Chapter Four: "As Gouda As It Gets" Burger:
Bob's Burgers 2.0 was parked in the back alley behind its namesake. Louise took down her dry erase board and scrawled the "Burger of the Day" down quickly, so she could begin prep. When she placed the dry erase board back on the hook, she made awkward eye contact with Mr. Huggins, who was waving at her from his window a few stories up. Louise waved back.
"What's the name of tonight's burger?" Mr. Huggins shouted down to Louise.
"Cheese Pervert in Paradise," Louise shouted back.
"That's funny," Mr. Huggins chuckled, "What about Cheeseburger in Pervert-dise? Eh, nevermind, I like yours better."
"You wanna buy one?" Louise asked.
"I'm having dinner with my girlfriend tonight."
"It's been thirteen years. Tell her you're not getting any younger!"
"I'll trap her one day," Mr. Huggins quipped. "Good night, Louise."
"Yeah, you too!" Louise shouted back. As she did this, she heard a knocking on the backdoor of the food truck. Louise reached for something on the counter then opened the door up, but kept a very visible and very threatening can of Cheese Whiz in her hand to show she meant business. Behind the open door stood Tina with a generous stack of mail in her hand, still clad in her kitchen uniform from Glencrest Yacht Club.
"Were you talking to yourself? Because if you were, I'm not judging," Tina said as she climbed into 2.0.
"I was talking to Mr. Huggins," Louise said.
Tina, very ungracefully, presented her sister the stack of mail, "Oh. Well, Mom wanted me to give this to you."
"How long has Mike been holding onto these?" Louise asked, starting up a pot of coffee. Tina just shrugged.
Lately Tina had been coming earlier and earlier to get Zeke at the end of the shift. She didn't say much about it, but with Zeke was picking up more hours at the restaurant. The Glenrest Yacht Club never seemed like it was doing as well around the holidays. With the sailing season over, the activities of the club narrowed down to private catered parties and exclusive holiday events.
Lifetime bans at Glencrest Yacht Club didn't count when your long term boyfriend was the top chef at the club and lifetime bans didn't matter when you were under the age of eighteen and your father was having a major, pill-induced freak out in the backroom of the prestigious club. Lifetime bans also didn't count when you worked at Glencrest Yacht Club and are able to get your mother into all the good events. Lifetime bans didn't count when Tyler What's-His-Face's father is not president of the Yacht Club anymore. And lifetime bans simply didn't matter when they mistook your last name for "Burper," instead Belcher.
The prior ban from the yacht club was one of the few secrets in Tina's life she seemed to be capable of keeping and Louise, much like her father, refused to step foot in Glencrest Yacht Club to this day.
Tina sat on the plastic crate while Louise flipped through her stack of mail. Louise took four or five letters out of the pile and immediately threw them to the ground as if they had performed some great offense against her person. The rest were letters from Seymour's Bay Community College and one with a return address from Rudy Stieblitz. Louise took her thumb and began to pry open the envelope from Rudy. She stopped when she saw Tina shuffling through her discarded letters.
"What are you doing?!" She shouted at her sister, throwing the can of Cheese Whiz at her and narrowly missing.
"Louise, you have so many letters. Some of these are written for the same day." Tina said organizing the open letters. The pages were numerous and if she didn't know better, Louise would have assumed it was a new draft of one of her sister's self-published horror-romance serials.
"Burn them!" Louise said, pointing to the grill. "Or better yet, don't open my fucking mail."
"This is so romantic," Tina said. "A secret admirer writing you letters?"
"It's not a secret, T. And it's not romantic. Those are letters from Millie. Millie Frock."
Tina was squinting behind her glasses skimming one of the letters, "It says she's being released to Second Horizon's Halfway House in a few weeks. She wants you to see her. Maybe you should write her back."
"No way, T. She's in jail. You know, prison? She stalked her ex-girlfriend and slashed her tires."
"Jail and prison are different things, Louise," Tina recited in a literal tone.
"I'll just have Mickey call in a favor to take care of her when she gets to that halfway house."
Tina gave her sister a judgmental stare.
"What? It's the perfect idea for one of your new books," Lousie threw up her hands, still holding Rudy's envelope.
Tina still wore her same judgmental expression.
"I'm not writing any letters to Millie. It's for my own safety. We have a history, T. One that you know I don't want to revisit," Louise said.
Tina relented.
Louise's attention came back to Rudy's envelope. She tore it fully open. Louise stiffened when her eyes got full view of the colorful postcard announcement. She wadded up the card into a ball.
"What's wrong, Louise?" Tina's sisterly instincts kicking into overdrive.
"Fucking Rudy and Jessica. It's a baby shower announcement and a fucking engagement announcement." Louise slammed a coffee mug on the counter and filled her cup up from an almost done pot.
"Louise?" Tina tried to get her little sister's attention.
"Some friends," Louise muttered.
In the four years Louise and her friends had been out of high school, they had all been horrible at keeping in touch. Of all her friends, she and Harley remained the closest to one another, seeing each other over summer breaks and spring breaks or going out to bars together when Harley was home from school for long weekends. Harley may have been first in line for the title of "best friend." Andy and Ollie were around, but Louise couldn't force herself to stomach their obnoxious energy in large or frequent doses anymore. They were too gullible and it sucked the fun out of any planned mischief as the trio got older.
Rudy and Jessica started college the fall after graduation. They'd moved to Wildwood to attend the same university and seemingly dropped off the face of the Earth.
Jessica had been a sore subject for Louise immediately following her elected disappearance. Louise invested a lot of time into Jessica and when Jessica cut her off, Louise knew she deserved better than that. No one was ever going to drop her like that again. Louise Belcher was too smart and devious and special to be treated just like any other woman, and she knew it.
Jessica had been her closest friend outside of Rudy. Louise and Jessica just clicked. The two girls were so close, in fact, that the summer after graduation, there was a lot of tension between them. Louise never said how she felt, but if Jessica had stuck around, Louise knew they may have had the opportunity to break each others' hearts.
That and the few awkward drunken kisses they shared on the beach. They had both never told anybody about it. Well, Louise hadn't, at least. Who's to say what Jessica really did with that information. Louise, what few deeply personal and intimate moments she'd had in her life to this point, preferred it when they remained solely hers and weren't broadcast to the rest of the world.
Louise might not have said anything, but her family knew and she knew that they knew. She mostly said nothing because it just easier to not talk about it. It was easier to not talk about a lot of things. But her attitude had a funny way of betraying her, so she'd did what she could to keep it in check as she'd grown older.
Louise spent a few months after that wondering where she was going to find another man or woman who could also pick locks and keep up with her the way Jessica had. Louise had seen from the first night at Linda's forced sleep over, that real Jessica was a force to be reckoned with. She wasn't bland and boring at all. She knew she liked that in a person: someone who could be one step ahead of her. Not that Louise would ever let someone have the chance to be one step ahead of her for very long.
Tina reached out for the crumbled card. Louise sighed and handed it to her sister. Tina studied it carefully, "Are you upset about Jessica?"
"Upset? What would I be upset about?" Louise strained her voice.
"Because you used to like her," Tina said plainly. Louise wanted to slap her sister around a little bit. Tina may have grown to be one of her favorite people, but her lack of filter and appraisal of social graces could test her patience at the worst times.
"I didn't li-"
Tina cut her sister off, "A romantic heart always knows." Tina placed her hand over her heart and returned the crumbled up announcement. Louise stuffed it in her pocket next to her ears.
"No, it's not that," Louise calmed a little.
Tina didn't say anything, she stayed silent, letting Louise talk when she was ready.
"We've been friends for years," Louise said. "I didn't even know they were together. They didn't say anything. And now all of a sudden here they're having a kid and getting married? And they're expecting us to just show up out of nowhere. I want to be happy for them, but I feel like they're strangers now. And this stupid 'Baby Getting Engaged Party' is in March, like we don't all have lives and can just be expected to show up."
Louise felt a little gross. There was too much talking about feelings tonight. She'd have to hose out all the emotional residue out of the food truck at the end of her shift.
"Do you remember that year Zeke and I first got together and I broke up with him for a few days when I came home from school the first time?"
"Yeah, that was the year I kept teasing you that you were gonna be the next Aunt Gayle, Tina-Zilla," Louise broke into an untasteful smile.
Louise had officially decided around year one of Tina and Zeke, that Zeke was a permanent fixture in the Belcher family. Louise would sell Tina into marriage with him to keep it that way, too. She came to this conclusion when Zeke had taken her to a Boyz 4 Now concert when she was still in high school, respectfully let her fangirl, and then never mentioned it again. This was a man who listened, gave you the affirmation that you needed, and knew how to keep a shameful secret. Tina needed that kind of support in her life.
Tina chose to ignore her sister's comment. "I wasn't afraid of being with Zeke. I was afraid of change."
"What's your point, T?" Louise said, taking a sip of coffee. "I'm not afraid of anything."
Tina gave her sister another disbelieving look. "I just think you should reconsider the invitation is all," Tina said.
Louise shook her head, "Sorry, not sorry."
Tina rolled her eyes and asked, "Have you at least read my new book yet? Or are you gonna welch out on that too?"
"I'll read it soon. I've been studying for finals. I didn't forget." Louise promised. A raw, unedited copy of A Night to Zomb-member by T. R. Belcher, title subject to change, still sat as a save file on her desktop.
"It's heartbreaking and beautiful and it's based on an original dream I had," Tina said. Then with her unskilled sneakiness, Tina attempted to reach for a mug and pour herself a coffee. Louise smacked her older sister on the hand. The family rule of "No Coffee for Tina" still stood since the childhood incident with the espresso machine.
There was a knock on the back door of 2.0. "Girls, let me in. Your father said he heard yelling. He said, 'I'm not dealing with this right now.' " Linda's impression of Bob in her high pitched Jersey accent brought a smile to her daughters' faces.
"I dunno who you're looking for, but were not them," Louise said
"We are them and we're here. In the truck. Maybe I should have said the part about the truck first," Tina said.
"Way to go, T. You ruined the plan," Louise muttered playfully as Linda opened the door to the truck.
"We had a plan?" Tina asked her sister incredulously.
"What was the yelling?" Linda asked, steering back on course.
"We were bonding," Louise said. She had no intention of mentioning the brief drama over the Millie letters. She moved over to the counter to start chopping vegetables for prep.
"Tina?" Linda looked at her eldest child.
"We were...uh...bonding," Tina shifted her gaze toward the counter with the half prepped vegetables.
"We weren't fighting," Louise confirmed, "if that's what you're wondering."
The scattered letters and envelopes on the floor and the stray can of Cheese Whiz suggested otherwise, but no one was missing a limb, so Linda decided not to push the issue further.
"Gene and Alex are on their way home tonight. They're gonna be staying with us when they get in," Linda said, breaking out into a full smile.
"Bog Harbor is only a few towns away, do they really need to spend all weekend here? Thanksgiving's still, like, two days away," Louise said.
"Don't be a sourpuss, Miss Missy. Your father and I let you stay with us," Linda let out a little honk of a laugh.
"That's different. I actually live here," Louise said pointedly.
"That's what you think," Linda said. She turned to Tina and said, "I'm bringing your brother with me tomorrow to that Turkey Tail Mixer. I can't wait to introduce him to all my fancy-schmancy friends," Linda put an extra flair on the fancy.
"Is that actually what they call it? Turkey Tail?" Louise laughed.
"Turkey Tail, it's fun. Festive. And speaking of fun, guess who I ran into the other night at the Yacht Club?" Linda asked.
"I'm sure you'll tell me," Louise said, dumping the cut vegetables into their appropriate bins.
"Cynthia and Logan Bush," Linda said, not giving any power to her daughter's smart-aleck tone.
"And you still willingly show up there?" Louise asked.
"We got to talking and Cynthia isn't so bad, after a few glasses of wine, anyway," Linda said waving it off. "That Logan was asking about you. He said he was at the food truck a few days ago."
"Don't remind me. The sooner I forget Logan exists, the better off I'll be," Louise gave a humorless laugh. Then she turned on Tina, "You work there? You've never seen them there before?"
"I see them all the time," Tina said. "I thought she was his wife. I thought she just looked really mature for her age."
"She doesn't look all that good for her age, does she?" Linda laughed. "And what does it matter? You never go in there anyway," Linda directed the question at her youngest child.
"Mom, you cannot fraternize with the enemy," Louise said.
"I could tell you the same thing, Miss Missy. Selling burgers to the 'enemy'," Linda said.
Louise rolled her eyes. "There are too many people in my truck," she muttered under her breath.
"All right, Whiny Pants, I have to help close soon anyway," Linda brushed her daughter off as she got out of the food truck, Tina following close behind. "Be safe tonight."
"Yeah, yeah, I will," Louise gave her mother a trace of a smile before she shut the back door.
Louise finished prep and used her laptop to quickly post her location to Chowster while she still had some connection to WiFi. She noticed a small notification circle in her Chowster inbox, but couldn't be bothered to look at it at the moment. She stashed her laptop in the passenger seat and drove off.
Louise parked herself a few blocks ahead of the entrance to Wonder Wharf, taking advantage of more constrained hours and the earlier closing times of many of the rides and stalls as winter approached Seymour's Bay.
Louise made few sales, but made even more progress on her term paper. She was roused from her focus on her half charged laptop by an aggressive voice.
"Filth!" the voice proclaimed as they read the "Burger of the Day."
Louise stood up and leaned out the service window to meet eyes with a crinkly Edith Cranwinkle, clad in a fuzzy winter track suit and scarf. Beside her was Harold in his wheelchair with the brake engaged. Harold was decked out in a beanie, thick wool scarf, large jacket and had a blanket spread over his lap. He'd been in a wheelchair for a few years now, not getting around as well as he once had. Edith had begun taking him out for evening walks, pushing him around the neighborhood in all weather and seasons.
Edith was still a spiteful, spitfire in her age, but as Louise grew older, she began to like that about Edith more than when she was a child. Back when some of that spitefulness had deliberately directed at her.
"Order or leave," Louise said bluntly.
"Rude!" Edith shot back.
"If you buy some burgers, I'll throw in two free slices of pie," Louise haggled.
"Fine," Edith agreed, passing the cash through the service window.
Louise started up the grill, worked her magic, and sliced some pie. She deposited to-go boxes through the service window, handing it to Edith.
"Hold the food, Harold!" Edith shouted at her husband.
"What?" Harold shouted back.
"I said 'hold the food!' " Edith repeated.
"No, you hold it!" Harold argued.
"Shut up!" Edith threw back at her husband.
"What? Fine, give it to me. I'll hold it," Harold relented as his wife set the food on his blanketed lap. Edith disengaged the brakes and pushed Harold off into the distance.
Louise hung around her spot for a little longer, finishing up some other assignments and last minute edits to projects until her laptop approached a quarter battery. It was almost midnight and she had to upload these assignments.
She shot a text to Zeke begging the password for the router at Glencrest Yacht Club, pressing the same numbers multiple times to craft a coherent text message on her flip phone. Once she sent the text, she hopped into the driver's seat and drove along the pier adjacent street.
Louise parked herself in front of the Yacht Club and waited impatiently for Zeke to answer her. She bided her time chowing down on some fries and counting her earnings.
It was a good distraction for her placement outside of the Yacht Club. Tina mentioned the only event tonight was a wine mixer that had hors d'oeuvres. Plenty of drunk, stuffed shirts would be wanting a good meal as they were stumbling outside to their cars and taxis.
Louise's phone vibrated from the mesh cup holder of the lawn chair. A message from Zeke, just a series of characters she assumed was her coveted router and password. She hand jammed them into her computer and prayed.
She uploaded her assignments and term paper with the spotty WiFi. Just in time, just before midnight. She then made her way onto Chowster and updated her location.
The little notification bubble in her inbox was still there.
Out of sheer curiosity, Louise opened the little tab. It was a review for Bob's Burgers 2.0. The review was two stars and authored by one Logan Berry Bush:
"This dingy diner on wheels leaves a lot to be desired. The food and customer service are subpar, in the nicest terms, and nicest terms are a little more than this sad food truck deserves…" Louise intently read through the rest of the review, simmering and seething a little more with each line. "Cold and under-cooked" and "Food poisoning is on the menu" were some of the nicer things that jumped out at her.
Louise had always known Logan Bush was a sneaky bastard, but this was plain low. It was pure mean without a hint of cleverness. Signature Logan.
But two could play at that game, and Louise played on "Expert."