PULLED-PORK COURTNEY
Michael Czyzniejewski
Chatty-Men’s-Room Courtney pees like a first-grader, pants down around his knees, ass hanging out, instead of through the fly. It’s like no one told him how to do it, like he’s never seen how adult men take a piss. He sees me do it every day, and I see Chatty-Men’s-Room Courtney pee every day, too, usually twice, because we work
the same shifts, have the same breaks. “Our cycles have aligned,” he jokes. After pulling his pants up, Chatty-Men’s-Room Courtney skips washing his hands but combs his hair, really digs in, too, the little black comb from his back pocket raking through his locks like he’s sowing the earth.
Chatty-Men’s-Room Courtney always asks how I’m doing. He asks if I’m having a good day, too, which is the same question, but he’s chatty and probably can’t help that. I ask how he’s doing and how his day is, which I suspect is why he’s asking me, so I’ll ask him.
Chatty-Men’s-Room Courtney works in the gift shop here at Ronnie’s, perfect for his chattiness.
I make pulled-pork sandwiches at the pulled-pork sandwich counter. I work with Arkansas Dave, the section manager, and his dork son, Kansas Dave. Kansas Dave is also from Arkansas, but the joke is, since Kansas Dave is the junior, he’s a little less than Arkansas Dave, i.e., Kansas Dave. I think it’s a pretty good joke.
The third person I work with is Pulled-Pork Courtney. Her name is really Courtney Wagner – maybe Wegner – but I call her Pulled-Pork Courtney to differentiate her from Chatty-Men’s-Room Courtney. To her face, I call her Courtney. In my head? She’s Pulled-Pork Courtney.
Arkansas Dave does a bit of everything, while Kansas Dave runs the register. Pulled-Pork Courtney buns the meat and wraps the sandwiches in foil, hands them to Arkansas Dave. I smoke and pull the pork. We have a pretty tight operation. On a weekend in the summer, we move a thousand pulled-pork sandwiches in a single shift. On a wintery Tuesday, we sell twenty. I like the busy days because the time passes, but I also like the slow days because I get to talk to Pulled-Pork Courtney more. We had this joke, about me sticking my meat between her buns. “Get that meat of yours in my buns,” she’d say. After a while, it lost its zip. It degraded to “Meat my buns,” then “Meat me,” then “Meat,” no accompanying smile. I think this means we’ve reached a level of comfort. I call it rapport. I don’t know if Pulled-Pork Courtney calls it anything.
* * *
Chatty-Men’s-Room Courtney eats a pulled-pork sandwich every day for lunch. It didn’t take long to figure out his game: Chatty-Men’s-Room Courtney loves Pulled-Pork Courtney. It adds up. All the pulled-pork sandwiches. The hair combing. Most of all, the way he asks her out every day. She has always said no. I don’t think he’s her type, mostly because Pulled-Pork Courtney is 20 and a vision of Texas loveliness and Chatty-Men’s-Room Courtney is 35 or 45 or maybe older and is a vat of lumpy gravy in cowboy boots. I also told Pulled-Pork Courtney about how he pees, his pants around his knees, ass hanging out for everyone to see. I had to explain how everyone with a kindergarten diploma pulls it through their fly or pulls it over the waistband if they’re in sweats. Once Pulled-Pork Courtney under-stood, she found it funny, too. Now, when it’s slow at the pulled-pork counter, Pulled-Pork Courtney asks about Chatty-Men’s-Room Courtney’s ass, if it’s really so white (it is), if he’s hairy in the crack (hauntingly so), and why I’m so goddamned obsessed with Chatty-Men’s-Room Courtney’s ass (I’m not). This is the way she teases me.
I tease her back, tell her that they have the same name because they’re in love and they’re going to get married and have babies and name them all Courtney. Pulled-Pork Courtney knows I’m teasing but still says, “Stop! That’s disgusting!” every time, giggling.
Meat you later for a drink? I think, hedge the courage to say it aloud.
* * *
Pulled-Pork Courtney has a boyfriend already, someone who does not work at the pulled-pork counter or in the gift shop or anywhere at Ronnie’s Rest Stop Emporium. This boyfriend visits her every day, on her breaks, the two of them wolfing down pulled-pork sandwiches as they make eyes and play very adult footsie. The boyfriend – I call him Pitbull because he looks like Pitbull and I don’t know his real name – seems like he’s really into Pulled-Pork Courtney. Or: He loves pulled pork, is just using her for her pulled-pork discount. I tell her this sometimes after he leaves: “You know, he’s just using you for your pulled-pork discount,” and Pulled-Pork Courtney laughs, punches me in the arm. “I should introduce you,” she’ll say, but never does. He remains Pitbull, lucky lover of Pulled-Pork Courtney.
* * *
Pulled-Pork Courtney doesn’t know this, but I’m the reason she got hired. The bun holder/sandwich wrapper slot was open and we had two candidates come in for an interview. Arkansas Dave said I should talk to them, tell him which to hire, his way of giving me responsibility, grooming me for management. I met with Pulled-Pork Courtney – then merely Courtney – first. She’d never had a job, wore a bikini top and flip flops and cutoffs. She was also high as fuck, reeking of some Oklahoma skunk blend.
I was smitten immediately.
The other candidate, a middle-aged woman named Debra, had worked at a Ronnie’s before, for eleven years, actually, as a bun holder/sandwich wrapper. She came in a navy blue pants suit and had a glowing letter of recommendation from her manager at the El Paso location. She said she loved Ronnie’s and had just moved to Ft. Worth with her kid so he could get him treatment for a particular kind of cancer, a nasty kind I hadn’t heard of. She badly needed the job, she said, the bills piling up.
“Really?” Arkansas Dave said when I told him we should hire Courtney.
“Yeah,” I said. When he asked why I wanted her over the woman with experience who came in a suit, I told him that Debra put her fingers in her ears and nose and armpits a lot during our chat. I said I was worried she’d do that on the line, taint the product.
“Her?” Arkansas Dave said, pointing at Debra as she departed the store.
“Yeah,” I said, pointing toward Debra, too. “Her.”
* * *
One day I go into the men’s room and of course Chatty-Men’s-Room Courtney is there, peeing at the left urinal, ass hanging out, little black comb precariously hanging from the back pocket. In the right urinal, Pitbull is peeing, his pants down around his knees, toddler-style, just like Chatty-Men’s-Room Courtney. Pitbull, however, is all-over tan save a bikini line, a tattoo of Pepé Le Pew on his left cheek.
Two moons, one full and bright, one eclipsed.
The center urinal is empty. For some reason, as soon as I step in, they start: “So hey, your name is Wendell, right?” Chatty-Men’s-Room Courtney calls out, from the side of his mouth, past me.
“That’s right,” Pitbull – Wendell! – calls back, out the side of his mouth, past me, but in the opposite direction. “Who’s asking?”
“My name is Courtney and I’m in love with Courtney,” yells Chatty-Men’s-Room Courtney.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” yells Pitbull Wendell.
“I’m in love with your girlfriend,” yells Chatty-Men’s-Room Courtney.
“Your name’s Courtney?” yells Pitbull Wendell.
“Yeah. My name’s Courtney,” yells Chatty-Men’s-Room Courtney.
“Do you want to have babies with my Courtney and name them all Courtney, too?” yells Pitbull Wendell.
I laugh out loud and both Chatty-Men’s-Room Courtney and Pit-bull Wendell turn to me, give me a look like, What the fuck you laughing at, shitbag?
I finish peeing but don’t move. Both men are done, too, but keep yelling with their pants around their knees. When Pitbull Wendell says, “How ‘bout I fuck you upside your head?” I step back, exit the restroom. Through the door I hear Pulled-Pork Courtney’s two courters come to blows, bodies smashing against bathroom stalls, some-thing like a paper towel dispenser busting, maybe a soap dispenser being smashed against bone.
At the pulled-pork stand, Pulled-Pork Courtney is standing there, holding out a bun. “Meat,” she says.
I say, “Your boyfriend and that big fuck Courtney from the gift shop are fighting over you in the men’s room.”
Pulled-Pork Courtney lowers her bun.
“Really?” “Really.”
“That’s hot.”
Courtney asks Arkansas Dave for a break. Arkansas Dave says that she already took her break and we need to make pulled-pork sandwiches because there’s customers. Pulled-Pork Courtney takes off her apron and goes, anyway. Arkansas Dave tells Kansas Dave to cover bun duty while he covers the register. He orders me to pull pork. I say that I’ll be right back, that somebody needs to look after Pulled-Pork Courtney.
“Who?” Arkansas Dave says. “Courtney,” I say.
“You mean Fresh-Buns Courtney?”
In the restroom hallway, the Ronnie’s security team already has both Chatty-Men’s-Room Courtney and Pitbull Wendell sitting against the wall, one on each side of the drinking fountain, their hands zip-tied in front of them. Pulled-Pork Courtney is kneeling by her boyfriend, wiping blood off his forehead with napkins, a deep gash above his right eye. Chatty-Men’s-Room Courtney is bleeding, too, from both nostrils; both his eyes are swollen shut. I call this one for Pitbull Wendell.
Actual non-gas station police arrive soon, put handcuffs on the two combatants, and take them away. Pulled-Pork Courtney – perhaps simply Courtney now – follows Wendell halfway to the door, then stops and heads back to the pulled-pork counter. A sizeable line has formed and Kansas Dave is just failing, pork and buns and tinfoil wrappers everywhere.
“Don’t ever do that again,” Arkansas Dave says. “Kansas Dave is not meant for back of the house.”
We resume making pulled-pork sandwiches.
“Meat,” Courtney says.
I meat her.
“Meat me,” she says. “Between my buns.” I meat her.
We go on like this until we catch up. It takes an hour.
“I think Wendell’s going to jail,” Courtney says. “Strike three and you’re out . . . and this is actually strike five or six. His cousin was a lawyer but she died in that big rodeo accident last month.”
“Bummer,” I say. I picture Wendell in prison, bald, sunglassed, in an orange jumpsuit. I picture him peeing in the prison bathroom, standing at a urinal, his jumpsuit folded down past his ass.
“I haven’t had men fight over me in a long time,” Courtney says. “Not since community college.”
I think of how Courtney is 20. “How often does this happen?”
“Depends what you call ‘fighting’,” she says. “But pretty often.”
Arkansas Dave has us clean up while he and Kansas Dave take their break. Courtney and I sweep up saucy pork with a squeegee. I see this as an opportunity.
“So, Courtney, would you like to meat me sometime . . . for a drink?”
Courtney stops pushing pork and stares at me.
“Meat like pork, or meet like meet people?” she asks.
“Meet like meet,” I say. “People coming together.”
“Then definitely not,” Courtney says. She winks and she waits, waits with the dustpan, waits for more pork to come her way.
Michael Czyzniejewski is the author of four collections of stories: The Amnesiac in the Maze (Braddock Avenue Books, 2023), I Will Love You For the Rest of My Life (Curbside Splendor, 2015), Chicago Stories (Curbside Splendor, 2012), and Elephants in Our Bed-room (Dzanc Books, 2009). His stories have appeared in The Southern Review, The Ken-yon Review, Black Warrior Review, Laurel Review, Puerto del Sol, and in two Pushcart Prize anthologies.