on; they’re from an old car wash from the sixties. My dad actually cried when he found them in working order. They’re supposed to be able to deliver up to three tons of Cadillac or Buick or minivan or whatever from one end of our drive-through to the other, a total distance of maybe thirty feet.
So far, nobody’s got stuck fifteen or twenty feet in.
If they did, though, it’s not like we’d have to call the fire department. Just give them a golden rain check from the pad and apologize.
Anyway, every time the tracks grind on and the whole place shudders, my dad, even if he’s across town, he smiles.
He really feels like he’s providing the world a service here.
I want to touch a scratchy place on my cheek, but that would mean putting the rubber of the gloves to the skin of my face. Instead, I wave the guy in.
He approaches at what I’ve calculated is about six inches a second, all the junk on his dashboard dancing with the gears and chains under the tracks.
I stop his car when his window is even with mine.
“John or Jane?” I say, not because I can’t tell but because it’s policy to ask, just to avoid lawsuits.
“John, I guess,” the guy says, no eye contact.
We could have this part automated, even have some kind of dispenser, forty-nine cents for a bottle or whatever—and my dad can see the day when that’ll be the norm—but for now we’re into the personal touch, into keeping things human.
Not to mention that it’s hard for a machine to upgrade the sale. In my four months here, we’ve had nineteen sales meetings about “Selling Up!”
It works in the burger industry and it works at the lube shop, so why not here, right?
I’ve considered running away, yeah.
Many times.
“Privacy curtain, sir?” I say in my best cheerful voice, pretending that I actually am a machine, a dispensing unit. That the words have just been programmed into me; that his wheels on our comes around’s—the track’s painted yellow, even has one corner where my dad tried to stencil in bricks—that his wheels have activated my start button, my sales routine.
“A curtain?” the man stammers into his steering wheel.
I could be cruel here. If I make him wait, there’s always the chance he’ll wet himself.
Except I’ve made a customer service pledge, and am already on tape for not washing my hands.
I shape my mouth into a tolerant grin and show the guy the velcro at the top of the curtain, fix it to the fake headliner above me: a demonstration of what he can have for just an extra seventy-five cents. Nothing really, considering.
He nods and I pass it over.
“Gloves?” I say then.
They’re in a tissue box like emergency rooms have. I hold them out the window.
“How much?”
“No charge, sir. We believe in hygiene.”
He takes one, starts to take another, but I’ve already drawn the box inside the window again.
“Just one, sir, so we can keep this part of your experience with us free. If you want your own box for the car, however, for your next visit, you can—”
I don’t get the eight-dollar box quite hoisted up into view before he’s stammering.
“Left or right?”
“Either, both,” I tell him, “whichever feels natural. And, in case of accidents—overspray’s the industry term—you can have one of these windshield and dash wipes for twenty-five cents.”
He takes two, is studying the leather interior of his car in a new way now.
The wipes were my mom’s idea.
“What else do I need?” he says meekly.
He’s exactly the consumer my father dreams about.
I hate it, but this probably is going to go nationwide. It probably is going to pay for my college.
God.
Next is the male lap-protector ($.49), which is just a round piece of hospital paper two feet across, with a hole in the middle—“for that extra layer of security”—and after that is the molded sponges my dad buys in bulk from the truck stop ($4.00/each or 2 for $7.00!), “for emergencies on the road or in the opera house,” and after that, the guy’s eyes already starting to yellow, an overflow canister “just in case” ($1.00 if used, $.25 if not), the packet of informational brochures, which includes our FM broadcast station numbers and a window decal, and then I’ve stepped off the button and he’s easing forward, past the window, and I’m looking politely away, jangling the keys he wasn’t aware he was going to have to leave with me, for collateral.
Not that drive-offs have been much of a problem yet—my dad says it’s because of the “social contract”—but we’d probably be liable in some way if we were to give customers the opportunity to pee into a bottle with one hand and try to drive with the other.
I’m waiting when the carwalk delivers the guy up to the second window. It’s been exactly fifty-two seconds: enough time to fill the bottle, shake off, and zip up.
Not that we’re supposed to look anywhere but at the roof of their car.
He passes me the warm John and I mumble the total, push the stainless steel tray out. He fills it with whatever, I don’t even look.
Aside from the smell of urine, the air of his car is thick with our FM broadcast. It’s the sounds of burbling water. One of the early newspaper articles dubbed our station “KPEE”; it’s part of our decal now.
I pull the money in, push his keys back out, and we’re done.
All of us, I mean. People in general.
4.
In the downtime between customers, the suggested duties of drive-through personnel is to:
a) prepare more brochure packets
b) sort through the customer satisfaction cards and mark for action any that need action
c) restock the Upsale items
What I do is go back to the tanks and smoke a cigarette, one glove off, my goggles pushed up to my forehead.
There are probably cameras here as well, but screw it.
If I had my cell on me I could call Prudence, my girlfriend since sixth grade, but something about being so close to my dad’s shop-made FM transmitter doesn’t allow any signal to get through. Either that or there’s so many news satellites trained on us that the bandwidth’s all cluttered with attention.
Behind
