Help Wanted

By Thomas Kearnes. Published on July 27, 2023.

     No one can go out after sunset. Don’t freak, Phillip says. I’m surprised no one told you. His fingers graze the small of my back. I’m the new girl, he’s the manager. Graveyard shift. He’s tall enough for me to nestle my head against the shaving rash on his throat. I won’t do this, of course. He has quite a beer gut, but I’m not sure that explains anything.

     At another Busy Burger, in Houston, twenty miles down the highway, a crew member smoked a cigarette. It was well past nightfall. He stood beside the store. No one inside saw a thing. Some fucker walked up and smashed his face with a wrench. He almost died, Phillip says. This fucker, I wonder why he bolted, but I don’t ask. I would’ve gazed upon that spattered blood, made it my fetish. Does Phillip know the word’s definition? What’s his fetish? Would he tell me, just us two in the storeroom, at some lonesome hour? I’m married. When a guy has no chance with you, though, not even the single you, it’s harmless to imagine how the scene might unspool.

     Anyway, no smoke breaks till sunrise. That’s seven hours from now. 

     Phillip is wearing a headset. In an instant, he stops talking to me and starts taking a drive-thru order. Would you like one of our all-time favorite sandwiches? No one calls them burgers. Goon and Gump, the cooks, stare out over the grill like gargoyles atop a roof. Melanie dumps a heap of frozen fries into the boiling grease. I’m at the register. 

     Rosemary, she’s leaning against the drive-thru window. She’s been here every night this week, same as me. She’s not friendly. She shoves the bagged burgers and fries into the idling cars. She never smiles. Phillip doesn’t say a word. Everyone else on graveyard jokes and fucks around, but Rosemary stands like her date never showed. She has a face like an ongoing argument: her nose disagrees with her chin, her lips find fault with her eyelids. Her feelings announce themselves like neon blinking in a storefront window.

     This is my fourth night here. When I’m not working, I lie in bed. I won’t go home. 

     It’s another half-hour till eleven, but the drunken hick wants the breakfast platter. He spits when he speaks. If I wipe my face, I’ll embarrass him. His belt is undone, a tin buckle shaped like Texas flops above his crotch. I tell him it’s not time for breakfast. Would he like one of our all-time favorite sandwiches? He looks at me like I stink. Slowly, he backs up. A skinny girl in hot pants and scuffed cowboy boots joins him. He bitches about our breakfast policy. The girl tries to console him. She wraps a bony arm around his shoulders. He shoves it away. He looks at me. Everyone else is busy or, at least, they seem so. Even Rosemary makes sullen small talk with the customer pulled up to her window.

     You bitches. He slurs his words. You think you deserve fifteen bucks an hour? Bullshit! He’s so wound up, the skinny girl has to restrain him before he tips over. She apologizes for him. I’m sure she’s had practice.

     By now, Phillip has returned to the front counter. He asks if he can help. The skinny girl politely says no. The hick lets her steer him toward the glass double doors. After a few awkward steps, he stops and bends over, arms braced against his knees. He vomits. First a little, then a lot. 

     Phillip doesn’t dally. He orders me to fetch the mop and bucket. They’re in the back. He makes sure I see how sorry he is, making me clean puke. As I walk through the kitchen, he zips toward the drive-thru. Rosemary is gone. No one knows where she went.

     The mop and bucket greet me in the storeroom. Whoever mopped last left the bucket filled with dirty water. I’m not mad. I’m hardly even here. Rosemary clears her throat. I’d missed her in the storeroom’s far corner, standing in the shadows. She holds a box of napkins, five paper-wrapped packages in all. She looks at me like I’m the only person she’s seen in ages.

     She asks me why I took this job.

     You look too smart, she says. Goon thinks you went to college. She doesn’t ask if it’s true.

     I hit a rough patch. That’s how I phrase it.

     She steps toward me, napkins held before her like pretty flowers. I’ll teach you to trip the alarm, she says. You can smoke. Just don’t get greedy.

     She isn’t done with me, I suspect. I tell her I have to go. I thank her for the tip. I promise that she can show me later how to trip the alarm.

     After I’m done mopping, I roll the bucket towards the storeroom. I use the mop, sunk in the nasty water, to steer. While I cleaned the floor, Melanie looked at me like she needed to talk. Her eyes darted back and forth, guilty. She hasn’t spoken to me once tonight. While I dump the filthy water in the back, she approaches me. She’s almost an albino. She even has colorless lashes. Only her bright blue eyes ruin the effect.

     She tells me to watch myself around Rosemary. Just because she can get away with certain things doesn’t mean we can. The pop and sizzle of the grease beckons from the front. Phillip probably dumped more fries in Melanie’s absence. Be nice to her, she says. She’s so tentative. She reminds me of Berlin.

     I am nice to her.

     No, she says, be nicer than your usual nice.

     She stares at me like she’s set forth a code, simple to crack. Behind me at the drive-thru window, Phillip and Rosemary are talking low. Their voices, though, are harsh and urgent. Rosemary is almost a foot shorter than him. Head tilted back, she wags her finger.  Phillip holds up his hands, maybe in surrender. They don’t notice me. Finally, Melanie jabs my side. When I face her, she vigorously shakes her head. She looks desperate. 

     I don’t like her. That’s my final decision. It’s a relief to pass judgment on a new acquaintance—you can finally stop thinking about her.

     Starting back, I see Goon staring at the grill, but it doesn’t register. I can tell—his eyes are milky and wide, useless. Gump gazes at the ceiling. I look up. There’s nothing there.

     To the right of the drive-thru, a bank of four black-and-white monitors flips among the various angles captured by the security cameras. We can see anyone approach at least thirty seconds before the double doors at the side of the building swing open. After the barflies depart, usually by three, there isn’t much to do. We stare at the monitors and wait for signs of life.

     It’s slow, so Melanie gets the axe. She says goodbye, but no one responds. This isn’t the sort of workplace where you’d take that personally. I always make sure to say hi at the start of my shift. Especially when I don’t want to.

     Goon and Gump man the grill. They’re either shy or retarded or stoned.  

     Phillip emerges from the back. He doesn’t even wait till he’s outside to light his cigarette. He apologizes. He sounds sincere. It’s not his fault the manager can break whatever rule he chooses. Kind of like Rosemary, if Melanie’s right. I catch her eye and bunch my brows in confusion. The double doors whisper shut behind Phillip. Rosemary simply lifts her head and glares at the monitors. Phillip appears on the lower right screen. He smokes in front of an overstuffed Dumpster.

     Rosemary sighs. That fucking douche, she says, has no spine and no guts. She glances at me over her shoulder. She’s not talking to herself. You’ll see, she promises.

     I ask why he didn’t use the back door. Surely, he knows how to trip the alarm.

     Because he’s a thoughtless tool, she says. She pauses, her features unreadable. I could show you something fucked up, she says, something obscene. She smiles, her eyes don’t. She’s wearing the headset now. She abruptly spins back to her station. Would you like one of our all-time favorite sandwiches?

* * * *

     I used to have a job I liked. Some days, I loved it. I proofread copy for an ad agency. I’d been with the boys for six years. Two or three wanted me naked. Bennett enjoyed teasing me about the lovesick Ivy-Leaguers who lusted after me. My husband liked that I was desired. Half the reason he married me was to disappoint those adoring men.

     Our home had one bedroom too many. There was a vast backyard that the junior-high kid next door clipped. Complete satisfaction with ourselves and our lives seemed ordained. I’ve never believed in guilt, certainly not over the comforts one has earned. When Bennett said he loved me, I said the same. Sometimes, I even said it first.

     I knew letting Berlin hole up in our rear cottage was a mistake. I think Bennett knew it, too, but the guilt I eluded without effort had besieged him like a summer cold.

     She was ten years younger than us. She should’ve been in college. She should’ve been scamming cocktails off horny frat boys. Instead, she rented a stream of Blu-rays from the Redbox outside the corner store. Bennett let her smoke indoors. He bought her groceries. 

     I couldn’t bring myself to hate her with abandon. Instead, I let it fester. It kept me company.

     Whenever I tried to make conversation, she talked around me. Once, a few days after she nested, I asked about her weekend, her last weekend before coming here. She kept focused on the flat-screen, told me she’d stepped quietly into her friend’s upstairs bedroom. She knew her friend smoked joints halfway then forgot about them. A party simmered below. Some beefy dude in a Texans jersey was fucking her friend on the daybed. Across from me, Berlin laughed softly. She was watching a sitcom with a sassy housekeeper. The beefy dude hadn’t bothered to undress. Her friend was unconscious, limp body jutting back and forth with the man’s thrusts. He was raping her? I asked the question with an edge in my tone. I wanted to be sure Berlin noted my contempt. She never said yes, Berlin replied. In his defense, she added, she never said no, either. Berlin watched the two fuck. Soft grunts from her friend, breathy gasps from the Texans fan. I decided to join them, she told me. She whipped off her t-shirt, her small, forgettable breasts just a foot from the beefy dude’s flushed face. He ignored her. After a while, Berlin screamed. She’s passed out! She might as well be dead! What about me? Right then, a sharp shudder signaled the beefy man was through. Finally, he noticed my husband’s sister, her woebegone tits. For fuck’s sake, he cried, cover up! Dumb fuckin’ slut…

     She looked at me, finally. The sassy housekeeper kept right on sassing. I think she wanted my insight. Instead, I made an excuse. Instead, I left the cottage.

     Bennett and I fought over his sister. We were screaming every night. All the while, Berlin chain-smoked and gaped at television. She wasn’t alive, I insisted. Not like us.

     I can’t toss her to the wolves. That’s how he phrased it. 

     That’s exactly what she wants you to think!

     I admired how she manipulated my husband while draped upon the couch. She’d pinpointed our weakness. His weakness, at least. I’d given up evicting her. 

     When I found her sprawled nude in the backyard, throat crudely slashed, I couldn’t elude the resentment. She got to check out when she fucking chose while I had nothing but the promise of another damn day. My life before Berlin was perfection. My life after perfection was Berlin.

     The cottage reeked of smoke. I had to hire professionals. There was no need for a funeral. 

     Bennett moved into the cottage. He swore it wasn’t meant as a rejection. He just needed to feel closer to her. I could’ve fought. I could’ve tried. Instead, I packed my bags and checked into a cheap motel. I could’ve afforded a nice one, but I believed shitty maid service and basic cable would keep me focused. Anything to eradicate Berlin’s ghost, more ambitious than her living self, from my belfry.

     I worried the boys at the agency might pity me. I could handle locker-room flirtations, but never closeout-bin compassion. I wanted a job that paid little and promised less. Busy Burger was on the same block as my motel. Help Wanted, the sign read. Reviewing my application, they asked when I could start. No interview. My nametag reminded me why I needed one. 

* * * *

     Rosemary instructs me to cover drive-thru for a moment. She disappears into the back, still wearing the headset. Only Goon and Gump remain.

     A Jeep pulls up beside the window. I’ve no idea if their food is ready. I ease out from their sightline. I’m terrible at this job. It hardly matters that I’m terrible. The driver punches his horn. It’s loud. It interrupts my soothing inner soliloquy, the one reminding me no one expects miracles from a burger-joint bitch. A dine-in customer enters, some rail-thin club kid with electric blue spiked hair and piercings wherever piercings are possible. His pupils are so wide that I fear falling into them. The kid’s card is declined. I glance at the monitors, wondering if Phillip is still smoking outside. I need him to void the sale.

     What I see instead appears on all four screens. The camera is angled on the Dumpster, again overstuffed. No Phillip. Something horrible is about to happen, and I’ll watch because horrible events need witnesses. On the monitors, a figure dressed in the Busy Burger uniform, bright yellow blouse and khaki slacks, hauls garbage to the Dumpster. She’s barely tall enough to tip the bag over the rim. As she turns to leave, the camera catches her face.

     It’s Rosemary.

     I watch her mosey through the parking lot. The flesh-and-blood Rosemary, however, stands at the drive-thru, having returned. Positioned below the monitors, she watches this recording of herself.

     A beefy Mexican tackles her. I gasp. I can’t recall from which side of the frame he lunged. Rosemary tries to fight. The monitors offer no sound, so I’m spared her cries for help. Minus volume, she appears to be having a seizure, and the Mexican is trying to restrain her. Her feet kick wildly, her fists beat his back. The Mexican surely has a name, but I doubt he told her.

     He’s raping her. No one’s stopping him. I wait for someone to save her. I’m still waiting when Phillip barges through the double doors. He’s not shocked, like me. Instead, he’s furious.

     Goddammit, he cries, how many more times can you watch that shit?

     The best and worst thing about Berlin’s rape anecdote was this: it only horrified me to the extent my imagination permitted. I could pretend it was some plainly simulated violation from a Lifetime weepie. I could pretend it was more devastating than a snuff film. I’ve never seen a snuff film, but the boys at the agency swear they exist. What was happening to Rosemary on the security video was utterly real and impossible to deny. I can’t help wondering how Berlin might’ve reacted had she stumbled upon this horror. Whenever I try to visualize the story she told while watching a bad sitcom, I can’t settle on a face for her friend. After all, I never met the girl. Whenever the events replay inside my head, my imagination simply refuses to focus on her face. From now on, though, I’m certain it will be Rosemary I imagine passed out and penetrated.

     She might as well be dead! What about me?

     Even as Phillip bellows, she maintains her poise. I thought, she says, the new girl should be fully aware of workplace dangers. She’s proud of herself. Back on the monitor, the Mexican has left. She rolls on her back in the parking lot, side to side, like she’s warming up for yoga.

     Phillip unleashes a string of vulgarities. He orders Rosemary into the manager’s office. I passed by the room my first night, expecting a swank and spacious haven. Instead, it’s scarcely deeper than a file cabinet. They don’t notice me trailing discreetly. The door slams behind them. Phillip shouts and grunts, Rosemary won’t respond. At least, I can’t hear her. He asks if she’d like to help find another damn cashier, assuming the security footage has driven me to desertion. Four in two months, he reminds her. If you’re trying to sabotage this store, forget it. I’ll risk a lawsuit first, he swears. Still, Rosemary says nothing.

     I finally hear a woman’s voice, but it’s at the front counter. Passing through the kitchen, I discover Goon embracing Gump. The latter may have been crying. It’s hard to tell with his face buried in Goon’s shoulder.

     The woman at the counter needs a large decaf. I tell her it will be five minutes. She glares at me like I’m dumb. The other girl always had my coffee ready to go, she says. I apologize. Give it another month, and I’ll be apologizing before I disappoint a customer. The other girl, she asks, what happened to her? I shrug. Probably the same thing that’ll happen to me, I tell her. The woman shakes her head and orders food.

     The shift’s final few hours pass in tense silence, interrupted only by customers and their bleary-eyed demands. Finally, the morning cashier blusters through the doors with only a minute to spare. She’s so damn happy, I want to pollute her mind. 

     When I clock out, boxes slam against a storeroom wall, startling me. I step into the doorway, peer into the darkness. The voice I hear congratulated me on joining the Busy Burger team just last week. I’ll never forget how his forced bonhomie brought me close to tears.

     Phillip insists I keep the lights off. I ask if he wants anything. Too damn much, he says. I ask if he needs anything. Never could answer that one, he says. I leave him, his self-loathing better company than I could offer. 

     The morning crew says goodbye to me, despite having said hello moments earlier. Gump and Goon are gone. A black girl with cornrows and a toned, tan college kid replace them. 

     The sun came up about an hour before my shift ended. Pinks and lavenders fade to a baby blue. It’s breezy, and I can’t light my cigarette. I quit six years ago, but I can’t imagine this version of myself minus a nod to the world of vice.

     I pass the Dumpster behind the store. No one calls Busy Burger a restaurant. This is where the horror happened. I stand where she lay during the attack. I’m so lost in my new, awful mash-up, made-up memory forever joining Berlin and Rosemary, that I miss the Monte Carlo behind me, crunching gravel beneath its wheels. 

     Rosemary honks her horn. The speakers crackle with a boy-band standard from two decades ago. I would’ve never pegged her as a Backstreet Boys fan. 

     What to say to her? I’ve never been raped. After thirty-one years on the planet, it’s likely I’m friends with at least a few from that evil club. I can’t be sure. No one tells me their secrets. My friendships are seldom complicated. We talk about bullshit. When I see a meme on Facebook about the value of true friendships, I share it on my wall. It seems like something those with actual friends might appreciate. I like the Facebook version of myself almost as much as I liked my actual self before Berlin arrived with her sob story. I haven’t ventured online since leaving Bennett. Too many questions, too much pity—even thoughtless wishes and prayers require cursory replies. I suspect I’d lack the energy to phone in the expected gratitude. 

     It’s much easier to just fucking disappear. 

     I don’t run from Rosemary, I walk. My motel is just a few parking lots away. She keeps pace with me, car rolling so slowly, I’m surprised it doesn’t stall.

     Do you want breakfast? She stops.

     I’m too tired. I just wanna sleep. 

     We’ll go to the other Busy Burger, she says. The one that doesn’t suck.

     She reaches over to unlock the passenger door. I haven’t moved toward her. She trusts that I’ll say yes. I want her confidence, but only if it comes packaged and postage paid.

     This Busy Burger, on the south side of town, feels so different. The décor is the same: orange, green and pink, glowing neon in the windows. The crew wears the same tragic slacks and bright yellow polo shirts. The heaviness that almost breaks me each night is absent. Folks enjoy their food, and the crew enjoys making it. I bet they don’t even care their wages condemn them to a life eked out from one paycheck to the next.

     I wish I could transfer. Rosemary laughs long and loud after muttering the wish. Maybe she was joking. I can’t match the merry glint in her eyes. She’s been violated in the most awful way, and everything else is bullshit. How did this happen to her? I must lift the veil and meet its gaze, whatever it may be, however repulsive. Does that desire make me a vulture? 

     This breakfast needs booze, she declares. She takes us home. Her home.

     I expect screaming children and a surly husband, but Rosemary lives alone. That’s the secret to a happy life, she says. Keep the overhead low. She keeps her vodka in the freezer. Perhaps it banters, too saucy for visitors to enjoy, with the carton of Rocky Road and the half-empty jar of salsa. The label reads MILD.

     As we drink, I do most of the talking. I tell her about my life before Busy Burger: Bennett, the agency, Berlin’s suicide. I can feel her coolly appraising me, like a jeweler inspecting a family stone. A couple of times, I imagine bursting into tears. I’m nowhere near that point, but I suspect most would weep a moment or two. It’s simple etiquette. She murmurs encouragement. If you need to cry, she says, cry. She reaches for my hand and lightly squeezes it. 

     You’re still here, sister-child.

     I swallow air, feel my face flush. I can’t meet her gaze. W-we still haven’t… I don’t know how to finish. We still haven’t talked about… I try again, fake a casual tone. I mean, I don’t know if you want to still talk about…

    Rosemary takes my other hand, now clasping both. It all started, she says, when lazy-ass Pedro didn’t dump the trash into the Dumpster.

     It was after dark, I say.

     The trash had to go somewhere.

     Someone could’ve escorted you. Isn’t that store policy?

     Yeah, but no one did.

     So, she goes on, the fucker caught me with my guard down. She releases my hands, rests her chin atop joined fingers. I don’t know which was worse: waiting for someone to rescue me or waiting for that fat bastard to finish fucking me. You can’t imagine, she says, how slowly time crawls with wetback cock shoved inside you, and your only hope is a hodgepodge of pussies.

     Why didn’t Phillip help? He’s a big guy.

     She smiles. Her lips and jaw tighten so quickly, I fear she’ll scream. Phillip couldn’t risk a second crew member, she says. He called the police. He did what the manual recommended. My co-workers said there was nothing they could do. 

     I can’t picture it. My imagination can’t conjure cowardice that extreme. Even Berlin had the courage to act on her horrid selfishness. I don’t admire the dead girl. I never did. It’s become obvious, however, my coworkers disgust me more.

     She tells me to finish my drink. I down it in one gulp. It burns in my chest. She tells me if she could relive that night, she wouldn’t change a moment.

     I wait for the punchline: no, she’s serious.

     She sips her vodka. How many people, she asks, can truly say they’ve survived the worst?

     Worst what?

     Worst anything. You think if Melanie got jumped, there’d be anything left but white hair?

     She’s right. I think about Berlin, submerged in a wash of fantasy and celluloid. She didn’t leave a note. I try not to guess her motives. It’s easier to hate a woman when you don’t know the many ways she disappoints herself.

     You, girl, you’re like me.

     My eyes narrow. My mouth twists.

     You can survive whatever life brings. I could tell on your first night. Again, she has my hands clasped between hers. She leans back. She has a beautiful smile, full of hope. I’m baffled all this warmth welcomes me. I don’t deserve it, but I don’t refuse it.

     You’re doing it right now, she promises.

     What?

     Surviving. I know what the word means, of course. I haven’t a clue, though, what it means to her. The rest of our conversation is comprised of hushed confessions and the urge to weep. I keep myself composed, however, because I’m not sure how she’ll react. Like Rosemary, a lot of women promise sympathy.

     A half-hour later, Rosemary drops me at my motel. I offer her my cheek. Her lip gloss is sticky. She says she’ll see me tomorrow night. It’s a varsity game, she says, we’ll get slammed for sure. I thank her for breakfast. I wave as she leaves. I don’t stop until I lose sight of the car. 

     I’ll never see her again. She saw something deep inside me. If I return for my next shift, she’ll no doubt see it again. One day, I might see it. And I won’t ever look away. I have no doubt this quality, whatever its name and wherever it resides, is stunning to behold. I mourn it while shivering outside the motel. I mourn it like my husband mourns his sister.

     She might as well be dead! What about me?

     The boys at the agency would scamper over hot coals to get me back. As for home, as for Bennett, I find myself at a loss. My husband needs to finish grieving. I will not watch that. He’ll wonder why I don’t. Berlin tried to seduce a rapist, I might tell him. She couldn’t even wait until he was done defiling her friend.

     She wouldn’t have survived in our cottage, no matter what my husband and I did. She wouldn’t survive in a convent. She wouldn’t survive in a classroom or a coatroom or a carousel. She wouldn’t survive on a fucking cloud

     I will. Any misfortune, any nightfall. I’m doing it right now. 

Thomas Kearnes is the Lambda-nominated author of two collections, Texas Crude and Death by Misadventure. His recent appearances include Bodega, jmww journal, MoonPark Review, Revolver and others. He teaches college English and SAT Verbal in Houston. He is at work on a third collection, The Exact Nature of Their Wrongs.