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He died later that year, the Teddy Boy, in our work. He was waiting to buy his burger and the service was so slow that he died before he ever had a chance to order. You saw the queue step away from him as he clutched the counter with those fat fingers, and then, almost with a look of release, like someone who has heard the punch line to a long joke, he timbered, falling so big and heavy that other customers moved out of his way. You expected him to cry out when he hit the floor, but the only noise was the beep beep—beep beep—beep beep of the fry timers. Then, as if she’d been waiting for this, LeAnn Rimes started to sing.
You almost expected more from a dead person, like you wanted him to do more than just lie there. I mean, if he was going to die then you wanted it to have some weight—to be less... silly.
“Fuck,” said Raj, kneeling beside the body. “Come on, stand back. Ah bollocks. Can you hear me mate? Mate? Phone a fuckin ambulance!”
“Take his pulse,” said a man in the queue.
“Just gies a bit of space, please. Mate? Hello sir, can you hear me?”
“He can’t hear you,” said the man in the queue.
Kit appeared from the office, with the phone cord stretching taut from her neck. “Is he breathing?” she asked.
Raj put his ear to the Teddy Boy’s chest. “Dinnae think so.”
“Oh dear,” said the man in the queue.
“Here, put this under his heid,” said an old lady, offering her coat.
“Has he got a pulse?” shouted Kit.
“Yes,” said Raj. “No. I Dinnae ken. I cannae find it!”
“He’s dead,” said the man in the queue.
“He’s no dead,” said Raj, wedging the coat beneath the Teddy Boy’s head.
“How auld is he?” shouted Kit.
“How the fuck would I ken? Fuck man. Have we got a doctor? Any doctors in the house?” But you find doctors in concert halls, on international flights, and onboard cruise ships, not in burger bars in small Scottish towns. “Ah fuck,” said Raj. “Okay. Alright. Here we go.”
“Give him the kiss of life,” said the man in the queue.
“Would you shut the fuck up? Here we go. Come on. Wake up, damnit.” He pounded the Teddy Boy’s chest with both hands and forced air into his lungs (if the heart attack hadn’t killed him then that would have finished him off), and as time passed, and the man in the queue looked increasingly satisfied, Raj pushed the Teddy’s Boy’s chest harder and harder, until the noise it made was like someone beating a dusty carpet with a stick. When the spectacle became grotesque, Gordon draped his arm on Raj’s shoulders, the way nurses comfort doctors when a patient dies on ER, and he said, “Raj man, we’ve lost him. Ye’ve done aw ye can.” Raj stood up, maybe a little watery in the eyes, and the Teddy Boy stayed where he had fallen. “Mate, there was nuttin ye could dae.”
“Bhenchod, I couldnae mind the course.”
“It wasnae yer fault. Fuck, you’d’ve had mair chance tryin tae resuscitate one of our quarter pounders.” Gordon pulled the coat from under the Teddy Boy’s head and draped it over the body (the old lady crossed herself and looked at her coat, as though wondering when it would be appropriate to ask for it back). “Alright,” announced Kieran. “Come on now. Let’s see a bit of service, yeah?”
It’s difficult to say why the death affected us; the customers straightened themselves and shuffled forward, gaping at the menu as they readied their cash, but some unknown glitch prevented us from taking their orders. “We need more fries down,” said Kieran, because the ones in the baskets, neglected during the resuscitation attempt, had turned hard and brown. “Ps and Qs, yeah? People, procedures, profitability. Quick, quality, quantity.”
“...”
“Guys? Come on. Let’s do this, yeah?”
Kit looked at me and I looked at Gordon and Gordon looked at Lucy and nobody moved. “Dude, this isn’t cool,” said Buzz.
“Alright, no more Mr. Nice Guy, yeah? Work. Now.”
“No,” said Kit.
“Work.”
“Nu.”
“Work or you’re sacked.”
“All of us?” asked Buzz.
That was when the new guy spoke up. As usual, Spocky was out in the dining area (the only place where he didn’t compromise the whole shift), where he should have been wiping tables or sweeping the floor. Instead, he walked up to the Teddy Boy’s corpse. “Hey, can someone give me a hand? Let’s get this body into the freezer.” The customers looked at him, unsure if he was for real, while Kieran gestured for him to shut up. “I’m serious. Come on, we can’t leave him here.”
“Okay, fine. You know what? For that, you’re on a final warning.”
“Think about the food costs. We can get three boxes of meat out of this guy.”
“Okay, done. Finished. You just talked yourself out of a job.”
Then Buzz sheathed his grill spatula and shouted from the kitchen. “If he’s out of a job, so are the rest of us.”
“Aye, fuck this,” said Gordon.
Kieran strained his muscles in a disorientated attempt to smile. “What is this, a strike?” And in the silence that followed, at more or less the same time, Kieran realised, and we realised—aye, it was.
And what a feeling it is to have your time unexpectedly reimbursed. It was like when the school heating broke or the pipes burst or the teachers went on strike. We paused on our way to the Railway because through the window, beneath an advertisement for “Buy one get one free” chicken burgers, we could see Kieran stocking the condiment trays as the paramedics shocked the Teddy Boy’s corpse. When they gave up and loaded him onto a stretcher, Kieran mopped the tiles and marked the spot with a “Caution! Wet Floor” sign.
“D’you think we’re gonnae get in shit for this?” asked Kit, pressing up to me for warmth. She picked up the smell of grease like the rest of us but there was a space at her nape, especially when she wore her hair down, where you could sniff out a lemony shampoo smell.
“Probably,” I said.
“Aw man,” said Buzz.
Gordon shrugged. “If we aw stick together then they cannae touch us.”
A few metres from us, Spocky stood alone, trying to form a shelter in which to roll a cigarette. In the border, between the knee-high shrubs, the wind was swirling litter and strips of bark. This eddy of woodchip and rubbish invaded Spocky’s shelter, flapping his Rizzla and scattering his tobacco. “Hey,”
