Some of the lunch crew on break were watching us. Howard Fisk had come in to pick up his paycheck. He held his little woman, hands up to his mouth, and looked pained. There’s got to be respect. I fired her.
She said, “I hope you can’t sleep at night,” and flipped me off when she stomped out the back door.
In the summer the day crew has thirty to thirty-five teenagers working. I fired one every four or five days. At the time, nights were great.
VJ says, “How is your wife?” His face is dirty, but the coffee has cleaned his top lip, which is red and chapped. I tell him.
Tillie and I don’t make love. She shares an apartment with a nurse, and I see her twice a month when she picks up her check at the end of my shift. I’ll see her tonight. I’m tense, thinking about seeing her. I check my fly all the time, as if I’m afraid she’ll come in and I’ll be exposed. Usually she comes through the employee door, doesn’t smile, talks in monosyllables, wears nice clothes I didn’t buy her. She’s lost weight since we separated.
Last time we talked I said, “How are you doing, Tillie?”
“Fine.”
“Car running okay?”
“Yes.”
“I was thinking of taking some graduate courses at the university. Maybe something towards an M.B.A.”
“Good for you.”
“Do you want a burger?”
“No. Thanks.”
She went out through the dining room, talked to Howard Fisk, who was eating his dinner before the night crew came in. She always talks to Howard. I watched her through the one-way mirror in my office. She ate one of his onion rings. He didn’t look at her. Kept his head down. When she went out the front door, he smiled at her and half-waved. She smiled back. She hasn’t smiled at me for years.
VJ says, “I stay away from women.”
Despite the almost palpable odor of lettuce, and the underlying hints of lye, cooking meat, old grease, soaps, Styrofoam, cardboard and plastics, VJ smells like an alley, a reminder of trashcans, a wetgutter. I think the women stay away from him.
“I’ll be back in a minute,” I say, and I go up front to see how they are doing.
The secret to running a fast food franchise is knowing what the customer wants before he can think to ask you for it. Most of the time I work pushout. The rush adrenalizes me. People lined up out the door. Green-screened television monitors filled with orders. Voices whispering in my earphone. My hands flying. Burgers out from under the heat lamps and into the bags (mayonnaise makes the waxy paper wrappings slick). Fries fresh from the vats hot enough to blister if I held them that long. Drinks all in order, all in a row.
I’ll say something like, “That’s two quarter pound Burger Land burgers, three small fries, a small coke, a small lemonade and a coffee.” I’ll place the two bags on the counter. The order might have flickered onto the monitor eleven seconds ago. I’ve timed myself. During the rush I average fourteen seconds an order.
I’ll say, “Would you like some ketchup with those fries?” I throw a package in. Some people want the condiments, some don’t. I’ve got a feel for condiments. Hardly anyone asks me for something before I ask them if they want it. The owner, Mr. White, told me that I’d have to read their minds if I was going to be good. In the rush, when I’m on automatic and my analytical side has shut down, I can. I’m good at clearing my mind.
I walk behind Ashmid, a scrawny seventeen-year-old with hairy arms. He’s dropping raw, red patties onto the broiler belt.
“Broil dem burgers, yeah, yeah,” he sings over and over under his breath.
If I say, “Go wash the tables, Ashmid,” he’ll say, “Yasuh, boss.”
“Tote that bale,” I say.
“Yasuh, boss.”
Janet Sims, staring absently into an empty fry bag, stands next to the shake machine.
“How’s the dining room?” I ask.
“Fine, sir.”
“Straw dispensers?”
“Filled, sir.”
A large mustard stain shaped like a breast discolors her uniform pant’s blue and white pinstripes.
“Go clean something,” I say.
“Yes, sir.”
For the moment the lobby and parking lot are empty. I send two of the boys out to sweep the sidewalks.
VJ says when I sit back down, “How tight’s the ship?”
“Tight. Lazy day.”
“So, tell me another dream.”
“I don’t want to,” I say. “Tell me one of yours.”
“I know what my dreams mean.”
“So do I.”
“No, you don’t.”
VJ is like this. He tells me I’m wrong, and I don’t get mad.
“Okay.” I remember another dream.
This one starts where I’m driving a bus in the fog and I see myself walking down a street, Orchard Avenue. The steering wheel is huge and horizontal. I lean over it and crank hard to steer up the hard bump of the sidewalk. The bus snaps off parking meters; slams aside parked cars. The me on the sidewalk looks up, turns, lumbers away, thighs too fat to run. Dead end. The me on the sidewalk turns, covers his face. I squash me into a blue dumpster. Big splash of hamburger grease on the windshield, just my hands visible at the bottom of the glass, like five-tentacled octopi.
I start laughing, and then someone touches my shoulder. It’s Tillie. She takes my hand and leads me down the aisle; the sun breaks through the fog and slants through the windows. Dust motes circle slowly. She stops at a huge bench seat, schoolbus green vinyl, sits down, lays back, pulls her skirt up. Her pubic hair is black, straight and vast, like a porcupine has curled up between her legs. But Tillie’s real hair is tightly curled and thin. I told her once she ought to just shave, for all there is.
She says, “Climb on the bus, sailor.”
VJ says, “Climb on the bus?”
“Yeah.”
“Then what else happens?”
“That’s it. That’s the end of the dream.”
“And that’s what’s bothering you?” He tilts his head off his right shoulder, moves in a complicated convulsion that switches his head tilt from the right to the left shoulder, a mirror image of his former position.
“Yeah. Sort of.” I can’t tell him about the other stuff that’s started happening when I’m awake. I mean, most people have dreams, but this other stuff seems crazy. Most people believe street people like VJ are insane, because they dress weird or they’re dirty or they mumble to themselves, but I’ve found them to be just like anybody else. I don’t want him thinking I’ve flipped.
He starts humming the Burger Land theme song. “You deserve a dream today,” he sings. I pour him some more coffee. A wind blows the back door shut with a loud squeak and rain splatters against the roof. “How come you don’t have Burger Land dreams?”
That’s scary that he would ask that, because Burger Land is part of what I can’t tell him about. So I say, “You don’t dream what you do. You dream what you want.”
“Exactly.”
“You think I want to kill myself and make love to a woman who looks like my wife but isn’t anatomically correct?”
“Maybe. What do you want?”
I think about Howard Fisk.
Howard Fisk took the night managing job when Mr. White promoted me. The night job is really a split shift and I was glad to give it up. Howard Fisk comes in every morning at nine and inventories produce. Takes an hour. Then we have a meeting and I go over the last night’s receipts with him and he takes the money to the bank. Sometimes he has to exchange cash for change and he brings that back. At four he comes in, eats dinner and starts his shift at four-thirty. I don’t know what he does in the middle of the day.
“Why aren’t our dinners bigger, Howard?” I asked once.
“The kids work hard.” He wouldn’t look up at me.