Flushboy. Stephen Graham JonesЧитать онлайн книгу.
That the words have just been programmed into me; that his wheels on our comes around’s—the track’s painted yellow, even has one corner where my dad tried to stencil in bricks—that his wheels have activated my start button, my sales routine.
“A curtain?” the man stammers into his steering wheel.
I could be cruel here. If I make him wait, there’s always the chance he’ll wet himself.
Except I’ve made a customer service pledge, and am already on tape for not washing my hands.
I shape my mouth into a tolerant grin and show the guy the velcro at the top of the curtain, fix it to the fake headliner above me: a demonstration of what he can have for just an extra seventy-five cents. Nothing really, considering.
He nods and I pass it over.
“Gloves?” I say then.
They’re in a tissue box like emergency rooms have. I hold them out the window.
“How much?”
“No charge, sir. We believe in hygiene.”
He takes one, starts to take another, but I’ve already drawn the box inside the window again.
“Just one, sir, so we can keep this part of your experience with us free. If you want your own box for the car, however, for your next visit, you can—”
I don’t get the eight-dollar box quite hoisted up into view before he’s stammering.
“Left or right?”
“Either, both,” I tell him, “whichever feels natural. And, in case of accidents—overspray’s the industry term—you can have one of these windshield and dash wipes for twenty-five cents.”
He takes two, is studying the leather interior of his car in a new way now.
The wipes were my mom’s idea.
“What else do I need?” he says meekly.
He’s exactly the consumer my father dreams about.
I hate it, but this probably is going to go nationwide. It probably is going to pay for my college.
God.
Next is the male lap-protector ($.49), which is just a round piece of hospital paper two feet across, with a hole in the middle—“for that extra layer of security”—and after that is the molded sponges my dad buys in bulk from the truck stop ($4.00/each or 2 for $7.00!), “for emergencies on the road or in the opera house,” and after that, the guy’s eyes already starting to yellow, an overflow canister “just in case” ($1.00 if used, $.25 if not), the packet of informational brochures, which includes our FM broadcast station numbers and a window decal, and then I’ve stepped off the button and he’s easing forward, past the window, and I’m looking politely away, jangling the keys he wasn’t aware he was going to have to leave with me, for collateral.
Not that drive-offs have been much of a problem yet—my dad says it’s because of the “social contract”—but we’d probably be liable in some way if we were to give customers the opportunity to pee into a bottle with one hand and try to drive with the other.
I’m waiting when the carwalk delivers the guy up to the second window. It’s been exactly fifty-two seconds: enough time to fill the bottle, shake off, and zip up.
Not that we’re supposed to look anywhere but at the roof of their car.
He passes me the warm John and I mumble the total, push the stainless steel tray out. He fills it with whatever, I don’t even look.
Aside from the smell of urine, the air of his car is thick with our FM broadcast. It’s the sounds of burbling water. One of the early newspaper articles dubbed our station “KPEE”; it’s part of our decal now.
I pull the money in, push his keys back out, and we’re done.
All of us, I mean. People in general.
4.
In the downtime between customers, the suggested duties of drive-through personnel is to:
a) prepare more brochure packets
b) sort through the customer satisfaction cards and mark for action any that need action
c) restock the Upsale items
What I do is go back to the tanks and smoke a cigarette, one glove off, my goggles pushed up to my forehead.
There are probably cameras here as well, but screw it.
If I had my cell on me I could call Prudence, my girlfriend since sixth grade, but something about being so close to my dad’s shop-made FM transmitter doesn’t allow any signal to get through. Either that or there’s so many news satellites trained on us that the bandwidth’s all cluttered with attention.
Behind the tanks, like she’s asking to be caught, are Tandy’s cigarette butts. I usually sweep them up for her. Not because it’s a safety hazard—I’m pretty sure that five hundred gallons of urine are only psychologically combustible—but because I could get blamed for them, have to do another Sunday school walk of shame or something.
When I see her, trading off shifts, we don’t say anything, because there’s nothing to say. We know where we are, we know what we do. On Saturday, the one day we each have off per week, should we ever be under the same food court or lobby or department store security camera, and somebody’s watching us on that closed-circuit feed, we’ll stand out, I know: the slumped shoulders, the slack face, the vacant, war-torn stare, like we’ve seen too much already. If ghosts could walk and mumble and wear clothes, that’s what we’d be, I think. The only place we wouldn’t stand out is the nursing home.
So, no, we don’t need to be reminded about this by ever talking to each other.
As far as Tandy knows, too—as far as I know she knows—the new Spanish/English signs in the bathroom about mandatory hygiene procedures are just one more of the suggestions my dad’s taken from his small businessman’s handbook.
In case you can’t read either Spanish or English, there’s a diagram as well, a stick-person me, who, after he doesn’t wash his hands, ends up outside the Hut, with X’s for eyes and wavy lines coming off his hands.
Whether Roy can read or has to follow the diagram, I have no idea.
Unlike Tandy and me, he enjoys the job, always shows up ten minutes early, his thermoses of coffee slung all over his body, a non-regulation bandanna tied around his head, low over his eyes.
Maybe this is what third-shift people are like.
My father used to check on him, I know, ease through the drive-through in some elaborate disguise, trying to trip Roy up, but one night after a three AM spot-check I found my dad in the kitchen, slamming one of his fake beers so fast it was spilling down his chest.
When he looked at me, his eyes were blown wide, his lower lip trembling.
I didn’t ask, don’t think he would have told me anyway.
After my cigarette—I balance the butt on the emergency flush plug of the first tank, because I’ll be back—I drape my right glove over my left shoulder and sort the day’s haul of customer satisfaction cards. They’re part of the packet of brochures we give. The customer can either drop them in the box bolted to the back of the building or they can mail them in.
Mixed in with the cards, like every time, are religious pamphlets and business cards.
At the bottom, though—at what would have been the top, before the box was emptied—are two tickets for the Bantams game tonight.
I look through my window, out at the city.
Chickenstein.
He was here.
Or she.
My hand shaking a little,