Chapter Text
In the grand scheme of things, from the tallest oak and the birds with crying featherless hatchlings that nested there to the muddy swamp depths dotted with the glowing eye-shine of gators, sprawling cities echoing with crooning cornets and saxophone licks to miles of flat sugarcane fields and mundane suburbia in between, Benson could not give less of a shit about Burgers Burgers Burgers.
He didn’t care about keeping the place spotless. The building used to be a local diner slash gas station years and years ago, he remembered driving past it in the backseat of his Ma’s station wagon when he was still too short to ride the rickety coasters they erected every year at the country fair. It had been painted a deep green then and while they never stopped inside that diner he recalled the hand painted signs advertising hotcakes and coffee at a reasonable price. The bolts that used to hang them up still jutted out from the wall where he snuck out for smoke breaks, painted over with a drab shade of cream. They caught and tugged at his shirt when he wasn’t careful where he leaned.
Which only meant that the building Burgers was currently wearing like an architechtural body snatcher was old as fuck and old places held onto dirt and grit with a stubbornness he would never be able scrub out with any amount of elbow grease.
He didn’t care about delivering perfect customer service to this side of Louisiana’s locals that slithered out of the swamp in search of a hot meal. Not every person who stopped by was a complete asshole but most of them were, at the very least, mildly annoying. People of every age, race, and socioeconomic standing had the potential to become mindless, snarling beasts the second they walked through the door. Huffing and puffing, kicking their heels into the linoleum like a bull ready to charge, giving hell to the poor idiot forced to work the counter that day because their burger had ketchup and mustard on it when they ordered it sans both.
The environment itself fostered that breed of animosity. Late night commercials broadcasted steaming combo meals overlayed with catchy jingles that flashed across millions of screens advertising to the masses that they could have it their way when that was rarely the case only to enter the establishment and find faceless workers who told them the contrary all donning the same sickly yellow and shit brown button down uniforms that said Please, take your personal frustrations out on me! I am a blank canvas for your rage. Would you like fries with that?
He definitely couldn't bring himself to think about the chain’s economic success, especially since they made way more money than they would ever share with their staff. The thought of an untouchable, anonymous, suited man’s pockets growing fatter off his work was an irritating one. A board room full of Kool-Aid sipping corporate drones laughed all the way to the bank in his head every time he had to ask a customer if they’d like to supersize their meal for only thirty nine more cents. He had to start forcing himself to zone out when Hardy talked numbers over their daily meetings because it made his blood boil when his brain automatically and involuntarily calculated the difference between the company's weekly sales and his own meager income.
Meetings that never concerned Benson because he was sure Hardy was just a little afraid of ordering him around too much. Not that Hardy ever had to worry much about him. He got his work done at an acceptable pace for someone compensated in what amounted to little more than pennies. His work ethic was marginally better than over half of the staff currently employed which was sad but entirely expected.
Most of all Benson certainly did not give a shit about the endless pool of deadbeat losers Hardy would corral into the back room to interview and inevitably hire because fast food was always hungry for fresh meat no matter the god awful work ethic or inexperience of their applicants. Not a single new hire lasted long enough to be worth knowing. Places like Burgers harbored a revolving door of people looking to make a quick buck and then bounce onto bigger and better things. Career advancement was nonexistent among the old grease in the fryers, wilted lettuce in storage, or mysterious bodily fluids accumulated in the public restrooms.
It was a place for drifters and no names. Lazy college kids working for the summer with their minds on their futures, teenagers taking the first job offer to call them back to collect pocket change for weekend partying, single mothers with temporarily laid off husbands forced to work for supplemental income, ect. Transients. Benson was fine with that. He had never been one for small talk, he found it boring and useless. What did he care to talk about the weather? It was Louisiana, hot in the summer, marginally less so in the winter, sometimes it rained, sometimes it didn’t. Talking about it with every customer or coworker wouldn’t change what fell from the sky.
Other things that people forced themselves to fill the silence never held his attention either: sports, current events, weekend plans. Who gave a fuck if a customer he would likely never see again or his coworker he only saw twice a week was taking his kids out to the lake on Sunday.
He hadn’t had many friends when he was young either. His classmates were mostly assholes who avoided him like the plague from K-12 as if they could smell the stink of white trash poverty on him. The chip he carried on his shoulder visibly weighed his shoulders down, making him slump in class and they must have decided they wanted nothing to do with it.
For the first year after he was deemed competent enough to graduate high school, a ceremony he missed in lieu of blasting music from the Chryslers speakers and getting drunk alone at the quarry in celebration, he allowed himself to briefly reflect on his educational career. Benson was never forthcoming about himself to his classmates but he wondered if they heard rumors about him and his family from their parents. A classic sad story of a kid with an absent father who up and left for milk one night and never came back dooming the remnants of his tiny family of two to a life of low class with no hopes of ever scraping enough money together to get out of the hole he left them in.
His hometown was small and everyone talked too much in small towns. Sometimes he thought his coworkers must be able to see that same chip his classmates did. The weight of it forced him to crack his neck every now and again to alleviate the pressure.
The younger kids who cycled through Burgers called him a lifer. Never to his face but Burgers was only so big and he had excellent hearing for his apparent old age. Once or twice he had heard them whisper questioningly about him to Carla, who he liked well enough, especially when she always replied in some form that he was just a guy who wanted to get his work done and go home like everyone else, following up with a stern order to get back to theirs so she could do the same.
He knew the expectations that society harbored for a man his age but Benson hadn’t planned to still exist at thirty three— never thought he’d make it past eighteen let alone on the fast track to forty. But everyone needed money. Minimum wage jobs were a necessary evil for guys who lacked brains big enough to earn scholarships for achieving college degrees.
So, yeah, he wasn’t about to start rubbing elbows with the losers at Burgers either. A simple “Hi”, “Bye,” and the occasional, “Careful, floors wet,” was the perfect amount of interaction at work.
Until they hired Bradley.
The only person to ever grace the doors of Burgers that Benson had noticed for more than two point five seconds was nervous, young Bradley.
It was an unreasonably hot afternoon in the long, early days of summer when the kid shuffled through the double doors for his interview. An interview that was purely theatrics since he could’ve dropped his pants and took a shit on the floor and he’d still start the onboarding process the next day.
He vaguely registered the skinny shape of a boy making his way to the back in his peripheral vision as Benson raked a dirty mop across the floor, gliding the permanently stained yarn strands over heaping globs of ketchup splattered on the tiled floor generously left by a group of rowdy high schoolers who hadn’t ever spared a thought as to who would clean up their messes. Probably never would for the rest of their lives.
Not even ten minutes later the accordion door to the manager’s office was slinking open again.
“Benson, meet our new team member!” Hardy called out from across the empty lobby, voice dripping with sarcastic excitement.
Benson looked up from his mop. The kid took a breath as if he was going to say something but swallowed it down, instead raising his hand in a half wave of acknowledgement. His neck forced a stiff nod like a puppet whose strings were suddenly pulled, jerking it into motion. He had an awful, hunted look to him. Eyes wide in his sockets that were slightly bruised with shades of dusty purple. Lips bitten red. Benson let his gaze travel down his form, noting the harsh, angular line of his shoulders with traps so tight they were nearly drawn up to his ears. Stiff forearms led to clenched fists, knees undeniably locked underneath overly formal brown slacks that were slightly too tight on him. Benson’s eyes swept up to his face again.
Hardy’s smile slipped slightly from his face as he looked down at the kid.
“This is Bradley,” he said slowly and snaked an arm around those bony shoulders, giving him a vigorous shake that jostled the kid’s entire body into motion. He caught a hearty whiff of deodorant desperately trying to mask the sharp, tangy smell of sweat. A bright and almost citrusy scent layered over something faintly animalic. Not at all like the musky, spicy stuff that he tended to buy for himself. The motion revealed a sliver of his underarms and Benson caught a glimpse of damp patches of fabric under his arms, the white button down he donned making them more pronounced. Benson’s eye twitched.
“He starts next Monday. I’m sure you won’t mind taking him under your wing.”
Benson grunted in their general direction which Hardy seemed to take as a positive affirmation. He turned back to his mop as the other man guided Bradley back out the door he just came in from with a promise to see him again in a week.
****
Their initial meeting occurred almost over a year ago but the heat in the air hung as heavy as the day Bradley first crossed Burgers doorstep which is to say it was pretty fucking hot.
As with most places around the world the weather in Louisiana was cyclical. They rarely, if ever, had frigid winters but they did bring relief from the hell that razed the state from early May to late September.
There was a physical weight to the swelter that insisted upon bearing down on all those who dared to venture outside their homes like God Himself was personally punishing the inhabitants of southeast Louisiana. Reaching down from His golden throne in the sky to rake a fiery fist across the land setting every man, woman, and child ablaze. Effectively turning civilized humans, ignorantly convinced they were lightyears away from their primitive ape ancestors, back into feral creatures. The weather induced a type of drooling brain fog while simultaneously inciting jaw snapping anger in even the most well-bred members of polite society.
Benson never forgot that people were just animals. Himself included.
The air was unbearably thick as well. Like it was trying to hold up the sky but was beginning to buckle under the pressure. The ninety eight percent humidity turned oxygen into syrup, forcing everyone to move in slow motion while the rubber soles on their shoes melted into the pavement. The state was one big soup pot on a stove set on high, left to boil over. Its inhabitants were held hostage in cast iron.
For the last three days stray storm clouds had begun rolling over, grey and wispy at first but rapidly becoming dark and heavy, threatening to spill buckets of rainwater down and hopefully deliver a break to the oppressive temperature.
That morning Benson, bleary eyed and sleep tousled, jerked awake from the beeping sound of his alarm clock and sat on the edge of his bed, dragging his hands roughly up and down his face in an attempt to bring himself back to life. It took ten minutes to work up the courage to peel his damp wife-beater from his body so he could shower the sweat off his skin before work. Behind him laid a damp man sized puddle on his sheets. The remnants of another sleepless night plagued with tossing and turning in an attempt to seek a stretch of fitted sheet that wasn’t already warmed by his own body heat.
The air conditioner window unit in his room was broken and had been for two and a half weeks. He kept meaning to try and fix the damn thing but it seemed as though he was always at work and when he wasn’t at work he was running errands for his Ma— traipsing around town picking up her medicine, cigarettes, or groceries. Making sure she was fed and the bills were paid. Checking under her tongue to make sure she was actually swallowing the cocktail of horse pills he picked up every month for her diabetes and various other maladies. When he found reprieve from being run ragged he always seemed to end up passed out in bed, on top of the covers, with little choice in the matter, only possessing enough energy to shirk his shoes before succumbing to the siren call of sleep. Downtime meant he could be blissfully unconscious for a few hours.
There was a fatigue in his body that ran so deep it ached his bones and he couldn’t shake it no matter how many cups of coffee he put away which meant that the air conditioner would stay dead and useless clinging to his window frame until he couldn’t bear the heat anymore. More an entryway for stray bugs that managed to worm their way in through the vent than anything. It wasn’t like it would make much of a difference anyway. The weather always found a way into his bedroom, tucked at the farthest corner of the house with two windows that both harbored slightly loose panels. Something he’d complained to his Ma about since he was a kid.
His small, boxy CRT television with the built-in VCR slot displayed the news in the far corner of his room in bleeding multicolored lines. Two pristine, buttoned up newscasters untouched by the heat were making a fuss about Hurricane Janis, the bitch who made her way up the gulf coast the last week, gaining strength and picking up water along the way, who now had her hand raised, knuckles poised to knock on the door of the United States. Threatening to wreak havoc on the south if the weather reports were to be believed.
Benson hadn’t paid much mind to it. A little rain and wind wasn’t enough to stop him from venturing out into the world or scare him into buying extra milk and bread on his grocery store pit stop last night. Hurricanes were a fact of life where he lived and he’d lived in this corner of the world his entire life.
All of which led him to where he was now, sweating out every ounce of liquid in his body at a fast food joint before the supposed apocalypse rained down upon them, waiting on nonexistent customers to badger them for grease stained bags of fried slop with the single coworker he couldn’t ignore.
“You guys’ll be fine, right?” Hardy had asked, one foot out the door the other toeing the threshold, keys jingling restlessly in his hand. Benson paused for a beat, waited in vain for Bradley to say anything whatsoever to Hardy about leaving them stranded at work while a full fledged hurricane warning was in effect but there was only silence from the both of them.
“Appreciate it. Bradley, make sure you finish inventory before you clock out. Benson,” he pointed at Benson with the hand clutching his keys. “You keep doing what you do.”
With that he shuffled through the door, the frame rattled and shook the glass as it clanged shut in his wake.
Hardy’s name had been firmly planted on Benson’s eternally growing shit list. Solidifying his name there within his first week of work when he revealed himself to be a smarmy, spineless ass of a man. It was planted firmly near the top, not number one or even two but a definite close runner up. He mentally underlined it in red.
Almost a year working with Bradley was enough to drive him almost certifiably insane. Where his days used to feel quick and monotonous they were suddenly endless. Eight hour shifts dragged on for what felt like miniature eternities. He quickly lost the comfort of zoning out and going on autopilot with Bradley on the clock.
The guy was always so tense he looked like he was about to snap, jumping from task to task that was unfairly designated to him because he did anything without question. He took to every task with a fervor like he had the muzzle of a gun lodged between the bony knobs of his spine, a negatory word never once falling from his mouth. The threat of imminent death hanging in the air if he didn’t clean the trays right or smile queasily through getting his shit reamed by a customer.
Benson had watched him through it all. He hadn’t meant to pay the amount of attention he did to the kid but it was like working with a perpetual train wreck. The shaky nods he gave their manager when he was shackled with jobs that even Hardy himself wouldn’t do. Their manager had sniffed him out as a sucker within his first week like he was a shark and Bradley was drifting aimlessly in the ocean, leaking blood in the water.
His most recent concern was the walking dick Hardy hired that couldn’t seem to leave the kid alone. A smug bastard that walked around the place like he was the king of shit city which was bullshit because they all worked at the same dead end job in the same microscopic town. Benson could tell that Chris delighted in pushing Bradley around, easily shirking his work off on him while verbally harassing the kid under the guise of sarcastic camaraderie.
Real playground bully stuff that made something angry and small inside of Benson perk up when he was around to witness it, commanding Bradley from across the room where he was peering at them from the corner of his eye, teeth worrying the inside of his cheek, his hands working themselves into fists, to do something. Anything. He never did.
He saved his company mandated fifteen minute breaks for those moments. Slumping off to smoke around the back of the building, hidden from customers, as per policy, to escape the defeated look in Bradley’s eyes while he just took it.
On a few rare occasions he caught a glimpse of what a slightly more relaxed Bradley looked like. When a parent would let their kid order their own food, stumbling over how to properly order a junior cheeseburger Bradley would lean down, make himself smaller in a way that was completely different than how he acted around Chris, and nod attentively as he keyed in the order. With a small, polite smile on his face he would reply to the toddlers with a sincere yes, ma’am or of course you can, sir.
A handful of months ago a flock of old women clad in brightly colored spandex floated through the door in a cloud of powdery floral perfume and staked their claim in the far corner of the dining room after ordering a plethora of small meals and diet sodas, clearly indulging but still unable to let themselves really enjoy it.
When Bradley went over with their trays of food the women batted their eyelashes at him, thanking him profusely. Called him a handsome young man and lamented if only they were forty years younger. Bradley still held that sharp tension in his shoulders but Benson caught the breathy huff of a laugh from him at the women’s fatuous advancements. Heard him thank them sincerely and tell them to enjoy their meal. Awkwardly called them lovely ladies.
Benson saw it all. It made him sick. Saw the kid turn around and start towards the dusty, cramped stockroom before Hardy could make it to his car.
Just the two of them left. Sacrificial lambs sat before the edge of a storm, tied up by finances and, what Benson assumed, was a chronic compulsion to follow orders. Left on the floor with soft bellies jutting up towards the water-stained ceiling tiles.
Maybe Janis would come and put both of them out of their misery. Rip Burgers Burgers Burgers off of its borrowed concrete foundation with seventy five mile per hour wind speeds and drop them miles away from here. Crush them both on impact. It would be a merciful act, Benson thinks. He might even get to feel a cool breeze before his body was reduced to meat in a sack. He pictured himself squished between wood and concrete, his eyeballs popping out of his skull with his tongue sticking out of his mouth comically and it made the corner of his mouth twitch.
The only relief he could find from his hypervigilant surveillance of Bradley would be slapstick Saturday morning cartoon-esque bodily injury.
The fixation excited him and disgusted him in near equal measure. Made his palms sweat and his stomach sour with rising bile. He wondered what Bradley would think about being ogled by his senior coworker. He briefly remembered the panic he felt being watched by an older man when he was young before he has to physically shake the thought from his head.
He felt the bones in his neck grind and pop viciously with the motion. He wanted to drive his fist into the wall but Burgers was composed of thick commercial cinder block, the kind that made most of the public buildings that littered America, and not the flimsy drywall and outdated wood paneling of his ma’s house so he abstained. He instead wrung the wet rag in his hand tighter until it was stretched thin and scratchy around his knuckles, knowing the company approved chemicals they use to clean will make his skin painfully dry and cracked. He couldn’t help it. Something about Bradley had him on high alert. Made the hair on his nape stick straight up.
Thunder cracked above him making Benson flinch. Hearing the first fat raindrops hit the roof, he went back to wiping down the table he was bent over.
It was going to be a long fucking shift.
****
Three hours into the closing shift and they’d seen absolutely zero customers. Dining area shined as spotless as it possibly could after he worked it over with broom, mop, and rag only pausing to swipe at the dampness that collected on his forehead. When that was finished he moved onto the kitchen and made the executive decision to close it down early. With the slate grey countertops sanitized, dishes washed, leftover food stored back in the refrigerator, he moved on to close the registers, depositing the small amount Burgers made that day in the safe. They would have saved money if they decided to close down but that meant a day's pay would be missing from his check so he wasn’t too sore over it.
He passed Bradley in the stock room a few times on his one man crusade to close, huffing against the heat each time. The kid's head was bent over a clipboard, probably double and triple checking his counts of styrofoam cups and plastic straws. He only looked up once when Benson had dragged two bulging black trash bags back into the manager’s office. Benson had ignored his questioning look. If Hardy couldn’t be bothered to give a shit about his employees then he deserved to smell the lingering aroma of old meat and mustard in his office where he did nothing but sit on his ass and watch porn for hours on end like the degenerate he was, getting paid more than all of them for it. He scrawled a short message in chicken scratch on a post-it note about the rain being too heavy to go around back to put in the dumpster and stuck it on one of the bags. Patted it down to make sure it stayed.
With nothing left but time, Benson settled in an unoccupied booth with his chin in his palm, his raggedy cap resting on the table next to him. His hair felt molded to his scalp, greasy and limp. The persistent hum of electricity whined in his eardrums, uncomfortably buzzing at the fine cartilage there. A bead of cold sweat rolled down the back of his knee under his work slacks.
Rain was beating down on the roof with full force creating an obstructed view of the outside world. Road, trees, and brush half hidden under the haze of a thousand raindrops. So much for breaking the heat.
Bradley came out from his hovel an hour or so later, squinting and blinking against the harsh fluorescents, and started to make his way to the kitchen.
“You don’t have to do all of that,” Benson’s voice felt louder than it was with just the two of them. Bradley stopped and turned to face him, eyebrows raised.
“No one’s out in this shit,” he nodded at the windows. Bradley shuffled over closer to his booth to inspect the weather. Bradley hummed and Benson saw him begin to look around the room in the window’s reflection. No doubt searching for another task to bestow upon himself without the guiding hand of Hardy to lead him to another. Benson pinched his brow with his thumb and pointer finger, the skin of his forehead was sticky with sweat where his hat had rested and it made him want to claw at until the first layer was stripped away.
“Everything’s done. Relax, for once,” he mumbled.
“Oh,” Bradley said before looking around helplessly, his head on a swivel.
Benson sighed and kicked the bench across from him, looking pointedly at the empty seat. His sneakers squeaked with the haste of plopping down in an empty booth. One more away than the one Benson indicated, putting two uncomfortable benches and skinny tables between them. Designed to be as unwelcoming as possible without being obvious to discourage loitering.
Benson cleared his throat and leaned back, crossing his arms over his chest where they stuck together and said, “If we get stuck here the company has to pay overtime, don’t let Hardy tell you any different.”
Bradley nodded once heavily, his face obstructed by his company issued baseball cap. Benson felt a stroke of irritation shiver down his spine. Something nudged at the back of his throat. Whether it was words or the toast he scarfed down for breakfast he wasn’t sure.
The lobby was too small, a suspended oasis in pure abyss. The raging storm beat at the glass, begging for entrance, to cleanse the buildings' innards just as well as the outside. Nothing existed past Burgers but flatland, marshy and wet, pelted by rain, lined with empty roads that led to on-ramps that led to highways that led to places far away. Other worlds where the air wasn’t as suffocating, the heat less stifling.
“So, what’s your deal?” Benson blurted. It was words after all.
Bradley’s head shot up so fast he must have almost given himself whiplash. His blue eyes were wide as saucers where they sunk into his face. A moist sheen painted his skin making him look corpse-like.
“Huh?”
“What’s wrong with you?”
“I don’t—” Bradley shook his head, puzzled, and Benson relented. Most people couldn’t keep up with his inner thought process. Somewhere distant, in the back of his mind, Benson was the smallest bit disappointed. He didn’t know why he thought the kid would be different.
“You walk around here like you’re waiting for someone to punch you in the face. Why?” The question hung in the air for a moment before Bradley jumped into motion, sputtering, lips twitching to form words of his own and failing miserably to do so. It seemed he was unable to make his weak denials and deflections into a full sentence. Benson regretted opening his mouth at all. He wasn’t sure if speaking to Bradley would cure him or drag him down further. He was staring down from the top of a skyscraper and the ledge was calling for him to jump, to fulfill his curiosity, to uncover, and most of all fix.
From the way Bradley was still stuttering he wasn’t sure it was worth it.
“Fuck, forget it,” Benson huffed. Bradley shook his head hopelessly.
“I’m sorry?” he said like It was a question.
“Don’t fuckin’ apologize to me.”
Benson swore he could see his lower lip wobble slightly and that was it— suddenly he couldn’t look at Bradley and his big, scared eyes any longer. He shifted to stand but before he could brace a hand on the table to do so another crack of thunder peeled through the air above them followed by a loud click and then the lobby was coated in darkness.
“The power went out,” Bradley said from somewhere to the left of him.
Benson could see the faint line of his silhouette painted a drab grey from the feeble light still clinging outside, slowly becoming smothered by the heavy rain and late hour. His earlier prediction was right. This was going to be a long fucking shift.
“You think?” He casted a sideways glance at the shadow.
The white nose of circuits connecting through ancient wiring ceased immediately, relieving the scratching at his skull. He liked to work in the dark, often arriving early in the morning before the sun found its way back to the sky, clocking in and leaving the lights off while he worked to open the restaurant. Kept him calm and the customers away while he toiled away on the clock, alone. It felt different with Bradley here at this hour. Like he was doing something he wasn't supposed to be doing and the phantom guilt made every inch of his skin itch terribly.
Another sound became clear in the new silence, a muffled artificial trilling.
“What is that? That a phone?” Benson looked around.
“Oh shit,” Bradley exclaimed, jumping into action, and jolted towards the back room, shoving past Benson. His arm brushed against Benson’s for a fraction of a second, their arm hair barely catching. Citrus and sweat invaded his nose, identical to the way he smelled the first day he met him, as he watched Bradley’s retreating form dash around the corner and bash his leg on a trashcan causing him to curse and grab at his knee before limping on.
Benson stared after him for a moment before he rose to follow.
He could hear Bradley rifling through something and then the hushed but frantic sound of his voice. Benson thought about giving him privacy for a fraction of a second before he bulldozed over that thought and went to look for a flashlight. As he got closer he started to make out the sound of a frenzied one-sided conversation.
“I know, I know. But— no, I understand,” — a pause— “I’m fine, Mom. I promise.” Bradley glanced over his shoulder at Benson who was now bent over a low cabinet drawer, rummaging through its innards, and ducked his head to stutter closer to the speaker. “I still have a few hours left,” he mumbled miserably.
Benson’s fingers brushed against the cool metal of the flashlight, picked it up, and straightened. Aiming the barrel at Bradley, he flicked the switch, illuminating him in a bright halo of white. The kid cringed against the light, his open hand shielding his eyes from the beam. Four silvery scars in the shape of tiny half moons dotted his palm.
“Found the flashlight.”
****
After an unproductive call to Hardy using Bradley’s cell phone they found themselves back in the lobby, slid into the same booths they occupied previously. The flashlight sat propped up on the table adjacent to them facing upright, base on the table, beam of light pointed upward painting the ceiling in an eerie blue-tinged haze, acting as a makeshift lantern. Dust motes danced in the halo it made.
The weak light outside withered away and died completely which turned the dark sheets of glass windows into a series of mirrors that reflected the image of them from multiple angles. They were two museum artifacts on display in a glass case.
Hardy had not answered which Benson expected. Bradley insisted on calling anyway. Clearly dedicated to following the protocol and procedures packet that hung in the back room, untouched and dusty for eons, down to the section and line.
Bradley's little flip phone sat on the table in front of them, mercifully devoid of distorted chimes and buzzing, awaiting a call from Hardy for further instruction.
“Is she always like that?” Benson asked.
Bradley inhaled deeply, “Yeah, kind of. She’s just worried.”
His fingers were bundled into a tight fist atop the speckled vinyl. Probably fitting his nails into those crescent moons Benson spotted earlier like a fucked up game of human Perfection. Worrying old scars, maybe even creating new ones— lines of punctures dotting his palms like layered bands of rock forming canyons in his skin.
“You are an adult, right? You have to be at least eighteen to work here.”
He made sure of it a week after the kid started, asking Hardy under the guise of a customer’s job inquiry.
“I’m twenty one,” Bradley’s quiet voice mixed with the roaring downpour.
Benson couldn’t help the shock of laughter that peeled out of him. He felt something deep in his gut go warm and slack. A pit in his stomach filled with something buoyant and bobbing instead of the usual heavy, burning noxious acid that sent him spiraling into nauseous episodes when he thought about Bradley.
Twenty one. A full grown adult— legal to drink and smoke, sign up for the military, rent a car, open his own credit card. Two out of five Benson thought weren’t worth doing but to each their own.
Bradley was a baby faced, newly minted adult who should’ve moved through the world like any other twenty one year old. Distinctly untouched by hardship. Young adults navigated life like they expected it to bend to their will and not the other way around and yet he carried with him a world weariness that people usually had to actually go to war to achieve. Benson was briefly reminded of an old neighbor who moved in across the street from him when he was a boy. A middle aged man that kept his head down and refused eye contact with everyone.
Benson didn’t think anything of it, his side of town was not dangerous but it also wasn’t an area that fostered welcoming committees with baked goods. Everyone mostly kept to themselves, regular people exhausted with their blue collar jobs that didn’t have the energy to spare a glance at the pipsqueak running around unsupervised. The guy only became interesting when Benson caught the muffled sounds of whimpering through his windows when he cut through his overgrown backyard to save a block on his journey to the corner store on the Fourth of July for more firecrackers.
He moved away a few months after that. Some other faceless entity taking his place.
“You’re twenty one and you still have your mother up your ass about where you are and what you’re doing?” He asked, incredulously, teeth flashing behind the grin on his face.
Bradley sighed, “There’s a hurricane warning.”
“It’s a little rain and you’re a big boy,” Benson rolled his eyes.
A band of wind whipped around the building, howling high and angry as if in protest of his denigration.
“That doesn’t mean she isn’t going to worry. She’s still my mom,” he said, picking up the cell phone to fiddle with it, passing it from palm to palm. The picture he had of Bradley was becoming more clear, slowly shifting into focus before his diligent, never-ending appraisal. He decided didn't like what he saw so far and he shook his head.
“It’s over parenting bullshit. My Mother stopped giving a shit where I was the second I turned eight. She knew I could take care of myself because she didn’t raise a moron. You’re old enough to order a beer at a bar and your mother doesn’t trust you to work a shift at a burger joint?” Benson squinted at him from across the bench backs.
“It’s not really any of your business,” his voice wavered but Benson could hear the subtle sharp edge that was creeping into his tone. He was fundamentally wrong. Everything to do with this guy was his business, willingly or otherwise. He made it Benson’s business when he unwittingly decided to torture him day in and day out by doing something as simple as existing in close proximity.
“See, that had a little oomph to it,” Benson said. “So, again, I’ll ask— What’s the deal? You make it a habit of only bending to the will of idiots?” The Idiots in question being Hardy, Chris, and potentially the kids own mother but he wasn’t going to be forthcoming with that thought. Even nice guys like Bradley had a limit to how far you could push them and Benson didn’t feel like punching him out if he got ornery over protecting his mother’s good name.
“That's not— Mr. Hardy is my manager, I have to do what he says or I’ll get fired.”
“That’s a crock of shit. Do you hear how everyone talks to that asshole? You were standing there when Donnie told him to go suck eggs the other day.” Which Benson thought was the only correct response to being told to clean the grease trap. The interaction was made all the more irritating when Hardy turned on his heel to pivot where Bradley was standing innocently behind the counter and asked him to do it instead.
“Have you seen Chris do anything worth a damn here since he started?” He asked. “Aside from making it his life’s mission to make yours miserable.”
“It’s just easier to go along with what they say,” Bradley responded, eyes still downcast, trained on the phone. Benson could see his teeth dig into his bottom lip, restlessly chewing at the delicate flesh there.
Benson hummed. “Like mother dearest.”
“Can we talk about something else?” Bradley whined, desperation seeping into his voice.
“We’re just getting started! I’m finally beginning to understand why you are the way you are,” he flashed a grin at the kid, leaning forward, bracing his elbows against the table.
Bradley’s gaze snapped back up to meet Benson’s, his jaw tight. A new expression he had never seen before swept across his face. It was no more threatening than a kitten hissing warnings to a stranger's outstretched hand but Benson had never seen him like this. His natural state was wound tight in the way a corpse underwent rigor mortis. Harmless and wilted, blackening, supine on the ground. Perpetually frozen with inaction. He was still coiled tight but Benson saw the difference. He was more like a snake threatening to strike. Benson wondered if he could. Wondered why he never did before when Benson was silently begging for him to do so from across the restaurant. It made him want to push harder. He wanted to see Bradley’s fangs, feel them pierce his skin, not his desired target but he wanted to revel in knowing that Bradley could bite. Benson was nothing if not an instigator.
“Bradley, Bradley, Bradley,” Benson tutted, shaking his head.
“My name is Randy,” the other boy interrupted, his voice sliced through the open air.
Benson twitched, thrown off his trail. “The fuck? What the hell is Bradley, then?”
“Bradley is my last name. This was the name tag they gave me when I started,” he said, looking down at the offending pin and jostling it with his fingers as if to brush it off of himself entirely like it was an offending piece of dust.
“Holy shit!” Benson guffawed, “And you never said anything? Jesus Christ, you really need help, man.”
Randy huffed, veering back in his chair. A transparent display of exasperation, like his puppet strings had been snipped. The cellphone clattered on the table as he tossed it down and he crossed his spindly arms over his chest. His body became an almost exact mirror of Benson’s in an instant. He could see a glistening sheen of sweat clinging to his upper lip.
“Another question for you, Randy,” he said, drawing out the vowel, emphasizing the new name. Savored the way it fit in his mouth, another piece of the guy revealing itself to Benson. Mentally, he rewrote every compulsive, stray thought he ever had of the kid, erasing Bradley and penning Randy in thick ink over the worn pages of his mind. He looked towards the windows, saw the two of them suspended in void. They might as well have been the only people left in the universe. Faintly illuminated, looking like two spirits forsaken to haunt a decaying fast food joint.
He wasn’t sure if it was the heat, ever present and reaching a fever pitch without the weak, ancient AC droning on its lowest setting to save electricity costs, the sudden darkness covering both of them in pitch, mostly veiling his face, or the storm brewing around them that had Benson’s jaw so loose and languid.
He felt like an overworked dog. Panting and huffing with its tongue lolling out of its maw, saliva dripping.
“Why do you feel so comfortable talking back to me and not the other dickheads in his place?” Benson asked, his voice rumbled through his chest, low in his throat.
Randy peered up at him, shades of blue shadows dancing over his face. “I wasn’t talking back.”
“Yeah, you were. That’s good. How you should respond when people fuck with you. Otherwise, you send a message that you can be fucked with.” Benson said, raising his eyebrows, meeting his gaze. “And, Randy, you have a giant neon sign flashing above your head twenty four seven that says Fuck With Me.”
Randy’s cell phone jumped on the table in front of him, flooding the silence with shrill beeps and staccato humming. He jumped to pick it up, briefly checking the name before sighing in relief and flipped it open.
****
Randy dashed to his car the second Benson pulled his weathered key from the slot of Burgers front door, jacket half pulled over his head, sneakers splashing in the puddles that emerged from the myriad of potholes littering the gravel parking lot. Benson stood under the small awning in front of the door watching him go. Fogged up headlights clicked on in the darkness, illuminating individual raindrops, painting the night with spider web streaks of light, exhaust from the muffler carried away by the wind. Gently, Randy eased out of his parking spot next to the Chrysler and merged on the highway, tail lights coating Benson in crimson.
He watched until the glowing orbs became smaller and smaller until they disappeared completely.