The Bialy Pimps (29 page)

As to the absence of intervention by the authorities, that was easily explainable. Army Ted had kept them away.

“I know guys at the police station and my wife knows most of the lawyers in town,” Army Ted explained, sipping his medium Diet Coke. “She’s president of the law association. Back when she was a model, she’d slipped and fallen on a runway that was greased with butter of all things, as part of some crap fashion show with a cooking theme. She’d broken an ankle. The show was here, in town, and because the show was a high-profile affair, dozens and dozens of lawyers had contacted her and tried to get her to sue the designer who’d set up the show. She told them all no, and said that it was a ridiculous idea. She said, ‘I was dumb enough to walk down a runway that had been greased with butter wearing high heels. I’m not going to try and get money out of someone because
I
was too dumb to refuse.’ And two years later, when she was back in town with her law degree, they all remembered her and that made her popular enough to be elected to the head of the association, and she told me, about you guys, that...”

Ted went on, explaining the lack of lawsuits, the lack of assault complaints, the lack of so much as a corporate shut-down from above. Philip and Slate scoffed. Rich giggled. Darcy shook her head. The Anarchist, Tracy, and Beckie pow-wowed over the T.I.U. official record book and made notes, trying to determine if it was true.

“Of course it’s not fucking true,” said the Anarchist.

“Ludicrous,” said Tracy.

“But he tells it so compellingly,” said Beckie.
 

But what alternative was there? The idea that Army Ted was a super crime fighter hero awesome radical federal spy agent was insane. The idea that people were simply too dumb or too lazy to complain was insane. You could flip a coin.
 

Only Jenny had a coherent thought on the matter.
 

“It’s going to be so goddamn funny when that guy gets hit by a COTA bus,” she said.
 

Regardless of the reason, the fact remained: Bingham’s was still standing. Wally blustered, but no closure came. Customers bitched, but nobody with authority came in to put an end to what they were bitching about. The lobby stayed mostly full. School was starting, new customers began to filter in, and many of them stayed and became regulars.

The crew had left the starting gate at a sprint, expecting to have a short run, and found that they were unprepared to face the extra time. The Anarchist had a solution. A plan was needed. If they were going to keep at this insanity, he said, it only made sense to go for the gusto.
 

The gusto project, which wrestling-loving Rich termed “Bingham’s Smackdown ‘98,” began with the installation of the vulture bar. The cost was low because Smooth B had questionable access to a load of lumber and because all of the labor, conducted after hours among clouds of marijuana smoke, was done by the employees themselves. Even Bricker attended, and the Anarchist began to call him “Boxer” which was not (as many assumed) a reference to Mike Tyson, but rather to the horse character in the George Orwell novel
Animal Farm
. Tireless and possessed of immense brute strength, the Anarchist saw in Bricker the unquestioning, unintelligent dedication of Orwell’s equine strongman, whose motto was “I will work harder.” While Bricker was strong, he was not unquestioning, not unintelligent, and not even very dedicated. He did not like to “work harder.” He did, however, understand the reference. He decided to ignore it and to settle for throwing nails at the Anarchist when he wasn’t looking.

When the vulture bar was completed, it worked exactly as the Anarchist had described weeks ago. When customers leaned over the counter, vulturing over their orders to the point of extreme irritation, the employees making the food used their abdomens to push against the protruding bar on their side, which caused a corresponding and hitherto-concealed bar on the other side to push the customers away. The rule was that the bar could only be used silently, without comment. You were not allowed to push people away with malice. You had to pretend you had no knowledge of what was happening on the other side of the counter, as customers floated backward, tripped, and fell.

“Why is that funny?” Philip asked.

“It’s random,” said the Anarchist.

“Exactly. And so why is it funny?”

“Because it’s random,” repeated the Anarchist.

“Where
is
that damn COTA bus?” Jenny pouted as Army Ted again crossed the street without bodily harm.

Within hours, naturally, the vulture bar sported several fliers that said
Math Tutor – #050 to 895 – 292-5040.
This was welcome, as it meant that the ecosystem had accepted it.

But best of all in the early weeks was the Ghost Employee.
 

The Ghost Employee, like most of the strangest ideas, was Tracy’s invention. The role was excitedly played by Dungeonmaster Eric, a slight, balding man with a curious gaze and an odd sense of humor. Eric didn’t work at Bingham’s anymore, but he, like most Bingham’s ex-employees, had never left entirely. Eric loved Bingham’s, and leapt at the opportunity to do his part for its evolution and/or annihilation.

Eric’s job as Ghost Employee was simple. He was to masquerade as a regular customer, and to stand in line with all of the others as if waiting for his food. Then, at a random moment, he would grab a Nerf bat and begin hitting people with it.

“Provo!” the Provo Girl shouted at Mike just before noon on an otherwise uneventful Friday.
 

“I keep telling you,” said Mike, “we do not have a cheese called ‘provo.’” He looked up and over her shoulder at Eric, who was three customers behind her. Eric looked totally innocuous. He gave himself away only to the trained eye by his lifted, evil eyebrow.
 

“I had it just last week! Provo cheese! Provolone!” the girl screeched.

“Which is it? Provo or provolone?” said Mike, unperturbed.

“YAAAAAA!” wailed Eric, exploding to life. He reached behind the corner table and grabbed the Nerf bat, which was gleaming white plastic wrapped with an ectoplasmic green foam. He drew back and whacked the Provo Girl resoundingly across the temples.

“Owww!” she wailed. She turned to Mike, who was ostensibly in charge here, for help. Mike, not a good actor, tried to look shocked and was only able to achieve a look that suggested that his bladder was full.

“YAAA!” Eric shouted again. Nobody was moving. Tracy had expected a room-clearing melee, but this would work too.
 

The Provo Girl grasped her head, her eyes wide in shock.

Eric dove into the part. He squatted like a hunting caveman and bared his teeth under a folded brow. He waggled his tongue crazily. He surveyed the turbulent scene for a second and then leapt gracelessly into the air with a high-pitched wail that immobilized his next victim – a woman in a pink pantsuit who was trying to creep away. Eric whapped her twice about the neck.

The customers in line began to break from their trances and look around like frightened birds. Some crouched and some watched the hooting maniac with a wary, frightened eye, praying that immobility might save them. A man with scraggly beaded mats of hair and patched bell-bottoms said, “Weak, man,” and shuffled for the door. Eric sprinted to the door ahead of him, to cut him off.

“Ooga!” Eric belched, poking him in the gut with the end of the Nerf bat. He squinted one eye down to a slit and stared wildly at him with the other.
 

The man crouched down, as if ready to play leapfrog. “It’s cool, man,” he said. “You’re cool. I respect our differences.”

“Ooo!” Eric grunted in his best Neanderthal. Then he leapt off of both legs at the same time, planted a hand on the man’s head, and valuted over his back. Eric pirouetted on landing, extending the bat and, as the man stood, struck him in the small of the back. The man curled around in surprise, uttering a grunt.
 

With another successful kill under his belt, Eric whooped back to the counter. Then without warning, he sprinted for the door, felling three more and knocking a bagel from the hands of a fourth. He was last seen running past the front window and down High with his hands waving over his head, screeching like a chimp.

“Wow,” said Beckie, peeking through the mail slot cut into the door in the counter. She was, as Tracy had suggested, crouching behind the counter, pretending to be surprised and frightened by the outburst. “He’s just
made
to do that, isn’t he?”

“What?” said Mike, who was still at the register, drinking a Snapple.

When Beckie stood back up, she saw that the store had cleared out completely. But they’d be back. They always came back.

With their lawyers.

But no, that never happened. That wasn’t
going to
happen, she told herself. Even though it
should
happen and even though it
would
happen if... you know... if Army Ted wasn’t keeping the authorities at bay.

As if to comfort her in her moment of trepidation – to assure her that some things were in fact constant in her rapidly evolving world – she realized that the lobby wasn’t completely empty after all. In the corner opposite the counter was a cloud of blue smoke, and in it sat Roger, the permafrown set on his lined face.
 

The cherry on his cigarette, tracing a hypnotic arc in the air as he tapped his foot slowly on the crossbar of the high chair, was like a metronome, counting off the seconds to some impending explosion. Beckie could feel it coming. She stared at Roger’s impassive, unnoticing face, the deep jowls at the corners of his mouth. She followed the bobbing cherry, waiting, and feeling each beat like a time bomb in her chest.

Tick, tock. Tick, tock.

Later that afternoon, Philip came back from the bank run and announced to Tracy, the Anarchist, and Darcy with a hint of pride that he had truly, completely hit rock bottom.
 

He had been walking down the street, his backpack on his back, the zippered bank bag buried at it’s bottom. A guy had stopped to ask him for directions to Bingham’s Bagel Deli, which he’d heard from a few people was kind of a crazy place. Philip had told him that it was indeed kind of a crazy place, that he was the manager, and that he strongly suggested the guy
not
go to Bingham’s right now because it had just emptied out and the employees tended to hate the first customer to arrive after a lull because that customer made them stop reading, stop goofing off, and start doing work. And oh, did they hate doing work, so who knew what they’d do to that first customer?

They’re your employees and you’re telling me this?
the man had asked.
 

It only seems fair to warn you,
Philip had said, and then had wished the man good luck if he decided to go. He warned the man to watch out for anyone looking to glue shit to him.
 

Philip had then turned to walk away. He’d only taken two steps when his drinking binge from the previous night had caught up with him all at once, within the span of one or two seconds, and he’d leapt for the closest receptacle he saw, which did, luckily, happen to be an actual trash can instead of some lady’s purse, and he’d heaved until the nastiness was out, and then he’d wiped his mouth without shame and walked on, and then, after a few more steps, he’d thought to look back and there had been the man who’d asked for directions, who’d seen it all.

“So much for our five-star rating,” he told Tracy, Darcy, and the Anarchist. “I hope that guy’s not a restaurant critic.”

With that, Philip announced that he had a turd “playing turtle” and was going to head to the bathroom to force it to make up it’s mind.

The man must have been scared off, because bank runs took a good fifteen minutes and Philip had run into him on the outbound trip, and the store had remained empty. Blissful. Beautiful.

Tracy soaked it in. Forget beaches at twilight.
This
was bliss. An empty store, an irresponsible and disgusting boss, fun co-workers, and a good book. As fun as the place had been lately with all of the new policies, it was still best like this: empty, quiet, and... and normal.

The Anarchist broke Tracy’s reverie by walking out from the back room with a huge canvas fire hose.
 

“I love the lulls,” he said, not explaining the hose.

“Yeah,” said Tracy, deciding to ignore the hose. Maybe it would go away.

“It would be so great if places like this didn’t require customers,” said the Anarchist. “Why can’t someone invent a chain of restaurants where the doors are always locked? I’d work there forever. Yessir, give me a shift with no customers and I’d be the best worker ever.”

“So you’d... what? ... just clean for your entire shift?”

“Clean?” said the Anarchist.

Something moved in the corner of Tracy’s eye. At the front. And with it came an instinctual feeling of danger. He told himself:
Don’t look. Don’t make eye contact.

The Anarchist saw it too. He sat down, lowered his head, and watched the door with his peripheral vision.
 

There was a dumpy-looking couple walking slowly by the front window. As Tracy and the Anarchist watched/didn’t watch, the two people turned toward the door. They didn’t advance and they didn’t walk on. They were talking to each other. Contemplating.
 

One turned to the other and said something. The other shrugged and said something back. The first said something else and gestured first at the door and then down the street.

“Don’t look now, but...” said the Anarchist.

“I see it,” Tracy answered, his eyes on his book.

“Go away... go away...” the Anarchist whispered.

The couple had moved away from the door and were now looking at the giant menu that was adhered face-out on the window.

“Shit!” hissed the Anarchist. “Beckie forgot to take the menu down!”

Even with the craziness lately, evasion was necessary, because nobody wanted to have to work.