Patrick Michael Denny
Beanie and Todd
The fruit was no longer frozen. Todd’s Greater Dayton Regional Transit Authority bus had arrived ten minutes early and he was the first employee to stand next to Allyson to help her assess the walk-in freezer’s condition. Puddles of water lay dormant near the mop bucket; piles of defrosted bags stacked on green shelves. It was Saturday and the morning rush would soon be pressing into the windows of Tropical Smoothies, searching for frozen empathy that the July heat had exiled.
Beanie arrived two minutes before eight, a twelve-speed bicycle barely supporting his tall frame and the Norseman-like amounts of bright orange hair covering his face and head. Beanie, who was nicknamed at an early age to help remind his single mother of their Boston roots, held a more confrontational stance than Todd, who was five inches shorter and frequently touched a fractured black mustache that he wasn’t entirely comfortable shaving. If Todd could be described as pressed down from the top, then Beanie was definitely squeezed in from the sides; his clothing barely containing a middle-aged man’s body. Despite both young men recently celebrating their twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth birthdays respectively, they were often mistaken for men in their early forties. This put them in the awkward position of having to explain to frustrated customers that they were not the managers of this Fine Frozen Fruit establishment.
Allyson, the twenty-two-year-old weekend manager, held that position, and she would be leaving for Chicago at the end of the summer. The rest of the employees of Tropical Smoothies slowly filed into the store and circled around the former silver fortress of frozen fruit.
Jessica quit on the spot. “This is horseshit,” she muttered while taking several pictures of her face framed by the yawning opening of the walk-in freezer. Her last day was going to be that Sunday anyway. She took off her pin and hat and grabbed a power bar from the counter. “Later everyone,” she said, moving towards the entrance, leaving the remaining six to contemplate their own employment. Beanie noticed Allyson frowning at her phone. “Hello Frank, it’s Allyson. The freezer isn’t working, and I don’t know what you want us to do. Give me a call.” She then dialed two more numbers and left similar messages. Erica, Tabbs, and Mikey had seated themselves in the customer section. Allyson would open the doors in twenty-three minutes, and there were already two people outside holding their hands up to the window and peering inside.
Todd went to the window and signaled that they weren’t open yet, not realizing that the slight tint made it impossible for anyone to see him. He was glad that he had taken Thursday and Friday off, as his inability to verbally defend himself would lead to an onslaught of mistakenly perceived passive-aggressive accusations from the staff. Luckily, Allyson’s clearly written schedule would protect him from inevitable feelings of guilt regarding the expiring freezer. Todd had almost been fired three times but was saved by a sudden exodus of younger employees eager to gain more profitable employment at the nearby Fairfield Commons Mall. In his almost four years and three months of frozen fruit employment, he worked for nine different managers. He had saved the bulletin board pictures of twenty-three previous employees who had fortuitously departed near the exact time of his repeated failings. His continued employment was based solely on a lack of staffing, which he frequently acknowledged to Beanie. Although he felt protected from admonishment, he started to worry that a curious eye would be cast towards his best friend who had never received a favorable work review score above a 74 in the Tropical Smoothies’ Exemplary Employee Flavor Chart, despite having worked for the original owner, Mr. Figurski.
The first Tropical Smoothies opened across the street from the popular Dairy Queen/ Orange Julius location on East Hills Road and was rooted in Mr. Figurski’s passion for juice store culture and his equal hatred of Dairy Queen. His dislike for the Dennis the Menace mascot’d ice cream parlor was emphasized through his attempts to hire away employees of DQ on a weekly basis. Beanie worked for DQ at age fifteen and a half when he first filled out a job application at the only restaurant that hired pre-sixteen young adults in the Dayton area. He quickly became adept at mixing frozen soft-serve with bits of colored sugar and was commended on the skill with which he twisted cones and applied sprinkles. He had heard of Mr. Figurski’s hiring tactics but was not approached by the pillager of frosty aficionados until a week after his sixteenth birthday, when Mr. Figurski approached him during the Friday night rush and offered him fifty dollars in cash if he left immediately to go work for Tropical Smoothies.
“They are all bastards at the Dairy Queen,” Mr. Figurski spat as Beanie mopped up a mess near the slop sink. They tell you that you are stupid, that they know everything, but they are fools, and we are going to shut them down!” Most of Mr. Figurski’s monologues started with the word “they” and were quickly followed by a smoke break, which Beanie had learned to appreciate from his mother. It was the guaranteed smoke breaks, not the fifty dollars that moved Beanie to quit and follow Mr. Figurski across the street.
It didn’t take long for Beanie to learn the reason behind Mr. Figurski’s disdain for Dairy Queen.
“I work for Bob’s Big Boy. I was manager, very good. We have 50’s dance at my church, and I make frozen drinks, because the church don’t allow alcohol. I work really hard making drinks, and everyone is happy. Then this guy, he owns the Dairy Queen, he comes up to me and say that he needs ten of me, and that Bob’s Big Boy doesn’t pay me enough. He says, you come work for me, I pay you fifty cents more an hour, and make you head manager, but I say no. Bob’s Big Boy has been very kind to me. He just shrugs his head and says, okay, he pay me seventy-five cents more an hour and he let me in on a little secret. He is going to buy the Orange Julius and make it into one store. Orange Julius, it’s my favorite drink, so I say okay. The first month is wonderful. The Dairy Queen, it buys Orange Julius, and then I get to come in and work as manager of both. There was even this kid I know from school working there. One night, he ask me how much I’m making? I tell him how much. Why not? I am manager, I get free Orange Julius, everyone is happy. The next day, the owner, he stops by and asks me to talk outside. The slimy bastard, he tells me I’m fired because I tell someone how much I make, and now he has to either pay everyone that, or he has to fire me. The liar, he has enough money to buy the Orange Julius, but he doesn’t have enough money?
‘But I do a better job…and I left Bob’s Big Boy for this,’ I say. He just shook his head and said that this is a life lesson, and that I should never tell anyone how much I make. He then took my apron, and my name pin and my hat. He gave me a check right then and there for the time I worked and showed me the door. Do you know what I said to that Beanie?”
Beanie blinked his eyes, mesmerized by the tale.
“I said fuck the Dairy Queen. Do you know what I do here at Tropical Smoothies? I make sure that we solve any problem. No one gets fired when something stupid happens. That is what I going to teach you Beanie, how to solve the problems and not be slimy bastard.” As Beanie surveyed the current employees of Tropical Smoothies, he found himself slowly mouthing Mr. Figurski’s mantra… “Fuck Dairy Queen.”
"How much do we have in the petty cash drawer?" he asked? Allyson opened the brown envelope that was kept next to the safe located underneath the register.
"We have sixty-three dollars. That won’t buy enough frozen fruit, even if we could get it here fast enough." Beanie went into the frozen-less room and removed all the strawberry bags, placing them to the left side of each blender station.
"Todd, I need you to get all of the fruit bags out of the freezer and separate them into piles like this. I'll be right back." With that he took the sixty-three dollars, adding it to a couple of twenties out of his own pocket. He winked at three people standing outside of the store, hopped on his bike and darted into the Ohio humidity, leaving his co-workers motionless and confused.
Inspired for the first time in his non-employee-of-the-month career, Todd took Beanie’s lead and found his voice. "Okay everyone, let's get this going." More out of disbelief than obedience, the Tropical Smoothies crew carefully moved the sealed bags of defrosted fruit out of the walk-in and found islands of surface area around the store to place them on. To everyone's surprise, Beanie returned twelve minutes later, his face pouring with the red exhaustion of someone who had not exerted himself that much since his junior year of the Presidential Fitness Test.
"Quick you guys, let's get these in before they melt." Strapped to the handlebars of his bike and stacked upon the basket behind his seat were bags of ice, newly purchased from the 7-Eleven up the hill. Todd grabbed the three bags behind the seat, while the others tried to figure out how to remove the remaining plastic bundles from the handlebars. Allyson keenly watched the long hand on the clock, aware that the growing crowd outside the door would be growing impatient.
"Beanie, I don't know what you're doing, but we have to hurry." The red-headed, red-faced monster slowly started to breathe again, looking for words that needed the least amount of oxygen.
"Okay, Allyson, you need to turn off the menu monitors, we're not going to make any of the smoothies we normally do. Todd, I need you to start dropping the ice on the floor before we let any of the customers in. Mikey, Erica, Tabbs, we've got six blenders. Let's make two of them strawberry, one of them mango-pineapple, one of them orange-banana, I need a raspberry-blueberry and let's use the last one for peach." Erica began shifting the bags around to match the flavor combinations as Todd ceremoniously dropped bags of ice onto the floor, the sounds of crashing tile intensifying the pace of Beanie's challenge. With the others engaged, he sat on a chair next to Allyson.
"We're only going to let the customers come in one at a time, and they’ll have to choose one of the six flavors that we're making this morning. Todd is going to start filling up the blenders halfway with ice, and everyone else will top them off with the fruit. This is what we used to do at Orange Julius, but no one has to know that." Allyson nodded in acknowledgement, ignoring the knocking at the entrance door.
The first four customers were confused and unwilling to separate their expectations from the harsh reality of the room temperature morning. Beanie took one of the portable whiteboards used for tracking the fridge inventory, erased that week's count of milks and yogurts and wrote "MANAGER'S SPECIAL $4 FRUIT SMOOTHIES ALL DAY." This was easily two dollars less than the curated items normally offered on the menu screen and helped to subdue the objections of the next fourteen customers. Slowly the team found a rhythm they had never achieved trying to serve up to sixty-three different smoothy combinations. Allyson hooked her phone up to the speaker system and began playing island music that an ex-boyfriend had introduced her to. Tabbs was the first to notice how quickly the time seemed to be going and Beanie kept track of the number of smoothies being sold. He went to the register, took out more ice-money, and was about to hop back on his bike when he heard the shrill echo of a woman’s voice who would not be placated by the Manager's Special. All eyes turned towards the Okapi-nosed woman who had not been told that zebra pants were not native to Ohio.
"I am literally allergic to all of these choices," she commenced with an opening argument, her voice thrown in every direction. "Every time I come here; I order the Banana Sunrise. I see Bananas over there, so why the hell can't I get one of those?" Typically, Allyson would meet such a request with a steady mixture of self-assured tenacity and the tone of a seasoned babysitter. Perhaps it was the undue stress of the morning's discovery, or the unexpected connection she felt amongst her co-workers, but for whatever reason, Allyson found herself freezing up for the first time as the store’s manager. Everyone else halted as well, looking at Allyson as she glanced back and forth between the bananas and the orally allergic female who had been taught that raising your voice usually means that someone will allow you to get your way.
"I am completely willing to pay full price, and I am willing to wait for as long as it takes to get a Banana Sunrise." Allyson tried to find the words needed to placate the request, but could only sputter out, "We can't..." This did little to lower the volume level of the banana-less belle, who started looking for a picture of the person in charge. "I want to speak with the manager. This is a Tropical Smoothies, isn't it? Every tropical place that I’ve been to has had a goddamn banana in it."
To say that Beanie's voice changed would do a disservice to the complete transformation witnessed by the staff. It was as if old Mr. Figurski had flown directly from his retirement residence in Ft. Lauderdale straight into Beanie's body and taken over every aspect of the young man's demeanor. Beanie sauntered up to the counter, looked the woman up and down, and rested his elbow on the counter.
"What is your name, dear?" he responded with the same belittling tone that she had established as her preferred form of communication. At first, she hesitated, but then looked at her ostentatiously large wedding ring, and coldly replied, "It is Mrs. Claire Gilderflunt."
Beanie smiled slowly, lifted his elbow, and slowly moved towards the whiteboard, humming "A Spoon Full of Sugar," one of Mr. Figurski's signature tunes. He first took the black dry erase marker, and then exchanged it for the red one, carefully writing below the manager's special, "EXCEPT FOR MRS. CLARE GOLDERFLOONT".
Despite the fact that he completely misspelled the woman's name, there was no mistaking that a Banana Sunrise would not be in anyone's immediate future. Beanie then moved slowly from behind the counter, opened the door and yelled in his best Eastern European dialect, "NEXT!" To the amazement of everyone watching, Mrs. Gilderflunt adjusted her moon bag and hastily left the lobby into the mugginess of the morning. If the employees of Tropical Smoothies had not been so ardently blending the ice and fruit for the new customers, a round of applause would have erupted. Allyson placed her hand on Beanie's shoulder as he made his way towards his bicycle, preparing to gather the next round of ice. During Beanie’s second departure towards the man-made palace of frozen jewels, an unusual calm soaked throughout the smells of mixed berries as the customers glanced below the Manager's Special at the misspelled deportee whose husband would be returning soon to re-establish his wife's honor.
When Mr. Gilderflunt cut through the line to get to the counter, Beanie was still several minutes away from the store, leaving no one to enforce Figurski's rules of customer care.
"I want to speak with the owner!" demanded the slightly balding, Cartier-watch-wearing patriarch of the Gilderflunt family.
When Todd was a boy, his parents took him to church every Sunday in an attempt to quell a religious inadequacy that he had yet to experience. Rather than focus on the loquacious words of the person chosen to rise above the suffering Masses, he would play an imagination game where a "bad guy" or criminal would suddenly appear inside the church, with guns, or sometimes a bomb, demanding that the entire congregation donate to him their most prized possessions along with that day's collection. The adults inside the chapel would freeze in fear, but not little Todd, who's diminutive size would allow him to creep beneath the pews, unnoticed by the armed henchman who had an alternative reason to visit the Lord's home. Finally, Todd would sneak behind the bandit, who had mistakenly placed his gun next to the holy water station, allowing the young hero to snatch it and hold the perpetrator at bay until the police and members from the Vatican Swiss Guard could arrive, apprehending the burglar and awarding Todd a victorious medal of sainted bravery. As Todd got older, he believed that the dreams of his youth had faded away. Suddenly, the thought of owning a Tropical Smoothies store sparked his imagination.
"I'm the owner," volunteered Todd, as he made his way past Allyson, towards the surprisingly short man across the plexiglass. "How may I be of service?" The man with the more expensive watch took out his phone and began typing a note.
"What’s your name buddy?" the husband tried to lead with, but Todd, having witnessed Beanie's previous tactic, did not fall for the trick.
"Are you related to the woman whose name is on our Specials board?" Todd couldn't tell if the man was amused or annoyed by the misspelling of his better half and quickly pointed to the surveillance cameras above the register. "I'm sorry sir, but we were about to call the police on her. She came in here micro-aggressing our employees and making rude comments about our industry to other valued customers. We found ourselves in a bit of a pickle this morning, the gosh-darn freezer broke, and we didn't have any way of serving drinks. Luckily, my manager figured out a way to get something across the counter so that these kids wouldn't lose a day of wages. You remember how it was sir, living paycheck to paycheck. Well, I'm sorry to say, but your wife didn't strike me as the type of person who could relate to that situation and became belligerent when we tried to explain our limitations for the day. That's when we had to ban her, but I'm hoping that she'll be able to recognize that we all have bad days. Heck, this morning started poorly, but we're making the best of it."
The older man began to thaw, "You know, I didn't even want to come in here? It's the only forty-five minutes I get to myself when she leaves, and I think I was more pissed off that you guys cut it short. You're right, she's never held a crappy job in her life, and she doesn't know how hard it is to go to work every day. I'll tell you what, here's a hundred-twenty bucks. Can I go home and tell her that I raised holy hell, and that you agreed to let her come back tomorrow and get her stupid drink? If I don't get that forty-five minutes in the morning..." Mr. Gilderflunt stopped suddenly and looked at one of the blenders. "You know what, here's another twenty, can I have one of those strawberry looking things? They used to have something like that at Orange Julius when I was a kid. I'll wait until it's my turn. Lord knows I don't want to go back home right away."
Todd took the money and went to mix Mr. Gilderflunt’s “Strawberry Special.” Beanie returned five minutes after Mr. Gilderflunt’s departure and asked why his red-colored customer ban had been erased from the board. Todd handed him twenty-three dollars and let the others describe how the events had unfolded. It was nearing the end of the rush period when Frank called and told Allyson that a repair person had been scheduled to arrive in an hour or so. He instructed her to let the staff take the afternoon off and agreed to pay them for the day. Frank was decent enough, Mr. Figurski would not have sold him the tiny franchise otherwise. As the rest of their co-workers left, Beanie and Todd went to the customer side of the counter and waited with Allyson for the repair person to arrive, relishing their remaining hour as both manager and owner of their favorite Fine Frozen Fruit parlor.
Patrick Michael Denny has written plays: A Wisp of Air, American Scream, Lady Anne and Debtor’s Shoes. His films include Tom and Francie and Chrisha. Mr. Denny is the co-founder of the Yellow Finch Project and spent several years as both the Editor in Chief of Insecurity Ragazine, and Artistic Director of The School House Theater. His work has most recently appeared in The Rathalla Review and The Valparaiso Fiction Review. Read more at PatrickMichaelDenny.com.
