by Paul Mendez
He crossed the road and jogged up the stairs of the Internet café. He couldn’t shake the feeling of being a runaway who should either find himself a reason to not be home, or go home. Home to him was jail-like. Despite somehow staying with his family until the age of nineteen he had never felt the freedom to get up and go to do whatever he wanted. He had left his family behind, but was not yet independent of mind; he could feel home, no matter where or how far he went, snatching him back, and he could feel the beating he was going to get. He walked with tight shoulders, as if expecting to be smashed on the back of the head. Everywhere around him were men who looked like Graham, and were of that strong, masculine, working-class type Jesse both fancied and feared. His instinct, even at the hostel, was to stay in bed until something outside of himself changed. He had to find a job, both for money and purpose. He knew he would be welcomed with open arms at any of the many branches of McDonald’s, with his two and a half years’ experience, but they would simply call up his previous branch—who would then find out where he was—for a reference. His former colleagues could not learn about his new life; it had to be a clean break.
McDonald’s had kept him fed. He also made himself a regular at the Black Country Chippy in Great Bridge, where the local delicacy, battered chips, soaked up the salt and vinegar, but the dandelion and burdock was less sweet than he remembered from summer days on his infant school playground. He understood the benefits of working in a restaurant as far as keeping fed for free was concerned, but also knew that he couldn’t live on fatty, fried food forever; it was thanks to his genes—clearly his father’s rather than his mother’s, a possible source of her resentment—that he stayed thin. He searched online for restaurant jobs in London, and Gilbert’s, a French-style brasserie in Covent Garden, were advertising for a waiter with two years’ experience in food and beverages. In the photographs, the staff wore immaculate white shirts and black ties, and looked like dancers, with straight backs, high chins, clear eyes and white smiles. The copy required him to be hard-working, and passionate about food and wine, for which free staff meals and generous remuneration were offered. His palate was amused by all the things he wanted to try—what was foy-grass? Steak tar-tear? What did oysters taste like?
He called the number, and a man named Richard answered. He sounded attractive, and as Jesse was still sitting in the Internet café he offered to go straight there for a chat. He emailed Richard his CV as requested and checked the Tube map on the back of his A–Z. Covent Garden was an easy journey, eight stops up the Piccadilly line, but the price of the ticket made his jaw drop. He paid the unsmiling, mute attendant and her nails an outrageous £6.20 for a one-day Travelcard, Zones 1–2, and took the lift down to the platform with a scared-looking little white woman and her muzzled black wolf-dog. The Cockfosters train clattered in straight away; he checked around to see if anyone else was laughing. He stepped into the carriage as several people got off, and a woman kissed her teeth at him for pushing on. He sat down and hung a strap of his rucksack over one knee. In front of him, a rolled-up copy of The Times was tucked in the gauze side pocket of a bag between tan Timberland boots and light blue jeans. A sleeping, silver-haired man, probably about fifty, couldn’t close his legs because of the size of his packet. Rufus was still in Jesse’s air—the rushes of the coke and poppers still occasionally moving through his body like a song stuck in the head—but the man with the big box woke up with red eyes at the next stop and got off.
* * *
—
Opposite the Albery Theatre, Gilbert’s was grander than any restaurant he had ever walked into, brightly lit, with plants, mirrors and ceiling fans, and gold lettering on the window. He arrived on time and was approached at the door by a thin brunette with grey buck teeth, wearing a trouser suit. She looked him up and down and said, Can I help you? When he said he was there for an interview, she told him to sit at the bar, facing a wall of bottles, and offered him a glass of water with a choice of still or sparkling. He went for the latter and the bartender, a curt young man with a gelled quiff, asked him if he wanted ice, which sounded like a threat, while the receptionist spoke on the phone, presumably to Richard. The bartender placed a tumbler in front of him on the bar with a black square napkin and merely twitched an eyebrow when Jesse thanked him. Several waitresses—one of them black—were scuttling around setting up. The tables were dressed in immaculate white cloths, with perfectly folded linen napkins, sets of shiny silver cutlery and tall, globe-like wine glasses. The chairs were upholstered in burgundy velvet. Impressionistic paintings of moustachioed black-tie waiters with white cloths draped over their arms, and still lifes of fruit, cheeses, hams and wine, were picked out by spotlights. A flower arrangement stood in a ceramic blue vase on the corner of the marble-topped bar; he recognised the pink peonies and purple gladioli. In the background, a slow, vibrato-rich female jazz vocal simmered. There was a vinegary smell about the place, still an improvement on old shortening and McD cleaning products. The bartender polished champagne flutes, checking them through narrowed eyes under the hanging lamps. He and the receptionist were talking about someone.
“Poor fet bitch try to lose weight but she can’t,” said the bartender, who tended to overenunciate the letters d, t, and s, and to gesture a lot; doing so in a confined space with thin-stemmed wine glasses in his hands made Jesse feel uncomfortable. “Every day she nearly knock somebody drink off as she try to squiz around de taybows.”
“If I was a customer I’d be scared of ’er eatin’ me dinner on ’er way upstairs,” said the receptionist, a slither of black bra visible underneath her shirt.
“And de hair? Babes. I keep say to her, is time!”
“Oh my God! Innit weird ’ow some people are completely bald and some others just have way too much of it?”
The phone rang, and the receptionist sauntered over to answer it, swinging her hair round her shoulder to clear her ear. Jesse couldn’t tell whether it was damp or just greasy, and looking at the waitresses, thought how he immediately disliked the uniform; contrary to that suggested in the advert, it was a navy blue shirt with a tie the same colour but a different, slightly waffled texture; black trousers and shoes, and a white apron. They all had medium-length hair tied back primly in black bands and wore minimal make-up. He could tell the black girl knew he was there and was deliberately not looking at him. It seemed he would be the only boy-waiter. Sometimes he worked the breakfast shift at McDonald’s with only girls, so he would have to take in the deliveries and pack the walk-in freezer full of boxes of burgers, buns and fries, because they were considered to be boys’ jobs. He spun round on his stool with a smile as a paunchy, sleazy-looking man with stubble, gelled hair and thick-lensed spectacles approached and held out his hand.
“Jesse?”
“Yeh?” Jesse’s smile faded quickly as he jumped down to accept the handshake.
“I’m Richard, thank you for coming. How are you?”
Jesse instinctively looked downwards. Richard’s belt was too tight, his trousers were too low and his shirt had been hurriedly tucked in, so he was showing a triangle of hairy underbelly. Massive packet, though.
“I’m very well, thank you,” he said. “How are you?”
“Ah, well. You know. Not bad,” Richard said, putting his hands on his hips and making Jesse wonder whether he should ask if he was sure. The bartender made some sort of snorting sound he didn’t try hard enough to conceal.
First Richard introduced all the staff who were on, and oddly, where they were from: Gemma, the receptionist, from Croydon, who pretended to be busy flicking through some sort of diary at the front desk; Vitor, the bartender, from Porto, simmering like a soap-opera villain; then the waitresses, starting with Élodie, Marion and Claudia, all from Bordeaux. Élodie looked up, pouted and looked down again as she crouched down to adjust a wobbly table; Marion sort of flickered a cheek in Jesse’s direction as she stocked up a station with
freshly folded napkins; Claudia was polishing cutlery from a metal bucket, which was the source of the vinegary smell. They all looked young—even Gemma didn’t look much older than twenty-one—but there was a certain choreographed aloofness about them as a group. Jinny (he assumed it must be spelt), who was from Brixton, seemed to be looking around for something to do. She caught his eye, shyly, as he turned to follow Richard, and before Élodie told her, quite sharply, to check that the customer toilets were well stocked with paper and hand soap. Richard led Jesse down some tricky service stairs, talking blandly about it being constantly busy, with never a quiet shift, interrupting himself to introduce the fire escape, where deliveries were dropped off, and outside which staff were allowed to smoke. Various storerooms and cupboards were stocked floor to ceiling with tablecloths, waiter pads and cleaning products. The poky staff changing room featured lockers, a full-length mirror and a side-toilet.
The kitchen already felt busy though there were no customers yet. Soggy cardboard boxes lay flat in front of the sink, and men dressed in whites were running around preparing their stations. The tall and thin head chef, called Farid, was trimming bloody meat on a red board and couldn’t shake Jesse’s hand; nor could the short and stout sous-chef, Reda, who was filleting fish on a blue one. They were both Algerian, with bad teeth and patchy beards. While most of the upstairs staff were white, everyone in the kitchen was brown or black, including the friendly, soaking wet, dark-skinned man washing pots; he and Jesse smiled at each other before Jesse followed Richard into a tiny office next to the kitchen, crammed with paperwork, coats, unpacked crockery and a fusebox of flashing coloured lights.
A printout of his CV lay in front of Richard on the desk. Jesse was disconcerted that the font was unaccountably different from the one he had designed it with. He took the worn-looking, crumby seat offered him, brushing it off with the back of a hand just before his bum fell on it. Half-eaten packets of various branded biscuits and a grab-bag of Cool Original Doritos were spread across the back of the desk, and the bin was full of empty Pepsi Max bottles. He could imagine Richard sitting at this desk for years, hitting company targets, forgetting about himself, getting fatter and fatter. Jesse was reminded of one particular, typical moment at McDonald’s when an enormously obese woman chewing her own hair ordered a super-size Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese meal, nine chicken nuggets and a Dairy Milk McFlurry. What drink would you like? Jesse asked her. Diet Coke, she deadpanned, and when her order was ready, she sat by herself on a four-seater bench and smashed the lot in five minutes flat.
“So, you’ve just moved here, have you?” said Richard, as he clicked his mouse repeatedly and various spreadsheets flashed in and out of view.
“Yeh, just a few days ago.”
“Where are you living?”
“Earl’s Court?”
“Nice area. Have you moved here on your own?”
“Yeh.”
“From?”
“The Black Country.”
“Yes, I thought so. How old are you?” He looked down at Jesse’s CV. “Nineteen eighty-two?”
“Nineteen.”
“So it’ll be your birthday, soon?”
“In a couple a weeks, yeh.”
“It’s a very brave thing to do, isn’t it, moving here by yourself? Are you studying anything?”
“Norrat the moment.”
“So you’re looking for a full-time job in the meantime? Save a bit of money?”
“Yeh.”
“It says here you’ve most recently been working at McDonald’s?”
“Yeh, I was there for two years. I got five stars and was promoted to Training Squad,” Jesse said, sitting up straight. He recalled a teacher at junior school nodding at him as her choice for Head Boy, and all the other boys turning round and scowling at him.
“Surely it would be easier for you to get a job at one of the branches down here? This is a very different kind of restaurant, where grace, conviviality and politeness are bywords.” He spoke as if verbatim from a managerial handbook.
“But you said in the advert full trainin’d be provided,” Jesse said, worriedly.
“It is, but on the assumption the bare minimum is already in place,” Richard said. “What hours are you available to work? Full- or part-time?”
“How many hours is full-time?”
“Forty-eight. And then I’d ask you to sign an agreement to opt out of the maximum forty-eight-hour week, because sometimes we’ll need you to work fifty-five or sixty. Because we’re so busy, I need my staff to be flexible and available,” he said. Sixty hours sounded like a lot of money. It also allowed a hundred and eight hours per week of freedom. “A high-volume quality place like this has to be staffed by people who know what they’re doing, and it’s like that ten-thousand-hour rule—the more you do something, the better you become at it. It’s a big menu, a long wine list, there’s a lot to learn. It’s all about speed, directness and lightness of touch. You need to be on the ball. It’s great training for anything else you might want to do in life, to be able to think on the hoof and hold a lot of different scraps of information in your head. I hire girls because they’re better at multi-tasking, and as long as they’re blonde and smile every so often they’ll be forgiven for being a bit matronly. Do you think you’re up to all that?”
“Erm, yeh,” said Jesse, though he was aware he didn’t quite know what he was saying yes to, and thought perhaps Richard saw this.
“Well, you’re clearly not stupid,” Richard said, scanning Jesse’s GCSE results. “A-grades in English literature, Art, History. Sounds like you’re the creative type. Why aren’t you at university?”
Jesse thought about the day he received his GCSE results and took them home to show his mother, hoping she would be impressed. It could not have been a hotter or sunnier August day, yet she was in front of the fire with her nightie on, the door and windows shut tight. He knocked, and when she didn’t answer, he invited himself in. The heat and smell almost knocked him back. He held out the envelope over her shoulder, and spoke to her calmly and politely, but she didn’t take her eyes off the TV. As if she had been offered one of the last of a tin of chocolates, all the best ones gone, she plucked the envelope from his fingers apathetically, and taking out the papers, glanced at each with her nose and mouth scrunched up. When she was finished, she gathered them back up, threw them out across the floor and wordlessly refocused her attention on the TV. Jesse, heartbroken, got down on his knees and collected them as he looked up into her face, and watched her watching Home and Away as if nothing had happened. He could see that she knew what she was doing. That there was a laugh in her eyes.
“I int decided wharra want to do yet. My parents are Jehovah’s Witnesses, and they discourage ’igher education.”
Richard raised his eyebrows. “Alright, look. I’m not sure whether this is the right thing for you or not, but why don’t you come in for a trial shift tomorrow, just for a couple of hours, and we’ll see how you get on. 11:45 for a midday start. Wear black shoes and trousers, the rest will be provided.”
“Thank you!” said Jesse, picking up his rucksack and rushing out of the muggy office.
* * *
—
He walked out into the warm sunshine, with a job all but secured and the rest of the day to himself. It was as if the whole of London was resting with its hands behind its head on a grassy bank. He switched CDs in his Discman, from “Freak Like Me” to the N*E*R*D* album In Search Of. Artists drew with chalk on the pavement outside the National Gallery. Open-topped buses carried tourists in T-shirts and baseball caps, not really taking it all in but desperately twisting their bodies in every direction to get that picture they needed to show friends back home where they’d been. Red buses carried adverts saying beat the queue at madame tussauds! Policemen walked in pairs with their hands tucked into their vests, as if protecting the
ir nipples against irritation from the stiff Kevlar. He wasn’t sure if he was expecting his mother and Graham to have reported him missing, but the two policemen showed no interest in him as he walked by thinking about an article he’d seen in a newspaper covering a May Day rally, where all kinds of cults seemed to converge on Trafalgar Square against capitalism and stirrings of war—sex workers across the world unite said one banner, danced around by cyberpunk milkmaids with shaved heads. According to his A–Z, he was very close to Buckingham Palace, so headed down the Mall to see if he might catch the Queen talking on the phone in her bedroom window or coming back from the shops. He couldn’t believe he was breathing the same air as her. A lot of people seemed to have had the same idea; families, and groups of tourists, speaking any kind of language—afraid to lose each other in a foreign city—posed for peace-sign pictures in front of her gates and her bearskin-capped guardsmen. Disappointingly, she was away on her Golden Jubilee tour, he overheard another policeman, also covering his nipples, say. He crossed through Green Park and up Piccadilly, a broad and spacious avenue of bookshops and boutiques, with double-height tea rooms and well-dressed doormen. He came out on Piccadilly Circus. Samsung. McDonald’s. Carlsberg. TDK. Imagine all the people living life in peace. Boots. Gap. Burger King. Fountains. Camcorders. Polaroids. Ahead of him was the promised glitz of Leicester Square. He remembered what Rufus had told him about Sue Lawley, new in London, being shamed for her Black Country accent and realising she would have to change it in order to get by. He wondered how Rufus was, whether he was okay, whether he’d been able to find anyone else to do his dirty work, how stupid he must’ve assumed Jesse to be if he thought a good fuck would blind him to all sense and lead him to sacrifice his future.
