Styrofoam Throne (3 page)

Once a year, Dunes had a Garlic Festival. It never made sense to me. We didn’t grow garlic. It all came from about twenty miles inland. And if two shut-down blocks counted as a festival, then you could call the busiest intersection in town a “Traffic Festival.” But everyone pretended we were “famous” for our garlic. And once a year, this cloud of bad breath hung over Dunes as our prideful tradition. Fucking garlic. I’m with Dracula on that.

So yeah, Dunes sucked. But Castle Dunes? Ruled. To me, it was the saving grace of both the town and my imagination. It was like, yeah, life’s boring and everything sucks, but if you could scale the iron gates of the Castle, you’d escape the pale-gray, slow death of suburban nothingness. Famous monsters never die. And I wanted to get inside more than anything in the world. But the fact that it simply existed gave me enough hope to keep me going. All of the Castle’s advertising spoke an overarching, kind of subliminal message to me. It said, “Don’t worry about
them
. Join
us
. We want
you
!”

As I stared at the ceiling, a change in the breeze outside carried a faint trail of Bach’s “Toccata.” Originating from the Castle’s outdoor PA system, it found me as it poured over the windowsill and crept through the room. Comforted by the other world’s soundtrack drifting into my own, I began to fall asleep.

2

The next day was the hottest on record for that day in Dunes history. When Janice and I walked into The Roost, a rank stench blew past us and out the door. Janice made her signature butthole face and threw her purse at the coffee pot. I couldn’t imagine the odor going without remark.

“What the hell is that smell? Did Viktor die on the toilet?” I asked.

“It’s the grease trap.”

“This place?”

“No, the grease trap. It happens when it’s hot out. Get back there and clean it.”

I parted the swinging doors and got slammed with origin-strength stench.

Viktor was on his hands and knees under the sink.

“Jesus, is that smell coming from your ass crack?” I said.

“Get down here!”

I got on the floor beside Viktor. He pulled his arm out of a deep hole.

“This is you. Clean grease trap. It catches all grease from dishwater and holds so pipes don’t stop.”

I let out a deep sigh but could only inhale short breaths to avoid being overtaken by the smell of rotting grease.
 

“And put on hair net!”

When I finished, my arms were covered in brown grease that wouldn’t wash off.

“How am I supposed to clean dishes when I’m covered in slime?”

“Here,” Viktor said, throwing a Brillo pad at me.

“This is for stainless steel, not skin!”

“Don’t be girl. It will get off.”

I worked the pad on my arms and it really did take the grease off. It also took off any hair on my arm and the first two layers of skin. I showed my raw arm to Viktor.

“See? Now stop lazy and start wash.”

After a while, I started getting the hang of the dishes but had no pride or pay to show for it. My thoughts turned to a possible escape. Going AWOL from The Roost became a full-time obsession.

While I was scheming to myself over the sink, Janice walked into the back.

“A customer left their dentures on a plate, where are they?”

“Huh?”

“For your own sake, tell me you got them.”

“What dentures?”

“Gibby left her dentures on her plate yesterday. You didn’t see someone’s fucking teeth staring at you while you’re doing dishes?”

“There’s a lot of dishes.”

“So I take that as a no.”

“Yes.”

“Well, Gibby has been coming here for over twenty years and if she said she left her dentures in a pile of mashed potatoes, we are going to find them for her.”

“How do you forget teeth?”

“Well, the good news is you get a break from the kitchen.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Because you’re going through the dumpster to find her teeth. That you threw out.”

“The dumpster!”

“The dumpster!” Janice echoed.
 

“You told me to never play in dumpsters.”

“I didn’t say anything about working in them.”

I went out to the alley and threw open the filthy dumpster. It was far worse than the grease trap and a hundred times bigger. Parts of it were actually moving, heaving with flies, maggots, and roaches scurrying about. I couldn’t do it.

I went back inside, to the front, where Janice was talking with Gibby.

“I’m not going in that thing! It’s fucking alive!”

Janice grabbed my arm and dug her fingers in the tendons as she led me into the kitchen.

“Don’t you dare talk to me like that. Ever. And especially not in front of customers. You have no class. None.” Janice grabbed a napkin and doused it with a bottle of vanilla extract. “Here. Put this in your face and start digging.”

“I don’t need that—I need a flame thrower!”

Janice made the butthole face and worked her jaw muscles to show that she was gearing up for the rarely seen “other level.”

“Fine. But if I die, it’s your fault.”

“I can live with that.” Janice spun around and changed her expression the moment she put her hand on the kitchen door.

I started walking back to the alley but Viktor stopped me.

“Wait. Take these,” Viktor said, handing me two unused trash bags.

“What’s this gonna do?”

“Put each one on legs and pull drawstring tight by thighs.”

“You’re pretty cool for a Russian, Viktor.”

“Cool is nothing.”

I put the trash bag chaps on and waddled outside. I stood in front of the dumpster for five minutes, trying to psych myself up. Finally, I climbed in and started picking through the rotten debris. All the food that I had scraped off was coming back to haunt me. I plunged my fists through bags of varying consistencies and tried to hold my stomach contents down. What seemed like hours was only fifteen minutes, but I found the dentures with a blind fist. I pulled myself out of the dumpster and slipped on my trash bag legs when they hit the ground—taking the fall on my elbow. I limped inside as a thin layer of blood started to rise to the top of the scrapes.

“Here you go,” I said handing the dentures to Gibby. “Some guys tried to steal your teeth but I wouldn’t let ‘em, so they kicked my ass.”

“That’s so sweet of you. Thank you so much, Janice.” Gibby took her teeth and left.

Janice looked sideways at me.

“Bullshit.”

“No, seriously. I should go home, though, don’t you think? I mean, if I’m not supposed to get a hair on the dishes, blood probably isn’t good either, right?”

“Get in the back before you make people puke.” Janice yelled into the service window, “Viktor! Fix him up with the first-aid kit.”

“Ya.”

I went to the back while Viktor unfolded paper napkins next to a spool of tape.

“Where’s the first-aid kit?”

“This,” Viktor said, pointing to the napkins and tape. He then reached out from under his apron and revealed a flask. “And this.”

“I don’t drink.”

“No. Come.”

Viktor pulled my elbow across the sink.

“What are you doing?”

“Vodka cleans.”

“Is it gonna sting?”

“Good vodka won’t sting.”

He splashed his flask on my elbow.

“Fuck, that stings!”

“I didn’t say this was good vodka,” he said, taking a swig.

I grabbed a napkin and clutched my arm.

“That would have been me in dumpster if you weren’t working. You’re okay.”

“Whatever.”

“Keep this up and you’ve got real future here,” Viktor said, laughing.

The next day, Viktor had diarrhea and kept running from the grill to the toilet. All the food burned on the grill in his absence. Janice pretended to serve the dishes like they were perfect and when the customers voiced their disgust, she acted shocked and appalled. Eventually, she told Viktor if he burned another dish, she’d start throwing them back in his face. So Viktor enlisted me to back him up on his runs.

“Donovan, I need you to cook when I go,” he said.

“I don’t know how to cook, man.”

“It’s easy. You put whatever is they order on grill. When starts burning, you flip over. When other side starts burning, you put on a plate with some of this,” he said, pointing at a pile of parsley that looked like fake foliage on a model train track.

“Fair enough. But don’t leave me hanging.”

Viktor clutched his stomach and ran off.

I started doing it just as he said when I quickly got backed up. Janice looked through the service window, saw me managing different piles of burning food, and exploded.

“What in God’s name are you doing? Where’s Viktor? I’m getting killed out here!”

“He’s squirtin’ dirt in the toilet,” I said, chopping up hash browns and trying to pretend like I had it under control. I didn’t have it under control.

“You’re ruining everything!”

It wasn’t the first time Janice had told me that.

“How long has he been gone?”

“I dunno,” I said. I was too busy juggling blackened chicken sandwiches, pretending to know what went inside a Denver omelet, and staying the fuck away from the deep fryer. It was a cauldron of hell that would bubble up and take a bite out of you if you got anywhere near it.

“Well, go get him!” she said, like it was all my fault.

I abandoned the grill and knocked on the bathroom door. No answer. I knocked again. No answer. I yelled his name a few times. No answer. Finally, Janice came and opened the door with her keys. She was still looking at me like this was my fault. When she opened the door, a foul odor poured out and there was Viktor—asleep on the toilet. I started laughing, which pissed Janice off even more. She slapped Viktor’s face and he woke up like he didn’t know where he was. It made me laugh even more. He hadn’t even flushed before falling asleep.

“Jesus Christ, you fucking Russian. You’re going to get us closed down.”

“Ya ya ya! I’m coming!” he said while getting up, exposing his penis and toilet contents. Janice and I couldn’t have turned around fast enough. Still buckling his pants, Viktor returned to the pile I had created and deconstructed my work as if I had explained it all to him in great detail. He was pretty damn good at his job when he wasn’t shitting himself to sleep.

The next morning, I awoke to the rooster-precision timing of Janice’s screams in the kitchen.

“Donovan!”

She yelled it every morning as if venting her frustration at my existence. Normally, this ritual would be completed with the sound of my door opening and a bathroom flush, or me yelling, “I’m up!” and going back to sleep, which only made things worse. But today I had a different plan.

A third scream barreled down the hallway with Janice and burst into my room.

“Goddamn it! Get. Up.”

Janice wasn’t a morning person, and having to drag someone else through the first hour of the day never made it better.

A scaly rash had broken out over my arm from the grease trap and gray dishwater.

“Check this rash out. I’m sick, I can’t go.”

“Pssffft! Viktor’s got the flu or a cold or something every other week. People don’t stop making dirty dishes just because you’re sick. For the last time, up.”

“I’m serious. I think I’m gonna barf.”

She disappeared. For a moment I thought it was a silent, frustrated goodbye—but seconds later, she came back with a salad bowl and threw it on the bed.

“Here.”

“What am I gonna do with this?”

“I’ll tell you what you won’t do. You won’t puke all over my car. Two minutes and we’re going.”

“I seriously don’t think I should go. What if I barf at The Roost?”

“We’ve got plenty of bowls there too.”

I realized it would take more than claiming a fever and possible leprosy to make my summertime dreams come true, so I temporarily relented.

“Okay, let me go to the bathroom.”

“Alright, but I don’t want to hear any sloppy lotion sounds. Make it quick.”

In the bathroom, I opened the medicine cabinet and reached for a small brown bottle, slipping it in my pocket.

As we got in the car, Janice glared at me.

“Where’s the bowl?”

“I think I can make it.”

“That’s what I thought. You look fine. Except for that stupid haircut. Or lack thereof.”

“Fuck you and The Roost. This is it,” I thought over and over.

I was staring out the window on the way to work when I saw the official Castle Dunes hearse going in the other direction. I had to hide my smile when Janice looked over at me. The hearse had “Follow me to Castle Dunes!” painted on the back and sides in dripping blood. I’d see it around town every now and then. It always felt like the car was a celebrity. I guessed it was the owner’s or something. Whoever it was, he seemed like the luckiest dude in all of Dunes. That hearse could have said, “Follow me off a cliff!” and I would have. Especially if it was written in dripping blood.

When we showed up, Viktor was already prepping the day’s food.

“Viktor, can you make something for Donovan?”

“Sure, what’ll it be?”

“The Trucker Special,” I said.

“Wowee, big! Coming up.”

Janice looked sideways at me as I felt the act slip. It didn’t matter, the plan was in motion.

“What? I’m hungry.”

The Trucker Special was the biggest item on the menu. Four eggs, four sausages, four bacon strips, four pancakes, half a pound of hash browns, and two pieces of toast. I don’t know why they stopped at the theme of four when they got to the toast.

I sat at the counter while Janice started tending to the regulars.

“More coffee, hon? Some jelly, sweetie?”

I only heard this tone in her voice when I eavesdropped on her at work. These strange regulars were “sweetie”s and “hon”s, and I was an earsplitting scream.

The Trucker Special arrived in front of me without a word from Janice. I began eating the dish chunk by chunk, working my way through sets of four at a steady speed. The struggle came with the pancakes.

I shoved as many breakfast items as I could into my mouth and quickened the pace when Janice turned her back. I could tell she was beginning to sense something was up when she shot a look across the counter.