Bad Things Read Free Page A

came out
    twitching.
    “Glad you could make it,” I said, taking off the special pizza
    apron. I didn’t care one way or the other about Kyle being late. I was
    merely following form. You don’t let fellow toilers at the bottom of
    12 Michael Marshall
    the food-production chain get away with any shit, or they’ll be doing
    it all the time.
    “Yeah, well,” he said, confused. “You know, like, it’s my job.”
    I didn’t have an answer to that, so stepped out of his way and went
    back to waiting tables. I established what people wanted, and pushed
    the specials. I conveyed orders back to the kitchen, instigating the
    production of breaded shrimp and grilled swordfi sh and blackened
    mahimahi, and the celebrated side salad with honey apple vinaigrette.
    I brought the results back to the table, along with drinks and bonho-
    mie. I returned twice to check that everything was okay, and refresh
    their iced water. I accepted payment via cash, check, or credit card,
    and reciprocated with little mints and a postcard of the restaurant. I
    told people it had been great seeing them, and to drive safe, and wiped
    the table down in preparation for the next family or young couple or
    trio of wizened oldsters celebrating sixty years of mutual dislike.
    After two cycles of this, the evening ended and we cleared the
    place up, and everyone started for home.
    It was dark by then. Unusually humid, too, the air like the breath of
    a big, hot dog who’d been drinking seawater all afternoon. I nodded
    good-bye as rusty cars piloted by other staff crunkled past me, on the
    way up the pebbled slip road from the Pelican’s location, to turn left
    or right along Highway 101.
    The cooks left jammed together into one low-slung and battered
    station wagon, the driver giving me a pro forma eye-fuck as he passed.
    I assumed they all boarded together in some house up in Astoria or
    Seaside, saving money to send back home, but as I’d never spoken to
    any of them, I didn’t actually know.
    As I reached the highway I realized Kyle was a few yards behind
    me. I glanced back, surprised.
    “You walking somewhere?”
    “Yeah, right.” He smirked. “Mission control’s on the way. Big
    B A D T H I N G S 13
    party up the road tonight. We’re headed in your direction, if you
    want a ride.”
    I hesitated. Normally I walked the two miles north. The other
    staff know this, and think I’m out of my mind. I look at their young,
    hopeful faces and consider asking what else I should be doing with
    the time, but I don’t want to freak them out. I don’t want to think of
    myself as not-young, either, but as a thirty-fi ve-year-old among hu-
    mans with training wheels, you can feel like the go-to guy for insider
    information on the formation of the tectonic plates.
    The walk is pleasant enough. You head along the verge, the road
    on your right, the other side of which is twenty feet of scrubby grass
    and then rocky outcrops. On your left you pass the parking lots of
    very small, retro-style condos and resorts, three stories at most and
    rendered in pastel or white with accents in a variety of blues, called
    things like the Sandpiper and Waves and Tradewinds; or fi fty-yard
    lots stretching to individual beach houses; or, for long stretches, just
    undergrowth and dunes.
    But tonight my feet were tired and I wanted to be home, plus
    there’s a difference between doing your own thing and merely look-
    ing unfriendly and perverse.
    “That’d be great,” I said.
    C H A P T E R 2
    Within thirty seconds we realized we had squat to say to each
    other outside the confi nes of the restaurant, and Kyle reached in
    his T-shirt pocket and pulled out a joint. He lit it, hesitated, then
    offered it to me. To be sociable, I took a hit. Pretty much immedi-
    ately I could tell why his pizzas were so dreadful: if this was his stan-
    dard toke, it was amazing the guy could even stand up. We hung in
    silence for ten minutes, passing the joint back and forth, waiting
    for