“A stick?” Heck asked.

“Yeah, you know, a fucking stick.” Fat Ernst shrugged. “Now, I know that it’s Pearl’s arm, and I don’t wanna know why she’s pointing this at Harry. See, I was ready to start pounding on the damn horn, get ’em moving out of the way so I can get to work, but lemme tell you, I saw that goddamn bony arm and I froze. Harry, he sees this stick being jabbed at him, he changes his tune real quick. He takes off, doesn’t look at me, doesn’t wave, nothing. I don’t know what the hell happened there, and like I said, I don’t wanna know. All I know is that a couple of days later, Harry is in the hospital.”

Fat Ernst lowered his voice. “I heard from Ray later that Harry couldn’t keep anything in him. Nothing. He’d eat and eat and eat, but it would just run right through him. I mean, didn’t take but ten, fifteen minutes. You could even see that he liked his steak rare. Like shit through a goddamn goose. Spent two days in the john before his wife called the ambulance. Doctors never did figure it out. He died four or five days later. Anything they put in him, any food, any liquids, any injections or anything, just kept leaking out of his ass.” He nodded, staring at us. “Like I said, that Pearl isn’t a woman you fuck with. No, sir. She’s got … she can do things, and that’s a good enough excuse for me to stay the hell away from her.”

CHAPTER 17

Slim came in around noon, shaking rainwater off his hat and stomping mud all over the place. I silently ground my teeth and had a nightmarish flash that I would be working at Fat Ernst’s until I was an old man, still mopping that goddamn floor while a steady stream of guys in muddy boots kept wandering in and out. Before the door had even closed, I threw the dirty rag in my gray bin and was heading for the kitchen to grab the mop.

“Afternoon, Slim.” Fat Ernst said, tearing his gaze away from the television. “How you doing?”

Slim nodded at Fat Ernst and stiffly eased himself down at the bar, setting his hat on the stool between him and Heck. Heck sat slumped over on his stool and stared at his drink. Slim rubbed his eyes tiredly. “Wife’s off taking care of the sister-in-law, so I’ll take one of those cheeseburgers if you got any left.”

“That’s something we always got plenty of. Just picked up some this morning, as a matter of fact,” Fat Ernst rumbled enthusiastically. “Hey,” he said sharply as I reached the kitchen doors. “Fix Slim up a cheeseburger. You know how he likes it.”

“Make sure those fries are extra crispy,” Slim said, still massaging his forehead. He stopped for a second to point at me and said, “And plenty of onions.”

I nodded, surprised that Fat Ernst didn’t want me to mop the floor immediately. I ducked into the kitchen, set the bin on the counter next to the sink, and washed my hands. Cooking wasn’t much of an art at Fat Ernst’s, despite what he liked to tell people. Food was either fried on the griddle or boiled in oil. That was it. I opened the fridge and surveyed the contents as I dried my hands. Two Popov Vodka cardboard boxes were sitting on the top shelf. They were new, so I peered inside. In the first box, I could see the meat that Fat Ernst had just bought, wrapped in butcher paper. Words like “Flank” and “Sirloin” and “Rump Roast” were scrawled across the white paper in black grease pencil. The second box held the hamburgers.

Fat Ernst took a lot of pride in his burgers. He made them about once a week, placing the raw patties in a box lined with aluminum foil so all he had to do was slap those suckers on the grill. He’d dump the ground beef in a large mixing bowl, adding ingredients like bread crumbs, garlic, a couple of eggs, some finely chopped onions, a little barbecue sauce, and maybe a few spices if he had any. All that would get churned together, and then he’d form the patties.

I made sure the stove was on and dropped a burger on the long, flat griddle, where it started sizzling immediately. Then I grabbed a bag of frozen french fries from the freezer and dumped them in a pot of oil on the top of the stove. And that was it.

Slim came in only about every two or three weeks, but he ordered the same thing every time. Cheeseburger. American cheese. With bacon. We didn’t have any bacon this time, so I didn’t worry about it. Plenty of ketchup. Mayonnaise on the buns, not on the meat itself. Just a touch of mustard. Tomatoes. Four sweet pickles. Lettuce. Relish. Onions—lots and lots of onions. You couldn’t put too many onions on Slim’s cheeseburger. Once, when he told me, “and I mean aton of onions” and shook his finger at me for about the hundredth time, I piled damn near an entire red onion on that cheeseburger. There was more onion than meat on it. I leaned up against the door, listening. I heard Slim tell Fat Ernst, “Kid finally got it right with the onions. You give him this,” and I heard something dry slide across the bar.

I never saw a tip the whole time I worked for Fat Ernst.

I flipped the burger over and grabbed the bag of hamburger buns and Grandma’s vegetables from the fridge. Fat Ernst had refused to pay for them because they were all smashed up, but he still wanted to use them. I cut up the onion and crushed tomato as best I could and prepped the buns. By then, the hamburger patty was nearly done so I dropped a slice of American cheese on it and collected the fries. They were crispy enough, I decided. I scraped the burger off the griddle and dropped it on the bun, piled everything up on top of it, dumped the fries on the plate and carried it out to Slim.

“’Bout time,” Fat Ernst said, not taking his eyes off the television. As I set the plate down in front of Slim, Heck exploded in a fit of liquid coughing. He grabbed the edge of the bar to brace himself as his body shook and trembled.

“Goddamnit, Heck!” Fat Ernst barked, scowling as he wiped off his arm with a rag. Slim moved his plate over a little and took a bite out of his cheeseburger.

Heck shakily reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a pack of Marlboros. His eyes had narrowed into slits, his mouth hung open, and deep, guttural sounds bubbled underneath his rasping breath. He fumbled with the lighter and dropped it on the bar.

Slim snapped, “Do you mind? I’m trying to eat here and you gotta light up a cigarette. You want me to come over to your place and spit in your food when you’re trying to eat? It’s the same goddamn thing.” Slim shook his head and took another bite.

If Heck heard Slim, it didn’t look like it registered. It didn’t look like he was hearing much of anything, actually. He left the lighter on the bar and put the cigarette next to it. His fingers trembled.

I glanced up at the television. A guy in a garish sweater was standing in front of a satellite-fed weather map. A large swirl of white static loomed off the coast while the guy grinned like an idiot and swept his arm across northern California, demonstrating the path of the storm.

Heck grabbed his beer and tilted his head back.

“I’m goddamn sick of this fucking rain,” Fat Ernst told the television.

Slim nodded in agreement and crunched his onions.

Heck dropped his head back down, holding his beer out to the side. A thin rope of spit trailed out of his mouth to the bottle. As I watched, the rope broke and drool ran down Heck’s chin. It was clear at first, but as more drool slowly oozed out of the corner of Heck’s mouth, it got thicker and yellow. Then it got red.

“You feeling okay, Heck?” I asked.

Heck dropped the beer bottle and I heard it clunk and roll away on the wood floor.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Fat Ernst shouted at Heck. Fat Ernst turned to me, “Clean it up. Now.”

Heck started to shiver. He slipped off the back of his stool, swayed for a moment holding his potbelly, then lurched off toward the restroom. Fat Ernst shouted after him, “You better not make a mess this time, you old fart.”