Broken Piano for President (12 page)

“I’m not talking about you.” He is violently quiet. “I’m talking about this horseshit ad campaign. Our memorials won’t be ready for another few weeks. The competition can’t beat us. Winters was
our
founder. Next thing you know they’ll be blasting Russians into space.”

“Oh, sorry…I don’t know much—”

“Just.” Tony huffs through his nose. “Just pump Malinta. Force booze down her throat. She’s got a weak spot. Get info from her, okay?”

“Sure thing, sir.”

The phone dies. A quiet wraps Henry. It’s just him and a bag of steam. The car smells like a griddle. His heart sags further with aching dead weight.

Some guy from accounting walks by and squints into Henry’s windshield. The undercover agent slinks below the dashboard line.

He crunches through a few more bites, trying to recall the last time he didn’t suffer such loneliness. Cuts kill with the chewing.

A bang on the window explodes Henry’s silence.

“Hey, what are you doing?” Malinta says.

“Oh, Jesus,” Hamler peeps, bucking in his seat. He grabs the familiar gray bag with old-fashioned green lettering, crumbles and stows it under his seat.

He opens the door.

“Hey, Malinta, you scared me.” He steps out.

“Sorry, I just caught you out of the corner of my eye.” Her lips click
tisk-tisk-tisk
. “And I saw what you were eating.”

Embarrassment washes over his face and fog pours from his nose in the chilly air. “Busted, huh?” He debates the next move.
My cover
, he realizes,
is officially blown
.

Malinta wears a red and white hat, obstructing her wound. For the first time, Henry focuses on the rest of her. Eyes, even trained spy eyes, are always drawn to gauze and blood spots. The cold pinches her lips into a pink so deep, daughters want their bedrooms this color.
She’s cute for a girl
, he thinks.

“Don’t sweat it, Hol
date
,” she says. “I kind of prefer Winters myself.”

“It’s Holgate,” Henry Hamler says, relieved. “And, can I just say,
whew!”

“But that’s a bleeping secret.”

“No problem.”

“I’ll tell you something else. I also really like healthy stuff. Tofu, veggies, soymilk. All that. I love it. Is that weird?”

“Wow, I’ll have to…” Henry’s pulse slows with the lies. “Try some.”

They share a silence, but Hamler doesn’t recognize it. This quiet isn’t the icy lonesome that normally crowds his time. It’s something whole. Something welcomed.

“Wanna hear a big secret?”

They look at one another as their breath knits together. Hamler holds off speaking for a long while. “Um…sure.”

“I even play the Cosmonaut Game.” Her words are tense and whispered as the breeze. “A couple nights back, I got to fly the suit for sixteen minutes until some punk stole the controls from me.”

“Really, how was it?”

“It was the warmest feeling I’ve ever had. Knowing I was helping save those poor, stranded astronauts. It was…” Her eyes glide up toward the sky.

Hamler counts the hairs in her nose. “What?”

“I think it was the most rewarding feeling of my life.” Her face turns cutesy and childlike. “That’s not sad, right?”

“I don’t think so—”

“It made me realize I don’t get that feeling a lot. Being a good person. It’s so much easier in our business to manipulate and cheat and be self-centered.”

“Don’t get carried away, you’re not—”

“It makes me want to be a better person. I’m trying, obviously.”

“You are?”

“The curse words. Hello?”

“I think we should talk about something else,” he says, hoping to get a speck of top-secret info.

“Okay, okay, but wait…can I tell you one last secret? I’m trying to be more honest, too.”

“Just one more, okay?” he says, proud of what a great spy he is.

“My odds of dying by falling off a ladder are six times higher than dying from a terrorist attack. Twelve-thousand people worldwide broke their stupid necks falling off ladders last year. Only two-thousand died from terrorists. Doesn’t that seem wild?”

“That’s…” He bites his lower lip. “Comforting?”

Henry watches her nod the same way his mom does when letting an expensive chocolate melt in her mouth. “I’ll say. I’ve been researching that kind of stuff for a special project. It’s amazing. Life is really precious. Too precious to spend being an awful person.”

Henry takes a silent balloon of breath and holds it. He touches cold fingers to the arm of Malinta’s wool coat. “You are an odd woman,” he says, letting the breath seep out in ghostly ribbons. “You want to get a drink after work?”

Okay, you’ve been very patient for the thrilling conclusion to Burger History 101. This is where the Monte Cristo batter hits the fan.

Prior to Bust-A-Gut’s immaculate conception, Winters enjoyed dictatorial dominance in the fast food market. Having an American hero for a founder proved as popular as Mickey Mouse peddling your amusement park. Winters’ burgers spread with epidemic speed throughout post-war America. History being the repetitious bastard it is, the competition developed its own Axis of Edible.

This all changed in 1979.

A rivalry was inevitable since both beef giants were headquartered in the same city. No one is sure why Bust-A-Gut opened its main operations down the road from Christopher Winters’ office, since its parent corporation was located wherever it was located. Much like Winston-Salem mothering cigarette giants, the city became the capital for all things fried and bovine, quickly earning the nickname: Burger Town, USA.

Bust-A-Gut consistently finished third place during its first few years of operation. That is, until Globo-Goodness Corporation purchased second-place Ka-Pow! Drive Thru and converted each of its one hundred and eighty eight restaurants like Hollywood actors to Scientology.

Still, Bust-A-Gut was never taken seriously until it slipped under the 1980s’ hot neon spotlight. The restaurant unveiled a new menu featuring fried chicken, BBQ pork sandwiches, roast beef, doughnuts and “The Shot Heard ’Round the World” in the hamburger industry: The Double
Cheeseburger
. Apparently, nobody thought of mixing a couple slices of cheddar with Beef Boy’s
Fat Boy
recipe until this point.

You know how an avalanche can start by someone yelling really loud? Consider the double cheeseburger the full-throated yodel that sent Burger Mountain rolling.

Bust-A-Gut’s broad menu catapulted the mysterious wunderkind into first place in sales. Since then, the gastronomic arms race between the two giants has heated up like clockwork. One adds bacon while the other adds another layer of beef and cheese. One tops its burger with three-alarm jalapeño poppers while the other slides in a layer of onion rings. This cold war hit full-force with Bust-A-Gut’s “Bonzo Breakfast Burger.” The Bonzo consisted of three alternating layers of beef, cheese, fried egg and country sausage stacked Dagwood-style between two waffles. Syrup came fifty-cents extra.

Health Watch International, a consumer advocacy group, chastised both companies for going so far as to produce sandwiches with four times the recommended daily amount of calories and saturated fat. Health Watch referred to the Bonzo as “a Cardiac Grenade.”

Health Watch also initiated an investigation with the help of the popular television news program
Nightbeat
, claiming Winters Olde-Tyme actually invented trans-fats and MSG. The results were inconclusive.

A few years ago, the burger landscape shook to its knees when Roland Winters jumped behind the CEO desk. The young Winters imitated his famous father as much as possible, even wearing matching clothes. But the boy was never taken seriously and several top executives resigned upon his promotion. Soon, the plump offspring of America’s hero ushered in the era of extreme dining. Winters Olde-Tyme Hamburgers switched its focus to habañero chicken sandwiches, pork rind spinach salads, monster fries, and all-you-can-eat BBQ ribs. The beef patty was left for dead on their doorsteps.

Bust-A-Gut quickly returned this serve.

The word “cheeseburger” basically fell out of favor in the American dining dictionary. For a while it was the neglected orphan of fast food.

However, several years ago, without fanfare, Bust-A-Gut introduced its Retro Burger line of ground beef. The return of sizzle-fried patties and melted cheddar was a throwback for American stomachs. With even less flair, Roland Winters changed its name from the short-lived
Winters Olde-Tyme Extreme Eatz
back to the original Olde-Tyme Hamburgers.

Immediately, the burger behemoths started slugging away in the bout’s twelfth round. As opposed to the “More beef and cheese…and country sausage” mentality of years past, Roland Winters and Bust-A-Gut CEO Clifford Findlay are currently in the midst of revolutionizing cholesterol counts as America knows it.

Winters’ Reuben Sandwich Burger birthed Bust-A-Gut’s Teriyaki Jerky Burger. (Two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese and a quarter pound of teriyaki beef jerky on a sesame seed bun. “Don’t forget the chopsticks!” the commercials claimed.) Olde-Tyme responded with the Lunch-on-a-Bun (a submarine hoagie roll with three beef patties, cheese, onion rings, French fries and, at the tail end: a slice of hot apple pie). Sales blimped for both corporations as the general public anticipated each side’s response like summer blockbusters. Despite outcry from Health Watch International and several subsequent
Nightbeat
specials, the war continues. Rumors of rampant spying and sabotage buzz through online blogs.

Recently, Bust-A-Gut threw the blue and yellow gauntlet with its Monte Cristo Burger, a double bacon cheeseburger with onions, tomato, lettuce and Baco-naise© all dipped in a thick batter and deep-fried until golden. The dome-obsessed restaurant bragged about the process locking in the flavor and American stomachs agreed. It soon ground all sales records into powder and snuffed them up its nose.

In a publicity stunt, the Bust-A-Gut’s mascot—Bonzo the Burger Clown—died from a heart attack after eating a Monte Cristo. The commercial coroner determined his passing had nothing to do with calories and arteries, rather his taste buds overloaded from the sandwich’s freshness. “Talk about dying with a smile on your face,” the television doctor proclaimed.

Monte-Mania swept the continent for several months. The deep-fried lump even appeared on the cover of
Time
.

Winters counteracted with an even larger strike, a blow so deep many consider it the final word in the Burger Wars. Just prior to the death of its founder, Olde-Tyme Hamburgers unveiled the revolutionary Space Burger. Modeled after astronaut food, it is the world’s only freeze dried burger. Customers marveled that it weighed less than a pack of gum, but tasted like Styrofoamy meat.

NASA was approached as a marketing partner, but proved too expensive. Soon a new ad campaign, in conjunction with the budget-priced
Russian Space Program, was launched.

“Yes,” a broken Russian voice says. “Hamburgers do taste better in zero gravity, comrade.” The screen fills with a press photo of the four-man, one-woman space team. According to our
Cosmonaut Watch
anchorman, video feed is still unavailable with the space travelers.