the boy asked nervously, standing in the dim light of the menu board. “No,” the frenchfryer answered. “Once, I was a twenty-two-year-old man. The year was nineteen-hundred ninety-one.” The boy was startled by the preciseness of the date and said, “Cool!” “What do you know of the food-service industry?” the frenchfryer asked in a contemplative way, as if not expecting an answer. “Have you any idea of the vastness of our secret community? We inhabit a world of eternal youth and temporary employment, the curse of leaving our parents’ homes at three P.M. and not returning until midnight, after the floors have been mopped and the Dumpsters fed, then to repeat in our troubled sleep that unholy incantation: ‘Hello, may I serve you, please? … Have a nice day.’ ” The frenchfryer sighed and stared at the drive-up window, as if it were the gateway to another world. “Once, I was one of you,” he said. “I was young, thin, goateed—alive. I had a degree in communications from Syracuse University.
