Authors: Johnny B. Truant
On the heels of this came two thoughts.
One, the store wasn’t going to close after all. This should have been good news, and it
would
have been good news just a few short weeks ago. But coming now, after all sense had been thrown out the window, it was troubling. It meant that there was now no defined end to what had been intended as a brief, brilliant flash of chaos before the end. And if the store’s closure wouldn’t force them to stop what they were doing, would they be able to end the crazy, risky, and probably illegal activities at Bingham’s on their own? Or had they started something that had gained too much momentum to stop?
The second thought was that after enough time, Wally was gong to get curious about why the bank deposits kept getting larger. He’d start to ask questions. Maybe he’d pay a visit. And maybe he’d hear through the grapevine about the rebellious little deli that people heard he was in charge of at Ohio State. Someday soon, Wally and Bingham were going to find out just what Philip had been doing with Bingham’s restaurant, his reputation, and his name.
And then the shit would hit the proverbial fan.
Dicky Kulane sat in his chair. The experience was painful. His arms were rigid and tight, straining on the armrests, threatening to lift him from the chair by sheer force. His teeth ground against one another like tiny mortars and pestles.
The newest intercepted email from Philip to Wally read:
Wally,
I got the check today. Thanks for the bonus. I guess this means that you’re not going to fire me for refusing to do that stuff that you told us to do? And I also guess it means that the store is staying open? No hard feelings, I hope.
Take it easy,
Philip
It was bound to happen sometime, Dicky told himself. It was inevitable that one of the parties involved in this little game would eventually break through the fragile wall he’d built between them.
But did it really matter? The whole venture was a failure, and he’d essentially given up anyway. He hadn’t bothered to write to Philip recently, because all he ever seemed to do was to make himself feel stupid and to make things worse. He had simply tried to keep Wally and Philip as virtually separated as possible, deleting emails from one or the other and replying as needed.
Intercepting email hadn’t been enough, though. The bank deposits alone would, of course, tell Philip’s bosses the good news.
??The good news??
It was supposed to be the other way around. The higher-ups were supposed to notice as the deposits got smaller and smaller, not bigger and bigger. They were supposed to realize that something was wrong with their email amidst the fury and tears of ruin, not with jubilation.
Dicky had seen what the place had become for himself, and Paul still visited almost daily and reported back. It was turning into anarchy down there. Out of control. Why nobody had intervened, he couldn’t imagine. He thought about calling someone to file a complaint himself, but what would he complain about? He hadn’t been assaulted, and he couldn’t complain that the Bingham’s crew were assaulting others because those others kept going back of their own accord. By now, the customers knew what they were in for when they stepped through Bingham’s doors. Even most of the new people knew what they were in for, thanks to the rather rose-colored, whitewashed article that had appeared in the
Dispatch
. Bingham’s was becoming a hotspot. A “thing.”
But dammit, someone must have a problem with all of this. Dicky couldn’t be the only sane person in a town filled with infuriating idiots.
But then he realized: of course, there was
someone
who would have a problem with it, if that someone knew what was going on. That someone could end it all. And if it were ended, there would still be displaced masses of customers with nowhere to go. Dicky could still funnel those masses through his doors if he played it right. Bingham’s, which he had grown to loathe with violent, almost homicidal intensity, would still end up decimated. The crew would still be just as out of sorts. In fact, if it did end now, the final result might be even better than Dicky had intended. Closed was one thing, but closed with the crew arrested, sued, and/or publicly humiliated was much better.
Dicky opened a window in Hotmail and composed a new email to Wally:
Wally,
I got your letter but we’ve run into some seriously bad stuff here and need your help... how soon can you visit? It’s urgent!
Philip
That’ll do it,
he thought to himself.
That’ll fix their wagon, by God.
Chuck Fink’s article had been out for two weeks. Because Bingham’s was gaining a cult reputation around town, the column appeared above the fold on the front page of the culture section instead of its usual location on page two, and business had picked up accordingly.
The Bingham’s staff didn’t know what to think of their sudden minor fame, but eventually settled on being proud. Slate cut the article from the paper (title = “Zany Deli Offers Respite from Boredom”) and tacked it up on the end of the old grill hood between the photo of Vanilla Ice at the Grammys and the disturbing new drawing that nobody would admit to having committed, which showed one man lifting his shirt while another knelt behind him with his tongue pressed against the first man’s back, with the caption,
Welcome to FREAKHAM’S.
I want to lick your fucking spine.
The publicity caused by the article had exactly the opposite effect of what would have been sensible. Given the frank descriptions of abuse, profanity, and obscenity at Bingham’s (now complete with rude service and unreasonable prices!), you’d think people would stay away, but that’s not what happened. Instead, business boomed.
As the deli gained in popularity, the employees themselves began gaining in notoriety. Philip was recognized the most, but the people who recognized him weren’t sure why he seemed familiar. It was like being a minor actor with a minor part on a minor TV show. People looked at him with tilted heads, and sometimes asked if they knew him. Philip told these people that he was a famous axe murderer. Sometimes he farted at them.
Groups began to arrive at the deli buzzing with excitement. Some arrived giggling amongst themselves, pointing at the employees and whispering in each other’s ears. Some came out of curiosity. Still others came because they were compelled by suspicion bordering on disbelief. Bingham’s did not discriminate. No matter why they came, all were treated equally horribly.
Still, the new sense of semi-permanence troubled Philip. He felt like they were walking a razor’s edge of luck. Their current streak of zero comeuppance was like being on a roll at a casino, but every smart gambler knows that if your luck gets hot, you have to quit while you’re ahead. If you play for long enough, the house always –
always
– wins.
But the hours when Philip contemplated taking it all back and returning to the old, non-crazy Bingham’s turned into days, which turned into weeks. Would it be smart to cash in now, to simply drop it all and show up tomorrow ready to serve normal food to normal people in normal ways? Absolutely. But somehow it never happened.
And so he played along, exhilarated and worried at the same time, and when he needed a break from it all, he went back in time by sitting in his office.
When Philip was in the office, time stood still. It was as if he were sheltered in the unmoving eye of the storm that raged around them. Nothing changed here. The chair still slid into the pit. The computer remained an antique. Pictures still hung in a jumble on the corkboard tacked to the wall – a mess of gone but never-to-be-forgotten faces. William. Carla. Trip. He looked at the pictures and felt a surge of melancholy. As great as things had been recently, Bingham’s today was so unbelievably different from the Bingham’s of the past. As much as had changed for the better, so much had been forgotten. So much – and so many people – were gone from this place forever.
But the office... the office would always be there. As everything around him changed, the office would remain as it always had been. Nobody would ever fix the hole in the floor or paint over the holy portrait of Jason. The phonebooks and long-forgotten files which stood unheeded on the shelves behind his head had been there since long before Philip had arrived, and would be there long after Philip had departed.
The office was an immutable force. Everything else could change, but the office would always be there. The office would never leave him.
He bent down to tie his shoes (a difficult proposition given the wobbliness imparted by the pit’s hold of the chair’s caster) and something caught his eye. Tucked deep under the desk was small rectangle of paper that read:
Math Tutor – # 050 to 895 – 294-5040.
As usual, there was no way the flier should have found its way into such a remote, deep location in the heart of a private business.
It would seem that there were other things that would never change, as well.
The Rat did not like the increased number of customers. Sure, more humans in the store meant more food, but it was all very unsettling. He felt stressed. He felt the need to organize, to plan. The time for action was coming.
The changes at the deli had begun slowly. First, one human had come into his basement domain and had poked around among the Great Food Machines, aligned in their glorious shining towers. Then, shortly thereafter, the freezer upstairs had been fixed and the dry goods – inedibles like Styrofoam cups and plastic cutlery that had been stowed in the inoperable appliance – were moved into the basement. Humans now regularly invaded The Rat’s domain to retrieve the supplies. Rats were nocturnal and, for the most part, tended to sleep during the day. But with the incursions and the racket upstairs, the sleep they could manage was sparse and unrestful.
Squeaky II had infiltrated the realm of the two-legged on a mission of reconnaissance. Unfortunately, he had become trapped in the defecation and urination chamber (humans apparently confined these activities to one room) and had thus met his end. The movement had suffered a setback.
The Rat’s current incarnation, who would come to be known in the annals of rat history as Squeaky III, would not make the same mistake. Humans were to be avoided – until sufficient numbers of rats had organized, that is. And contrary to what some of the humans above believed, that number was already large, and growing.
Squeaky III sat at the top of the front stairway, looking into the main dining room and listening. He could understand nothing. One thing was certain, though. These new humans – this
infestation
– would have to go.
And he was just the rat to make it happen.
Over the course of September and into October, the staff of Bingham’s became local celebrities. Two more reporters stopped by to do follow-ups to Chuck Fink’s article, both mentioning that Bingham’s story was not nearly as enticing as the fact that disrespect apparently bred popularity. Only the Anarchist’s girlfriend saw a speck of precedent, having once gone to a restaurant in Oklahoma whose theme was abject rudeness, including denying their customers permission to use the restrooms. She said that maybe this was the reason that the deli was doing well – people got a kick out of the theme.
But Bingham’s was not about themes. Themes, as Smooth B was fond of observing, blew ass. If the deli were to go on operating (legitimately) on a “rudeness” theme, there would be no fun in it. The customers – the very same idiot customers against whom the staff was revolting – would once again begin to enjoy themselves. The cardinal rule became: The Customer Shalt Not Enjoy Himself. Come Hell or High Water.
Still, customers returned. Fanfare took on new levels, spurned by (apparent) public support and by the inflated profits from which Philip skimmed in the name of “store improvement expenses.” Rich and the lanky artist Nick, fresh from a weekend outing in the woods playing paintball wargames, suggested that Philip use some of the money to purchase paintball guns that the staff could use to shoot customers 1) randomly or 2) to drive them from the store as the Anarchist had done with the hose. The increased business meant increased work, and the logical way to alleviate the stress that accompanied it was to shoot people with exploding balls of paint.
Bricker was promoted to doing double-duty. He began acting as Tip Enforcer, dressing head-to-toe in 1970s pimp regalia – long, brightly-colored coats, tall shoes, ostentatious sunglasses, and lots of
faux
gold jewelry – and backhand “pimp slapping” people who refused to tip. He usually colored his performance with such clichéd expressions as “‘Sup wit chu, you stupid bitch?” and “I’m gwanna stick my boot right up you ho ass!”
The other major investment began with Rich, who lobbied for, received, and then set up wrestling mats and turnbuckles to create the Bingham’s Smackdown Ring.
The mats were laid in front of the counter. The turnbuckles were arranged around the mats in a rough square that was bordered by the counter on one side and ropes on two more, with the fourth side left open to allow a line to form at the register. As soon as the makeshift ring was in place, Rich began swapping out occasionally with Dungeonmaster Eric in the role of Ghost Employee, clotheslining and DDT-ing customers at random.
The mats saw their first real usage one day when Rich stalked over to Frat Douche, grabbed his trunk, hoisted him so that his body was inverted above Rich’s head, and fell backward with him onto the mat in a perfect suplex. Then, after Frat Douche was down, Rich stalked around him and then fell on him, driving “The People’s Elbow” into his gut.