Rotary by Joe Shlabotnik
I couldn't finish my first prank call.
I'd called Skip's Diner, the place by the old Route 4 rotary, the one you're too young to remember, and tried to reserve every table. The owner took me seriously. How many guests? Thirty, I told him. When? Tomorrow at noon, I told him.
Perfect, the owner kept saying.
Beside me in the summer shade of the supermarket payphone, P and Little M convulsed. I focused on the task ahead: I would tell the owner my name was John Hamburger and that I would fill every table, every seat, every square inch of Skip's with Hamburgers.
If I made it that far, I'd tell him we were vegetarians.
At fifteen I knew the voice of a desperate man. I imagined him in a sea of empty chairs and uncooked food as he watched drivers catch the rotary orbit and spin out to places he'd chosen to never know. My legion of Hamburgers couldn't save him. No diner outlives its regulars.
Then the owner asked me, Alright, Jack, who's the reservation gonna be under?
The new name surprised me. John Hamburger vanished. I heard a stove-top sizzle through the phone. Little M and P stared at me with open mouths.
Hello? the owner said.
John, I said. The first giggle broke through, an involuntary squeak.
Say again?
Come on dude, said P.
John, I stammered. John Ham. Hambur–
I jammed the phone on the hook and slid to my ass, giggle-mad, jelly-boned. My giggles forced out every drop of air inside. Couldn't see through my tears. I was the funniest boy alive.
Little M and P glared with immortal disappointment.
You couldn't even get it out, said Little M.
It's hard, I said.You try saying that name.
I have, said Little M. Many times.
I'll try again.
Tomorrow. We look suspicious as fuck. Laughing like this.
We departed the payphone. It was too hot at Little M's to rot inside and game and we had no money for worms to fish. At the library we pissed and rioted in the elevator until the librarians kicked us out.
Our rampage took us to the Route 4 rotary. Drivers circled like insects. All going, no knowing. We dodged death and gathered hubcaps from the yellow grass at the rotary's heart.
The owner of Skip's stood in his doorway. He was old Montford, someone our grandfathers knew before they died, back when the rotary was green and people drove for pleasure and stopped to eat on the way to nowhere in particular.
A week later I called him again, just me at the payphone, and told him I was hungry, that I'd steal his mail, burn his dumpster, end his life. He called me a bastard and a son of a bitch. Then I dropped the phone, his impotent curses hung from a metal cord, and walked into the hot suburban burn. I never left. You wouldn't read this if I had.