Let me tell it, you don't tell it good.
What? I tell it fine. You add all sorts of weird stuff.
It makes the story more interesting.
That stuff isn't true.
Look, you're making him nervous.
Just tell the story like normal.
So there we were, cruising down I-16 in Jon's like-new restored purple 1971 Dodge Charger. The top was down and the sun was out, and we were sippin' on sodas without a care in the world.
Not a single word of that is true. The top of a 1971 Charger doesn't even go down. It isn't a convertible, it's just a normal car.
Well fine, Mr. Exciting, you tell it then.
...We were on our way to work.
"Put your feet down."
Eric's feet slapped back down to the mat. "I gotta say, Jon, I'm getting kind of tired of it all." He brushed his gross hair out of his eyes and watched the red stoplight. "I really am."
"So? What are you going to do about it?"
Eric shrugged. "Dunno. Maybe I'll just lounge around some more instead of getting any work done."
I didn't say that! And you think I add stuff?
Well you do!
Just let me tell it. And my hair wasn't gross.
"I agree with you," Jon said, bent over the wheel because he's so nervous. "The grind can get annoying. What are we going to do about it, though? We're pieces of the machine now, and we'll never escape. It'll be a long life of constant work and toil until we die alone, friendless, and with nothing to show for it. We're worm food, my friend, that's all we'll ever be."
You make me sound so depressing.
Sometimes you are!
"Forget that!" Eric said. "I'm not gonna be worm food!" He sat for a few seconds. "I want to do something else. Something exciting."
"You might die if you did exciting things."
Come on, I never said that.
It's in the way you say other things.
I just like to be careful!
"You're just going to shirk your duties?" Jon asked. They pulled into the parking lot of the Tuffco glove manufacturing plant. "Shirking duties isn't fun, Eric. Shirking duties makes you a bad person."
Just let me tell it, this is going to take forever.
Whatever. I don't remember what happened next anyway.
It was lunch break.
"You know, you're getting a lot better at making these burgers," Jon said. The lunchroom of the plant rumbled with talk and machines. Eric, as always, had brought a big sack of cheeseburgers for himself, Jon, and anyone else who needed a hot meal.
"How'd you get 'em to taste this way?" one of the other workers, an older man named Lee asked. "Like they got some sorta spice in 'em." He took another bite. "The texture's like nothing else."
"They taste healthy, but, like, in a good way," another worker, Aaron, said. "Not like healthy stuff usually tastes. Like, yeah it's a cheese burger and yeah it tastes good like one, but it's like...filling or something."
"Ahah, that's a secret," Eric said, smiling through his food, waggling a finger. "Can't tell, can't tell."
"It ain't drugs, is it?"
"No it isn't drugs. It's food!"
"You bring a big bag of these every day," Lee said, casting a critical eye over his burger patty. "How do you cook all of 'em? Do you spend all night rolling patties and cookin' 'em on the stove?"
"Naw," Eric said, smacking his lips. "There's an abandoned fast food place next door to my apartment building. Some guy owns it, but I learned how to sneak in and turn the burners on. I get all these done in about thirty minutes."
"Thirty minutes for all these?" a third worker, Russ, asked. "Geez, we gotta speed demon over here!"
"Hey, I got an idea." Eric put his burger down, directly on the dirty table. "Why don't you guys come over tomorrow night. I can cook us some burgers and we can play cards."
Everybody agreed it was a good idea, and nobody had any problems.
I remember you had a problem with it.
It was technically breaking and entering.
Actually just entering. Only the first time was breaking.
That doesn't change anything.
He was fine with it! Also, I notice you didn't say you spat out your bite of burger when Aaron asked if it was drugs.
It didn't seem necessary to the narrative.
I get to tell the next part.
Everybody came over to the apartment Friday night, and then Eric let them into the burger joint. He got the burners going as Jon and the others set up a big table with enough space for cards, plates, and drinks. They talked about stuff while Eric cooked, slapping down a dozen patties and watching them grow into cooked burgers. He was fast. He was skilled. He didn't take no for an answer when it came to a good burger. He spun his spatula in the air and caught it without looking, and all the while the four outside the kitchen whispered his praises.
I'm not saying you can't embellish it a little bit, just try to keep things moving.
"Here we go," Eric said, setting the platter of burgers down in the center of the table. Rows of condiments, burger additions, and drinks lined up next to it. "All yours."
They ate, greatly enjoying the burgers, since they were so good. "It really did only take you thirty minutes to cook all 'em," Lee said. "You make the patties yourself, too?"
"Yup! With my own two hands." Eric lifted and showed off his hands, which were super clean.
"They taste even better fresh," Aaron said. "That's the best burger I've ever had, I tell you what."
"You know, I just had an idea," Eric said. "What if I started a restaurant? I like cooking burgers. I could do it all day! What a great idea I just had."
It wasn't you. And it wasn't that fast. Lee was the one who suggested it, and it took about an hour, after everybody got drunk.
I was condensing things. We can skip past the rest of the night now and we don't miss any relevant information.
That's not true!
"I think it's a good idea," Jon said, re-cleaning all the dishes Eric had cleaned. "Really. You're clearly talented at this. But I want you to ask yourself: Can I really run a restaurant? Go on. Ask yourself. Ask."
"Can I really run a restaurant?" Eric said, looking at the ceiling of the kitchen. "Yes. There, question asked and answered."
Jon looked at Eric as he stood over the sink. "It takes a lot of money, and time. You'd have to quit at the plant. You'll need to hire people. It'll take a lot of work." He looked at the dish he was cleaning. "You'll have to do more than just cook burgers. It'll take accounting, administration, and advertising." Jon looked at Eric but found he wasn't in the kitchen anymore. He was in the dining room of the restaurant, standing on his head.
I wasn't.
It looked like you were.
I was just trying to see what was underneath some of the benches.
By...
I wasn't standing on my head.
Eric put his feet down. "What's that?"
"I was trying to tell you all the extra work you'll need to do to actually run this place." Jon lifted his hands and spun around a few times, pointing at stuff. "This place is kind of a dump. You don't even own it! We're here illegally! Oh God, I'm going to be sent to prison!"
"Nuh-uh," Eric said. "Nobody knows we've been in here. We'll be fine."
"You're wrong, and now I will tell you how you're wrong in an in-depth manner."
"There's a sign out front with contact information for the owner," Eric said. I'll give him a call tomorrow and ask for a tour of the place. There. And as far as all that other stuff, you can handle that, right?"
"Yes."
"Good. There, everything's dealt with, nobody's doing anything illegal, and no one is going to jail."
I remember I had to convince you to let me help. Also, I was the one who pointed out the sign in front of the building.
You're the one who wanted to make it a shorter story!
I just said you should keep the story moving.
Well fine! Why don't you tell the next part if you're such a master storyteller.
The next morning they called the owner of the building, a Mr. Dennis Fruncion, about the cost of purchasing. Mr. Fruncion insisted on giving a tour, which they had to accept to maintain their story.
"But we already know what it's like in there," Eric said.
"Yes, but he doesn't know that. And we don't want him to know that," Jon said. "Remember, going in there without him is illegal. And we've never done anything illegal...right?"
"Yes, that's correct."
Meeting Mr. Fruncion in front of the deserted building, they shook hands as men should, and the owner unlocked the front doors. "It's a fixer-upper, that's for sure," Fruncion said, as Jon and Eric pretended to look around. "It'll need a hefty helping of hands-on. But I ain't selling for very much. It's really just a nominal fee. All I've really been doing with this place since I got it is paying property taxes; I'd be glad to get rid of it."
He wandered into the kitchen. "Plenty of space back here for...somebody's been in here! And recently!"
"What? No. Couldn't be!" Eric said. "It's probably just...mice."
Fruncion peered closer at the grill, which still had a lot of grease from the night before. "You're probably right. Those little buggers are getting smarter every year, I tell you what."
I came up with a better lie than that. It wasn't that obvious.
It seemed like it was to me.
"What do you boys have in mind?" Fruncion asked, having missed all the really obvious clues Eric had left everywhere.
"We're thinking of a burger place," Eric said. "I have my own recipe. People seem to like it."
"Oh yeah? What's the recipe?"
"Ah." Eric held up a finger. An index finger. "Can't tell. That wouldn't be very good business practice, now would it?"
Fruncion nodded. "I suppose it wouldn't. Anything else you fellas want to see before we talk about pricing?"
Do you remember exactly how much we paid for the building?
A couple thousand dollars. No more than ten I think.
It was more than ten dollars. I know that for a fact.
No more than ten thousand, I mean.
We had to almost drain both of our accounts. Well, I did. Jon still had some money saved.
I wasn't about to do that sort of thing without a safety net. Would have been foolish.
"We own property," Jon said a few hours later. Fruncion had gone home. "We're property owners."
"Do we put a sign up now?" Eric asked. "I don't have any burgers made but it wouldn't take too long."
Jon looked around the sitting area of the restaurant. There were piles of garbage under other, bigger, piles of garbage. Fluorescent lights hung from the ceiling, swinging, should someone accidentally run into them.
I only did that once.
"This place needs a ton of work just to open it," Jon said. "If a health inspector knew you were cooking food in this place for public consumption he would probably go nuclear."
"A what?"
"...Do you really not know what a health inspector is?"
"They try the food and tell people if it's good or not."
"That's a food critic. We'll get some of those, too. No, a health inspector is the guy who says if we're allowed to serve food here or not."
"There aren't any laws about being allowed to serve food."
"Yes there are. There are like...a hundred."
"There are not."
"You're right. There's not a hundred laws about being allowed to serve food. There's probably a thousand."
"No."
"Yes! And we're going to have to follow all of them!" Jon looked around. "I hope you're ready to put some intense work into this place, because it needs it."
I did!
You really did.
I totally did.
Eric worked harder than I had ever seen. He was there every free moment of his life. Neither of us could quit the plant, so free time was short. But every time I'd step into the store another part of it would be clean, or fixed.
My dad helped. He was surprised, but excited, when I told him about it. He's pretty handy.
Meanwhile, I got busy reading up about businesses, all the laws, advertising. The store was in a good location.
Unfortunately, we just didn't have the funds we needed. So, we went to the bank.
We've talked about this a bunch of times. Neither of us can agree on what happened, and our versions differ. They came out to the same result, though. Eric, why don't you go first?
Jon and Eric, wearing their flashiest suits and walking their flashiest walk, entered the bank. An employee quickly approached them.
"Gentlemen, you look like you're here on a mission. Perhaps I can assist you?"
"You sure can help us, young man," Eric said, whipping his sunglasses off. "We're entrepreneurs looking for a break into the wide world of business, but we need some help. Funds have run low, you see."
"A small business loan! Sure, we can help you out with that. Why don't you take a seat in my office here, and I'll fetch some paperwork."
They sat, without saying anything, for a few minutes. The chairs were a little bit too small for them, so their knees came up almost to their chests. The bank employee returned with a folder in his grasp.
"What are the aspects of your business?" he asked.
"Burgers!" Eric said. "They taste very good. I make them myself."
"Ah, a restaurant." The employee wrote a few things down.
"Well, more like a fast food place than a sit-down restaurant," Jon said. The employee nodded and kept writing. "But the burgers are actually very healthy. Eric uses a special ingredient."
The employee looked up. "And what is it?"
"Can't tell," Eric said, waggling a finger. "You'll just have to come in and find out for yourself. You might even be able to guess."
"Wait." The employee looked from Jon to Eric. "Is your business already open?"
Eric shrugged. "Unofficially."
"What?" Jon shook his head. "No, not unofficially. Not even officially! We haven't served any food to customers."
"What about to people who aren't customers?"
"Oh sure," Eric said. "I've given burgers to plenty of people already."
"That you've cooked in the store?"
"No," Eric said.
"What? Yes you have," Jon said. "I was there. It was that Friday, remember? Before we'd even bought the place."
"What?"
"You're being silly, Jon," Eric said. "I've only served food to others in the comfort of my own home."
"You made like, a dozen burgers that one night," Jon said.
Eric made a number of clandestine gestures, meant to make Jon stop talking.
"Are you saying you've served food from the store not only before you owned it, but before it was open?"
He looked from Jon to Eric. Neither said a word.
I can't believe you think that's what happened.
That is what happened. But whatever, you tell your version.
Eric and Jon, wearing simple suits as a businessman might, entered the bank. An employee approached them.
"Hello sirs. Something I can help you with today?"
"Yes ma'am, there is," Jon said. "We're looking to get a small business loan. Nothing too much, just enough to help us get off the ground."
"Of course. Why don't you take a seat at that table there and I'll be with you in a moment."
They sat and waited for the employee to return. She came back with a small stack of papers. She led them through the basic information first, names, addresses, phone numbers, prior credit history, and more. For quite some time.
"What kind of business are you looking to operate?" she asked.
"It's a fast food restaurant," Jon said. "Eric has a secret recipe he's developed all on his own."
"It's great."
"I'm sure it is," the woman said. "Is the business operating currently?"
Eric grimaced. "Of course not. We're right here."
"I mean is it open, sir."
"Oh. No." He looked at Jon. "Do you think we can count the burgers we gave to the guys from the plant?"
"No, you cooked those at home and didn't charge anybody."
"What about the time we cooked some for them inside the building? Before we'd bought it?"
Jon said nothing, hoping the bank employee wouldn't notice Eric had just spoken.
"I'm sorry, what was that?"
"Oh, would sneak into the building to cook burgers for our friends at work. Just for a half an hour or so."
"You would...sneak in?"
"H-he means...that...the building was closed and there was nobody running anything, he would just use the grill and such." Jon attempted to make his face innocent.
The woman looked from one to the other. "Are you saying you served food from your building before it was open?"
"No...I didn't," Eric said. "Besides, it wasn't even our building at the time."
Well, one way or the other, we didn't get the loan.
And because we'd been denied for the loan at that bank, it made it harder to get a loan anywhere else. We weren't sure what to do next. Eric was still getting the place looking better, I was still trying to figure out how to run a fast food business, and both of us were still working at the plant. If we'd had free time we would have picked up more shifts, but we needed all the free time we had to work on the building.
We won't sugarcoat it. We were scared. We didn't know if we had just given our life savings away to buy an empty shell of a restaurant.
We both had our misgivings, but we were sure of one thing over everything else: We both know Eric could cook a mean burger. If we could get people to try his burgers, we would be in business, but we needed to get people inside, first.
We kept working. It must have been months. Maybe half a year. We didn't lose hope, but it was trying to get away. We kept working.
Another thing about Eric: If he sets his mind to something, he keeps working at it. It isn't even as positive as a single-minded determination. It's more like he keeps working just because he didn't have much else to do.
Thanks. I guess.
There was one positive to taking so long with the building. It gave me plenty of time to learn about the wonderful world of business. I took the time to visit other burger places, places we wanted to emulate. I learned what we would need to have stocked. I watched them work. It was enlightening.
By bits and pieces we got closer to opening. The place got cleaner, items got fixed. We did it slowly and kept our funds in check, but we still needed financial help. Jon found a solution.
I came into contact with a private investor in the fast food industry, wealthy enough to fund us but unwilling to simply dole out cash. He would need a taste.
We agreed on a Monday meeting and went wild during the weekend, trying to get the place up to shine. By Sunday evening it looked like it could have been a real restaurant, if empty and a bit run down. But then...we found out someone had been living in the restaurant.
"That is...the biggest rat I have ever seen," Eric said. He and Jon stood at the entrance to the kitchen. Eric held a broom like a sword, and Jon had a pot on his head, a knife in each hand. The rat, large enough to have well-defined pectorals and biceps, hissed at them from atop the grill. "I've named him Noma-Tooga, and he is lord of all rats. If he calls, they will come and devour us." He squeezed the broom handle. "We gotta kill him."
"But can we?" Jon asked. "Are our mortal weapons strong enough to pierce his flesh?"
"We have to try. Man may never know our sacrifice, but we must stop this menace before it grows stronger." Eric swelled, his lungs filling with air. "Let Noma-Tooga know today is his last upon the earth!"
Moments later they both dove to the ground, kitchen utensils sailing over their head to strike the wall. One of the knives Jon had wielded stuck and quivered, point buried in the wall. "Aww...I just got done patching holes in that wall," Eric said. A pushcart rolled out, Noma-Tooga riding it like a noble steed. Both men jumped away, putting the Ur-rat between them and making it choose which of them to disembowel first. Perhaps the other would be able to escape.
But the air carried sweet freedom. Such an ignoble building was no place for the king of rodents. Noma-Tooga's nose twitched in the air and he spotted the door, propped open to air out the smell from cleaning fluids. It jumped off the pushcart and made for the wide world. Jon and Eric watched it enter the street from one of the windows. A car promptly ran over their mighty foe.
I know what you're thinking, but yes--that is actually how it happened. But I thought I named it. I thought I named it Henry.
Henry isn't exciting enough. I gave it a name strong enough to pump blood through your veins.
Once the rat had left, we did everything we could to sterilize the place. It wasn't until after midnight when we'd finished and could go home. We had the next day off at the plant, so we got there early to make sure everything was ready.
"He's going to get here at one," Jon said. He rubbed his hand over the shabby chic wood table they had prepared. "Everything ready in the kitchen?"
"Spotless. I could make a burger with my eyes closed."
Eric took away the other man's blindfold. "Maybe next time. If this goes poorly we're going to be out of luck. Unless that man hands us a big suitcase for of hundred-dollar bills before he walks out of here, we've wasted our money, and we're going to die poor and alone."
"I'm sure it'll be fine." Eric cracked his knuckles. "One last sweep, and then we wait."
A car pulled up at twelve fifty-nine, and a tall man stepped out. His suit danced around his bones like a flag wrapping around a pole. He walked toward the front door, and Eric, from the window, pointed with a happy grin at the briefcase he carried.
The man stopped an inch from the front door and looked at his watch. After six seconds, he rapped on the glass pane with his knuckles, and Jon unlocked it for him.
"Jon, good to see...youagain," the man said. His voice seemed to halt and jump forward at whim.
"Mr. Oris, welcome. This is my business partner, Eric. He's the chef behind the operation."
"It's nice...tomeetyou, Eric," Mr. Oris said as he shook Eric's hand. He took a look around the seating area. "Interesting decor. What is the...feelingyour trying to evoke?"
"Family picnic," Jon said. Eric whipped his apron over his head. "Tasty food. Good food. Food you know you're going to like. Comfort."
Mr. Oris nodded, head bobbing up and down. "I see, I...see. Interesting. Tell me more."
"Sir?" Jon said.
"Tell me about...thebranding."
"Ah. Yes. Of course. Well, our central pillar is very simple. Eric has a recipe he's developed to make delicious burgers. We won't reveal the recipe, except to those relevant figures in authority. You know, health inspectors and things like that. We want people to get their food-"
"Cooked by me!" Eric said, standing in the doorway of the kitchen wearing a long white apron. He had a spatula in his hand and a grin on his face.
"Yes...cooked by Eric," Jon said. "We want them to sit down, start eating, and be surprised."
"By the burgers."
"Yes, that's right." Jon sat at one of the tables. "We want them to talk. To talk about the food. If they leave the building having both enjoyed the food and unable to guess what exactly they were eating, they're sure to tell others about it. Free advertising. Repeat business because they want to figure out what the special ingredient is."
Mr. Oris was nodding his head. "I like it." He coughed. "A fine...plan. Now then, to...business. You'll...letmetry a burger?"
"Eric is getting a few ready right now."
A few minutes later Eric emerged from the kitchen, bearing a single burger inside a bun. Placing it before Mr. Oris at the table, he stepped back, almost to the entrance, as if to flee, should Mr. Oris find his offering lacking.
Mr. Oris brought his briefcase onto the table and opened it, producing a pair of metal utensils. He cut the burger into two halves, sawing with a knife in a businesslike manner. He ate one half plain, first eating a piece of the patty, then the patty with the bun. He chewed, gazing at the ceiling as his lips went in a circle. Eric made a noise.
Mr. Oris opened the other half of the burger, applying an almost clinical amount of ketchup and mustard. After replacing the bun onto the patty, he bit into it. Not a drop of condiment went anywhere but inside his mouth.
Eric coughed and Jon glanced at him. The chef was pointing at the floor near a corner of the room, making a face he would have changed had Oris looked in his direction. Jon moved a step and looked where Eric was pointing.
The rat from the day before huddled in a shadow, baring its long teeth. Its whiskers twitched as Jon stared at it. He risked a quick glance at Mr. Oris, who was still chewing, lost in the burger. Jon looked at Eric and waggled his head in the rat's direction.
Jon grimaced and made for the kitchen. He returned with a broom and started toward the rat's corner.
"Unique," Mr. Oris said. He looked up at Jon. "Very...unique. I detect vegetable matter. It has a healthy, robust taste, almost as if it was part veggie burger. Clearly that is not the case." There was a tiny portion of his patty left, and he broke it open with his utensils. "It appears to be only animal matter, though I see irregularities."
Eric nodded and looked at Jon. While he held one end of the broom, something seemed to have a hold of the other end, and was jerking it within Jon's grasp. "Very astute of you, sir."
"It is a singular burger," Oris said. He smacked his lips. "It tastes healthy. Light, but filling." He rotated his irises up at Jon. "It is beef, yes?"
"A high percentage of it."
Mr. Oris nodded. Jon looked at the corner. Eric had disappeared from view. "Now, is this...theonly burger you plan to offer?"
"We don't have any other recipes."
"No other recipes...needed. If you also offer a simple beef burger, you can raise the price on your special recipe. It will also offer people a chance to try the food without the worry of an unknown element."
"That's a good idea."
"About the...secretingredient. Will you tell me?"
"I suppose I could...if you mean to invest."
Mr. Oris stood, wiping his mouth with a napkin despite there being nothing to wipe away. "Young man, I intended to invest as soon as the burger...touchedmylips."
"Well, that's wonderful news," Jon said. "Why don't we speak in the office. Eric still has work he needs to do out here."
"Where did...hego?" Oris asked, looking around. "I would have liked to speak with him. He already has oil control. I wanted to see his spatula...grip."
"Oh...I'm sure he's around here somewhere," Jon said. "After you."
It bit me.
It was just a little bite.
We still had to go to the hospital afterward. I can't believe I managed to kill that thing. It survived a car running over it. It almost broke the broom in half.
You were fine.
I was more than fine. With the money Jed gave us, we had more than enough to get everything ready.
Jed Oris became more than just an investor. A few years after we opened he became a full business partner, one of just a handful of people who knew Eric's recipe. He became our friend, my father-in-law, and a steadying hand on our wild business.
Things began to move faster. Now we had to prove Jed's investment worthy. He kept us to a schedule. We ordered dishes.
I hired people. If you've never done that let me tell you, it's a strange experience. We ordered signage.
Signage!
But we weren't done yet. We had one last hurdle before we could open: the health inspector.
"Here he comes everyone." Jon said. "Places, places. Smiles and handshakes. You're friendly, your clean, your happy."
Three of the workers they had hired stood in their new uniforms, each with an apron showing a cartoon burger tapping the side of its nose and winking, the restaurant's logo. They ranged from thirty-five to eighteen, and all of them knew if things went poorly they would be out of a job. They stood shoulder-to-shoulder, chests out and chins up. Merrya, the shortest, gazed ahead with unexpected determination, while Will kept his face stony, as always. The middle-sized one, Jack, had an easy-going smile.
Eric looked out the window. A black SUV sat in one of the handicapped parking spaces, tinted windows blocking any prying. Eric narrowed his eyes and let the blinds slip closed.
"What's he doing out there?" Jon asked, appearing at Eric's elbow.
"Letting us stew in our own sweaty juices," Eric said. Jon scowled. "He's putting the pressure on. He's turning up the heat. He's raising the water level."
"But can't he do those things in here, while he's checking everything?"
Eric shrugged. "I'm going to make sure the kitchen is ready."
"You've done that a dozen times today."
"Then it's thirteen now. A baker's kitchen. Let me know if he makes a move."
Eric left the front area of the store and wandered to the chrome hideaway the laypeople called the kitchen. Less a kitchen, more a spaceship, blasting off to the farthest reaches of the yum-iverse, ready to return to Earth laden with out-of-this-world food.
Eric rubbed his chin. Jon's advertising talk had been rubbing off on him. He looked around. Everything was in place. A place for everything. The counters were spotless. The grill gleamed. The window to the seating area was covered with reminders to himself, things like "Burgers in back, fries in front" to present the food in an attractive manner when an order was up, "Loud and clear" when calling things out to the staff, and "Careful with the knives" because he wasn't very careful with the knives. He had fresh patties ready to go; all his supplies were stocked up. His stomach churned, nervous but ready.
"Eric!" Jon called, and Eric returned to the front.
A short man, head shaved and mouth drooping down, stumbled toward the front door. He pushed through, not waiting to knock. He carried a clipboard and a pair of small glasses, which he placed on his nose after he left the sunlight.
He glanced to his right and found the three employees standing at attention. He looked left and saw Jon and Eric, hands behind their backs and chests pushed forward. He clicked his pen and began to wander around the storefront, writing things down. He looked under tables and along ceilings. He looked at tabletop levels, inspected floors, and tapped displays with his fingernail, all while jotting notes.
He marched around corners until he stood in the center of Eric's world, Jon and Eric standing behind him. He swiped a finger across the grill's surface and inspected the finger. He looked behind appliances, neither nodding nor shaking his head but always jotting things onto the piece of paper attached to his clipboard.
Jon and Eric swallowed in unison.
Nothing escaped inspection. Food storage, food preparation, electrical load, blind corners, fire lanes, even handicapped parking spaces quivered under the inspector's eye.
It seemed to go on forever. Days ended and began. Nations rose and fell. Dynasty replaced dynasty; still the inspector inspected.
The employees hadn't moved. Jon and Eric stood in front of the inspector as he rotated his head around the entire store, standing with his back pressed against the exit. He signed his name on his slip and presented it to Jon and Eric. He left without a word, and his SUV whispered out of the parking lot, as if the wheels floated above the pavement.
"An A?"
"An A!"
"That's the only A I've ever gotten!"
"Ladies and gentlemen," Jon said to the employees. "Hearts may resume beating!"
It was terrifying. I still have nightmares. I hate inspections. We've never failed one, not even close, but every time one of them comes into the restaurant I think about our very first inspector. He didn't say a word. Not even with his eyes. He just looked, wrote, handed us our grade, and left.
He might not have even existed. Maybe he was just a shared creation of our feverish minds.
He gave us the go-ahead. We were cleared to open.
The grand opening was a week later, giving the advertising a little bit of time to settle in.
We were set to open, and we believed in our products from one end of the store to the other. But nobody else knew what kind of food we were selling so we knew what kind of clientele to expect in the first few days.
"Doors are open," Jon said to Eric, who looked through the kitchen window. "There are-"
Oh, by the way, we had to quit our jobs at the plant. In fact, we'd more or less quit a few weeks ago, but we were able to burn up paid time off before actually quitting. That helped.
They had a big party for us. They spelled Eric's name with a k, but they meant well. They all promised to stop by in the first week. Strange, but it was kind of sad to leave. They were friends. Neither of us loved working at the plant, but it was a home of sorts. It was comfortable. We knew what to expect when we went there. Our own restaurant was exciting, new, and unknown. We were in charge of our own destinies, and that meant if we failed we had no one else to blame and nothing to fall back on.
My parents said I could live with them if it failed.
All right, well, I had nothing to fall back on.
You could have stayed with us for a while.
Let's continue.
"There are people waiting to get in," Jon said. "Waiting at the doors."
"You're going to get a picture of the first customer, right?" Eric asked. Darcy, next to him in the kitchen, was preparing patties for the grill.
"What? Well, I mean, I guess I could."
"Yeah! For posterity!"
"Do you really know what that word means?"
"Of course I do!" Eric slapped the first patty on the grill, nudging it slightly with his spatula. It began to sizzle. "We have to have a memory board or something. All the big places have them. First customer, letters from people who liked the food, reviews."
"Got it." Jon turned to find the very first customer on the other side of the counter. "Welcome to Can't Tell Burgers. How may I help you?"
Jon and two other workers ran the front. Eric and a kitchen helper cooked the food. People streamed in the front doors; the grand opening sign drew them inside. At first it was just another burger place to them, slinging burgers and fries and a few other items. A good place to get out of the house and enjoy some food without having to cook it yourself. Soon it became something different.
Jon was wiping the counter when he heard someone say excuse me. He looked up to find one of the first few customers, holding his basket still containing the half-eaten burger.
"Uh, yes sir, what can I help you with?"
"This..." the man looked at his burger. He was young, no older than Jon or Eric, somewhere in his mid-twenties. "This is beef?"
"For the most part, yes. Of course it has the special ingredient," Jon said. He tapped the side of his nose, just like the burger in the logo. "Can't tell."
"Right, right. It's just." The man looked at his burger. "I wept when I ate it. I cried. Tears."
Jon stood with the wipe rag in his hands and a confused expression on his face. "You aren't allergic, are you?" He looked aside at Merrya. "You've been notifying people of possible allergic reactions, haven't you?" Merrya nodded.
"It tasted too good," the young man said. "It tasted too good to be a burger. I need another one." He went into his wallet and brought out a slip of paper. "I'm a food critic from a local paper. I need to be thorough. I need to make sure I wasn't hallucinating anything."
"That's not what I expected to hear on my first day," Jon said. "Another burger, coming right up."
"Oh, trust me, you'll hear plenty of strange things," the critic said. "You always do."
The critic received his second burger, and sat down. Jon watched him. He looked at the patty, and the bun. He ate. He placed the burger, with a bite taken out of it, back in the basket and stared at the wall. He took out his phone, and began to text. He texted for a solid ten minutes; his thumbs danced the nutcracker on the keys. After finishing, he continued eating. Every bite seemed to be a new eureka.
Within a quarter of an hour a cadre of young men and women entered all at once. They met with the critic and he gestured at the burger, talking with animation and then pointing at Jon. Jon smiled and waved. They approached in a phalanx and ordered their food, turning the store's modest opening into a party. They had laptops and tablets with them, and as they ate they wrote. Not a one of them talked until a few minutes of munching had passed.
Jon--and Eric, leaning through the kitchen window--watched them.
One of them took out a phone and made a call. They caught a few words: "incredible," "ground-breaking," "unmistakeable." What, exactly, was unmistakeable they did not catch.
Afternoon hit. More customers entered, enough to keep Eric busy until he had to wipe sweat from his brow so it didn't land on the grill. Men and women who had an air of control entered. They were from bigger papers, famous blogs, TV stations. They tried the food and asked questions. About Jon and Eric, about the store, about the secret ingredient. They asked about the allergy warning--the cashiers were trained to ask about allergies but would only confirm if someone should not eat the secret recipe.
A few asked for interviews, but it was too busy. The place was packing full. Families of rowdy children silenced when they began to eat. Workers from the plant bull-rushed the door at dinnertime, cheering when they saw the business on the restaurant's first day.
The next day began with an even bigger crowd. From open to close the line was packed with people waiting to receive burgers.
The third morning Jon opened the paper and found a picture of the restaurant's building on the front page of the local section, explaining their sudden and well-deserved popularity. In a week they had a full interview with the city's big paper, filled with attempts to get them to divulge their secret ingredient. A week later one of the employees said a website had called them the number-one burger place in the state. A month later they were number one on the east coast. The next year more than one publication called them the best burger store in the nation.
In the third year there was a TV show about them. National names tried their products.
In the fifth year, the president visited.
***
Jon and Eric, with wrinkles and faded hair and older bodies, sat side-by-side at the original restaurant. There were more than fifty Can't Tell Burger shops in the state alone, and hundreds more throughout the country and around the world. A man sat across from them, with a laptop recording them and a pad of paper full of notes. He'd let them talk for the last hour.
"Things grew from there," Jon said. "Franchises. It was strange."
"Yeah," Eric said. His hands shook, and he watched the motions with dark eyes. "Strange. Good."
"When Jed died we knew things had changed. We stepped back. The men and women we'd worked with could do things just as well. Better, sometimes." Jon looked around the store, small and old compared to the other buildings bearing the Can't Tell name, but it was the original and it still drew quite a crowd most days.
"You're proud?" the man asked.
"Prouder than ever. Aside from our children, the proudest we've ever been," Eric said. "I still sometimes wish I could grab a spatula and flip a burger. I try it every once in a while, but..." he glanced at his shaking hands. "Some things belong in the past."
"Anything else to add?"
Jon and Eric looked at each other. "There are so many stories we could tell. The time we had a terrorist threat. The time someone tried to blackmail the secret recipe out of us." Jon smiled and shook his head. "But our story has ended now. We'll have a hand in the business but we look forward to spending time with our families and relaxing."
"Any specific plans?"
They were quiet for a moment. "Ah." Eric tapped the side of his nose. "Can't tell."
What? I tell it fine. You add all sorts of weird stuff.
It makes the story more interesting.
That stuff isn't true.
Look, you're making him nervous.
Just tell the story like normal.
So there we were, cruising down I-16 in Jon's like-new restored purple 1971 Dodge Charger. The top was down and the sun was out, and we were sippin' on sodas without a care in the world.
Not a single word of that is true. The top of a 1971 Charger doesn't even go down. It isn't a convertible, it's just a normal car.
Well fine, Mr. Exciting, you tell it then.
...We were on our way to work.
"Put your feet down."
Eric's feet slapped back down to the mat. "I gotta say, Jon, I'm getting kind of tired of it all." He brushed his gross hair out of his eyes and watched the red stoplight. "I really am."
"So? What are you going to do about it?"
Eric shrugged. "Dunno. Maybe I'll just lounge around some more instead of getting any work done."
I didn't say that! And you think I add stuff?
Well you do!
Just let me tell it. And my hair wasn't gross.
"I agree with you," Jon said, bent over the wheel because he's so nervous. "The grind can get annoying. What are we going to do about it, though? We're pieces of the machine now, and we'll never escape. It'll be a long life of constant work and toil until we die alone, friendless, and with nothing to show for it. We're worm food, my friend, that's all we'll ever be."
You make me sound so depressing.
Sometimes you are!
"Forget that!" Eric said. "I'm not gonna be worm food!" He sat for a few seconds. "I want to do something else. Something exciting."
"You might die if you did exciting things."
Come on, I never said that.
It's in the way you say other things.
I just like to be careful!
"You're just going to shirk your duties?" Jon asked. They pulled into the parking lot of the Tuffco glove manufacturing plant. "Shirking duties isn't fun, Eric. Shirking duties makes you a bad person."
Just let me tell it, this is going to take forever.
Whatever. I don't remember what happened next anyway.
It was lunch break.
"You know, you're getting a lot better at making these burgers," Jon said. The lunchroom of the plant rumbled with talk and machines. Eric, as always, had brought a big sack of cheeseburgers for himself, Jon, and anyone else who needed a hot meal.
"How'd you get 'em to taste this way?" one of the other workers, an older man named Lee asked. "Like they got some sorta spice in 'em." He took another bite. "The texture's like nothing else."
"They taste healthy, but, like, in a good way," another worker, Aaron, said. "Not like healthy stuff usually tastes. Like, yeah it's a cheese burger and yeah it tastes good like one, but it's like...filling or something."
"Ahah, that's a secret," Eric said, smiling through his food, waggling a finger. "Can't tell, can't tell."
"It ain't drugs, is it?"
"No it isn't drugs. It's food!"
"You bring a big bag of these every day," Lee said, casting a critical eye over his burger patty. "How do you cook all of 'em? Do you spend all night rolling patties and cookin' 'em on the stove?"
"Naw," Eric said, smacking his lips. "There's an abandoned fast food place next door to my apartment building. Some guy owns it, but I learned how to sneak in and turn the burners on. I get all these done in about thirty minutes."
"Thirty minutes for all these?" a third worker, Russ, asked. "Geez, we gotta speed demon over here!"
"Hey, I got an idea." Eric put his burger down, directly on the dirty table. "Why don't you guys come over tomorrow night. I can cook us some burgers and we can play cards."
Everybody agreed it was a good idea, and nobody had any problems.
I remember you had a problem with it.
It was technically breaking and entering.
Actually just entering. Only the first time was breaking.
That doesn't change anything.
He was fine with it! Also, I notice you didn't say you spat out your bite of burger when Aaron asked if it was drugs.
It didn't seem necessary to the narrative.
I get to tell the next part.
Everybody came over to the apartment Friday night, and then Eric let them into the burger joint. He got the burners going as Jon and the others set up a big table with enough space for cards, plates, and drinks. They talked about stuff while Eric cooked, slapping down a dozen patties and watching them grow into cooked burgers. He was fast. He was skilled. He didn't take no for an answer when it came to a good burger. He spun his spatula in the air and caught it without looking, and all the while the four outside the kitchen whispered his praises.
I'm not saying you can't embellish it a little bit, just try to keep things moving.
"Here we go," Eric said, setting the platter of burgers down in the center of the table. Rows of condiments, burger additions, and drinks lined up next to it. "All yours."
They ate, greatly enjoying the burgers, since they were so good. "It really did only take you thirty minutes to cook all 'em," Lee said. "You make the patties yourself, too?"
"Yup! With my own two hands." Eric lifted and showed off his hands, which were super clean.
"They taste even better fresh," Aaron said. "That's the best burger I've ever had, I tell you what."
"You know, I just had an idea," Eric said. "What if I started a restaurant? I like cooking burgers. I could do it all day! What a great idea I just had."
It wasn't you. And it wasn't that fast. Lee was the one who suggested it, and it took about an hour, after everybody got drunk.
I was condensing things. We can skip past the rest of the night now and we don't miss any relevant information.
That's not true!
"I think it's a good idea," Jon said, re-cleaning all the dishes Eric had cleaned. "Really. You're clearly talented at this. But I want you to ask yourself: Can I really run a restaurant? Go on. Ask yourself. Ask."
"Can I really run a restaurant?" Eric said, looking at the ceiling of the kitchen. "Yes. There, question asked and answered."
Jon looked at Eric as he stood over the sink. "It takes a lot of money, and time. You'd have to quit at the plant. You'll need to hire people. It'll take a lot of work." He looked at the dish he was cleaning. "You'll have to do more than just cook burgers. It'll take accounting, administration, and advertising." Jon looked at Eric but found he wasn't in the kitchen anymore. He was in the dining room of the restaurant, standing on his head.
I wasn't.
It looked like you were.
I was just trying to see what was underneath some of the benches.
By...
I wasn't standing on my head.
Eric put his feet down. "What's that?"
"I was trying to tell you all the extra work you'll need to do to actually run this place." Jon lifted his hands and spun around a few times, pointing at stuff. "This place is kind of a dump. You don't even own it! We're here illegally! Oh God, I'm going to be sent to prison!"
"Nuh-uh," Eric said. "Nobody knows we've been in here. We'll be fine."
"You're wrong, and now I will tell you how you're wrong in an in-depth manner."
"There's a sign out front with contact information for the owner," Eric said. I'll give him a call tomorrow and ask for a tour of the place. There. And as far as all that other stuff, you can handle that, right?"
"Yes."
"Good. There, everything's dealt with, nobody's doing anything illegal, and no one is going to jail."
I remember I had to convince you to let me help. Also, I was the one who pointed out the sign in front of the building.
You're the one who wanted to make it a shorter story!
I just said you should keep the story moving.
Well fine! Why don't you tell the next part if you're such a master storyteller.
The next morning they called the owner of the building, a Mr. Dennis Fruncion, about the cost of purchasing. Mr. Fruncion insisted on giving a tour, which they had to accept to maintain their story.
"But we already know what it's like in there," Eric said.
"Yes, but he doesn't know that. And we don't want him to know that," Jon said. "Remember, going in there without him is illegal. And we've never done anything illegal...right?"
"Yes, that's correct."
Meeting Mr. Fruncion in front of the deserted building, they shook hands as men should, and the owner unlocked the front doors. "It's a fixer-upper, that's for sure," Fruncion said, as Jon and Eric pretended to look around. "It'll need a hefty helping of hands-on. But I ain't selling for very much. It's really just a nominal fee. All I've really been doing with this place since I got it is paying property taxes; I'd be glad to get rid of it."
He wandered into the kitchen. "Plenty of space back here for...somebody's been in here! And recently!"
"What? No. Couldn't be!" Eric said. "It's probably just...mice."
Fruncion peered closer at the grill, which still had a lot of grease from the night before. "You're probably right. Those little buggers are getting smarter every year, I tell you what."
I came up with a better lie than that. It wasn't that obvious.
It seemed like it was to me.
"What do you boys have in mind?" Fruncion asked, having missed all the really obvious clues Eric had left everywhere.
"We're thinking of a burger place," Eric said. "I have my own recipe. People seem to like it."
"Oh yeah? What's the recipe?"
"Ah." Eric held up a finger. An index finger. "Can't tell. That wouldn't be very good business practice, now would it?"
Fruncion nodded. "I suppose it wouldn't. Anything else you fellas want to see before we talk about pricing?"
Do you remember exactly how much we paid for the building?
A couple thousand dollars. No more than ten I think.
It was more than ten dollars. I know that for a fact.
No more than ten thousand, I mean.
We had to almost drain both of our accounts. Well, I did. Jon still had some money saved.
I wasn't about to do that sort of thing without a safety net. Would have been foolish.
"We own property," Jon said a few hours later. Fruncion had gone home. "We're property owners."
"Do we put a sign up now?" Eric asked. "I don't have any burgers made but it wouldn't take too long."
Jon looked around the sitting area of the restaurant. There were piles of garbage under other, bigger, piles of garbage. Fluorescent lights hung from the ceiling, swinging, should someone accidentally run into them.
I only did that once.
"This place needs a ton of work just to open it," Jon said. "If a health inspector knew you were cooking food in this place for public consumption he would probably go nuclear."
"A what?"
"...Do you really not know what a health inspector is?"
"They try the food and tell people if it's good or not."
"That's a food critic. We'll get some of those, too. No, a health inspector is the guy who says if we're allowed to serve food here or not."
"There aren't any laws about being allowed to serve food."
"Yes there are. There are like...a hundred."
"There are not."
"You're right. There's not a hundred laws about being allowed to serve food. There's probably a thousand."
"No."
"Yes! And we're going to have to follow all of them!" Jon looked around. "I hope you're ready to put some intense work into this place, because it needs it."
I did!
You really did.
I totally did.
Eric worked harder than I had ever seen. He was there every free moment of his life. Neither of us could quit the plant, so free time was short. But every time I'd step into the store another part of it would be clean, or fixed.
My dad helped. He was surprised, but excited, when I told him about it. He's pretty handy.
Meanwhile, I got busy reading up about businesses, all the laws, advertising. The store was in a good location.
Unfortunately, we just didn't have the funds we needed. So, we went to the bank.
We've talked about this a bunch of times. Neither of us can agree on what happened, and our versions differ. They came out to the same result, though. Eric, why don't you go first?
Jon and Eric, wearing their flashiest suits and walking their flashiest walk, entered the bank. An employee quickly approached them.
"Gentlemen, you look like you're here on a mission. Perhaps I can assist you?"
"You sure can help us, young man," Eric said, whipping his sunglasses off. "We're entrepreneurs looking for a break into the wide world of business, but we need some help. Funds have run low, you see."
"A small business loan! Sure, we can help you out with that. Why don't you take a seat in my office here, and I'll fetch some paperwork."
They sat, without saying anything, for a few minutes. The chairs were a little bit too small for them, so their knees came up almost to their chests. The bank employee returned with a folder in his grasp.
"What are the aspects of your business?" he asked.
"Burgers!" Eric said. "They taste very good. I make them myself."
"Ah, a restaurant." The employee wrote a few things down.
"Well, more like a fast food place than a sit-down restaurant," Jon said. The employee nodded and kept writing. "But the burgers are actually very healthy. Eric uses a special ingredient."
The employee looked up. "And what is it?"
"Can't tell," Eric said, waggling a finger. "You'll just have to come in and find out for yourself. You might even be able to guess."
"Wait." The employee looked from Jon to Eric. "Is your business already open?"
Eric shrugged. "Unofficially."
"What?" Jon shook his head. "No, not unofficially. Not even officially! We haven't served any food to customers."
"What about to people who aren't customers?"
"Oh sure," Eric said. "I've given burgers to plenty of people already."
"That you've cooked in the store?"
"No," Eric said.
"What? Yes you have," Jon said. "I was there. It was that Friday, remember? Before we'd even bought the place."
"What?"
"You're being silly, Jon," Eric said. "I've only served food to others in the comfort of my own home."
"You made like, a dozen burgers that one night," Jon said.
Eric made a number of clandestine gestures, meant to make Jon stop talking.
"Are you saying you've served food from the store not only before you owned it, but before it was open?"
He looked from Jon to Eric. Neither said a word.
I can't believe you think that's what happened.
That is what happened. But whatever, you tell your version.
Eric and Jon, wearing simple suits as a businessman might, entered the bank. An employee approached them.
"Hello sirs. Something I can help you with today?"
"Yes ma'am, there is," Jon said. "We're looking to get a small business loan. Nothing too much, just enough to help us get off the ground."
"Of course. Why don't you take a seat at that table there and I'll be with you in a moment."
They sat and waited for the employee to return. She came back with a small stack of papers. She led them through the basic information first, names, addresses, phone numbers, prior credit history, and more. For quite some time.
"What kind of business are you looking to operate?" she asked.
"It's a fast food restaurant," Jon said. "Eric has a secret recipe he's developed all on his own."
"It's great."
"I'm sure it is," the woman said. "Is the business operating currently?"
Eric grimaced. "Of course not. We're right here."
"I mean is it open, sir."
"Oh. No." He looked at Jon. "Do you think we can count the burgers we gave to the guys from the plant?"
"No, you cooked those at home and didn't charge anybody."
"What about the time we cooked some for them inside the building? Before we'd bought it?"
Jon said nothing, hoping the bank employee wouldn't notice Eric had just spoken.
"I'm sorry, what was that?"
"Oh, would sneak into the building to cook burgers for our friends at work. Just for a half an hour or so."
"You would...sneak in?"
"H-he means...that...the building was closed and there was nobody running anything, he would just use the grill and such." Jon attempted to make his face innocent.
The woman looked from one to the other. "Are you saying you served food from your building before it was open?"
"No...I didn't," Eric said. "Besides, it wasn't even our building at the time."
Well, one way or the other, we didn't get the loan.
And because we'd been denied for the loan at that bank, it made it harder to get a loan anywhere else. We weren't sure what to do next. Eric was still getting the place looking better, I was still trying to figure out how to run a fast food business, and both of us were still working at the plant. If we'd had free time we would have picked up more shifts, but we needed all the free time we had to work on the building.
We won't sugarcoat it. We were scared. We didn't know if we had just given our life savings away to buy an empty shell of a restaurant.
We both had our misgivings, but we were sure of one thing over everything else: We both know Eric could cook a mean burger. If we could get people to try his burgers, we would be in business, but we needed to get people inside, first.
We kept working. It must have been months. Maybe half a year. We didn't lose hope, but it was trying to get away. We kept working.
Another thing about Eric: If he sets his mind to something, he keeps working at it. It isn't even as positive as a single-minded determination. It's more like he keeps working just because he didn't have much else to do.
Thanks. I guess.
There was one positive to taking so long with the building. It gave me plenty of time to learn about the wonderful world of business. I took the time to visit other burger places, places we wanted to emulate. I learned what we would need to have stocked. I watched them work. It was enlightening.
By bits and pieces we got closer to opening. The place got cleaner, items got fixed. We did it slowly and kept our funds in check, but we still needed financial help. Jon found a solution.
I came into contact with a private investor in the fast food industry, wealthy enough to fund us but unwilling to simply dole out cash. He would need a taste.
We agreed on a Monday meeting and went wild during the weekend, trying to get the place up to shine. By Sunday evening it looked like it could have been a real restaurant, if empty and a bit run down. But then...we found out someone had been living in the restaurant.
"That is...the biggest rat I have ever seen," Eric said. He and Jon stood at the entrance to the kitchen. Eric held a broom like a sword, and Jon had a pot on his head, a knife in each hand. The rat, large enough to have well-defined pectorals and biceps, hissed at them from atop the grill. "I've named him Noma-Tooga, and he is lord of all rats. If he calls, they will come and devour us." He squeezed the broom handle. "We gotta kill him."
"But can we?" Jon asked. "Are our mortal weapons strong enough to pierce his flesh?"
"We have to try. Man may never know our sacrifice, but we must stop this menace before it grows stronger." Eric swelled, his lungs filling with air. "Let Noma-Tooga know today is his last upon the earth!"
Moments later they both dove to the ground, kitchen utensils sailing over their head to strike the wall. One of the knives Jon had wielded stuck and quivered, point buried in the wall. "Aww...I just got done patching holes in that wall," Eric said. A pushcart rolled out, Noma-Tooga riding it like a noble steed. Both men jumped away, putting the Ur-rat between them and making it choose which of them to disembowel first. Perhaps the other would be able to escape.
But the air carried sweet freedom. Such an ignoble building was no place for the king of rodents. Noma-Tooga's nose twitched in the air and he spotted the door, propped open to air out the smell from cleaning fluids. It jumped off the pushcart and made for the wide world. Jon and Eric watched it enter the street from one of the windows. A car promptly ran over their mighty foe.
I know what you're thinking, but yes--that is actually how it happened. But I thought I named it. I thought I named it Henry.
Henry isn't exciting enough. I gave it a name strong enough to pump blood through your veins.
Once the rat had left, we did everything we could to sterilize the place. It wasn't until after midnight when we'd finished and could go home. We had the next day off at the plant, so we got there early to make sure everything was ready.
"He's going to get here at one," Jon said. He rubbed his hand over the shabby chic wood table they had prepared. "Everything ready in the kitchen?"
"Spotless. I could make a burger with my eyes closed."
Eric took away the other man's blindfold. "Maybe next time. If this goes poorly we're going to be out of luck. Unless that man hands us a big suitcase for of hundred-dollar bills before he walks out of here, we've wasted our money, and we're going to die poor and alone."
"I'm sure it'll be fine." Eric cracked his knuckles. "One last sweep, and then we wait."
A car pulled up at twelve fifty-nine, and a tall man stepped out. His suit danced around his bones like a flag wrapping around a pole. He walked toward the front door, and Eric, from the window, pointed with a happy grin at the briefcase he carried.
The man stopped an inch from the front door and looked at his watch. After six seconds, he rapped on the glass pane with his knuckles, and Jon unlocked it for him.
"Jon, good to see...youagain," the man said. His voice seemed to halt and jump forward at whim.
"Mr. Oris, welcome. This is my business partner, Eric. He's the chef behind the operation."
"It's nice...tomeetyou, Eric," Mr. Oris said as he shook Eric's hand. He took a look around the seating area. "Interesting decor. What is the...feelingyour trying to evoke?"
"Family picnic," Jon said. Eric whipped his apron over his head. "Tasty food. Good food. Food you know you're going to like. Comfort."
Mr. Oris nodded, head bobbing up and down. "I see, I...see. Interesting. Tell me more."
"Sir?" Jon said.
"Tell me about...thebranding."
"Ah. Yes. Of course. Well, our central pillar is very simple. Eric has a recipe he's developed to make delicious burgers. We won't reveal the recipe, except to those relevant figures in authority. You know, health inspectors and things like that. We want people to get their food-"
"Cooked by me!" Eric said, standing in the doorway of the kitchen wearing a long white apron. He had a spatula in his hand and a grin on his face.
"Yes...cooked by Eric," Jon said. "We want them to sit down, start eating, and be surprised."
"By the burgers."
"Yes, that's right." Jon sat at one of the tables. "We want them to talk. To talk about the food. If they leave the building having both enjoyed the food and unable to guess what exactly they were eating, they're sure to tell others about it. Free advertising. Repeat business because they want to figure out what the special ingredient is."
Mr. Oris was nodding his head. "I like it." He coughed. "A fine...plan. Now then, to...business. You'll...letmetry a burger?"
"Eric is getting a few ready right now."
A few minutes later Eric emerged from the kitchen, bearing a single burger inside a bun. Placing it before Mr. Oris at the table, he stepped back, almost to the entrance, as if to flee, should Mr. Oris find his offering lacking.
Mr. Oris brought his briefcase onto the table and opened it, producing a pair of metal utensils. He cut the burger into two halves, sawing with a knife in a businesslike manner. He ate one half plain, first eating a piece of the patty, then the patty with the bun. He chewed, gazing at the ceiling as his lips went in a circle. Eric made a noise.
Mr. Oris opened the other half of the burger, applying an almost clinical amount of ketchup and mustard. After replacing the bun onto the patty, he bit into it. Not a drop of condiment went anywhere but inside his mouth.
Eric coughed and Jon glanced at him. The chef was pointing at the floor near a corner of the room, making a face he would have changed had Oris looked in his direction. Jon moved a step and looked where Eric was pointing.
The rat from the day before huddled in a shadow, baring its long teeth. Its whiskers twitched as Jon stared at it. He risked a quick glance at Mr. Oris, who was still chewing, lost in the burger. Jon looked at Eric and waggled his head in the rat's direction.
Jon grimaced and made for the kitchen. He returned with a broom and started toward the rat's corner.
"Unique," Mr. Oris said. He looked up at Jon. "Very...unique. I detect vegetable matter. It has a healthy, robust taste, almost as if it was part veggie burger. Clearly that is not the case." There was a tiny portion of his patty left, and he broke it open with his utensils. "It appears to be only animal matter, though I see irregularities."
Eric nodded and looked at Jon. While he held one end of the broom, something seemed to have a hold of the other end, and was jerking it within Jon's grasp. "Very astute of you, sir."
"It is a singular burger," Oris said. He smacked his lips. "It tastes healthy. Light, but filling." He rotated his irises up at Jon. "It is beef, yes?"
"A high percentage of it."
Mr. Oris nodded. Jon looked at the corner. Eric had disappeared from view. "Now, is this...theonly burger you plan to offer?"
"We don't have any other recipes."
"No other recipes...needed. If you also offer a simple beef burger, you can raise the price on your special recipe. It will also offer people a chance to try the food without the worry of an unknown element."
"That's a good idea."
"About the...secretingredient. Will you tell me?"
"I suppose I could...if you mean to invest."
Mr. Oris stood, wiping his mouth with a napkin despite there being nothing to wipe away. "Young man, I intended to invest as soon as the burger...touchedmylips."
"Well, that's wonderful news," Jon said. "Why don't we speak in the office. Eric still has work he needs to do out here."
"Where did...hego?" Oris asked, looking around. "I would have liked to speak with him. He already has oil control. I wanted to see his spatula...grip."
"Oh...I'm sure he's around here somewhere," Jon said. "After you."
It bit me.
It was just a little bite.
We still had to go to the hospital afterward. I can't believe I managed to kill that thing. It survived a car running over it. It almost broke the broom in half.
You were fine.
I was more than fine. With the money Jed gave us, we had more than enough to get everything ready.
Jed Oris became more than just an investor. A few years after we opened he became a full business partner, one of just a handful of people who knew Eric's recipe. He became our friend, my father-in-law, and a steadying hand on our wild business.
Things began to move faster. Now we had to prove Jed's investment worthy. He kept us to a schedule. We ordered dishes.
I hired people. If you've never done that let me tell you, it's a strange experience. We ordered signage.
Signage!
But we weren't done yet. We had one last hurdle before we could open: the health inspector.
"Here he comes everyone." Jon said. "Places, places. Smiles and handshakes. You're friendly, your clean, your happy."
Three of the workers they had hired stood in their new uniforms, each with an apron showing a cartoon burger tapping the side of its nose and winking, the restaurant's logo. They ranged from thirty-five to eighteen, and all of them knew if things went poorly they would be out of a job. They stood shoulder-to-shoulder, chests out and chins up. Merrya, the shortest, gazed ahead with unexpected determination, while Will kept his face stony, as always. The middle-sized one, Jack, had an easy-going smile.
Eric looked out the window. A black SUV sat in one of the handicapped parking spaces, tinted windows blocking any prying. Eric narrowed his eyes and let the blinds slip closed.
"What's he doing out there?" Jon asked, appearing at Eric's elbow.
"Letting us stew in our own sweaty juices," Eric said. Jon scowled. "He's putting the pressure on. He's turning up the heat. He's raising the water level."
"But can't he do those things in here, while he's checking everything?"
Eric shrugged. "I'm going to make sure the kitchen is ready."
"You've done that a dozen times today."
"Then it's thirteen now. A baker's kitchen. Let me know if he makes a move."
Eric left the front area of the store and wandered to the chrome hideaway the laypeople called the kitchen. Less a kitchen, more a spaceship, blasting off to the farthest reaches of the yum-iverse, ready to return to Earth laden with out-of-this-world food.
Eric rubbed his chin. Jon's advertising talk had been rubbing off on him. He looked around. Everything was in place. A place for everything. The counters were spotless. The grill gleamed. The window to the seating area was covered with reminders to himself, things like "Burgers in back, fries in front" to present the food in an attractive manner when an order was up, "Loud and clear" when calling things out to the staff, and "Careful with the knives" because he wasn't very careful with the knives. He had fresh patties ready to go; all his supplies were stocked up. His stomach churned, nervous but ready.
"Eric!" Jon called, and Eric returned to the front.
A short man, head shaved and mouth drooping down, stumbled toward the front door. He pushed through, not waiting to knock. He carried a clipboard and a pair of small glasses, which he placed on his nose after he left the sunlight.
He glanced to his right and found the three employees standing at attention. He looked left and saw Jon and Eric, hands behind their backs and chests pushed forward. He clicked his pen and began to wander around the storefront, writing things down. He looked under tables and along ceilings. He looked at tabletop levels, inspected floors, and tapped displays with his fingernail, all while jotting notes.
He marched around corners until he stood in the center of Eric's world, Jon and Eric standing behind him. He swiped a finger across the grill's surface and inspected the finger. He looked behind appliances, neither nodding nor shaking his head but always jotting things onto the piece of paper attached to his clipboard.
Jon and Eric swallowed in unison.
Nothing escaped inspection. Food storage, food preparation, electrical load, blind corners, fire lanes, even handicapped parking spaces quivered under the inspector's eye.
It seemed to go on forever. Days ended and began. Nations rose and fell. Dynasty replaced dynasty; still the inspector inspected.
The employees hadn't moved. Jon and Eric stood in front of the inspector as he rotated his head around the entire store, standing with his back pressed against the exit. He signed his name on his slip and presented it to Jon and Eric. He left without a word, and his SUV whispered out of the parking lot, as if the wheels floated above the pavement.
"An A?"
"An A!"
"That's the only A I've ever gotten!"
"Ladies and gentlemen," Jon said to the employees. "Hearts may resume beating!"
It was terrifying. I still have nightmares. I hate inspections. We've never failed one, not even close, but every time one of them comes into the restaurant I think about our very first inspector. He didn't say a word. Not even with his eyes. He just looked, wrote, handed us our grade, and left.
He might not have even existed. Maybe he was just a shared creation of our feverish minds.
He gave us the go-ahead. We were cleared to open.
The grand opening was a week later, giving the advertising a little bit of time to settle in.
We were set to open, and we believed in our products from one end of the store to the other. But nobody else knew what kind of food we were selling so we knew what kind of clientele to expect in the first few days.
"Doors are open," Jon said to Eric, who looked through the kitchen window. "There are-"
Oh, by the way, we had to quit our jobs at the plant. In fact, we'd more or less quit a few weeks ago, but we were able to burn up paid time off before actually quitting. That helped.
They had a big party for us. They spelled Eric's name with a k, but they meant well. They all promised to stop by in the first week. Strange, but it was kind of sad to leave. They were friends. Neither of us loved working at the plant, but it was a home of sorts. It was comfortable. We knew what to expect when we went there. Our own restaurant was exciting, new, and unknown. We were in charge of our own destinies, and that meant if we failed we had no one else to blame and nothing to fall back on.
My parents said I could live with them if it failed.
All right, well, I had nothing to fall back on.
You could have stayed with us for a while.
Let's continue.
"There are people waiting to get in," Jon said. "Waiting at the doors."
"You're going to get a picture of the first customer, right?" Eric asked. Darcy, next to him in the kitchen, was preparing patties for the grill.
"What? Well, I mean, I guess I could."
"Yeah! For posterity!"
"Do you really know what that word means?"
"Of course I do!" Eric slapped the first patty on the grill, nudging it slightly with his spatula. It began to sizzle. "We have to have a memory board or something. All the big places have them. First customer, letters from people who liked the food, reviews."
"Got it." Jon turned to find the very first customer on the other side of the counter. "Welcome to Can't Tell Burgers. How may I help you?"
Jon and two other workers ran the front. Eric and a kitchen helper cooked the food. People streamed in the front doors; the grand opening sign drew them inside. At first it was just another burger place to them, slinging burgers and fries and a few other items. A good place to get out of the house and enjoy some food without having to cook it yourself. Soon it became something different.
Jon was wiping the counter when he heard someone say excuse me. He looked up to find one of the first few customers, holding his basket still containing the half-eaten burger.
"Uh, yes sir, what can I help you with?"
"This..." the man looked at his burger. He was young, no older than Jon or Eric, somewhere in his mid-twenties. "This is beef?"
"For the most part, yes. Of course it has the special ingredient," Jon said. He tapped the side of his nose, just like the burger in the logo. "Can't tell."
"Right, right. It's just." The man looked at his burger. "I wept when I ate it. I cried. Tears."
Jon stood with the wipe rag in his hands and a confused expression on his face. "You aren't allergic, are you?" He looked aside at Merrya. "You've been notifying people of possible allergic reactions, haven't you?" Merrya nodded.
"It tasted too good," the young man said. "It tasted too good to be a burger. I need another one." He went into his wallet and brought out a slip of paper. "I'm a food critic from a local paper. I need to be thorough. I need to make sure I wasn't hallucinating anything."
"That's not what I expected to hear on my first day," Jon said. "Another burger, coming right up."
"Oh, trust me, you'll hear plenty of strange things," the critic said. "You always do."
The critic received his second burger, and sat down. Jon watched him. He looked at the patty, and the bun. He ate. He placed the burger, with a bite taken out of it, back in the basket and stared at the wall. He took out his phone, and began to text. He texted for a solid ten minutes; his thumbs danced the nutcracker on the keys. After finishing, he continued eating. Every bite seemed to be a new eureka.
Within a quarter of an hour a cadre of young men and women entered all at once. They met with the critic and he gestured at the burger, talking with animation and then pointing at Jon. Jon smiled and waved. They approached in a phalanx and ordered their food, turning the store's modest opening into a party. They had laptops and tablets with them, and as they ate they wrote. Not a one of them talked until a few minutes of munching had passed.
Jon--and Eric, leaning through the kitchen window--watched them.
One of them took out a phone and made a call. They caught a few words: "incredible," "ground-breaking," "unmistakeable." What, exactly, was unmistakeable they did not catch.
Afternoon hit. More customers entered, enough to keep Eric busy until he had to wipe sweat from his brow so it didn't land on the grill. Men and women who had an air of control entered. They were from bigger papers, famous blogs, TV stations. They tried the food and asked questions. About Jon and Eric, about the store, about the secret ingredient. They asked about the allergy warning--the cashiers were trained to ask about allergies but would only confirm if someone should not eat the secret recipe.
A few asked for interviews, but it was too busy. The place was packing full. Families of rowdy children silenced when they began to eat. Workers from the plant bull-rushed the door at dinnertime, cheering when they saw the business on the restaurant's first day.
The next day began with an even bigger crowd. From open to close the line was packed with people waiting to receive burgers.
The third morning Jon opened the paper and found a picture of the restaurant's building on the front page of the local section, explaining their sudden and well-deserved popularity. In a week they had a full interview with the city's big paper, filled with attempts to get them to divulge their secret ingredient. A week later one of the employees said a website had called them the number-one burger place in the state. A month later they were number one on the east coast. The next year more than one publication called them the best burger store in the nation.
In the third year there was a TV show about them. National names tried their products.
In the fifth year, the president visited.
***
Jon and Eric, with wrinkles and faded hair and older bodies, sat side-by-side at the original restaurant. There were more than fifty Can't Tell Burger shops in the state alone, and hundreds more throughout the country and around the world. A man sat across from them, with a laptop recording them and a pad of paper full of notes. He'd let them talk for the last hour.
"Things grew from there," Jon said. "Franchises. It was strange."
"Yeah," Eric said. His hands shook, and he watched the motions with dark eyes. "Strange. Good."
"When Jed died we knew things had changed. We stepped back. The men and women we'd worked with could do things just as well. Better, sometimes." Jon looked around the store, small and old compared to the other buildings bearing the Can't Tell name, but it was the original and it still drew quite a crowd most days.
"You're proud?" the man asked.
"Prouder than ever. Aside from our children, the proudest we've ever been," Eric said. "I still sometimes wish I could grab a spatula and flip a burger. I try it every once in a while, but..." he glanced at his shaking hands. "Some things belong in the past."
"Anything else to add?"
Jon and Eric looked at each other. "There are so many stories we could tell. The time we had a terrorist threat. The time someone tried to blackmail the secret recipe out of us." Jon smiled and shook his head. "But our story has ended now. We'll have a hand in the business but we look forward to spending time with our families and relaxing."
"Any specific plans?"
They were quiet for a moment. "Ah." Eric tapped the side of his nose. "Can't tell."