Food that half an hour before had probably looked fit for the cover of a magazine was now disgusting to behold, and even Yancy, a man who had worked as a mess mate in the Coast Guard and scrubbed pots for cafeterias up and down the West Coast, shook his head when he saw some of the food wrecks that people had created.
I was blasting ricotta cheese, boneless chicken breasts, and crinkle-cut beets with the water gun, and I had it down to a rhythm. Three short bursts with the gun, and I turned and handed the plate to Yancy, who had sure hands.
Danielle and I would drop a cup every few days, and despite the sturdiness of the china a handle would break off, or a water glass would bounce off the rubber-grid mat on the floor and show a crack. “Sorry!” Danielle would sing out.
“Breakage,” Yancy would call, meaning: no big deal. Kitchen work has its own terminology. A spill was spillage; sea crabs that showed up dead from the wharf, too rotten to cook, were wastage.
Danielle caught my eye, pretending she was going to flip something invisible off a spoon. She gave the spoon the wrong sort of tension, bending it back. The stainless steel spoon came to life for an instant. The utensil spun through the air, bounced off the rim of the steel trough, and fell into the gobbling hole of the garbage disposal.
Yancy moved fast, in a fluid, seemingly unconcerned way, hit a red kill switch down by the floor, and put his hand into the grind hole.
The sudden ceasing of the mechanical roar made the noise of the dishwasher distinct, a wet, mechanical chugging, and for some reason when Danielle made her sorry-about-that smile I did the logical thing. I fired the water gun right at her.
This spurt of water didn’t do Danielle any harm. We were both sashed up in our plastic-cloth aprons, chest to knee, although my apron was covered with bits of meatball and stir-fry rice.
Danielle said, “Stop it.”
I fired the water gun again, one more time.
Just as Mr. Gartner came through the door.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Yancy bent to rearrange some soup spoons in their cubicle.
Gartner nodded, making sense of what he was seeing, and what he was not seeing. He stepped over to the trough and peered into the silent hole, exaggerating, almost making a joke of it, a caricature, the Patient Boss.
The dishwasher raised a thunderhead of steam, obliterating Mr. Gartner’s voice, forcing him to shout. He wanted to see us when our shift was done.
Yancy gave me a smile I could not mistake, a silent farewell.
I gave him a stiff, unreal smile right back, as though I didn’t care.
We were waiting outside his office. It was twilight, and now, two days after my bout with Del Toro, my ribs were aching. Boxing soreness is like that, surprising you long after the fight is over.
Danielle and I waited in the corridor.
“Steven, you make such a big deal out of everything,” said Danielle.
“Gartner thinks he can treat us like this,” I said.
“Steven, look at you, full of all that tension,” she said, sounding a lot like her mother, a sweet-voiced, no-nonsense woman.
Mr. Gartner breezed down the hall.
He hefted a key ring, picked out a key, and ushered us into a room of folders and software tumbling all over his desk, squashed soda cans in a paper bag, ready for that yearly trip to the recycling bin. A Hansen’s coffee calendar decorated a wall, the entire year with phone numbers and notations scribbled all over it.
“You two find a place to sit,” he said, falling into a mock leather starship chair.
I perched on a yellow plastic chair. Danielle leaned against the calendar. We had taken off our aprons, and washed our faces and arms, but even after all this time some of the pink was still in Danielle’s cheeks from the dishwasher heat.
Danielle spoke first. “We’re sorry we fooled around, Mr. Gartner, and we won’t let it happen again.”
“I’ve worked in restaurant administration for decades,” said Mr. Gartner, giving her a save-it wave of one hand. “I have fired almost no one, for the simple reason that when it isn’t working out most people quit.”
“You want Steven and me to tender our resignations, Mr. Gartner?” asked Danielle, polite but not puppy-dog nice. “Because if you do, I really think you should rethink the situation.” Her mother ran a staff of nurses.
Mr. Gartner settled back in his chair. He rocked back and forth for a while, relaxed and quite happy to be where he was. “I have fired personnel for drinking on the job,” he continued. “For showing up high on drugs. And one time we had one individual try to stab another individual with a fillet knife.”
“How awful!” said Danielle, maybe realizing the situation was flowing, Mr. Gartner wanting to tell his life story.
Mr. Gartner ran a hand through his balding hair. “I do believe we settled for disability in that case, because the attacker turned out to be a Gulf War vet with three kids and antianxiety medication that didn’t work very well.”
Mr. Gartner kicked off his shoe, a brown loafer, and tugged at the toe of his black sock. Danielle wrinkled her nose at me.
Mr. Gartner saw this, and he shook his head just slightly. “I like working in the bowels of an inferno,” said Mr. Gartner. “Like today. Today the pastry chef is out with stomach flu, and forty people off a bus from Reno stagger in, pick up trays, and head for the salad bar.” He chuckled and shook his head.
“And it gets worse,” he continued. “Chef gets a speck of cayenne under his contact lens, and a customer finds a dime in the canned peaches, and then when I make it through the kitchen on my way to take a leak, two of our employees are playing war games with the hydraulic sanitation equipment.”
“We were wrong,” said Danielle. “And we’re sorry.”
Mr. Gartner’s face would have looked good on a Supreme Court justice. “My problem is I really do like all this,” said Mr. Gartner. “If I was your age, and saw myself running an insane asylum for a living, I’d think: this man is crazy. But I love it.”
He looked at Danielle steadily, and Danielle looked right back, fresh and alert, with a sweet air that was absolutely genuine.
There was a long silence.
Mr. Gartner turned to me.
“So what I’m going to suggest,” he said after thinking for a while, “is that you two work different shifts.”
“You hired the two of us together,” I said. I hadn’t spoken for so long that I hardly recognized my voice.
“I signed you on at the same time,” said Mr. Gartner, “but not necessarily as a team.”
“One of us goes, we both go,” I said.
Mr. Gartner put on his shoes, easing his feet into them, tapping the heels against the tiled floor. “Steven, let me talk with you alone.”
Danielle trailed me in the parking lot. The East Bay summer nights are often cold, and I wished I was wearing a jacket.
Interstate 580 rumbles past on the other side of the lot, trucks sighing by, going eighty miles an hour. I wondered what Raymond was doing right about then, probably hanging out with men who carried concealed weapons.
“You told him okay, you’d work nights,” Danielle was suggesting hopefully.
I kept walking, keeping my mind focused.
I was way ahead of Danielle, and she had to raise her voice, calling after me. “Tell me you didn’t quit.”
CHAPTER NINE
We were driving down the freeway, toward Chad’s house. I had called Raymond the night before, said I wanted to go visit his new friend, and Raymond had made the arrangements. Raymond gunned the open-air car out of the slow lane. It was a little past noon, and we were supposed to be there at twelve-thirty.
The next day I was set to fight Stacy Martell, and the entire gym was alive with the upcoming bout when I dropped by to pound the speed bag and shadowbox in front of the floor-length mirror. The Spanish-speaking guys said things I didn’t understand, smiling and making punching motions. The older, experienced boxers wished me well, in a way that made me nervo
us and proud. “Don’t mess him up too bad, Beech,” one of them said, a thick-necked, coffee-colored welterweight with graying hair who, the story went, once fought a preliminary in Vegas.
I had worked in front of the mirror for hours, silver with sweat. Body hooks, head bobs. Getting that special, commanding look in my eye, like I could see through walls of steel. Andy, the timekeeper, said he’d heard that if I handled Martell, San Diego was a sure thing.
Raymond changed lanes and asked, “How are you feeling?”
I stretched my fingers to show that my fists weren’t sore, which they sometimes can be, from working out with the thin speed-bag gloves. Dad took meticulous care of his own hands, wearing cashmere-lined gloves on even a slightly chilly morning, flexing his fingers unconsciously in idle moments, his hands nervously eager to be off and running. Years of keyboard lessons from Dad meant I could snap through Mozart’s “Turkish March” without a note out of place, but Dad and I both knew I had about one-tenth his natural ability.
“I mean, about meeting Chad,” said Raymond.
“Chad is no big deal to me,” I lied.
Raymond let me see him thinking about this.
“Chad says Loquesto was a bleeder who couldn’t go the distance after he turned pro, so he ended up picking up a little extra money.”
Raymond was making sense, the sort you hate to hear. Loquesto was always smooth and well dressed, and liked to rivet you with his stare, a man pushing forty, an air of defeat about the way he probably dyed his hair.
“Okay,” said Raymond, as though I had made some additional remark. He made a little down-turned shrug with his mouth. “If you’re happy, I’m happy.”
Even when he was accepting and forgiving, there was an alternate, opposite view, and he let you see it. “It’s just, you can back out of this if you want to.”
“I said I better meet Chad.”
“But it doesn’t have to be today.”
“You ashamed of me, Raymond? You think Chad’ll take one look at me and think, what’s so tough about this guy?”
“We’ll see Chad right this afternoon,” Raymond was saying, “if you want to.”
“That’s what you agreed to.”
Some part of me wanted never to have a conversation with Chad, the way some part of my body wanted never to drive one hundred miles an hour on the freeway ever again, hanging on the steering wheel like I had a few weeks before, Raymond in the passenger’s seat asking why couldn’t we go any faster, in a thin, scared voice.
Raymond said, “Chad tells me Loquesto used to throw fights for money, down in Mexico.”
“You don’t believe that,” I said, knowing how much Raymond used to admire Loquesto.
“Not really. But I wonder.”
That made me mad. I said that Chad was a liar. I actually used the word liar, realizing how biting and challenging it was.
Raymond drove along for a moment. “Do you think you’ll be able to say that again? Explain to Chad how he’s making up stories?”
I didn’t bother making a sound.
“I can’t hear you, Steven,” he said.
“I’ll tell Chad he’s a liar,” I said, aware that I was being cock-proud and foolish. “To his face.”
“Really?” said Raymond, with a note of caution.
Or maybe it was the real thing, real glee. I couldn’t read Raymond’s moods so well anymore. He swung the car into the fast lane.
He said, “This is going to be fun,” his voice cracking with tension.
CHAPTER TEN
Raymond and I rarely came into this neighborhood, the flat-land district of San Leandro.
We cruised past storefront churches and insurance agencies, a neighborhood of overweight bikers, Harleys and Kawasakis sweating oil onto sidewalks. We passed flat-roofed blue and pink stucco building and blank windows, palmists and burglar alarm specialists.
Raymond drove a vintage Volvo his brothers had decided should be turned into a convertible. One fine, beery Saturday afternoon had seen Raymond’s brothers laboring with hacksaws and acetylene torches, transforming this staid Scandinavian car. Now the gray two-door was open to the sky, with a long I beam welded across the backseat to give the vehicle strength.
Raymond pulled the car up a driveway and up onto the front lawn, parking under a spreading Monterey pine.
The front lawn was worn and rutted, areas of bare loam where cars had kept the sun from the grass, and a brown-and-black Doberman stood on his hind legs behind a chain-link fence and gave out a bark. Then he found a sag where the fence parted from the pole, stabbed his snout through the gap, and let out a low, bone-chilling growl.
The house was a tall white Victorian, handsome and genteel, except for the iron bars on the windows on the first floor and the flaking paint of the window frames. A blue wicker chair with a calico pillow sat on a broad front porch, overlooking the view of a taqueria and car stereo discount shop.
Raymond wiped his hands on the front of his pants and gave me one of his tight little smiles, his hand in no hurry to push the doorbell button.
Even in this broad afternoon sunshine a tiny electric light shined from within it, through the fingerprint grime. Raymond pushed the button, and as he twitched another smile at me I realized he had never visited Chad here at home before now.
And I felt some compassion for Raymond, unable to back out from the situation, with the whisper of the doorbell echoing in the interior of the house. I also realized something else as Raymond eyed me up and down, measuringly. Raymond was looking forward to showing me off, while I still had the nerve to call Chad a liar to his face.
Raymond was trying to find out something about Chad, and I was the test.
A pale young woman peered out through the screen while the Doberman at the side of the house barked full voice, leaping at the fence.
Raymond spoke, although I could not make out the words, a quiet politeness coming over him.
I barely heard her response: “My brother isn’t here right now.”
I was more aware than ever how I looked, my clothes whatever my dad and I had been able to pick up at the clearance table at Ross Clothes-for-Less.
“Carrie, this is great,” Raymond was saying, “I’m very pleased to meet you at last. Chad is always saying wonderful things about you.”
The young woman did not respond to this. She was not as pretty as Danielle, and did not have Danielle’s winning smile, but I wished I had taken a moment to comb my hair.
“We’re going to play tennis up at Hiller Highlands,” Raymond added. “We hope to rent some rackets, work on our serves.”
He might as well have said we were going to play nine holes of golf at Pebble Beach. Hiller Highlands was a development far up in the hills where freshly painted concrete courts were enjoyed by dentists’ and podiatrists’ wives.
But the young woman hesitated, conquered by Raymond’s talk, maybe, or by my look of apology. Or maybe she was just afraid of Chad’s anger, whatever her brother would do if she turned us away.
“We’re a little early,” I said.
She unlatched the screen door and let us in, the Doberman going crazy behind the fence.
“Who’s this?” said a kid looking right at me, one of those tough junior high students who move with a swagger, even in his own living room.
“These are Chad’s friends,” said Carrie. She turned to us and asked if we wanted to sit down.
“Steven is a boxer,” said Raymond, with something close to pride. He moved a sports section of the newspaper to one side and sat on the couch. I took my place in an old oak rocker, trying not to let it shift back and forth.
Raymond continued, “He’s a welterweight, in the novice division. The coach thinks he can make it to the Junior Olympics or maybe even the real thing, Team USA.”
“How big is welterweight?” said little brother.
“Steven goes about one-forty-seven,” said Raymond.
“Not very big,” said the kid.
�
�Just about right,” said Raymond, putting out a playful hand, as though to cuff him gently all the way across the room. “Boxing fans don’t usually like size. Big equals slow.”
If I made it to open division boxing, where you fight opponents who have real ring experience, I hoped to muscle up to middleweight, or even light-heavy, without losing my speed.
“On Monday, Steven fought Lorenzo Del Toro, a nineteen-year-old man with a three-and-oh record,” Raymond was saying, maybe too nervous to shut up. “Steven put a whole lot of pressure on him.”
The dog outside continued to go insane.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
A large flowering plant branched from the dark fireplace, fake calla lilies. On the mantel was a picture of Jesus, looking away from us, toward a source of light that radiated from above.
In another framed picture a large young man with quiet gray eyes looked out at us, his arm around a tall blond kid with a basketball. Both of them were smiling, the sort of happiness you can’t fake. “That’s Milton and Chad, years ago,” said Carrie.
“Chad’s older brother,” said Raymond. “He’s in Vacaville, in the prison. He’s always getting into fights in the exercise yard.”
Carrie indicated a large three-ring album on a shelf. “There are more pictures in there,” she said. “And letters Chad keeps, from Milton.”
The Doberman’s barking took on a hoarse, maniacal note. Or maybe he was getting tired. Little Brother slipped away.
Carrie watched Little Brother leave, and then took the album from the shelf. She turned the pages possessively, letting us see the contents without actually sharing them. I glimpsed handwriting on lined paper, black ballpoint pen. “Chad keeps every letter.”
Carrie eased a snapshot from the album and handed me a view of Milton and Chad, unmistakably the same two people. Milton wore a gray work shirt and matching gray pants while Chad had grown up, filled out, and gotten a set of muscles. But he kept his proud smile. The two brothers beamed at the camera, while behind them blurry picnic tables and chain-links offered a sample of what I took to be visitors’ day at a correctional facility.
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