vituperation

March 18, 2005

I pulled up to the window, first customer of the day, and stopped. Normally one wouldn’t find me at a fast food driveup — especially at 10:30 in the morning — but today’s Friday and I felt like a Backyard Burger.

Yeah, I did have one last week, too. You got a problem with that?

Inside, a young woman walked across the crew area to the window. She tried to open it, but couldn’t. She tried again, and again she got stymied. She stared at the window for a moment, then realized the security bar to keep people from breaking in was still keeping the window closed. She grabbed the bar and yanked.

Outside, I heard the glass rattle in its frame, but the security bar held. She yanked at it again. Denied. She tried to force the bar up, then down, but each time it moved less than an inch before locking tight.

She turned and called back into the bowels of Backyard Burger. A few seconds later another young woman came to the window. I watched surreptitiously, pretending not to, while she wrestled unsuccessfully with the security bar. After thirty seconds or so, she gave up and wandered off.

A third person, this one a young man, came to the window and tried to get the security bar out. He had the same level of success as the first two, but he took it a step further, going so far as to climb up into the windowsill to try and use his body weight to leverage the security bar out.

No such luck.

He grabbed the bar and shook it like a prisoner in jail in a bad movie. The bar held, mocking him with its devil-may-care attitude. He gave up and stepped away from the window.

Finally, it was time for the big guns, and someone called the manager over. He stepped up to the window, pushed the locking button on the side of the security bar, and pulled it out with two fingers.

I guess that’s why he’s the manager.

“Did you see the picture on that snake show? You could count the specks of dust on each scale!” I said, waxing poetic for the hundredth time about our new television. I put my hands under my head and stared up at the ceiling, my mind’s eye on the TV some twelve feet underneath me, just through the bed and the floor in the den below.

Robyn rolled onto her side and propped up on an elbow.

“Yes! I saw! I saw it every other goddamn time you brought it up, too. It’s awesome! Can we stop talking about it now?”

I turned my head, fixing her with a wounded look.

“I just like it,” I said in a small voice. “Sorry.”

We got out of the bed, our normal place for five or ten minutes after dinner each night, and I made my way downstairs to look at some more high-def animal shows, because Discovery HD Theater is the shit. Robyn stayed behind to fold some laundry.

I trod lightly on the stairs, thinking I might try to scare the spud, who was in the kitchen doing her after-dinner chores. Scaring the spud is one of my favorite pasttimes.

I rounded the newel post at ground level and found myself looking into a strange tableau.

The spud stood in the kitchen, facing me but with her head turned so she could watch the TV. Her right arm stretched out wide, the hand at the end of it resting on the counter. With her left hand, she held the arm-lever of the can opener. Next to her, the radio played some crappy bubblegum song that today’s kids love so much.

The spud dipped on one leg, like she was doing a half-plie in ballet class. When she did, she lifted the arm of the can opener, then lowered it as she straightened her leg back out. She banged her right hand on the counter.

As I watched, she performed the sequence a second time, then a third.

The spud was dancing with the can opener.

Fred Astaire had a coat rack…

Gene Kelly had an umbrella…

And the spud? She had a can opener.

Sweet fancy Moses, I thought, watching her shuck and jive from the darkened hallway. This reminds me of something, but I can’t quite put my finger on what it is.

Her head twisted to the music, and she caught sight of me. She yelped and clutched her hands to her chest, her face reddening.

“Don’t let me stop you, Mr. Baryshnikov,” I said, cackling.

“Who?”

Another fine wisecrack ruined by a meddling kid.