Last Night at the Lobster

by Stewart O'Nan

  Outside, a skinny dude in a hoodie with his hands jammed in the pouch skirts the lower edge of the lot, hunched against the wind. He ignores the stop sign and crosses the road, headed for the mall. Where the hell did he come from? Not the front door—Manny would have seen him leave—and for an instant he thinks it’s the homeless guy who gave them problems this fall, hunting for unlocked cars and climbing the fence to the dumpster. It’s only when the figure stops to let an SUV back out and the brake lights show his face that Manny recognizes Fredo.

  “What the fuck.”

  He clacks his glass down and hustles outside, the ball of keys banging at his hip. The ice melter’s worked, but only to the end of the walk. Three steps into the lot, his shoes fill with slush and he has to retreat. “Fredo!” he calls into the blizzard. “Fredo!” With the snow it’s hard to see, but he swears Fredo looks back once, just briefly, before going on, making straight for the bus shelter by JCPenney. “Okay,” Manny hollers, arms stretched wide as if calling him out, “you can forget about your check.”

  The first thing Manny does is make sure he’s punched out, which he is.

  “I don’t know,” Ty says. “He just took off his apron and left.”

  “You didn’t say anything to him?”

  “Like what?”

  Like: Are you really that stupid, or are you purposely trying to fuck this up? Like: Who told you to do that, because it sure as hell wasn’t me. Like: Now I’m going to have to replate the whole thing, which is a waste of my fucking time.

  “Did anyone try to stop him?”

  Rich and Leron and Eddie look over but don’t say a word, as if this doesn’t concern them. Jacquie pushes in to refill a pitcher at the coffee station and watches them, sensing the drama.

  “Fuck Frito,” Ty says. “Eddie can handle backup.”

  “Aren’t you the one that told me we couldn’t do dinner with three people?” Manny asks.

  “You really think we’re going to serve dinner?”

  “We’re going to be open for whoever shows up.”

  “Then we’ll be fine,” Ty says, “because no one’s gonna show up.”

  Manny can’t dispute this, the way it’s snowing, but he won’t lose this argument either. When logic fails, a manager can always pull rank. “Someone’s going to show up, and if no one does, we’re still going to be ready for them. We’re still in business, and we’re still getting paid. I didn’t come in today to play babysitter. Now let’s get these desserts out and get this place squared away.”

  As halftime speeches go, this one doesn’t inspire much of a response. Ty wanders back behind the hot plate, Rich tagging after him. Eddie and Leron turn away and silently unload the bus tubs and rack the dishes at their regular pace.

  “You knew something like that was going to happen,” Jacquie says in the break room.

  “What?” Manny says, though he knows what she’s going to say. He hired Fredo (as he hired Leron), seeing in him the ghost of his younger self—another lost New Britain kid at the bus stop, going nowhere. He gave Fredo a chance, and no matter what, he’ll never consider that a mistake. He wants to believe that with another cook—someone with more patience and less of a temper—Fredo would have made it, but he’s never worked with a cook like that. Honestly, a cook like that probably doesn’t exist. The only person who would put up with Fredo’s slowness is Manny himself.

  “I’m surprised he came in,” Jacquie says.

  “I’m surprised anyone came in,” Manny says. “I’m surprised I came in.”

  “Why do you have to go and make a joke about it? I don’t know if you know this, but a lot of us only came in because of you.”

  “Like you.”

  “Yes like me. You think I came in because I got nothing better to do? Yeah, right, I’m here for the big money. Jesus, Manny, think for once.”

  She blasts him and walks away, something she has practice at, just as he has practice at turning her words over, trying to see what they really mean, and then holding that meaning at a distance, since everything between them is tentative and temporary, like the fine print on the menu says, subject to change without notice.

  Roz swings in shouldering a tray of lipstick-smudged wine glasses and peeled beer bottles and gives him a sympathetic frown commonly reserved for toddlers, pouting with her bottom lip out. “Uh-oh. Looks like there’s trouble in paradise.”

  “This is paradise?” Manny asks.

  “Could be if you play your cards right.”

  She says it in passing, and is well into the kitchen when he lets out a single uncensored laugh, shaking his head at her ability to tease him as much as the ridiculous idea that he ever had cards to play.

  Out front, the kid is leaving. Nicolette’s boxed Mom’s leftovers in a styrofoam clamshell and returned her credit card, said her good-byes and fled for the break room. Only now, with her Visa safe in her wallet, does the mother slide the comment card into the hinged leather folder, setting it beside the tea light. Manny lurks at the main wait station, watching them file past the grandmothers, who turn as one to remark on the boy, the only child in the whole place. Manny resists the urge to go over and placate the woman further—not hard, considering the kid is jumping around her legs like a hyper poodle.

  Now they’ve stopped. One of the grandmothers wants to offer the kid something from her purse—a piece of hard candy, just what he needs.

  “Keep moving,” Manny murmurs to himself.

  The mother’s politely declining—no, thank you, we couldn’t possibly—when the kid puts a hand to his mouth as if to cover a burp, bends at the waist and gushes all over her boots. A big butterscotch-colored flood, with chunks. And he’s not done. The gagging is audible over Kenny Loggins, making one side of the retirement party turn in their chairs.

  “Get him outside,” Manny quietly urges, but the mother and her friend are trying to comfort the boy, not manhandle him to the door, and with their help he empties himself onto the carpet while the grandmothers gawk at one another, scandalized.

  “Can someone please get him a glass of water?” the mother shouts, stuck in the puddle, since borrowing one of the grandmothers’ is out of the question.

  Manny has a pitcher right there at the station, and a spare goblet.

  “Thank you,” the mother scolds him.

  “We’ll take care of this here,” he counters. “You can clean up in the restroom.” But first he needs to wipe off the uppers of her boots so she doesn’t track goop through the whole place. He kneels and wets a napkin in the ice water. Close up, the stuff smells like a mix of sour milk and fresh dog shit.

  “Be careful,” the woman says. “Don’t soak them.”

  Lady, he wants to say, they’re boots.

  While he scrubs the stinking rug and fills a bus tub with nasty rags, Nicolette has to relocate the grandmothers to a booth as far away as possible, which is the equivalent of seating and serving them again. Jacquie takes a tray over. So does Kendra, as Roz shares an openmouthed look of surprise with him. While he’s down there, he notices a couple spots of gum on the underside of the table, and before he can stop himself, he thinks he should find the putty knife later and take care of them.

  He’s just breaking out the disinfectant spray when the mother stops him. The kid and the other mother are waiting by the live tank, the colored lights playing over their faces.

  “I want to know who your supervisor is.”

  “I don’t have a supervisor, I’m the manager.”

  “Okay, let me make this easier for you.” She speaks precisely, enunciating each word as if he might have trouble understanding. “Who do I have to write to to complain about what happened here? Because I don’t think a child being sick is something to laugh at, and I saw at least one of your employees laughing at my son.”

  “I’m sure that’s not the case.”

  “I’m sure that is the case, and I am going to write a letter to someone about this.”

  “I can give you another c
omment card.”

  “I don’t want another comment card. I want the name and address of someone who’s actually going to do something.”

  Manny’s tempted—as he’s never been before—to tell her her kid’s a brat and that she’s a terrible mother, and a terrible human being, but instead he gives her the contact info for the regional director and apologizes just to get her out the door. He smiles and eats a big shit sandwich in front of everyone, and if they don’t understand, Manny does: Like his face-off with Ty, it’s just the cost to be the boss.

  The wetted carpet reeks like an overpowering cheese. He fogs the spot with disinfectant, then spends a couple minutes at the hygiene sink washing his hands. Once the mess dries he’ll vacuum, but not with guests present. The idea is to let things settle, let them all forget. Impossible in real life, and yet here it works perfectly. In fact, once the kid and his mom are gone, an infectious laughter circles the room as if they’ve all been holding it in, the grandmothers included, hooting and slapping the tabletop so hard their silverware rattles.

  Manny needs to let it go too. The big party’s done, and Jacquie and Roz can use a hand settling their checks. He fingers the screen of the POS, swiping cards and printing slips. In another idiocy of corporate procurement, the system is brand-new. He likes the speed and the neatness of the transactions, and the feeling of completion, of closing the deal, money in the till, as if it somehow counts in his favor. At the Olive Garden, as assistant manager, his receipts will blend in, just one ingredient in a larger pot, and, aware of how selfish it sounds, since he’s always preaching teamwork, he thinks that’s a loss.

  As the party filters out, Manny posts up by the host stand, following protocol, and thanks them as they pass, a kind of receiving line, Kendra behind him like a bride, reminding them to drive safely. The boss in the bow tie shakes his hand. “Thanks for getting us in on such short notice.”

  “Not a problem. Thanks for thinking of Red Lobster.”

  By now he says this as a reflex, but what does it mean? Who, besides the people who actually work here, thinks about Red Lobster? And even they don’t really think about it. Maybe Eddie, who seems happy to have a place to come every day, or Kendra, who doesn’t always, but Manny can’t imagine Rich or Leron wasting much thought on what’s just a job. Maybe Manny didn’t think enough of it either, all the years he took for granted that the Lobster would be here. In that way, he thinks, he’s just like Eddie. And now it’s too late.

  Like they did on the way in, the party bunches up under the marlin, the snow outside an obstacle. One by one they retrieve their jackets from the coatrack (one woman, strangely, carries an umbrella) and button up before braving the storm, then leave in waves, leaning on one another for balance, and again Manny wonders what it would be like to work there—or anywhere else, really, since it’s obvious he can’t waste his whole life working for Darden Restaurants, Incorporated.

  When the last of them are gone, he notices an ornament on the floor by the live tank, an ancient pink-and-cream-striped bulb cracked in pieces like a bird’s egg, the largest showing its shiny silver insides. It’s something that might have come from his abuelita’s tree. Someone must have brushed against it and not heard it hit the carpet. The irony bothers Manny: something so delicate that had survived so many Christmases; one more day and it would have made it. Or maybe what bugs him is how sentimental he’s getting, seeing his own fate in every little thing, as if he’s helpless. He grabs the push sweeper from beside the host stand and rolls it back and forth until all the shards are gone, then deposits them in the kitchen garbage, knocking the head against the rim to empty it.

  “Easy there, chief,” Ty says. “You break it you bought it.” He’s perched on a stool at the end of the grill, leafing through the Courant while Rich works the ass end of the dishwasher in rubber gloves, pulling burning plates off the racks and stacking them in rollaways.

  “You guys all done with lunch?”

  Ty holds both arms wide to show off the spotless counter.

  “What’s our dinner special?”

  “What ever’s left.”

  “Make it lobster tails,” Manny says, hoping they can get rid of some. “What’s for lunch?”

  “What ever you make,” Ty says, but Manny’s not going for the joke. “What ever people want. I’ve got some snow-crab legs—if we’re not saving them for dinner.”

  “I’ve got to go to the mall, but make sure everyone gets something.” Meaning Roz, who’ll drink coffee instead of eat. Even at 50 percent off, the food’s not a bargain. Sometimes a manager’s got to exercise his discretion. “And tell everyone it’s free today.”

  “Nice,” Rich says, giving him a gloved thumbs-up.

  “Sure you want to leave me in charge?” Ty asks. “Who else is there?”

  “I’ll be in charge,” Eddie says. “I’ll give everybody a raise.”

  “Okay, Guapo,” Manny surrenders, “you’re in charge.”

  Out front the grandmothers are taking their time, asking Nicolette for refills on coffee, oblivious of the fact that they’re the only customers. Or maybe they’re afraid to go outside; the snow’s drifting against the concrete legs of the benches, the wind sending snakes skirling off across the lot. Dom is predicting two feet for this stretch of 84, more in the western hills.

  “I think we’re basically screwed,” he says, “if we weren’t already.”

  “If people can’t drive,” Manny reasons, “they’ve got to stop somewhere.”

  “Not if they never leave home in the first place.”

  Manny points to the windows. “It’s not even three o’clock.”

  “So how long do you wait before you call dinner?”

  “What, you got a date or something?” Manny says, then, arbitrarily, “Four thirty.”

  Kendra’s restless, and Nicolette’s frustrated with the grandmothers, now trying to pay their checks with expired two-fer coupons. With no one else in the place, Manny can hear her laying down the law from across the room. “I’m sorry, ma’am, even if this coupon was valid, that offer’s only good for one meal per table, not two.” Logically, Nicolette’s got them, but the grandmothers keep pleading their case. The volume escalates, and Manny has to step in.

  The grandmothers insist they’re two tables, since they asked for separate checks, and the coupon’s barely expired. Nicolette hands it to him as if it’s dipped in anthrax. The expiration date is last Saturday, close enough, except as he’s standing there he notices the ceramic holder that should be full of sugar and Equal and Splenda and Sweet’n Low packets has been picked clean—always a danger with these cottonheads, their memories of the Depression pushing them beyond thrift into greed. It shouldn’t matter to him, since anything not in a sealed box will probably get tossed, but now he feels doubly fooled.

  “One table, one entree,” he rules, and short-circuits their arguments with a raised finger. “And I’m only doing this because it’s Christmas.”

  “I’m never eating here again,” one of them says.

  “I thought this was supposed to be a nice place.”

  “I’m sorry you feel that way,” Manny says. “You can fill out a comment card if you like.”

  Back at the main station, Nicolette says he shouldn’t have given them anything. “Bet you twenty they don’t tip me.”

  “Too easy,” Manny says, and then is wrong. The grandmothers leave Nicolette a single penny—a penny Nicolette runs to the front door and flings into the storm after them. “Fuckin’ old biddies, I hope you crash!”

  She still has to clear their coffees, but steams straight for the break room, empty-handed and swearing. As her tantrums go, this one’s minor. It’s only when she reappears a minute later in her jacket with her bag over her shoulder that he realizes she’s serious.

  “Let them go,” he says.

  “I want my check.”

  “No you don’t.”

  “You want to see how much I made today?” She threatens him with a fo
lded wad of ones. There can’t be more than twenty dollars.

  “It’s been slow.”

  “It wasn’t slow for everybody, was it? Just me. Now why would that be?” She scratches her temple, then holds a flattened palm out like a game-show model toward Kendra, standing at the bar with Dom, then bends it toward Manny. He deserves this, partly, for keeping her away from the big party, and he can’t promise to make it up to her at dinner. “I shouldn’t be surprised. I mean, one of them’s your girlfriend and the other’s your mother, so right there that leaves me out. I don’t mind working a crappy shift as long as I have a fair shot at making some money, and you know that’s true ’cause I worked every fucking lunch for the last month straight when I could have just said fuck you. I knew you were shorthanded. That’s why I came in today, and look what I get. So that’s it, I’m done. All I want is to get my check and get the fuck out of here. You don’t need me anyway.”

  “I gave you good shifts too,” Manny says.

  Nicolette just stands there, adamant, admitting nothing. He knows he’s supposed to ask her to stay, maybe beg her, but lunch is over, there’s no one here and the snow is falling hard.

  “I’ll get you your check,” he says. “You already punch out?”

  “Yes.”

  And in back she has; it wasn’t a bluff.

  Jacquie and Roz already know, sitting at the table in the break room as if nothing’s wrong.

  “Oh well,” Jacquie says.

  “It’s not like she did anything around here anyway,” Roz says, and he thinks maybe he’s soft-hearted, because he wants them to miss her.