“Why? Pray tell, Dr. Freud.”
“Because it hits a little too close to home. Let’s face it. You’re built kind of like a bag. A bag with arms and legs.”
“What?” I glared at her. Sometimes her blunt-and-to-the-point act could get on your nerves. “How would you like it if I said you were built a little bit like a fireplug with pigtails and a Kangol 504?”
That didn’t faze her. “I wouldn’t care. I am built a little like a fireplug. I’m short and solid. Only a fireplug has two arms and just one breast, so I guess I come out ahead on that part. I don’t care what anyone else thinks.”
So I’m like, “Okay, you can be a double-breasted fireplug, but me, I don’t want to be Body Bag anymore. Anyway, the bag-with-arms-and-legs deal’s not the worst part of it. The worst part is it’s like when I was at the police station—they take your identity away. They strip you of that, and all you have left is a stupid nickname.”
“So, you know what they say?” She smiled at me. “The best revenge is living well.”
“Really? They must not have been in high school when they said that.”
When we pulled into Topper’s, Rockin’ Rhonda was out front as usual. You might think Stan, the owner, would chase off a weird homeless character like Rhonda, but he didn’t. Instead, Rhonda became part of the Topper’s experience.
She was probably in her forties or so and huge, not only for a woman but for anyone. In fact, I thought she was a man the first time I got a look at her. You’d always see her out there in her faded army jacket, pants, and boots—with a frizzed-out pink scarf. The color of her hair I don’t know. Maybe she didn’t have any. She always covered her head with an orange stocking cap, even in the summer.
She got the name Rockin’ Rhonda because she played a beat-up guitar that had no strings and pretty much nonstop sang one golden oldie after another—or at least as much as she could remember of them.
As we walked up to the front door, it’s like:
Me: Hey, Rhonda, how’s it going?
Rockin’ Rhonda (singing): Peggy, my Peggy Sue-hoo-hoo-hoo.
Me: I’ll catch you with some coin on the way out.
Rockin’ Rhonda: I love you, gal. Yes, I love you, Peggy Sue-hoo-hoo.
Audrey: Rock on, Rhonda.
Rockin’ Rhonda (nodding): Yeah, I love you, gal, and I want you, Peggy Sue. Hoo-huh-hoo-hoo. Hoo.
So, yes, having Rhonda out front was a definite bonus, but the real draw to Topper’s was the burgers. The thing is, I’m pretty much an authority when it comes to hamburgers—a real connoisseur of the ground beef and bun—and Topper’s has the best burgers south of Twenty-Third Street. Not that I’ve tried every burger place in the metroplex, but I’ll bet I’ve been to most of the good ones. My personal menu involved about three burgers a week, more when I got lucky, and sometimes I wrote reviews about them for the school paper. The best place I’d tried was actually in Dallas, a place called the Stackhouse, but it’s not like I could make the three-hour drive down there every day. No, Topper’s was easily the best place within fifteen to twenty minutes of my house.
Audrey and I took our usual booth in the corner and looked over the menu. Of course, we knew everything on there, but it’s always fun to look at the selections anyway, especially since they have pictures of the food. Usually, I got the Number 11, which has pepper-jack cheese, bacon, jalapeños, and anything else you want. In my case, I went for lettuce, tomato, onions, and mustard. Mustard is key. Mayonnaise might be all right for a turkey sandwich, but please leave it off the burgers. Also, Topper’s asks how you want your meat cooked, which is a must for a really good hamburger, and I go for the medium well. No blood for me. Just a light touch of pink so I don’t feel like I’m going to come down with E. coli poisoning or something, but not so overcooked that they burn the succulent juices out of it either.
As for Audrey—here’s a major difference between us—she’s been a vegetarian since eighth grade, so she always ordered the Number 2 with both Swiss and sharp cheddar cheese, lettuce, tomato, onion, mustard, AND mayonnaise—hold the meat! That’s right—HOLD THE MEAT! I told her that a little piece of me died every time I heard that order.
So, we’re sitting there perusing the menus when who comes out of the restroom? Corman Rogers in all his black-and-silver-chain glory—the same guy who seemed a little too interested in the morbid details of Hector’s death. He’s like, “Hey, hey, Body Bag, found any more good corpses lately?”
“Don’t call him that,” Audrey warned him. “He doesn’t like it.”
But Corman just snickered and headed for the door with a couple of his buddies, their silver chains jingling from their oversized belt loops.
I shook my head. Even a vampire like Corman was going with the Body Bag moniker. You might think that would dampen my appetite, but actually it just made me feel like eating two Number 11s.
I’m like, “Jesus, I have to do something about my life. And it’s not just the Body Bag thing either. It’s feeling like you’re a zero in the scheme of the universe. If I died five years out of high school, I probably wouldn’t have a single person at my funeral. If someone found me dead in a Dumpster, they might as well just leave me there. It’d save the city money for having to bury me.”
“Is this about Hector? Just because he died young doesn’t mean you’re going to.”
“I’m talking about this whole process we’re caught in. I mean, think about grade school—there was just a small number of kids. It was manageable. And you get to fifth grade and you’re totally on top. There’s these puny first graders walking around with their cartoon-character backpacks, and you just—you know—you feel huge. Then comes middle school and there’s like ten times more kids, and you don’t even get to know who they are before they ship you to high school and there’s even more kids. You’re fourteen and there’s guys in the halls with full-grown beards. Girls with giant boobs. And it’s not like I’m a bottom-feeder or anything, but I’m sure not at the top, and the middle is so vast you might as well be nobody. So think about what college will be like. And then you get spewed out of that into this churning ocean of life. What then? Am I going to be like this little speck of plankton for these humongous stupid cop sharks to gobble up and crap out their other end?”