TBT #84: If Love Could Kill It’d Kill Us All

“Stan Tropp’s gonna die tonight!” the woman yells, waving her sign in the street. “Bastard gonna fry tonight!” She dances and cheers down the streets of Somerside. Later she’ll pile into a bus with the rest of her church group and drive down the highway to Nickerfall prison, where they’ll watch him go, smiles on their faces and love in their hearts.

Paul hears the woman’s cheers and then watches her prance past the drive-through window, banging on the glass in jubilation. Her hand leaves a print on the glass, big and smudged. Paul sighs and remembers to clean it later. For now he throws another burger on the grill, listening to it hiss in protest, silencing it with his spatula, letting out a tiny grin.

Paul has the radio on. It’s talking about Stan Tropp, too. He keeps the volume low, so Sandra won’t hear. She’s out front working the counter, though business is slow tonight. She walks back and forth, her long blonde hair tangled in her hair net. She constantly checks herself in the shiny metal of the french fry machine, smirking satisfied when she does.

She chews gum, though she’s not supposed to. Paul sighs when he sees this. Paul always obeys the rules. Paul’s been working here for seven years. His stomach rests on the counter’s edge when he makes burgers. It’s big and bulbous and strains against his uniform, which was given to a much smaller man. Paul just shrugs when he thinks of this, however. He has no regrets.

Eddie’s working too. He’s out back having a cigarette. Eddie is always out back having a cigarette. He’s the nephew of the owner, and is entirely intent on testing the bounds of familial loyalty. Paul sighs when he thinks of this. Occasionally he’ll poke his wild-hair and piercing through the back door, checking to see if things have gotten busy. It’s not that Eddie wants to help, but rather that he’d really like to fuck Sandra. Eddie’s life is primarily about cigarettes and fucking. He has lots of the former and not enough of the latter.

The sun is going down over Somerside Burgers N’ Shakes. Paul sighs and flips, Sandra checks and smirks, Eddie smokes and thinks of way to fuck Sandra. And, down the highway, Stan Tropp is going to die.

Derek swaggers through the door of the restaurant in his uniform, grinning as he does. Derek’s a prison guard. It’s good work if you can get it. Sandra smiles politely from behind the counter as he approaches. They’re the same age, Paul notes, watching from behind the rill. Everyone in this town seems younger or older than Paul.

Derek makes a show out of pulling a folded page from his pocket. He grins wider as he smoothes it on the counter beside the register. Sandra waits intently, then asks what she can get him.

“I need all of this, Sands,” he drawls, sliding the paper toward her. “Provided it ain’t more than twenty bucks.”

There’s the sound of the back door opening, then closing, as Eddie checks on Sandra. Sandra holds the paper lightly between two fingers. She reads it, then drops it, then bolts for the back door.

“Bastard!” she mumbles, passing by Paul at the grill.

Derek is an asshole, still grinning at the counter. He motions at Paul, who flips a burger, sighs, and moves towards the register. The chubby man feels his knee pop as he bends to retrieve the note.

“Can you help me out here, Paulie?” asks the guard. “Just need a few things.”

“What is this for?” Paul asks, studying the note.

“Last meal request,” Derek grins. “For one very special prisoner.”

******

“Stan’s gonna die,” Sandra breathes. Eddie jumps as the door slams open. His cigarette falls from his lips. The girl has tears in her eyes, standing beside the dumpster, breathing the air in gulps.

“Yeah,” Eddie says, watching as she pulls the hair net from her hair, letting her blonde locks fall over her shoulders. “I heard.”

******
“Now naturally,” Derek smirks, “I can’t divulge the name of the prisoner, but I have been instructed to let you know that you’re doing good by god by providing a last wish to a dying man.”

Paul studies the list of food. It’s long and varied. “This will take a while to make,” Paul sighs, while Derek is still talking.

“Even a bastard like Stan Tropp deserves a last request. Though, with him, let me say by Christ, it was close. It’s only as a Christian that I can give this man any sort of forgiveness.” Derek is trying to look deeply serious.

There is a short silence, as if Derek expects Paul to respond with something equally profound. Paul, though, just thinks about the food, and how difficult it will be to make it all by himself. Derek coughs, stares at the ceiling, then smiles again.

“Really, though, Paulie, make sure that ain’t more than twenty dollars. They only get twenty for their last meal.”

******
“He wanted our food for his last meal?” Eddie asks the girl, still standing, still breathing in the heavy dark air.

“Yes. Yeah. God, I don’t know. That’s weird, isn’t it? We’re pretty shitty.”

Eddie has a new cigarette. He lights it and offers the pack to Sandra. She shakes her head.

“Fucking shitty,” Eddie agrees, cigarette in his mouth.

She looks at the boy with his untucked uniform and gleaming metal nose ring. She sobs to herself and slumps down against the concrete wall.

“You knew him pretty well,” Eddie asks, but not in the form of a question. “You know him pretty well, I mean. This Stan guy.”

“I dated him,” she says, her head down, her hair spilling over her knees.

“Shit, man, really?” Eddie blows smoke up to the sky. “For how long?”

“Until right before he did what he did.” Sandra’s eyes meet Eddie through strands of her hair. Eddie coughs on his smoke. Sandra is surprised. She thought everyone already knew.

******
Derek sits at a plastic table and waits. He stares down at his shiny black shoes. Paul rings in the food orders. It’s a little over twenty dollars.

“It’s more than twenty,” Paul says to the guard. “But I could give you… — him — the employee discount. I think that would come in just under.”

Derek stands and grabs some napkins from the condiment area. He looks up as he walks over and smiles that stupid smile. “Whatever, man. I wouldn’t give it to him but it’s your call. I honestly could care less, you know.”

Paul weighs the option of pressing the employee discount button versus denying a dead man an order of chicken nuggets. It takes longer than you would think. Eventually he hits the button. Derek sits back down and shines his shoes with the napkin.

******
Eddie has a flask in his pocket. He unscrews the top and takes a swig. He offers it to Sandra. She declines. He is starting to think fucking this girl might be a bad idea. She stares intently at the wall.

“Wanna talk about it?” Eddie asks, because he feels he should.

“No,” Sandra gasps.

The younger man who couldn’t care less about his job stares at the elephant in the room. He knows he should just leave. He knows he should just let her sit here by herself and thinking. But fuck, he thinks, it’s not like this girl is going to do anything for me anyway.

“Does he deserve to die?” Eddie asks Sandra. Eddie leans against the wall with a cigarette and a flask. Sandra slumps near the opposite wall near the dumpster; she’s strewn across the ground. Paul sighs and shoves open the heavy metal door. Down the highway, Stan Tropp waits for his food and, later, his death.

“I need you both to help me with this,” Paul says in the open air.

“Fuck you, Paul,” Sandra says.

Eddie takes an opportunity. “Yeah, fuck you, Paul,” he repeats. Then adds: “You fat fuck. Go to a gym. And get a better job.”

Paul sighs. “I’ve got five different orders that need making in there. I’m the night manager. You two need to listen to me or I will report you.”

“You want me to help make my ex-boyfriend’s last meal?” Sandra spouts. “Do you understand how fucked up that is?”

“What’s effed-up is the two of you, out here, not doing your jobs,” Paul snaps, trying his best to sound authoritative. “It’s just food. Don’t think about it. Let’s just get this order out.”

Neither of the three people in the alley are about to move. Paul shifts his eyes from one to the other and back again. Eddie blows smoke at him. Finally Paul relents.

“Just do this one, guys. Do it and you can go home afterwards. There’s no one else coming in tonight. I’ll close and tell Jenks you were here until the end.”

Eddie likes any idea involving leaving. He throws his cigarette to the ground and moves for the door. “Cold out here anyway,” he says to Sandra, almost apologetically.

She’s moving to her feet. She’s unsteady. She wipes her eyes. “Okay,” she says. “Let’s just get this over with.”

******
“There you are!” Derek exclaims, as the three of them walk back inside. “Thought you all ran out on me! Thought maybe you thought we wouldn’t go through with the execution if you didn’t make this food.”

Sandra fills a drink under the soda fountain. Eddie tries to figure out the fry machine. Paul is back behind the grill, sighing as Derek talks.

“We would have, though,” he says, directly to Sandra. “Ain’t nothing gonna come between this boy and dying.”

She will not meet the guard’s gaze. She moves throughout the back of the restaurant, pulling things together. Derek stands directly behind the counter and follows her with his eyes, grinning wide again.

“He won’t shut up about you, you know,” Derek starts again. “He won’t shut-up in general, but his favourite topic is you.”

The tall ship festival blew into town last July. Sandra and Stan lived together in a basement apartment under the hardware store. It was small and smelled like sawdust and gin. They almost lost it by missing rent three times over. The festival saved them. They worked the docks, telling the tourists about Somerside, and its rich history as a coastal hamlet with down-home charm.

They were supposed to save their money, but they blew it all at night. Sandra loved to dance. Stan loved to drink. They’d hit the Carlyle Club at 8. They’d blow through their day’s wages by 11. Sandra would spin and swoop and sway on the dancefloor as Stan watched from the bar, smiling uneasily, clutching the wood for support.

“He says you were so much in love,” Derek says. “But I know that probably is not true. How long did you two know each other? Six, seven months? Eight? That’s not enough for the kind of love this boy talks about. Not even close.”

They fought after that. Sandra would get close to some of the guys on the floor. Stan would storm off, making sure she saw him before he did. They yelled at each other in the parking lot, both too drunk to really say anything beyond I love you. I love you and I need you and please don’t leave me please don’t hurt me I won’t ever hurt you.

They’d go home. Make drunk and loud and desperate love to one another on the mattress on the floor. They’d work at the docks again the next day, and everything would start over. Everyting would start over with a morning breeze.

The funny part was that Stan really liked the ships. Sandra just did it for the cash, but Stan liked them. He’d spend hours before the festival, sitting near the docks, watching them come in, one by one. He’d wake in the morning and stick his hand up in the air, testing the breeze, noting whether this weather would be good for sailing. “Good day to be at sea,” he’d say.

“I dunno, though, because, personally, any girl hurt me as bad as you must’ve hurt him…” Derek continued, “I’d hate her. Say she was a fucking bitch. I wouldn’t pine for her like he does for you.”

One night Sandra drank too much. She could barely stay upright. She floated through those bodies on the dance floor like a blind butterfly, drifting from blossom to blossom, her wings crushed. Stan just watched as she fell into a lanky college boy, who instantly wrapped her in his arms. Stan just watched as they kissed and then kissed some more. Long sloppy kisses that left trails of saliva on their cheeks.

“Still don’t understand why he did what he did. Still don’t understand why he had to kill those kids. But I guess trying to understand a bastard like Stan Tropp is like trying to understand the goddamned devil. He was just fucked up, wasn’t he? Was he always fucked up, Sands? Did you know it all along?”

Stan rose shakily from his position on the bar. He left without Sandra noticing. Eyewitness reports have him standing outside the Carlyle Club, waiting for the lone streetlight in town to change, staring up at the sail of a tall ship, mumbling something no one around could understand. When the light changed he walked across the street and entered the all-night diner. There, he pulled a gun from his pocket and shot the three people sitting at the booth near the window.

They all died. Stan Tropp killed them.

“So fuck trying to understand why. That’s what I say. After you slow-pokes make this shit, I can bring it up to him and we can kill him.” Derek smacked his hands against one another. “And this town can move on from Stan Tropp.”

Sandra leans against the counter, gripping its edge. Her knuckles are white. Eddie notices this as he brings wrapped food to the front, placing it in the bags Sandra set up. He stands beside the girl, placing a hand on her back, and glares at the prison guard.

“Paul,” Eddie says stiffly. “Order up?”

Paul sighs and wraps the burgers. He briefly lets thoughts cross through his head. These are for a dead man, he thinks. These are what will kill him. But soon those are gone, as he stares down at his stomach, which rests against the counter’s edge.

“Order up,” Paul says.

The other people in the diner stood shocked as Stan painted the window red with blood. He did not react to his actions. He dropped the gun with a thud that echoed through town. Then he turned, and left the diner, crossing the street again, not waiting for the light this time, not staring up at the ship sails. He walked back into the Carlyle club, his clothes blood-stained, his eyes filled with tears. Sandra was still kissing the college boy. The dance floor crowd thinned as Stan moved through it. She just looked at him, the college boy scurrying away, her eyes blank. She mouthed dead words. He pulled her to his blood-stained chest. Then he whispered something in her ear, just before the police arrived.

The food is in the bags. Derek is ready to go. Sandra hands him one of the bags, reflexively pointing out that straws and napkins are available by the side. Derek grins at this, holding back a chuckle. He hates this girl because he knows what happened is somehow her fault.

“He says a lot of things about you,” the guard snarks, talking as he makes his way toward the door. “Hell, the last thing he said to me, when I took down this list? He thought about you, as I did it, because he knows you still work here. And he said ‘Sandra. Jesus Christ. She was so good at falling in love.’”

The door jingles as it opens. Derek presses a button in his pocket. His car horn honks and the lights come on. He looks there, and then back again at the three employees behind the counter.

“I don’t know what exactly that asshole is trying to say, Sandra, but I’m pretty sure it means you’re a fucking whore.”

Derek’s gone now. Paul sighs and returns to his grill. Eddie immediately goes outside for a cigarette. Sandra stands behind the counter, gripping it, her feet heavy. No one says a thing.

Stan Tropp loved the tall ships in the harbour. It was his favourite time of year. And he loved Sandra, for everything she was. The possibility of leaving, of pushing off towards something else, of moving with the wind. Of good days at sea.

Eddie will leave after he finishes his cigarette. Sandra will go with him. They’ll have bad sex in the back of his car, listening to Roy Orbison on the radio. She’ll cry afterward and Eddie will hold her awkwardly, hoping with everything he has that she’ll stop. Paul will close and sigh as he does. The thought of the dead man’s burger will cross his mind exactly twice. Once as he shuts down the grill for the night and again as he pulls into the driveway of his parent’s house, turns off his truck’s ignition, and lets loose with every swear word he knows, his hands pounding against the dashboard.

Stan Tropp will die after eating the food prepared at Somerside Burgers N’ Shakes. He’ll save the french fries for last, dipping them in his milkshake, like his father taught him to do. His last thought will be of Sandra, who worked with him, down by the harbour, near the tall ships.

Tags:death fiction short fiction somerside the best things