The Guy Not Taken Read Online Free PDF Page B

Conehead had caramel oozing over its chin.
    Nicki’s friends loved it. They’d line up at the counter and cram six or seven to a four-person booth, demanding all manner of diseased, deformed, and dying coneheads: Conehead with a Cold (marshmallow topping dripping from where the nose should have been), Cyclops Conehead (one eye, a Hershey’s Kiss), Nauseous Conehead (gaping chocolate syrup mouth spewing great frothy quantities of Reese’s Pieces and whipped cream). Business was booming. Tips were stellar. The manager, Tim, didn’t know what to do, but he was certain that my sister’s inventions were far from standard Friendly’s procedure.
    He sat Nicki down over a late lunch one Friday before her shift began. Tim was having a Big Beef Patty Melt with a double order of fries. Nicki, a picky eater, was having a scoop of tuna fish, a pickle, six olives, a handful of crackers, and a conehead of her own creation for dessert.
    She came to the table expecting praise, perhaps even a promotion. “So, Tim,” she said, spearing an olive with her fork, “I hear we’re about to be named Friendly’s of the Month in the Farmington Valley region.”
    “Nicki,” said Tim, “just what is going on with the cone-heads?”
    Nicki gave a nonchalant shrug.
    “Are you making them the way the manual says?”
    “I may have taken a few liberties,” she said.
    Tim shook his head. “Liberties.” He picked up Nicki’s dessert and turned it slowly in his hands: a Satanic Conehead, with beetling black licorice brows and “666” written out inchocolate shots underneath its cone hat. For a long, silent moment he perused the conehead, considering its every angle. “This is no dessert for a Christian.”
    “I,” Nicki pointed out, snatching her conehead back across the table, “am not a Christian.” She spooned up a big mouthful of ice cream and sauce. “Mmm-mmm good!”
    Tim sighed. “Make the coneheads regular, okay? Like they show them in the manual.”
    Nicki shook her head. “That would thwart my creativity.”
    Tim clasped his hands in an attitude of prayer. “Nicki,” he said, “maybe you should consider looking for a job at a place where your creativity will be more appreciated. For now,” he added, “regular coneheads. I insist.”
    Nicki got to her feet, untied her apron, and flung it on the floor. “You know what? I don’t need this crap. I don’t need this job,” she said. “I quit.”
    •   •   •
    For the last week of summer Nicki spent her afternoons in front of the TV, reacquainting herself with the doings of the denizens of Santa Barbara and Springfield and General Hospital. When the sun set and the temperature dropped, she’d make her way to the kitchen to work on her magnum opus: Portrait of a Family in Coneheads.
    When she’d gone to Friendly’s to pick up her final paycheck, she’d taken a few items home with her: a round ice-cream scooper and a whipped-cream dispenser. To this arsenal she had added some new toys: a series of small tubes full of food colorings—red and brown, neon green and electric blue.
    Four coneheads were already lined up in the freezer. Jon’s conehead had brown M&M eyes and the hopeful caramel hint of a mustache above its upper lip. My conehead had green LifeSaver glasses and pointy banana chunks for bosoms. The Mom conehead had shredded coconut hair and floated on waterywaves of blue icing, while Nicki’s self-portrait, the Beauty Queen Conehead, had an updo of the glossiest Hershey’s syrup topped with a tiara made of crushed toffee. There was only one conehead left to make, and Nicki took her time as she crafted the glasses and selected the perfect chocolate shavings for the beard.
    Finally she called the family into the kitchen, and the four of us stood around the butcher-block island, staring at her final creation.
    Mom, in her swimsuit, pronounced it a perfect likeness.
    “It’s really good,” I said, picking up discarded chocolate shavings with a