Mario Muscar

12 Days of Fiction

 

I had an idea. An idea that would make the perfect gift for people this holiday season. Story. Creation. Narrative. All for free.

 

So I contacted some people I know who I thought might make a good fit. People who have a creative streak and have something to say. People from different backgrounds and different ways of expressing themselves.

 

Each day for 12 days, new material will be released. It's our gift to you. Happy Holidays. Celebrate story.

 

 

 

Counting

by Janet Iafrate 

 

Jason was the first black person I ever spent a lot of time with, the first person to tell me that it was okay to say “black” instead of “African-American,” the words my 8th grade English teacher had scribbled into the margin of an essay about the life of Langston Hughes. There were no black people at my school, in my neighborhood, at church, and this was life in my small hometown in West Virginia—school, Plum Street, church. A primetime schedule and then Nick at Nite. Rax Roast Beef. Regal Cinemas. School, Plum Street, church.

 

And now there was Jason and our four-hour shifts together at the Wendy’s on Emerson Avenue. Neither of us would ever be scheduled for more than four hours a day, we assumed, because we weren’t very good at our jobs. We easily forgot instructions and never appeared busy enough to please our feared manager, Bill, who hugged a clipboard to his stomach with the intensity of a wild animal protecting its young. Our shared dislike of the management revealed itself subtly at first—I saw him roll his eyes at Bill while he stocked napkins, and in the same hour Jason caught me scratching my face with a specific finger after Bill, clipboard in hand, had snapped at me for dropping a baked potato.   

 

Together, Jason and I eventually hated Wendy’s, hated every single man, woman and child that walked in, ordered, changed the order, requested a different toy in the kids’ meal, asked where we kept the napkins or when a large fry got so expensive. It eventually bled over to our matriarch, Wendy herself, her wiry pigtails, the freckles, the horrible truth that she and her red-haired offspring would one day inherit her father’s multi-million dollar franchise.

 

On the 4th of July, while friends relaxed in the sun at Seneca Lake and set off illegal fireworks in their backyards, Jason playfully snatched a fry from a to-go order. I felt inspired to take two from the next meal, and suddenly, in this together, we had declared anarchy via stolen French fries, stealing from Wendy’s inheritance and thus killing her slowly. By mid-July it was a kind of game—How many you get today, Jason? Five. I got seven. One Tuesday we each reached eleven, laughing through the entire lunch rush, the rest of the Wendy’s brigade clueless and confused under their visors. By late July we had made up a nick-names for each other: I was “Janet Jackson” to him and he was “Jason and the Argonauts” to me. That was the day his wrist brushed mine as we reached for our time-cards at 2:30. 

 

Back in early June, I had imagined my summer as a long, greasy tunnel to the Fall of my freshman year of college, where anything that had ever made me feel Less Than would wash away, disappear like pounds and pounds of salt into a deep-fryer. Now I was starting to not even mind the lunch-rush, the nearby post-office employees marching in to order, change orders, ask “how big a medium is” for the tenth time. Because by August I was up to thirteen stolen fries in one four-hour shift, Jason twelve. Finally, a friend in this place.

 

One week before college orientation, Tammy, an assistant manager who resembled a worn, middle-aged version of Wendy herself, approached me with a blue envelope, a greeting card.  

 

“Wanted to make sure you got it before I go on my break,” she said with no affection.  “Aint you off at 2:30?”

 

“Yeah, I am,” I said, taking the card from her. It smelled like frozen fish. 

 

“I might see you anyway,” she said, trailing off and reaching for the Marlboros in her back pocket. She never left the building for breaks, but usually took a # 3 with extra cheese, no pickle, to a seat in the smoking section and stared out the window for thirty-five minutes.

 

The front of the card was a sailboat drifting away from an empty dock. Inside were a dozen signatures, some of them with messages like,  “Have fun at your college!”  Everyone had signed it, even the agitated grill-workers, but I only wanted to read what Jason and the Argonauts had to say. My hands were shaking and there was a strange comfort in leaning against the steel door of the refrigerator, like it was there for a reason. How was anything in this place comfortable, I asked myself. 

 

Jason’s note was sandwiched between two giant signatures, as if he had been the last one asked to sign it. I had never seen his handwriting. 

 

Janet Jackson—Someday I’ll make it to 50 fries. Come back and visit me! 

 

Slowly, I slid it back into the envelope, the sailboat disappearing under blue paper. 

 

After 2 pm, restaurants turn empty, and fast-food workers all over the world relax, lean on counters, steal leftover fries of the lunch-rush. But that day I completed my final shift with the precision of an Olympic athlete. I thoughtfully washed, salted, and restocked with a latent vigor, Wendy herself coaching me from the sidelines. I didn’t hate her anymore.

 

Jason had been asked to start seven-hour shifts, now, so he stayed on past our usual 2:30 exit. I could hear him refilling the ice-machine as I clocked out for the last time.

 

In the smoking section, I said goodbye to Tammy, interrupting her daily meditation with a short, awkward but sincere hug, my nose just touching her visor: Tammy, who had worked there since it opened when I was six.  But Jason And The Argonauts I haven’t seen since.