Grease Fire

I had a smoke out back by the dumpsters while I waited for the fire department to show up and deal with the burning kitchen.

The kitchen was burning because the fryer exploded. I don’t actually know why the fryer exploded, I hadn’t been there. I had been in the manager’s office, trying to get him to do something about the new hire, Diane, who didn’t seem to be graced with the brains God gave a cockroach.

Thinking about it, pulling a long drag out of my cancer stick, I bet Diane had something to do with it.

The manager and I were doing that thing. You know that thing. That scream whisper thing. Stage whispers, I guess, but for the opposite reason. We weren’t supposed to be heard. The door was shut and even as we breathily screeched at other we kept stealing glances at it. Make sure no one was lurking outside. And by ‘no one’ I’m sure we both were thinking of Lois. Gossipy bitch.

I’m pretty sure Roger didn’t want anyone to hear us screaming for employee morale, whatever the fuck that was worth at the fourth worst third-rate fast food chain in town. I didn’t want anyone to hear us screaming because I wanted Roger’s job. Was supposed to have gotten Roger’s job. But Roger was cousins with the district manager. And Roger hired Diane because he was fucking her. And then Diane fucked up so severely with the fryer that now the entire kitchen was belching flames behind me.

I took my second cigarette across the parking lot as sirens started screaming on the edge of my hearing. I stared at the place I’d worked thirty-eight hours a week for the past six years as it burnt to the ground. Went quicker than I thought it would.

Connie found me right around the time the fire trucks finally pulled into the front parking lot. She held out a hand for a smoke without asking and I gave it to her without protesting. Connie I liked. Connie knew what she was fucking doing. Connie showed up on time and did her job without having to ask a million questions and then when it was quitting time she cut out, didn’t matter if the dining room was empty or if the line was up to the back counter with the napkins and the condiments. I respected the shit out of that.

“You see what happen?” I asked her.

“Nah.” She lit her cigarette and took a drag. “I was out front refilling the napkins. You?”

“Nope. I was screaming at Roger.”

“Again?”

Connie knew all about it. She didn’t know why I wanted to be a manager. She’d been working there twice as long as I had and was still running the register and wiping down tables, and she liked it like that.

“Ain’t got the patience to order a bunch of snot-nosed shit-for-brains around. I’d rather be the shit-for-brains.”

Easy thing to say for a woman whose husband had a successful laundromat next to the college dorms. I needed the money. Needed to get more than thirty-eight hours a week. Two hours away from benefits, for fuck’s sake.

“Maybe he deserved it, today,” Connie said, watching as a bunch of hoses started spraying down what was left of the building. “Ness was out front with me.”

There it was. Roger and I in his office. Connie and Ness out front with the napkins. Only left one person in the kitchen.

“She’s probably up front with Roger, then. Crying into his arms.”

Connie raised an eyebrow, and then glanced around.

“I was up front with the rest of them before I came back,” she said. “Came around to make sure you got out okay. Expected to see the two of them back here with you.”

Despite the summer heat, goosebumps rose on my arms and the back of my neck.

“They ain’t up front?”

“Not that I saw.”

When we heard the explosion and saw the fryer oil splash against the door, I’d gone out the back. Roger had gone into the kitchen, grabbing the walls to keep from slipping. Screaming Diane’s name.

We lit new cigarettes and walked around the building to the street side, giving it all a wide berth. More worried about getting hit with the hoses at this point. The building wasn’t a building anymore. It was charred rubble. We used to joke about the place being built in the seventies, probably loaded with asbestos. Guess we’d been wrong.

Roger’s car was sitting right where he’d parked it that morning. Roger had fixed his tie clip and whatever was left of his hair while Diane had fixed her makeup, and then they’d crossed the parking lot laughing while Roger had grabbed her ass. Neither had noticed I’d been sitting in my car, three spots down. As far as those two were concerned there was nothing out there besides each other.

Ness was out front with the family that had been eating by the windows. No reason for them to still be there, except the spectacle. Couldn’t really blame them. They thought it was just a chicken joint burning.

Ness knew immediately. As soon as she saw Connie and me walking toward her, and only Connie and me. She glanced at the family, calculated whether she could get them to leave, then hustled over to where one of the firefighters was standing, watching the other two work.

I’d hated both of them, but I never wanted this. Ain’t no one deserve to die in a grease fire in a shitty fast food place, even if you were the one who accidentally started it. Connie and I watched in silence. Couldn’t think of a thing to say.

After the hoses were off she dropped her cigarette butt and rubbed it down with her shoe.

“You can probably be manager now. Once they rebuild.”

“Nah. Think I’ll see if that sub shop is hiring.”

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