Mason was working a double shift because one of his employees had quit.
fyi tomorrow = my last day Luna had texted him.
You’re giving me one day’s notice? Seriously? Three dots and then nothing for five minutes. Look just don’t bother coming in tomorrow ok? Goodbye and good luck.
On the one hand, it was a loss because she had been there for two years, the longest tenure among his ragtag group of baristas and bartenders. On the other hand, she was annoying as fuck. She would neglect some task that she was supposed to take care of, like emptying the knockbox, and instead she’d do something totally random, like polishing the frothing pitcher. “Look how shiny it is, isn’t it awesome?” like a kindergarten kid who’d organized her crayons ROY-G-BIV and wanted her due. “Oh, awesome,” he wanted to say. “Who the fuck asked you to do that? Maybe go clean the toilet instead,” because Shit Boy—the regular who came in every day, swilled two cappuccinos, then took a massive dump in the men’s room—had just departed, whistling.
The turnover was brutal, which wasn’t his fault. Baristas elsewhere in the city could make as much as 12 bucks an hour, while here they started at minimum plus tips, $7.25 an hour in this crappy right-to-work state, but he couldn’t get the owner, Andre, to pony up. Instead, they ground through workers like coffee beans. College students. Food service flunkies stitching several jobs together to keep themselves warm. Musicians like himself who needed a steady gig to fund their enthusiasms. He’d cycled through his bandmates and others in the local scene—fun to hang with, but irresponsible, for the most part, and apt to call out at the last minute—and yet he remained, the general manager of Siesta Gordo Coffee, well aware that 1) Siesta Gordo translated to Fat Nap, which was as ludicrous as it was unaccountable and probably offensive, and 2) his responsibilities far exceeded his remuneration and what marginal satisfaction he might enjoy in his position of power.
Luna was just a warm body. He wasn’t going to miss her, per se, and certainly not her dipshit boyfriend, who would park himself at a table and stare at her while she was going about her work in her slow, substandard way. “Hey, maybe buy something? Yeah, you.” Mason could not bear to use his name, which was, no lie, “Eclipse,” and he felt sure it was self-applied, because what were the chances he’d have parents that cruel and also that he’d hook up with Luna?
Eclipse never bought anything; challenged, he’d switch from staring at Luna to staring at him, and every once in a while Mason would return his stare in silence, although take your Mexican wedding shirt and your shitty blond dreads someplace else is what he hoped to convey. Poser. Cultural appropriator. He did not understand why it was okay for pasty white Eclipse to wear a Mexican wedding shirt and dreads when he, Mason, was castigated for breaking into a reggae jam in a rare blip of joy during a gig last summer, and was consequently still, still referred to as “Dude-Bro” by that midriff baring clutch of pod people who made it their business to identify and ostracize the politically incorrect.
To be clear, Mason was not a dude-bro. He had tried to ignore it, but, you know, it hurt.
The shop was always down an employee or two, and he was always balancing the need to correct his existing workers against the likelihood that they would book if he was too harsh, and so he found himself wheedling and appeasing, which was not in his nature. It took a toll. When he punched a hole in the drywall, he made sure to do it in a restroom so he could blame it on the homeless, er, unhoused, who, despite the fact that Fat Nap was in a gentrified area of the city, were a constant pain in his ass. Their graffeces (a term he thought he’d coined and for which he was inordinately proud until he found it on Urban Dictionary, no doubt added by one of his beleaguered brethren) adorned the restroom walls, which had to be scrubbed with bleach, a job so lowly and vile that only the general manager would undertake it.
So much for power.
His girlfriend kept telling him he deserved more, and why didn’t he look for another job, one where the owner appreciated his willingness to meet the walk-in repair guy at odd hours and his ability to troubleshoot the ice machine and his just all-around unearned dedication to Fat Nap while also hating absolutely everything about it.
Why didn’t he just leave?
It was a slow night. They’d added bar service about six weeks ago, but it hadn’t caught on yet. There were two people studying at the café tables who had been there for a couple hours, which was cool. He remembered bribing himself in a similar fashion—if I go study I’ll treat myself to a dirty chai, if I go study maybe I’ll buy a muffin—from his short, dispiriting stint in college. Now their coffee drinks, which had started out hot and comforting, were cold and ashy, like their faces in the light of the Edison bulbs. It looked like they’d be packing up and leaving soon. Maybe he’d close early.
“Dude, I don’t know what to do about Marcy,” his friend and ex-bandmate Ray said. Mason was behind the bar, and Ray was hanging off a barstool, wearing shorts and a hoodie, though it was 45 degrees outside. He wasn’t being macho, he was just a big guy who was always hot, the sort of guy who generated both heat and nicknames effortlessly. Stinky Ray was one, because personal hygiene was not uppermost on Ray’s to-do list. Ray Penis was another. Long story; don’t get him started.
“What do you want to do about Marcy?” he said.
“I sense she’s about to dump my ass,” he said.
“And that’s a problem?” He did not like Marcy, as Ray well knew.
“Well, it won’t feel good, you know? Being dumped does not feel good.”
“True, but on the other hand…” He bent over to rummage in the cooler for some ice.
“On the other hand, what?”
“On the other hand, you won’t have to listen to her drone on about sex worker rights.” Marcy was a stripper, but not your average kind of stripper, because she had only started stripping to organize the workers. It wasn’t going very well, as most of the other strippers didn’t want the hassle and had pretty much told Marcy to STFU, but she could hold forth for hours on the subject, and did. It was the first thing she told people about herself, her lip jutting out like she was spoiling for a fight.
Also, Marcy did not like Ray’s 16-year-old dachshund, Moses, who was—no way around it—also stinky, and she wanted Ray to have him put down.
Also also, Marcy was one of the pod people who called Mason dude-bro.
The case against Marcy was iron-clad, in Mason’s opinion. “And what about Moses? Moses is a righteous dog.”
“Yeah. Seriously. Yeah, he is.”
“I don’t know, man. That’s just cold.”
Ray pulled out his vaping pen, which glittered in the dystopian bar light. “You got time to take a break? Chill out?”
“Do I look like I can take a break? It’s just me here closing tonight.”
“Right, I forgot. So, can we—?” He spun the weed pen around.
“Play spin the bottle? You know I love you, dude, but you can’t vape here. You can go back to the office if you want, though.” Mason slid the keys across the bar to him.
“Cool. Then I’ll help you close. Still got my chops.”
Ray had worked at Fat Nap for five minutes three years ago and his “chops” were rudimentary, at best, but Mason appreciated the offer. “Later.”
Two minutes after Ray left, Luna and Eclipse came in. She was wearing a jean jacket over some kind of pink tutu-looking dress, torn black tights, and her shitkickers, the kind of boots every girl he knew, including his girlfriend, wore. The juxtaposition was supposed to be ironic or something.
“You know I won’t have your paycheck for another week,” he said.
“She’s here to claim what’s rightfully hers, man,” Eclipse said, so loud the students looked up from their notes.
“What the fuck are you talking about? Are you high?”
“My intellectual property, that’s what he’s talking about.” Luna threw her head back and glared at him. “Why don’t you listen for a change. You might learn something.”
“Are you quoting The Big Lebowski at me?”
“What?”
“Yeah, asshole, her intellectual property!” Eclipse shouted, taking a clumsy step toward the bar. Definitely altered.
Mason was perplexed and not a little pissed by their sudden appearance, but after six years dealing with testosterone cases and tweakers, he recognized a certain something in the air, a thread of chaotic energy that told him to dial it down. “I’m not sure what you’re talking about, guys. Maybe fill me in?”
“This is what I’m talking about,” Luna said, grabbing a stack of drink menus from one end of the bar. “Here, E, take these. Where’s the rest of my menus?” She kicked a stool out of her way, and it screeched across the concrete before tipping over and crashing to the floor. “Where are they, Mason,” she said as she lunged across the bar, one combat boot on tiptoe, the other dangling.
Out of the corner of his eye, Mason saw the students quickly gather their books like nuh-uh, they were not hanging around to see what happened.
“Wait—you want the drink menus?”
“I invented those cocktails. I did. They’re my intellectual property.” She was wallowing on the bar now like a toddler in tulle, seizing the menus that were stacked on the rail and tossing them behind her like frisbees.
“Fuckin’ A,” Eclipse said.
Intellectual property. He couldn’t believe he had to deal with these, these morons. Or wait—these what, fools? Dolts? Goddamn it, see what Marcy had done? She’d gotten into his head.
“Strictly speaking, Luna, you invented two of those drinks. Two. Out of ten.”
“Fuck you, man!” Eclipse said, bouncing like some puppet ninja, dreads flying. (And screw it if you weren’t supposed to say ninja.) “Grab that raspberry syrup, Luna. Go on, take it. Hand me the menus, then round up those syrups.”
“Also,” Mason continued with ostentatious sanity, “even if you had invented all ten drinks, you don’t own, like, the menus. You see that, right? Andre had them printed. And you certainly don’t own the drink syrups. I mean, what the fuck.”
“She does own the menus and she will take the damn raspberry and the elderflower, too. What are you, dude, some kind of narc?”
“Listen,” Mason said, raising his palms in the universal gesture of surrender, “take it all, I don’t care. But just know that there are cameras here, right? Cameras? Remember?” He pointed to the security cameras Andre had mounted in the corners after that homeless—er, unhoused—guy had thrown a chair through the plate glass window. Now, that was a story.
“Cameras? You think I give a rat’s ass about some fucking cameras? What, are the police gonna come and stop us from claiming property to which she is entitled?”
“I mean…”
Eclipse fumbled around in the pocket of his raggedy jeans and pulled out a knife.
“Whoa. Whoa there. Hold up. Hold up.”
“Baby, don’t do that. Let’s just get the stuff and get out of here,” Luna said. She had picked up the menus off the floor and was stuffing syrup bottles in her jacket pockets.
Mason backed up a few steps, then lifted his cell phone where the lunatic could see it. “Put the knife away, Eclipse, come on. This is crazy. I’m calling the cops, man.” It was a dinky knife, but still.
He had no idea how Eclipse managed to vault the bar, but the next thing Mason knew, he was close enough to smell him, musty closet with a base note of weed.
Luna fled, ever loyal, scattering menus as she went. “Hey, I hope you and your—your fucking pineapple chipotle syrup are happy together, you fucking bitch!” Mason yelled after her. “Goddamn it, get away from me, freak.”
Mason sidestepped Eclipse as he lunged with his tiny knife.
“What the hell is going on?” Ray said, emerging from the back, his mouth full of scone, the crumbles spilling down his beard. “Jesus, where’d you get that pussy knife?”
And just like that, Eclipse turned and swung at Ray with his knife hand, sticking the blade deep in his forearm as he raised it to cover his face. Ray bellowed like a grizzly bear awakened untimely as Mason rushed Eclipse from behind, using his momentum to push him through the swinging doors to the kitchen. “Walk-in!” Mason shouted, as Eclipse stumbled, giving Ray just enough time to open the latch, and together—Mason dragging him by the shirt and Ray shoving him violently—they threw him into the walk-in cooler.
Mason grabbed the broom that was propped against the wall and slid the handle longways through the latch. “Ok. Ok. He’s not going anywhere. Whew. Ok.”
“Motherfucker,” Ray said, looking at his arm, which was bleeding liberally. “Noisy bastard, isn’t he?” They could hear Eclipse yelling on the other side of the stainless-steel panel. “Tell you what—coolest that dick has ever been.”
“Nah, not that cool,” Mason said, catching his breath. “As it turns out.”
“What, the walk-in is broken again? Didn’t Andre say he was buying a new one? Like, years ago?”
“He swears he is every time he has it repaired, which is every other week, pretty much. He stopped by this afternoon and jerry-rigged some fix, but whatever he did isn’t working very well. Here, man, let me wrap that arm up while we wait for the police.”
Mason fetched the first aid kit and they left Eclipse to his screaming and pounding.
When the police came twenty minutes later, Mason answered their questions as best he could. Yes, he had always had a decent working relationship with Luna. No, he had no idea why she quit or what caused her and her boyfriend to go apeshit. Yes, the owner was on his way. Yes, he’d be happy to show them to the walk-in.
The two officers told him to stand back while they assembled, guns drawn, ready to deal with the situation, but when the broom clattered to the tile and they released the latch, he was close enough to see Eclipse curled up on the concrete floor next to Andre’s cheap, temporary fix, a plastic bin of dry ice melting in the tepid air. “What the hell?” one of the officers said, as he first nudged Eclipse with the toe of his black shoe and then knelt carefully beside him.
Eclipse’s cheeks were pink and he looked remarkably healthy for someone who turned out to be dead.
“Shit,” Mason said.
A flurry of activity followed. One officer called an ambulance. The other ordered him to sit down at one table and Ray at another, and they were warned not to confer. He felt a little dazed at everything that had gone down, but a thought nosed the tent flap of his brain and pushed its way in.
One time when he’d been especially fed up with Fat Nap, he’d taken an online food safety class offered by the local Restaurant Association in an effort to up his skills and obtain the certification he hoped would catapult him into a better job, and though he’d never left, and though he’d probably forgotten eighty percent of the course content, and though the memory, when he was in the wrong frame of mind, made him feel bad about his pathetic, striving self, he remembered one fact: Never, ever use dry ice in a walk-in freezer.
When the cops were done questioning him, Mason sat by the front door, smoking. He wondered why his hands were shaking. He tried to tell himself that at least it would make a good story—he and Ray the dynamic duo, unwittingly consigning a jackass to death by asphyxiation—just as he had told himself that at least it would make a good story when he had caught that skeezy guy stealing his catalytic converter on the street outside the shop and chased him till embarrassment and his smoker’s lungs overtook him, maybe a block. He had worked hard on that one, telling and embellishing and refining it till it became a “bit” complete with him shaking his fist and yelling come back, motherfucker! like some cartoon character in hot pursuit all the way to the MARTA station. Meanwhile, his girlfriend rolled her eyes and muttered how many times, Mason, how many times? But hey, it made a good story, right?
Yeah, Fat Nap was nothing if not a good story.
He watched the EMTs carry Eclipse’s body out the door. Poor, sad bastard.
He watched the forensic guy don a mask and seal off the walk-in.
He watched another EMT lead Ray away to be stitched up.
He watched as the owner logged into his laptop so the police could examine the surveillance footage. They looked bored.
Why don’t I just leave? he thought. Now’s as good a time as any to just walk out and never look back. Come on, man, go! He put his cigarette out and sighed.
And then he went to the utility closet and got the brush, a bucket, and the pink, gallon size industrial cleanser.
The toilet wasn’t going to clean itself.
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