Will Not Attend: Lively Stories of Detachment and Isolation by Adam Resnick Page B

dramatically opened it, exposing the blade like a freshwater pearl.
    “I just found that in my milk shake,” I pronounced, tryingto sound like a cross between Steven Seagal and Morley Safer. Joplin reached down and picked up the blade. He inspected it for a moment and shook his head.
    “There’s no way this came from my milk shake machine,” he stated definitively in a Caribbean accent. There wasn’t a hint of concern or curiosity in his voice. Instead, his tone seemed to imply that I was up to some kind of monkey business.
    “Well . . . it came from
somewhere
,” I said. “
I
certainly didn’t put it there.” My voice quivered a bit. I was born feeling guilty, so it doesn’t take much for me to question myself. In this case, though, I felt pretty sure my hands were clean.
    “Imagine if a kid got that milk shake?” I continued, growing outraged. “I mean, someone could’ve died from this thing.”
    He looked at the blade again, exhaled, and disappeared for a moment. He returned with a stubby pencil and a fresh napkin and told me to write down my name and phone number. Obviously Joplin wasn’t going to expend much energy on this one. It was a departure from the norm, and they don’t pay him for shit like that. He told me he’d show the blade to his manager on Monday, and if the manager felt it warranted further investigation, he’d send it off to “corp.”
    “Do you promise me you’ll do that?” I asked, unintentionally sounding like the boss man on a sugar plantation.
    “What did I say to you?” Joplin snapped. “If I say I’ll do it, I’ll do it.”
    He was getting a little grumpy, so I decided to back off, but I told him I’d be stopping by in a few days to follow up. He gave me a smirky nod, as if to convey the Jamaican equivalent of “Oh, goodie, I can’t wait.”
    I was convinced the entire matter would disappear once my shoe hit the sidewalk. The evidence was no longer in my possession. Cell phone cameras were something new in those days, and I didn’t have one. And even if Joplin, who clearly wasn’t a fan of mine, showed the blade to his manager, there would be no upside for the guy to take it any further. It was found in
his
location in one of
his
milk shakes. The jagoffs from corp would be all over him like lime aftershave on Donald Trump (sorry to bring him back into it). No, the razor, the napkin, and the whole incident were headed straight for the garbage with the rest of the stink. I’m not a cynic; I’m a realist. Especially when it comes to human beings in positions of power and the dirty business of fast food.
    I began having dreams about coughing up blood. I saw diners screaming and knocking over tables to get away from me. I saw the floating head of Leona Helmsley licking red spittle from her Joker smile. Then I was harvesting sugarcane in the oppressive Kingston heat as Joplin whipped me with a riding crop. I sassed him and he threw me in “the box,” where I sweated it out with a blind girl I glanced at once in the subway. My hand found its way up her skirt and I wascompelled to ask in a flustered voice, “Wait, you are a
girl
, aren’t you?” She just laughed and told me to look in my hand. When I opened it, I found two eyeballs. So, sort of a happy ending.
    I went back to the restaurant to check on the status of the investigation. Joplin no longer worked there. All I could get out of the young woman behind the counter was that he was “probably in Queens.” The manager I spoke to, a friendly middle-aged man with braces on his teeth and a William Holden hairline, knew nothing of the incident. He’d been out for a couple of months with shingles and told me Joplin most likely dealt with the “temp manager.” When I asked him if he knew where the temp manager was, he responded, “Not really. Those temps, you know, they kinda float around. I’d say your best bet is Queens.”
    It was a sufficiently half-assed answer that left me little room to maneuver. For