The man glanced over his shoulder at the leftover items on the warming rack. Wiley followed his gaze, spying through the service opening another employee, a young black man in a white apron, intent on scraping the flat grill. “Looks like your lucky day,” the counterman said. “How about a ham and cheese, a junior roast beef, and two fries? I'll charge you the same.”
“You serve plain hamburgers, don't you? I mean, fella comes into your establishment should be able to order anything off the menu, as long as you're open. That's your business, right?”
The counterman leaned forward, his lank hair falling across his brow. He looked older, maybe late twenties, wrinkles foreshadowed around the eyes, with the kind of pallor that comes from too much time under fluorescent light. “Listen, bud,” he said. “We're out of cheeseburgers. Now, I can give you what we have, or you can just split and go somewheres else. There's a McDonald's up the highway, may be open if you hurry.”
“I was just saying—”
“You want what we got, or not?” The man raised his voice, and from the kitchen, the cook wiped his hands on the apron and marched toward the front, disappearing from Wiley's view for an instant, then crashed through the swinging doors, glowering.
“Sure, sure,” Wiley said. “I'll take whatever you got.” He laid a five-dollar bill on the counter, and the cook and counterman grinned simultaneously at some inside joke. Wiley took the bag of food and his change and started to leave, then remembering, he turned on his heels. “Oh yeah. Two large shakes. Chocolate.”
“Shake machine's closed,” the cook said.
“We're closed,” the counterman said. “Why don't you go on now?”
Wiley approached them, face red with anger. “Look, man, all I want is—” He flinched when the cook slapped his hands upon the Formica. “My girlfriend had her heart set on a chocolate shake.”
“Ain't that funny, Carl,” the counterman said. “Girlie boy says he has a girlfriend.”
No conscious choice registered in the seconds it took to put down the bag and draw the pistol; rather, the movement, which he had practiced so often in the mirror, was accompanied by a strong sense of déjà vu. The gun leapt into his hand. The two men behind the counter, surprised as Wiley, did not know what to think or how to react other than to twitch in recognition that they, too, had been in this scene before, played out in their imaginations, and could remember what to do: when the bad guy pulls a piece you reach for the sky, like in a cartoon, and that is how they found themselves, hands in the air, a pistol waving madly back and forth between them, waiting for their cue, hoping he would not shoot. But he did not speak, this long-haired boy with fury in his eyes. He seemed stunned, too, by the suddenness of the moment and the dangerous act. They waited, mumbling prayers.
He debated which one to shoot first. If the counterman, the cook might panic and jump him, and from his size and demeanor he appeared the tougher of the two and more likely to make a move and perhaps disarm him. Of course if he shot them both, no one would know which had been killed first, although the sequence would matter in his own conscience. He imagined the pull of the trigger, the flash, the bullet through the brain leaving a clean hole in the skull, and then the body's surprised collapse. Then the other one—he had decided by then that the counterman would go second—the other man would cry out in shock and have an instant's panic before he, too, would snap alert at the report of the pistol and flinch as his soul flew homeward. A cool trickle of sweat ran down his spine.
“Carl,” Wiley said to the cook. “Carl, that's your name, ain't it? You know how to make a milkshake?”
Carl nodded. His paper hat was soaked with sweat.
“Well then, Carl, you make me two chocolate shakes while your friend and I wait. Don't be all day, Carl. I'm thirsty.” He clicked and locked the hammer, and Carl moved like a robot to the machine. Then Wiley turned to the man at the other end of his gun.
“You shouldn't have been such a miserable prick. You should've treated me like any other customer. Brother, either you are with us or against us.”
“I'm sorry,” the counterman said. “Please. Don't shoot me.”
“What's your name?”
“Barry,” he said. The first tears rolled down his cheeks.
“Barry, you got a good reason why I don't shoot you for being such a prick about making a chocolate fucking shake? A simple fucking chocolate shake?” The first bite of power felt sweet in his mouth. He had been bullied so long that the moment of control gave him revenge upon all the boys who had ever taunted him, and the sight of Barry weeping filled him with joy.
The counterman's nose began to run, and sweat dripped on the counter. He wiped his face against his shirtsleeve, never lowering his arms. “I've got a wife, and a baby girl—”
“Barry, Barry, Barry, you got to quit that crying.”