Waylaid by Ed Lin Read Free Book Online Page B

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    I was thinking hard about her while I was scrubbing away at the crusted grill. I’m not sure when the burger stand was last open, but they hadn’t cleaned up before closing. Someone had left behind a portable stereo. The radio didn’t work, but there was a tape in it, The Byrds’ Greatest Hits. After hearing “Mr. Tambourine Man” for the fourth time, I took out the tape and destroyed it with a milk crate.
    A discolored sheet of paper taped by the light switch gave directions on how to clean the grill. Who knew there were so many steps to cleaning a grill? I rubbed the grill with Brillo pads and a porous brick that smelled like a bad fart as it wore down. I scraped all the solids off the grill with a spatula. Then I paper-toweled a layer of oil over the cleaned surface.
    I dragged all the hotel supplies into a corner and threw a sheet over them, so no one would notice. The four flimsy tables seemed to be made from artificial Christmas tree bases and were so scummy, I didn’t want to go over them with a sponge. That would have taken hours. Instead, I pulled them outside and sprayed them down with the pool hose. It took a whole week to get that place ready, and the heavy cleanser fumes killed a lot of my common sense.
    By the time we opened, most of the kitchen was still pretty raunchy, but everything the customers could see looked clean. After I wiped down the fluorescent lights, the counter shone like a shelf in K-Mart after the blue-light special sold out.
    The menu, spelled out in white plastic letters on a Pepsi sign board, read: “BURGER $1.50 CHEESEBURGER $1.75 FRIES $1.25.” There was only one 5, so the other two were S’s. Everything was 25 cents cheaper than the Barnhouse. We didn’t sell any drinks, because the soda machines were right outside.
    A rack of snack chips sat by the cash machine. Each dinky bag of Fritos, Ruffles, Lays, and Doritos was marked “NOT FOR INDIVIDUAL SALE,” but I went over them with a thick black laundry marker. I had bought three six-pack Snax Pax for 99 cents each and now each bag was priced at 60 cents.
    With only three things on the menu — really only two,
    â€” it would be pretty hard to fuck things up, even for a wannabe high-school dropout and a 12-year-old boy. My parents had checked to see if there was a minimum age for working a grill or deep fryer. There wasn’t any if an adult was present. My father was officially down as the supervisor on duty, but how he was supervising from his workshop almost a quarter of a mile away was beyond me. If the burger stand went up in a mushroom cloud, would he run to get there before the cops and pretend he’d been there the entire time?
    That first day, I was wondering how we would get away with charging 25 cents for a slice of cheese when Anne-Marie walked in. She was wearing shorts and a white tanktop. I thought all her curves were a little soft, but in the right places.
    Because there were no customers to serve, I constantly found Anne-Marie bending over the counter, leaning on the rack of the grill, or slouching over a few boxes. She’d brush her hair behind her ears and turn to face me, smiling — a basic pose from the porn magazines. My body couldn’t help but respond.
    â€œOh, Jesus, what’s this?” she asked, rubbing my cock under my corduroy shorts. “How old are you?” Her hand hadn’t left my lump.
    â€œI’m 12,” I gulped. We’d been working less than an hour together. It was all unfolding like a letter to Hustler, where women always made the first move. I put my hands on her ass.
    â€œI’m impressed,” Anne-Marie said, letting her fingers slide off and slipping her body out of my grip. I took a deep breath and felt my head throb. Then I swallowed the wrong way and coughed.
    The place was still empty. Two people had stopped in earlier, but they’d only wanted change for the soda machines.