First Chapter - Fork You

The way he felt about her wasn’t out of the ordinary. In fact, it was pretty ordinary. The way you’d regard a partly sunny weather forecast, a decent novel or a comfy pair of jeans. But the minute she tied that black apron around her waist and stepped to the counter to confront the dinner rush, she became something else entirely: a goddess of epic proportions. The Mona Lisa of fast food, the Jezebel of the Dollar menu, the Madonna of super-sizing.

And from where he sat in the Drive-Thru window, Vince could watch her every move. “Hey Vicki.” He’d flash a pitiful grin, and pretend to slit his throat with a plastic fork. “Another Saturday, another shift.”

On a good night, she’d wave, sometimes smile and wave. But for the most part, Vicki wanted nothing to do with Vince. No one did. His misplaced sarcasm and general disdain for their job at Biggie Burger were off-putting enough. Then there was the greasy hair, the missing tooth, and the clothes: usually a worn black concert t-shirt, acid-washed jeans and a pair of low-top Converse All Stars, which everyone agreed were Vince’s coolest quality.

“Tim, you bang that chick I saw you with last night?” Vince asked in between orders, slapping an imaginary ass in front of him, thrusting his pelvis into the air.

“She’s my sister asshole.” Tim, a middle-aged prep cook, was often the target of Vince’s taunting.

“Leave him alone Vince,” Sarah shouted from the deep frier, in a tone that implied she’d drop his balls in if he didn’t back off.

“What? Just having a little fun. You guys are a bunch of drips. Welcome to Biggie Burger, may I take your order?”

---

The thing is, Vince wasn’t always like that. He came from a nice family, and grew up spending summers at the Jersey Shore, where he and his mom would waste whole days building droopy sand castles and netting minnows in the sand bar shallows. He wore plaid bathing suits, washed his hands before dinner, and won his Boyscout Troop’s pinewood derby 3 years in a row. He sang in the Episcopalon Church Choir, rarely masterbated—even when he had the urge—and always made his bed.

That’s what he was doing the minute his mother told him the big news. “Sit down sweetheart.” She’d barged into his room, unable to contain her excitement.

“What it is, mom?” Vince new it had to be good. He hadn’t seen his mom this excited since his father finished the year as his firm’s number one insurance salesman, winning an all-expense paid cruise for two around the British Virgin Islands.

She kneeled in front of him, resting her hands on both his knees. “Okay, you know how your dad and I have been fighting lately?”

“No,” Vince was being honest. He was largely unaware of the bickering, of the wedge that had developed between his mom and dad.

“Okay, well…” She paused, staring briefly at the glow in the dark stars on Vince’s ceiling, admiring the way he’d painstakingly recreated so many major constellations: the big and little dipper, Sagitarius, the Archer, even Scorpio.

“Mom!”

”Oh, sorry honey. Your father and I are going to have another baby.” She patted his knees. “Isn’t that the greatest news?”

“Ahhhhhm…” Vince looked at his mother. He really looked at her, amazed he’d never noticed how the mole above her nose looked like a third eye. “Didn’t you just say you’ve been fighting?” He, like most normal people, failed to see the connection.

“Yes,” She stood up, straightening her plaid skirt. “But, what we need is another child, something to bring us together, you know?”

“Okay.”

“Everyone’s doing it.” Mrs. Sullivan smiled, as if convincing herself.

“Who?” Vince wasn’t as easily swayed.

His mother went on to list a few families in the neighborhood who had children—others who opted for dogs and cats—in an effort to bridge “very natural gaps in their marriage.” She smiled the entire time, like a president delivering an upbeat pitch for a war in which thousands of young men and women will surely die. “What do you think?”

Vince realized she very much wanted his approval, and he wasn’t about to deny her this simple pleasure. He wasn’t the type of kid to put himself before anyone else, certainly not his mother. He created a quicklist of “pros” in his head to help his response seem believable: a little brother or sister, someone to play with, someone to mentor, someone to blame. “I was hoping you guys might come around.” He returned her smile. “I’ve always wanted to be a big brother.”

“Oh Vince, you don’t know how much this means to me, to hear you say that.” She kissed him on his cheek, which was sporting a few sprigs of teenage facial hair.

“I do mom, I do.” He grabbed her hand.

---

Each employee at Biggie Burger received one meal per shift, on the house. If they wanted an extra French fry, some onion rings or another apple pie, they had to pay for it. And the inventory system was maniacal, down to the last ketchup packet, or bendy straw. The “three strikes” policy kept everyone in line. Everyone except Vince. He figured out a way to beat the system. No surprise there. He was helping to unload boxes of frozen hamburger patties and fish filets when he found the loophole. It lassoed him like a golden fucking rope at a rodeo. His hands were moist from the condensation on the boxes. One slipped and fell off the loading dock, rolling out of sight. “Dammit.”

“Watch your fucking mouth Vince. What is it?” The night manager asked, pushing through the hanging plastic flaps separating the loading dock from the cavernous walk-in cooler.

Vince, who already had two strikes against him, opted for an alternate version of the truth. “Nothing, just a bee.” He swatted at the air in front of him.

“You allergic?”

“No, just annoyed.” Vince reached for another box.

“You need the EPI-pin? There’s one in the first aid kit.”

“I’m fine Tom.”

“I saw Pulp Fiction, I could jam it in your heart if I had to.” He imitated the movement, raising his arms above his head and slamming them down.

“Dude, I’m fine. It was just a fucking yellowjacket.”

“I thought you said it was a bee.” Tom reached for another box off the truck.

“Same thing man.” Vince wanted to smash his box over Tom’s head.

“No way man. The yellowjacket doesn’t have a honeycomb nest, and they can’t survive the winter. Pussies.”

“Maybe it was a fly, I don’t know Tom. Let’s just finish this shit so I can have a smoke.”

“Alright, relax.” Tom counted the rest of the boxes. “We’ve got to scan these bitches once we get them in the walk-in. If they’re not scanned, they’re not here.”

“What?” Vince asked.

Tom told him again, “We’ve got to scan the boxes to get them in the system. Otherwise we wouldn’t be able to keep track of it all.” He looked at Vince. “What, you think some magical fucking fairy keeps track of the all the fries you eat?”

“I didn’t know. Chill out Tom.” Vince picked up three boxes and pushed through the hanging plastic flaps, smiling to himself.

---

Vince made sure he was scheduled to work every Thursday night, when the weekly deliveries came in. “Hey Charlie, how’s tricks?” He knew all the drivers, and often hooked them up with freshly rolled joints or free lapdance coupons from his buddies strip club. “How was your brother’s bachelor party? You tell Skip I fucking sent you guys?”
“Hell yes, that place is a sack of motherfucking gold my man.”
Vince taught all the drivers the Biggie Burger underground employee handshake, which involved a series of high fives and finger snaps, but ended with each shaker stuffing an imaginary burger in his mouth before pretending to heave all over the place.
As soon as the driver passed through the plastic curtains, Vince started tossing boxes from the back of the truck into the nearby dumpster. At the last quarterly sales meeting, he’d conveniently recommended a second dumpster be placed next to the loading dock: “To fucking prevent me from getting a hernia dragging those Godammed trash bags of filth to the other side of the parking lot.”
“Okay Vince, calm down.” The regional manager stuttered, as he tried to ease the crowd of employees who clearly wanted to toss him into a wood-chipper and call it a day.

On a good night, Vince was able to pilfer a half a dozen boxes from the truck: hamburger patties, egg and cheese croissants, chicken nugget clusters, French fries, onion rings, corn dogs, fish filets and sticks. He’d wait until his shift was over, and everyone had gone for the night, before retrieving his cardboard treasures from the dumpster. He’d stack the boxes on the loading dock, slide the dolly carefully underneath—often using a soft hip-check to wedge the base securely below the bottom box—then wheel his loot through the plastic flaps, down the hallway, past the bathroom, down the basement steps to the original walk-in cooler.

This sprawling antique beast was larger then most New York City apartments, but had been abandoned by the Biggie Burger, in favor of the new first floor unit, which ran twice the BTUs at half the energy costs. The fact that the old cooler still huffed electricity like an overweight mechanical bull to keep it’s empty contents refrigerated night and day reminded Vince that the world was not perfect; that good intentions did not always translate into good moves. This oversight, however, really worked to his advantage. Vince stacked his boxes of food in the farthest corner of the cooler, covering them with discarded promotional items, including inflatable hot dogs, new product banners and several life-size cardboard replicas of the Biggie Burger’s founder, John “Meat” Malone. The rotund entrepreneur had struck gold in the eighties with his small chain of burger joints. His claim to fame was not the food—most of which tasted like Styrofoam—but the wide variety of secret sauces customers could order up to fool their taste buds: there was Rancholio, a combination of ranch style dressing, herbs, and extra virgin olive oil; Moscowi, a bizarre mixture of Russian dressing and wasabi paste; Salsurprise, which the employees made on-site by mixing bulk tubs of salsa with black peppercorns, chopped onions and fresh cilantro; and the crowd favorite, Ketchup-a-notch, a blend of discount ketchup and tobassco. The flat cardboard statues of Meat Malone had their arms outstretched, like Jesus welcoming followers to break bread, or in this case, chicken nugget clusters and twice-hydrogenated apple pies. Vince stood the last cardboard figure up on its base, then kicked Meat Malone in the balls, knocking him back into the pile that now completely covered his surplus of stolen food.

---

The lunch shift was Vince’s least favorite, long before he got his front tooth knocked out by an elderly customer’s cane. It was the busiest time of the day, wrought with throngs of smiling white-collar workers, less-pleased, but equally as hungry blue collar crews; plumbers, landscapers and painters, and the dreaded field trip school bus, little league team or church troop. On the fateful day Vince said goodbye to his left front tooth, he was particularly fed up with work—with customers’ inability to get their orders right the first time, with the soda machine that always overflowed, with the rolls of quarters he could never break open. He was trying to close out his register, which was short $10, when his nemesis hobbled towards him. As the woman approached and began to speak, her upper dentures dropped out of her mouth, onto the counter. In an effort to stay the course, she continued to mumble through her order. Unfortunately, Vince couldn’t understand a single word she was saying. He knocked her dentures back across the counter with his elbow. “Ma’am, can you please put your teeth back in. I can’t understand what you’re saying?”

Her eyes narrowed, like he’d just called her a useless old bag.

“Ma’am, your teeth.” Vince spoke louder the second time, and the other customers in line behind her stepped back, slightly repulsed.

She mumbled something else before popping the dentures back in her mouth. “Look you little son of a bitch.” She raised her cane in the air. “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re up to! One day you’ll lose your teeth too.”

Vince was noticeably flustered. He squeezed his left hand tightly around the yellow stress-ball, under his register. “Next in line please.”

“Excuse me?” the elderly woman leaned over the counter. “Where’s my food?”

“What food? I don’t even know what you ordered, or if you can chew it.” Vince smiled.

“Is there a problem here?” Jay, the brown-nosed lunch manager asked. He was the kinda guy who’d sell a friend to a hungry tribe of cannibals if it’d save his own hide.

“No problem Jay,” Vince’s fingers broke through the lining of the stress-ball, sending small rice-size pieces of plastic raining down on the floor.

“Really?” Jay asked, eyeing the shattered remnants of Vince’s patience piling up on the floor, around his feet.

“Really,” Vince smiled, releasing a slow exhale through his nose in an effort to calm down. During Biggie Burger orientation, all employees had to work with a Customer Service Coach, who impressed upon them the Meat Malone Mantra: “Don’t get Mad, Get Breathin’.” She presented tired anatomical diagrams along with a mountain of statistics reminding staffers that controlled breathing is the best way to “stay cool in a heated situation.”

“Are you the manager?” The old woman shouted.

“Yes ma’am, what seems to be the problem?” He smiled, pretending he was happy to help.

“Well, let’s see. Where to I begin.” She paused for effect. “Oh yeah, with this nitwit right here.” She pointed an arthritic finger at Vince.

“Me?” Vince was so angry, he thought he might blast off, right through the paneled ceiling, the steel beams, and the asphalt roof. He looked around the room, for something to focus on, and recalled the Stage 2 training technique for calming: “If the breathing doesn’t work, try to find something else to focus on: a cloud in the sky, a single square of ceramic tile, or a plant. Put all your energy into that object.” Vince scanned the room, he bounced from the napkin dispenser to a light switch, from the stack of used brown trays above the garbage can to a sprinkler head on the ceiling. Nothing seemed to stick. Then he turned and found Vicki standing at the next register. She smiled at him, and mouthed the words “chill out.” Vince stared into her green eyes. He let himself relax in her gaze. He watched her irises spin like hypnotic pinwheels, urging him to find peace on Earth. Then he accidentally shifted his focus to her breasts. It happened involuntarily, the way you might change gears in a standard car, step over a puddle or high-five a friend. But now he was stuck—Superglued to their spectacle. They taunted him from beneath her apron like a couple of ripe peaches. He tried to look away, but could not. He tried to close his eyes, but failed. He was mesmerized by their perfect symmetry, by their perkiness. He quickly began to feel his heart slowing down, his tensed fists, even his mind going slack. He could see the faintest outline of Vicki’s nipples beneath the crisp fabric, to the left and right of the Biggie Burger logo. Just as he was coming back down, through the asphalt roof, through the steal beams and the ceiling panels, Vicki walked over and slapped him across the face. “Pervert.”

“See what I mean,” the old woman squawked. “He’s the devil’s child, this one.”

“Ma’am,” Jay raised his hand to cut her off. “Can I please take your order?” He too was exasperated, and pleaded with her like a policeman trying to coax a kidnapper into releasing hostages after a long stand off.

Vince held his hand to his cheek, which burned with the passion of a woman scorned. The skin under his eye vibrated, his upper lip began to swell. He wished the pain would never stop. She had touched him. Vicki had touched him, hard. It was not a sign of affection, but it was a sign of hope. He turned to see her huddling with a few of the less attractive, less fiery employees. They giggled, and pointed at him, as Vicki re-enacted the scene. But no amount of mockery could knock Vince off his high horse. He felt alive for the first time in a long while.

“Vince!” Jay shouted. “Snap out of it.”

“Oh, hey.” Vince kept his hand to his cheek. “What is it?”

Jay stared at him, then extended his finger and pointed at the winding line that had piled up in front of Vince’s register. “You’re kidding, right?” Jay patted him on the shoulder.

Vince took a deep breath. But as Jay moved out of the way, he was again confronted by his elderly archrival. “Youuuuuuuuu.”

“That’s right sonny, I ain’t leaving without my nuggets and a vanilla shake.”

“I already rang her up,” Jay whispered behind Vince. “Just get her the food and get her the fuck out of here.”

“I heard that,” the woman yelled. “What are you gonna do to my food?”

“Nothing ma’am.” Jay smiled.

“Put it in a blender, so you can suck it through a straw.” Vince whispered to Jay as he walked towards the long diagonal metal racks where wrapped sandwiches waited patiently like orphans hoping the next family might take them home.

“Here you are ma’am.” Vince dropped the bright white bag in front of her. “Biggie Burger thanks you for your business.” He hated the required closing line, and thought Meat Malone wouldn’t lose any sleep if this woman never set foot in his restaurant again.

“Next in line please.” Vince actually leaned over the counter and pushed the woman gently out of the way.

She whacked his hand with her cane and in a startling gesture, swung at his head like a blindfolded child trying to split a piñata in half. Vince moved in time to miss the first blow, which landed on the register with a loud thud. But as he tried to back away, the tip of the woman’s wooden cane caught him square in the mouth, knocking his front left tooth onto the counter. It bounced three times and skidded to a stop, leaving a small trail of blood droplets behind. Vince could see his years of flossing and brushing as a kid paid off: the tooth literally sparkled on the silver finish of the steel countertop. The tooth’s life also flashed before his eyes: He remembered the summer it came in, enormous for his toddler mouth, like the kid who hits puberty at 10 and looks more like a teacher than a fellow student. He also recalled with poignant accuracy, the day Jennifer Dikstra called him “Horse Tooth” during recess in 2nd grade. All the other kids laughed, even Vince’s friends chuckled. Later that afternoon, Vince fastened his father’s power-sander to the vice in the garage, and bit down on the spinning heavy grit paper. This didn’t work out, or end well. The tooth was fine, but Vince spent the afternoon getting stitches in his upper lip and cheek. Eventually, as his other teeth came in, the horse tooth didn’t seem so out of place. Unfortunately for Vince, the nickname stuck—through elementary, middle, even high school. And occasionally, on the most unfortunate of days, some blast-from-the-past asshole would stumbled into Biggie Burger and launch into a glorious recollection of Vince and his oversized tooth.

“Hey Horsetooth, I didn’t know you worked here?” They’d always nudge some obscure friend or co-worker, as if to suggest that there is no statute of limitation for mocking someone’s childhood imperfections. “Remember that Christmas Becky Daugherty got you the Mr. Ed tee shirt. The one that talked.” They’d laugh. “Shit that was awesome. What’d he say? Oh yeah, ‘howdy folks, I’m Mr. Ed.’”

Vince felt the blood pooling in the bottom of his mouth, filling the empty space underneath his tongue. Jay handed him a stack of napkins, and reached for the tooth.

“Oh no you don’t,” the old bat croaked. “She snatched the tooth and backed away from the counter.

“Ma’am, please give me the tooth.” Jay rounded the counter and slipped through the saloon-style employee door after her.

Vince swallowed the blood in his mouth, pushing the salty swell down his throat with a sense of purpose. He calmly untied his apron and walked away from the register. He gave the girls around the deep-frier a close-lipped smile before dropping his apron in the swirling vat of partially-hydrogenated oils. He loped down the hall, past the towering stacks of to-go boxes, paper towels and 50-gallon drums of secret sauce. Vince opened the microwave, tossed his metal nametag on the middle of the rotating tray, then pressed the “defrost” button, slammed the door and walked out the service entrance into the parking lot. He was unlocking his car when the fire alarm went off, and he politely waved to the fire trucks that buzzed passed him as he shifted into 3rd, and lurched his Chevy Nova onto the Post Road and into the hot July evening.