Eleven on Top (Stephanie Plum 11)

“She's no good,” Emily said. “The other chicken was way better. The other chicken flapped her arms.”

I took a deep breath, stuffed my fists under my armpits, and did some chicken-wing flapping. “Cluck, cluck, cluck, cluck, clu-u-u-u-ck,” I said.

“I want french fries and a chocolate shake,” Emily said.

The next guy in line weighed three hundred pounds and was wearing a torn

T-shirt and a hard hat. “You gonna cluck for me?” he asked. “How about I want you to do something besides cluck?”

“How about I shove my foot so far up your ass your nuts get stuck in your throat?”

“Not my idea of a good time,” he said. “Get me a bucket of extra crispy and a Diet Coke.”

At five o'clock I was marched back to the fryer.

“It's a no-brainer,” Mann said. “It's all automated. When the green light goes on the oil is right for frying, so you dump the chicken in.”

Mann pulled a huge plastic tub of chicken parts out of the big commercial refrigerator. He took the lid off the tub, and I almost passed out at the site of slick pink muscle and naked flesh and cracked bone.

“As you can see, we have three stainless-steel tanks,” Mann said. “One is the fryer and one is the drainer and one is the breader. It's the breader that sets us apart from all the other chicken places. We coat our chicken with the specially seasoned secret breading glop right here in the store.”

Mann dumped a load of chicken into a wire basket and lowered it into the breader. He swished the basket around, raised it, and gently set it into the hot oil. “When you put the chicken into the oil you push the Start button and the machine times the chicken. When the bell rings you take the chicken out and set the basket in the drainer. Easy, right?”

I could feel sweat prickle at my scalp under my hat. It was about two hundred degrees in front of the fryer, and the air was oil saturated. I could smell the hot oil. I could taste the hot oil. I could feel it soaking into my pores.

“How do I know how much chicken to fry?” I asked him.

“You just keep frying. This is our busy time of day. You go from one basket to the next and keep the hot chicken rolling out.”

A half hour later, Eugene was yelling at me from the bagging table. "We need extra-spicy. All you're doing is extra-crispy. And there's all wings here.

You gotta give us some backs and some thighs. People are bitchin' about the friggin' wings. If they wanted all wings, they'd order all wings."

At precisely seven o'clock, Mann appeared at my side. “You get a half-hour dinner break now, and then we're going to rotate you to the drive-thru window until closing time at eleven.”

My muscles ached from lifting the chicken baskets. My uniform was blotched with grease stains. My hair felt like it had been soaked in oil. My arms were covered with splatter burns. I had thirty minutes to eat, but I didn't think I could gag down fried chicken. I shuffled off to the ladies' room and sat on the toilet with my head down. I think I fell asleep like that because next thing I knew, Mann was knocking on the ladies' room door, calling my name.

I followed Mann to the drive-thru window. The plan was that I remove my

Cluck hat, put the headset on, and put the Cluck hat back over the headset.

Problem was, after tending the fryer, my hair was slick with grease and the headset kept sliding off.

“Ordinarily I don't put people in the drive-thru after the fryer just for this problem,” Mann said, “but Darlene went home sick and you're all I got.”

He disappeared into the storeroom and came back with a roll of black electrical tape. “Necessity is the mother of invention,” he said, holding the headset to my head, wrapping my head with a couple loops of tape. “Now you can put your hat on and get clucky, and that headset isn't going anywhere.”

“Welcome to Cluck-in-a-Bucket,” I said to the first car.

“I wanna crchhtra skraapyy, two orders of fries, and a large crchhhk.”

Mann was standing behind me. “That's extra crispy chicken, two fries, and a large Coke.” He gave me a pat on the shoulder. “You'll get the hang of it after a couple cars. Anyway, all you have to do is ring them up, take their money, and give them their order. Fred is in back filling the order.” And he left.

“Seven-fifty,” I said. “Please drive up.”

“What?”

“Seven-fifty. Please drive up.”