Читать книгу Flushboy - Stephen Graham Jones - Страница 8

I come on at four, right after school, and tie my apron and lower my hairnet and get my goggles in place before rolling the gloves on. By the end of the night the pads of my fingers will be pruned from sweat, and the skin around my eyes will be clammy from the goggles—my dad says safety goggles would do the trick, but I prefer the seal of the swimming kind, thanks—and I’ll have earned between thirty and forty dollars of what, technically, should be gratuity. I know better, though.

It’s shame.

I probably wouldn’t care about my fifty-one other cents either. If it was even policy that employees could roll through the drive-through like a normal person.

We’re not supposed to handle family either, but that’s not so much an issue: I don’t have any brothers or sisters, and, my mom, I don’t know what I’d ever do if she ever came through. Probably kill myself. Will an aneurysm. Choke on my fist.

The girl who works the day shift, Tandy, she has five older brothers.

For the first few weeks we were open, when the news trucks were here every day to document the process, the phenomenon, her brothers were in line each lunch hour, just to razz her. Make her do her job.

Because it looks good on the six o’clock broadcast to have cars stacked in the drive-through, my dad looked the other way.

I assume that, anyway.

There has to be some reason he’d let policy slide for her and then jam me up for not washing my hands.

And before you ask, no, she’s not the cheerleader/yoga type, Tandy. But then I’m not forty-four either, I suppose. Or a dad. On a black-and-white monitor, sitting primly on a toilet in a unisex bathroom, maybe she’s every bit the cover girl. Or close enough.

Except—if the camera was actually aimed at the toilet, either head-on or from the top, then I’d have been busted for not washing my hands and for cigarettes. Unless my dad’s letting them slide for some reason. And he doesn’t let anything slide.

Five hours, I tell myself. Five hours then I can hand the keys to Roy, the night guy, the one who has to deal with the people weaving home from bars, who think our place is the logical halfway point to the drive-through wedding chapel they’ve always known was at the end of this road they’re on.

The novelty’s a big part of our draw, I know.

It doesn’t make it any easier.