, “I’m sure we can work something out.”

Mike’s mom pops around the corner from her cigarette/bunion-healing break. “Now honey what’s a pretty little thing like you doing with something as horrible as that cheap shit
?”

“It makes Will tolerable to work with.” She jabs as they both break out in laugher.

“O, ok that’s cool,” I retort. “I guess I should just go home then huh?”

“O don’t be so sensitive!
Should we all take one real quick?” Grace asks.

“Way ahead of you honey,” Jody says producing a flask. “And it not filled with that paint thinner you have there.”

Grace runs around the corner and comes back with three
cups. “Where is he?” She asks.

“Who Mike?
He’s getting scratch offs and probably out smoking.”

“Ok we’ll wait then.
I can’t believe he’s still goin. You think he’s gona be all right?”

“O he’ll be fine, Obama said the wars are gona be over soon anyways. I’m sure by the time he’s service ready we’ll be out of Iraq and Afghanistan.” I encourage.

“Ya he seems just dumb enough to make it out all right.” Jody quips rolling her eyes at me.

“Whoa, my ears are burning you guys mind not talking about me behind my back?”

“How long have you been there?”

“Long enough to know just how heartbroken all of you will be when your military hero in training leaves for basic.”

“O please you’re going to get there realize you can’t do pushups, shoot yourself in the foot and come home.” I retort.

“Well at least I’ll have a purple heart.” He smiles.

Grace hands the plastic shot glasses around the group. “This is America!”
She Spartan shouts into the glass before downing it. I take mine choking it down from trying not to laugh at her.

“I remember my first beer,” Mike smirks.

“Hey, it was funny ok.”

Grace just smiles as she pours me another one. “Come on now Will, I can’t have you passing out on me after just one shot.”

CHAPTER…

“Hello
?” Someone yells from the front of the store.

“O, shit,” Jody exhales, “Will please go get him.”

“Aww fine.” I turn to go take the customer’s order when Mike grabs my shoulder.

“Imma take off now but I’ll see you tonight.”

“Ok sounds good man,” we bump fists and I run to the front.

“Don’t breath towards him
!” Jody yells to me.

I instantly recognize the customer as a regular. Greg… ah I can’t remember his last name but he’s an old fart with what I guess you can say is a lack of social graces.
      
“What the hell kind of restaurant is this?”

“Not a very good one,” I reply as he smiles at me.

“How ya doin kid?”

“O you know living my life to the fullest.”

“Ha I hear ya, which is surprising cause I left my hearing aid at home.” (He’s talking about his wife)

“Maybe one of those nice girls over there are looking to help a fine guy like you out,” I wink at him.

“O lord, I think they should probably help someone with a more comparable gravitational pull,” he winks back.

One of the girls heads dart up, her face almost concaved from the pissed off frown on it. (By social graces I meant he’s a dick without knowing it sometimes)

“Aaahhhh, so are you getting anything, or are you just here to distract me from work?”

“Ah why don’t ya just get me a cup of coffee and we can call it a day.”

“I thought that was you I heard
talking.” Jody yells walking up to us, “you didn’t let Will take any of your money now?”

“No mam, he’d probably just pocket it anyways.” He tells her with a smile.

“O watch it now don’t need you putting any ideas in his head.” She jokes followed by her
trademark smoker’s
laugh.

I stand there pretending to be interested but the thing is when you work in the food industry you’re going to have the same ten or eleven conversations a million times, and it’s all just old people banter. From the weather to ah well what the weather is going to be like in a few days, you will accrue a quarter million jokes about every possible weather scenario by your third month working.

I suddenly realize the two of them staring at me. “Will, you gona get that or what?” Snapping out of my daydream I turn
to the fry vat beeping at me. I pull
em;
dump em, and salt em leaving them to bask under the infrared heat lamp that will literally give you a sunburn if you work the fry station during lunch rush.
Immediately heading straight to the backroom, trying to avoid a long drawn out conversations about something I’m probably marginally versed or interested in. Taking the only chair in the break room I sit staring blankly at the monitors watching the front and drive through.

Grace turns the corner. “Well, well, well,” she smiles at me you can tell she’s gotten pretty tipsy. “Looks like another night of getting paid to sit.” She dances over to me, sitting on my lap
.
“So, I was watching the discovery channel today and they said in ten years the Amazon will only be eighty percent of what it is today.”

“What?
No that can’t be true.”

“I swear, people think ya know, hey it’s the jungle the soil
has to be really good right?
Nope the top so is so thin they can only plant a year or two worth
of crops and it’s all used up.
I just kept thinking, Jesus we don’t deserve to live on this planet anymore.”

“Ha I don’t know if it’s that bad.”

“O it is. We don’t even deserve dirt.
Cause what’s the only thing that comes from dirt?”

I stare blankly at her not following at all.

“Life!
Life is the only thing that can come out of dirt.
Whether it’s a flower or the bubonic plague it’s all one hundred percent life. And what do we do with it? We kill it!” Making a hand gesture like she’s breaking a log in half.
“
We cut it down, chop it up, eat it, smoke it, pop it, snort it, and insert it rectallllyyyy!” She says pretending to struggle to shove God knows what up a you know what.

“I don’t think this is a time to talk with your hands.” I advise.

She laughs but continues. “We cut it down because it’s blocking our view of stuff blocking other peoples’ view.
Then we work forty hours a week selling other peoples view to pay the rent on our own view. We roll the stuff around itself and smoke it to deal with the pressure of keeping it, and when it finally gets to us we have to take it once a day with a meal so we don’t die from it all. In the end all we have done is taken years off of and out of our lives and for what? Just to be able to look around and see that what use to be our view has just been stolen, inventoried, and sold.”

“So, how do you think we should fix it?”

“Space travel!” She giggles.

“Really, that’s your master plan?”

“Defiantly, makes total sense. Just take off to mars and fuck up that planet instead. We would designate earth as, oh I don’t know, the school of evolution. When we leave earth it’s like, hey we just graduated! Right now the whole human race is just a bunch of super seniors walking around the halls thinking we’re the biggest bad asses. When in all reality we are just making it harder on everyone else by asking the same old stupid questions, making the same old dumb mistakes, and taking time and resources away from other beings that need it.”

I pause letting it sink in.

“Aaahhhh maybe I’m just a hopeless romantic.”

“Ya defiantly in a callus, everyone sucks sorta way.”

“Hey I never said we sucked, at least we’ve made it this far. We just need a little push ya know? We need to go to college, Mars academy!”
Her hands visualizing an invisible banner. She pauses, “Hm I probably shouldn’t have watched Starship Troopers last night.”

I laugh probably a little bit too much at this. “So your whole reference for this idea is Starship T
roopers?”

“Hey, it’s the idea that counts, not where you get it from,” she smiles.

“We should turn off the sign.”

“Ooo I almost forgot,” she jumps up running to the fuse box switching off the gaudy giant M sign alerting the interstate nearby of artery clogging, heart pounding cheeseburgers.

“We almost had to work tonight,” she smiles coming back to me.

“I think you mispronounced you.”

“Ha that would be funny if it wasn’t true,” she says punching me in the arm.

Jody turns the corner, “you kids gona be all right with me taking off a littler early?”

“Go ahead, we’ll watch the cameras.”

“Alrighty then, you two still comin to his goin away party right?”

“Wouldn’t miss it.” Grace replies.

“Good it’s at two, and I guess I’ll see ya then.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Grace yells to her as Jody walks away.

“God is he really leaving?” Grace asks me. “Who the hell joins the army when there is a war on? Why yes sir, I would love to get shot at in a desert halfway around the world.”

“Believe me I don’t get it either. He’s barely patriotic. It’s just because of his dad and all that.”

“What? I never heard that?”

“O well he told me it was a family thing. Guess all the guys in his family served in the army, he didn’t want to be the one to break the chain. His dad died in Kuwait or something like that.”

“Huh, I guess that’s a better excuse than mine. O God dam it,” she exclaims looking to the monitor above us.
      
An old trucker looking guy stands staring into our dollar menu. “I’ll take care of him if you do the dishes!” She laughs to me.

“Fine,” I sarcastically reply. Pretending to be weary of the idea just to make it seem that in my mind I’m doing her a favor.

“Great,” she hops off me and up to the customer.

I turn to face the pile of grease laden trays and meat troughs. You might think I’m just being pessimistic in my description but after the entire thirty eight seconds it takes to cook this so called meat. We shovel it off the grill directly into a trough like dish where the grease is allowed to pool up to a half inch of Florida swamp like conditions. Then left to slowly congeal around the edges for your dinning pleasure. The only thing worse than eating this food is having to clean up after all the grease has hardened. Dipping my hands in water that’s gone cold I scrub every nook, while simultaneously shoving my fingernails into each and every cranny.