Vinyl Cafe Turns the Page
Page 14
Sam was transfixed. He stared at the silhouette of the little dog standing on the end of the bed, glaring out into the hall, growling at whatever was out there.
He looked around the room. He wasn’t going down without a fight. His tennis racket was propped against his desk. He picked it up and climbed out of bed.
On the way out the door, he scooped up Tissue and stuffed her into the kangaroo pocket of his hoodie. The dog could sense something was terribly wrong. She whimpered and shivered all the way down the stairs and into the kitchen.
Sam had to calm her down or she was going to give him away. He looked around for something to distract her, and there on the counter was a bowl with the remains of his popcorn.
Tissue is not a big dog.
She does not have a big brain and is not capable of complex thought. But when Sam shoved the handful of popcorn into his hoodie pocket, the little dog had a moment of complete clarity.
She understood precisely what was happening.
She was about to be blown to smithereens.
She erupted out of Sam’s hoodie with a yowl and, in a blur, clawed her way up his chest and over his shoulder. She made a beeline for the stairs and disappeared.
When she got to Sam’s room, Tissue dove under the bed.
Sam slid under a second behind her.
It was almost eight the next morning when Morley woke up. And the first thing she thought of, the very first thought that entered her mind, was how great it was to have gone an entire night without checking on her son. Dave was right. They had entered a new stage in their lives. Their daughter, Stephanie, had been living on her own for a couple of years. And now Sam didn’t need her every waking moment. He was fine, and she could lie here and wonder about what she’d order from room service for breakfast. She could take a swim in the hotel pool before they headed home.
She rolled over and saw her husband sitting in the bed beside her, staring at her phone.
There were sixty-three missed calls.
“I turned the ringer off before the service,” said Dave.
There were no messages.
And there was no answer when they called Sam back.
They threw their stuff into their suitcases, ran to the car, and shoved everything in the trunk. They peeled out of the parking lot, spraying gravel behind them.
They called their neighbour Jim Scoffield from the road.
“Something has happened to Sam,” said Morley. “He’s not answering the phone. Can you go and check?”
Jim called back twenty minutes later. He’d gone over and rung the bell, but there was no answer. He couldn’t find his copy of their house key anywhere. Should he call the cops? What should he tell them? What should he do?
“Don’t panic,” said Dave. “We’ll be there before you know it.”
So, there they were, a Sunday morning, not yet nine, hurtling down the highway. Morley was in the passenger seat leaning forward, a huge bag of kettle corn in her lap. She had packed it for a moment just like this. She was eating it with the compulsive distraction of a chain smoker.
Half an hour later they careened around a corner and screeched to a stop in front of their house.
They found Jim pacing in the driveway.
But there was no sign of Sam.
Anywhere.
His bed had been slept in, but he was gone, and so was the dog. They searched the house in rising panic. They were about to call the police when Dave heard a scratch and a snuffle coming from Sam’s room. He found boy and dog fast asleep and wedged under the far corner of Sam’s bed.
After a brief conference, Morley and Dave and Jim tiptoed out of the house and went out for breakfast. Morley and Dave stayed out until they were sure Sam would be up and about.
They never asked about the sixty-three phone calls. And Sam never asked why they had come home early.
It was clumsy. They all knew that. But new beginnings are often clumsy.
IN THE WEEDS
A Saturday morning in early April. The sky still dark. You can tell by the puddles that the wind is up to no good. It is a morning so wet and grey and so devoid of hope that all over town people are getting up, looking out their windows, and crawling back to bed. What was the use? A day like that, you might as well move to St. John’s.
The tulips in the garden in front of the municipal building, which had come up a good three inches during the week, spent the night trying to burrow back underground.
But Dave’s daughter, Stephanie, is out—skirting a puddle in front of the garden, heading for work.
If you could see her face, under her hat, you would see that Stephanie is on the verge of tears.
Her cell phone had rung at seven-fifteen. She’d thought it was her boyfriend, Tommy. Tommy was away at some science fiction convention. Something to do with Isaac Asimov. Who else would phone at seven-fifteen in the morning? Tommy was probably just going to bed. Her heart fluttered as she fumbled for the phone.
“Tommy?”
It was her boss, Mark.
He didn’t wake her, did he? He was sorry to call so early. Listen, could she come in? Could she cover the morning shift?
“What about Allison?” said Stephanie, lying on her back, her eyes still closed. Allison was supposed to do Saturday mornings.
“Allison called in sick.”
Surprise surprise.
Exams had just ended. Everyone was out last night. She should have seen this coming.
Of course, she could have said no. Except Stephanie didn’t do that. And she wasn’t about to start now. Especially now. On her last day. What did they say about showing up? Showing up was everything. And showing up was what Stephanie did. Maybe the only thing she was any good at. She showed up.
She wasn’t supposed to go in until noon. She was only supposed to work lunch and dinner. She’d been planning on sleeping in. Instead, she got out of bed and made coffee. And now she was pounding past that wind-whipped puddle in front of the municipal building, heading for a fourteen-hour shift. Heading to work in the sure knowledge that it was going to be a miserable day. She’d already expected a day of yelling and conflict and almost certain failure. Now it included Saturday morning. The worst shift of the week. An appropriate beginning for her last day.
There is nothing to do on a Saturday morning at the East River Grill except to make pot after pot of coffee, and get paid next to nothing for doing it. No one tips for coffee.
“What I do,” said Peter, the server in section two, “is I only put every second cup through the till. I throw every other cup in the tip jar. Everyone does that in the mornings,” said Peter. “You should do that too.”
Not everyone. Stephanie didn’t do it, though she wasn’t sure whether it was because she thought it was wrong or because she was afraid she might get caught.
It would all be over on Monday anyway. Stephanie was going home on Monday—where she’d have to decide about a job for the summer. She was utterly exhausted. She needed a rest. Maybe she’d go tree planting again. Or maybe she’d go to Banff with Becky. She had to decide soon. She was tired of being asked about her plans. She was tired of not having an answer.
When she got to work and found the restaurant door locked, she smiled for the first time that morning. She reached into her pocket and pulled out her keys. It made her feel important to have her own key.
She unlocked the door, went in, and headed behind the bar to flick on the lights.
She went to her station and turned on the computer. A map of the restaurant lit up the screen. Her tables were in red. The others were in blue. She had section B3. B for in the bar, three for farthest from the kitchen.
She took her two coffee pots back to the bar, filled them with water, and got them going. Before the coffee was finished, Mark came through the door.
“Geez,” he said. “It’s brutal out there.”
He came over and poured himself a cup of coffee from one of her pots. You were allowed as much coffee as you wanted.
The front door opened. A man wearing a fur hat walked in and stood there uncertainly. They weren’t supposed to open for twenty minutes. Stephanie picked up a menu and headed over.
Stephanie began working at the East River Grill just before Halloween.
It was less than minimum wage, but she’d heard that you could clean up on tips. She’d thought about trying to get a job doing research for a professor or working in an office, but working in the restaurant meant she’d have her days free for class. How hard could it be to be a waitress? she’d thought.
A lot harder than you’d imagine, it turned out. She almost didn’t make it through the first week.
They were supposed to give her a week of training, but guess who phoned in sick on Stephanie’s first night? She covered for Allison on her first day, and here she was, covering for her on her last.
She handed the guy with the fur hat the breakfast menu.
Her first night had been a disaster. That was the night a kid dropped his retainer into his basket of fries and no one noticed until Stephanie had cleared the table. When she returned with the bill, the agitated mother had launched into a lecture on responsibility and the boy was slouched over the table, looking as if he was about to burst into tears. Stephanie ended up digging through the garbage to find it.
The man with the fur hat said, “Two eggs over easy, home fries, brown toast, extra butter.”
Stephanie said, “Would you like orange juice or maybe a cappuccino?” She nodded her head slightly as she said “cappuccino.”
The man said, “Uh. Sure.”
He didn’t sound sure.
As Stephanie punched in his order she was still thinking of that first night. There she’d been, not two hours on the job, her arms up to the elbows into the greasy waste bucket by the kitchen door, digging around in the remnants of other people’s half-eaten meals, when she unexpectedly closed her hand around the slimy retainer, let out a whoop, and—
If you’re going to fully appreciate the catastrophe that is about to unfold, I should tell you a little bit about Chef.
The most important thing is that he went to cooking school with the famous Brock Godkin. The guy who started, well, Bluberry, among other places. The guy with the TV show and the bestsellers. The six-foot-six guy with the tousled hair and the movie-star grin. The guy the reviewers write about, who everyone talks about, who never did anything special when he and Chef were at school together. In fact, Chef did better than Brock Godkin ever did at school, so you tell me why Brock Godkin had a TV show while he was slaving away at the East River Grill as if he were being held hostage at a McDonald’s.
Chef was obsessed with Brock Godkin. Or with Brock Godkin’s notoriety. Or, more to the point, with his own lack thereof. Every Tuesday morning he’d arrive with a new creation—something he’d dreamed up over the weekend that was going to shift the spotlight onto him. Filet of venison in a licorice reduction. Beetroot sherbet. It would go up on the specials board, and by the end of the night, when not one single order had come in, Chef would storm around the kitchen, foaming and spitting and berating the servers. They weren’t pushing hard enough. They were trying to sabotage him. A few days later the item would be off the menu, and no one would ever mention it again.
That night, Stephanie’s first night, it was a crayfish gumbo with okra, chilies, andouille sausage, and a raspberry finish. Chef had worked on it all week. Mark had talked a reviewer into coming and Chef was bouncing around the kitchen in anticipation. As he lifted the gumbo off the stove, he was actually humming.
He was carrying the pot across the kitchen to the warming station while Stephanie was on her knees, digging in the garbage for the retainer. When she found it, she jumped up with her arms in the air. It was something she wouldn’t do today—a quick, unpredictable movement in a crowded kitchen filled with hot liquids and hotter tempers. But it was her first night, and she had just solved a big problem.
Or that’s what she thought.
When she found the retainer, sticky and slimy, bits of mashed potato and parsley clinging to the metal wires, she threw her hands in the air, jumped up, and smashed into Chef.
The gumbo went flying.
If Stephanie had known then what she knew now, she would have just gone home.
Stephanie hadn’t had the nerve to say one word to Chef before then. But now she was talking.
“Sorry, sorry,” Stephanie said as Chef let out a wail.
“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” she said as Chef picked up the pot and threw it down.
“Sorry,” she said as Chef picked up the pot and threw it a second time.
So Stephanie started picking up the crayfish. Chef left the pot on the floor and said, “Let me help you.” He took a handful of crayfish from Stephanie and began hurling them around the kitchen. Then suddenly Chef went still. He squatted down on the floor and lowered his hand sadly into a pool of gumbo. And as he squatted there, he started to cry. Which was far worse than the yelling.
Stephanie kept her head down and no one said a word. Everyone had their heads down, everyone suddenly intensely focused on their own business. Of course, there was no time for a mop and bucket, even if Stephanie knew where they were kept, and it was impossible to completely clean up the terracotta tiles or whatever they were. So she kept scooping the stuff up with her hands. When she was finished there was still a thin layer of gumbo smeared all over the floor.
For the rest of the night, the tiles were so slippery that you couldn’t walk safely. The only way to get from the dining room to the line where you put in your order was to skate across, sliding along, never lifting your feet from the floor. As the night wore on and the spray from Pamu’s dishwasher mixed with the gumbo smear, the floor got greasier and greasier. By nine o’clock people were carrying orders in one hand and using the other to grab onto racks and trolleys to keep themselves upright.
Any other night, Stephanie would have been fired on the spot. But they were short staffed, so they couldn’t fire her. She couldn’t believe it when she thought about it now.
She got a second shift.
She arrived determined to make amends.
She brought in a recipe.
She walked right behind the serving line, the stainless-steel counter with the heat lamps that divides the servers from the cooking staff, and handed Chef the recipe. She said, “I think you should put more basil in the tomato sauce. See, in this one it says a third of a cup of fresh basil.”
She was trying to reach out.
Chef stared at her for a long time, and then turned around so that she was staring at his back. He said, “Get out of my kitchen.”
That should have been the end of her, except Robin took her under her wing. Robin said, “She’s okay. I’ll train her.”
Robin taught her everything.
It turned out Stephanie wasn’t supposed to even talk to Chef. Stephanie wasn’t supposed to talk to any of the cooks behind the line. And she certainly wasn’t supposed to go behind the line.
“Are you kidding?” said Robin. “Never. Never go behind the line. Unless you have a death wish.”
When things were hopping, there could be five servers working out front, all with five or six tables each. At an average of four people per table, that’s a possible 120 problems. All of which had to be solved in sequence.
That was the pivot’s job. You took your orders to the pivot. The pivot called them out.
The pivot was like an air traffic controller.
Stephanie teamed up with Robin in section one for a week, which is what should have happened at the beginning.
Robin had worked in the industry for years. She was a lifer. She was actually an actor, but she understood everything about serving.
“It’s one of the toughest jobs in the world,” said Robin at the end of Steph’s first week. The Grill was closed. There were no customers
left. They were sitting in Robin’s section. Table two. Right in front of the fireplace, best table in the restaurant. They were polishing off a bottle of Californian Pinot Noir that table five hadn’t finished.
Robin topped up their glasses.
It was Robin who showed Stephanie the ropes. It was Robin who sat beside her at the staff table in front of a big pile of napkins and taught her to roll cutlery: knife, fork, fold, fold. Knife, fork, fold, fold.
Stephanie learned everything from Robin.
It was Robin who taught her the Sullivan Nod.
The Sullivan Nod is a subliminal technique developed by a restaurant consultant named Tom Sullivan. He came up with it to increase the sale of appetizers.
“Does it really work?” asked Stephanie.
“Not all the time,” said Robin. “But a lot of the time. It has been proven.
“If they choose apple pie for dessert,” said Robin, “you say, ‘Would you like ice cream or cheese with that?’”
Robin nodded her head as she said “cheese.”
Cheese cost more.
She did it again.
“Would you like ice cream or cheese,” her head bobbing up and down almost imperceptibly.
“Just a little one,” she said. “Sometimes they nod right along with you.”
“Don’t you feel guilty?” said Stephanie.
“Honey,” said Robin, peering at the empty bottle of Pinot, “we get paid less than minimum. A bigger bill means a bigger tip. Besides, they want the cheese. They just don’t want it to be their fault. They want you to talk them into it.”
Robin got Stephanie over the hump. And slowly Stephanie was accepted. Or more to the point—taken for granted.
By Christmas she was pulling three shifts a week. Unlike the other temps, she never missed one. She showed up, and kept her head down.
The job seemed to get into her bones. At Christmas dinner, when she carried the potatoes to the table, she heard herself say, “Can I get you anything else?” At the school cafeteria, she had to stop herself from whisking away everyone else’s trays when she’d finished eating.