Monday, out east, was Bill’s first day as a cook. Robert picked him up downtown at nine where the van picked up the dishwashers and drove him out personally. On the way, they discussed Bill’s needing a car. Robert said Mr. Bowman would loan him the money and he could pay him back with regular payroll deductions. He told Bill to think it over but there wasn’t much to think about. Sue’s father wouldn’t even loan them money for the rent. If his father gave him the loan that would be better, he thought, but he already owed his father and brother money. Mr. Bowman it was.
Only a week had gone by, but he’d worked all seven days. He and Sue had put away next month’s rent, they’d bought food and they’d opened a bank account and made a twenty-two dollar deposit. Things were definitely looking up.
Robert explained that Bill would no longer be paid in cash. He’d be going on the books immediately, making two dollars and ten cents an hour. He would be working about seventy hours a week, if he could stand it. He would be taught to be a broiler cook and that would be his primary function since Suburban East needed a broiler cook. He would be the night man, responsible for the dinners and the running of the kitchen. At lunch he would work the fryers, doing the French fries, fried shrimp and fried fish.
Robert told Bill he was going to learn to cut meat, do the prep cooking and then learn every job they had including the management jobs. Drenovis, Robert told Bill, would not be an issue. Robert said he’d already cleared all this with Mr. Bowman and he was having a meeting with Bowman and Drenovis that afternoon to make sure Drenovis got with the program.
Actually, once Robert explained it to Bill, it was quite simple. Robert was first cook for all of Suburban and all the kitchen help was loyal to him. Drenovis bucking Robert’s position would cause a mutiny Suburban could not afford. Some twenty years later, after Bill pinched a waitress on her privates with his tongs and she complained to the manager, the manager told her to leave his cooks alone. “Here’s the equation,” he said. “One cook equals ten waitresses.” So all the cooks were worth much more than one manager. An assistant manager could easily step up, but they simply couldn’t replace all the cooks quickly enough to keep orders flowing.
Alfreda, Henry Lee’s wife, and Mary, the East’s prep cook, both sang in the church choir Robert led. Alvin, Henry Lee and now Bill, owed their jobs to Robert, as did Mary and Alfreda. Drenovis didn’t have a chance. He couldn’t win the war with Bill and Bill wasn’t even a trained cook yet.
Bill stepped on the line in kitchen whites for the first time that day after meeting Mary, Bea, the pantry lady, and Henry Lee, the meat cutter. He helped Henry Lee carry up the trays of steaks and burgers to set in the reach-in box opposite the Garland on the line. He knew the cuts of meat, thanks to Robert. He also helped Mary by carrying things from the prep area to the line. Au jus, vegetables and soup du jour he took over one by one. Mary asked Bill to check the baked potatoes in the convection oven, and feeling that they were done, he pulled them out and packed them into a steam table insert. He covered the insert with aluminum foil and brought it out too.
By eleven just about everything was in place. Henry Lee had gone back downstairs to the meat room to drink some bourbon. Mary and Bea were sitting in the hallway resting. Bill had gone out the screen door and was leaning against the side of the restaurant smoking a cigarette. Robert had gone over to the west side to make sure they were all set up. He’d told Bill he’d be back to check in on him. Alvin, whom they all knew, was coming over to work the middle, cutting the round for the roast beef platters and plating burgers and bleus.
All seemed right with the world.
Suburban didn’t serve lunch on Saturdays or Sundays. The line cooks could sleep in since they didn’t start until eleven. The prep cooks could sleep late too, but they had to be in at nine.
Bill did not see Eleanor over the weekend. They had had that moment out back, shared a beer, a cigarette and a kiss and then she was gone. He would find out that Drenovis did it. He would find out that Drenovis was mean-spirited and very often vulgar. But he would also find out that Robert was top dog and could not only put Drenovis in his place, but he could kowtow him too.
Seeing that Eleanor was sweet on Bill, Drenovis sent her back east. This punished both of them, Bill because he wasn’t getting any more kisses, Eleanor because she would make less money since East did less business than West.
When she’d first started, Drenovis had tried to get in Eleanor’s pants. She had declined his advances and suffered the penalty for it. She got the worst shifts and the worst stations for over a month until a new girl was hired who became his target. He gave up on torturing Eleanor and she was released from his wrath. Tommy, the East’s assistant manager, quickly gave her good tables and good shifts to help her make up the difference. Tommy was older, kinder, softer. Bill would discover that Drenovis forced almost all the waitresses to have sex with him and those that didn’t he got rid of one way or another. Tommy, married and a grandfather, had never molested any of them. Tommy was nice, too nice, the kiss of death for a restaurant manager.
The Friday and Saturday night dinner rushes taught Bill what real restaurant work was about. The dish machine ran incessantly, rack after rack of dishes that Bill emptied. He filled up one plate warmer then the next then the next. Then he did it all over again. He stacked cups and saucers on each bus station. Then he did it all over again. Robert did not have time to peek out the double doors and Drenovis did not have time to bother with him. Drenovis called orders, served as the expediter. At times he sounded like an auctioneer, one of those guys who called out the bids at an auction and he was equally melodious.
“Ordering, a top medium rare, two Bostons medium and a King medium-well. Ordering, two tops rare, a king and a queen medium-well, two pickerels and a fried shrimp. Ordering two sirloin strips medium rare, a top medium, two Boston’s and a queen bloody. Give me a single top rare with a baked and corn. Give me a Boston well done and two prime ribs medium all with fries and green beans. Ordering two more tops rare, a king rare, two sirloin strips medium and a chop steak well done. Ordering a surf n turf medium rare with a king medium well. Gotta go on a chop steak medium with two burgers rare, a fried shrimp and fried chicken. Ordering three tops. Give me two ribs rare with baked and green beans. Give me a side of au jus and a side of slaw.”
It went on and on. Drenovis sang out, Robert and the other cooks bore down. Bill discovered Robert remembered every steak that was on his broiler, what other items it went with and how they were cooked. It was like a dance and as much as they disliked each other, Robert and Drenovis danced, each knowing that they needed each other to function despite any feelings.
When the nights were over, Bill discovered a new level of tired. His hands ached from the scalding dishes, his back ached from the repeated lifting and bending. At home, with cash, he showered and lay with Sue. Then he slept the sleep of the dead. On Sunday, the game was different. The pace was slow and steady, a family dinner hour beginning around two and ending around seven. Then the week was mostly over. They cleaned and lounged, coasting until ten when the doors were locked and they set up for Monday all over again.
The war was fun for Robert because as he saw it, he couldn’t lose. First, the more Drenovis ran Bill through the kitchen and dining room, the more Robert, who was in charge of the dishwashers, sent Bill on errands that kept him away from the machine. He sent him for meat trays when they were needed. This had the side effect of teaching Bill the different cuts of meat. He had Bill get line refills from the prep station, steam table pans of vegetables and gravy, anything and everything that needed refills. This taught Bill the line setup, and since the line in the East store and line in the West store were identical in everything except their physicalness–one line was the open hearth with one Garland and a charcoal grill, the other was in the kitchen with two Garlands separated by a double charcoal grill–Bill understood the setup and working of the line before he ever set foot on it as a cook.
Drenovis redoubled his efforts. If Robert sent Bill one place, Drenovis sent him somewhere else. Bill, for his part, did what Robert told him to do and then what Drenovis told him to do, always taking care of Robert first. This irked Drenovis endlessly, and finally he blew, screaming at Bill and cursing Robert. Robert simply poked his head through the double doors and said, “Huh Glory.” Then he went back to turning steaks on the broiler.
Late in the evening of day five, Robert sent Bill on a break. Bill stepped outside the back door of the kitchen and was smoking a cigarette when the door opened and Eleanor came out.
“Robert sent me with this,” she said, handing Bill a beer.”
Bill twisted the cap on the bottle and offered Eleanor some. She took the bottle from Bill but made sure her hand touched his. She took a drink then handed the bottle back. Then she reached for Bill’s cigarette, took a drag and held it.
“You’re going to the east side next week,” she said to Bill.
“Yeah,” Bill said.
“Me too,” Eleanor said. “I’m just here doing vacation relief. They sent me over because I trained here so I know the layout and the people.” She took another drag on Bill’s cigarette then gave it back.
“So I’ll see you over there,” Bill said.
“You bet you will. You’ll like it there. It’s different in a few ways. You won’t be rid of Drenovis though. He comes over there too. He’s like the overall manager.”
“Lucky me,” Bill said.
“Well you have Robert on your side. He trumps Drenovis. So you don’t have to worry.”
“How’s that work?”
“I don’t know for sure. I just know Robert is top dog.”
Bill took another puff on his Marlboro and handed it to Eleanor. She puffed it too then tossed it off in the distance.
“I need to go back in,” she said. She kissed Bill, slipped him her tongue, then turned back inside. “See you later,” she said on her way.
Bill waited until she was gone before he went back in. He went straight to the dish machine and assumed his place.
They worked straight through now until the kitchen stopped serving, until the last of the dishes had been brought in and washed, until the dishwasher area was cleaned and shiny and the machine shut down, scrubbed clean and readied for the morning. That was another of the many unwritten rules: no one was finished working until everything everywhere was set up and ready to go for the next day.
Almost all the cooks at Suburban worked split shifts. On Bill’s second day of work, Robert informed him that he would be the pot washer and would start on split shifts the following week, when he would be sent to Suburban East where he would be trained to be a cook. That meant he would be at work at six in the morning, work until two in the afternoon, have a three-hour break, then work until closing. During the week they stopped serving dinner at eleven. On weekends they stopped at one in the morning.
Meanwhile, Robert informed Bill that he would stay close to him and work twelve hour days, from eleven in the morning straight through to eleven or twelve at night. Bill didn’t care. They were paying him a buck-sixty cash per hour and the more he could work the better off he was. He knew he would need a car, and quickly too, since no buses went out to the east side location.
All day two and day three of work, Bill was up to his elbows in pots. The water was so hot it scalded his hands. The large steel wool rings used for scrubbing scraped his skin. But Bill was happy. They played loud rock music on the radio in the kitchen and both Robert and the waitress Bill had stood up for fed him beers at regular intervals. That waitress, Eleanor, became super-friendly, even more so when Robert told her he was going to be the new broiler cook out east. Eleanor knew that even before Bill did.
On day four Bill was moved up to the dishwasher. This machine was a three-man operation, one man to load, one man to rinse and one man to unload and stack. Bill, least senior man on the machine, was the unloader. The dishes coming out from the wash were scalding hot, so Bill’s hands were continually being burned, not enough to be a second or third degree burn, but enough to cause continual pain. Bill was reminded of the workhouse, working at the practice range making bullets, more precisely, sawing through the lead and separating the copper wires inside. Bill remembered the blisters. He remembered the pain.
Drenovis wouldn’t let go. He got on Bill’s case every chance he could. He inspected the pots when Bill was in that station and if he found the slightest bit of dirt left, he made Bill wash the pot over again. Bill did as he was told. He was getting paid. That’s all that mattered to him.
“You know what they call the dishwasher department?” Drenovis asked Bill.
Bill said no.
“The asshole of the industry,” Drenovis said. “And you sure are an asshole.” Drenovis laughed loud and long. Bill wanted to smack him, but then he remembered he had more education than Drenovis and he laughed internally. Bill would come to understand that if the dishwashers couldn’t keep up, the cooks ran out of plates. When that happened, the flow of food to the customers stopped, the cooks fell behind and never caught up. He would come to realize that if he took care of the dishwashers, they would bust their butts for him, for the cooks. It was a simple, symbiotic relationship. Bill would also come to understand, knowing how crappy and hard the potwasher job is, never to dirty a pot unless it was completely necessary.
Of course Robert heard about Drenovis’ antics. Eleanor ratted him out for what she saw. When Bill was on the dish machine, Drenovis ran Bill from one end of the kitchen to the other making him carry stacks of hot plates, making him carry racks of mugs and stock them at the bus stations in the dining room before they cooled down. But Robert wasn’t one to let go either and he wasn’t one to be bested. He got on Drenovis’ case and wouldn’t ease off.
War!
Bill sat at the kitchen help’s table in the middle of the kitchen. He felt like a high school kid in detention. He was sure he was getting fired. He was glad he spoke up because it was the right thing to do, but he was totally demoralized since he needed the job.
About twenty minutes later, Drenovis, the manager, came in with the waitress. The waitress kissed Bill right on his lips and thanked him for doing what she couldn’t. “That was so sweet,” she said. Bill smiled shyly.
Drenovis started by dressing Bill down. He yelled, he cursed, he explained that it cost him dinner, dinner next time for the customer and his party and the cleaning bill for the suit. He was in the process of firing Bill when Robert came in from the open hearth.
Robert spoke quietly, softly. “Mind your p’s and q’s,” he told Drenovis. “He’s my boy. You’ll pay him for the day and tomorrow he’ll work in the kitchen.”
“He’s getting fired,” Drenovis said.
“No,” Robert said. “He’s not. Now take your big butt out of the kitchen and don’t bring it back in.”
Drenovis turned red in the face. He did an about face and walked out of the kitchen. Bill did not understand why, but he would learn in due time.
“They all told me what happened,” Robert said to Bill. “No matter what, the customer is always right. That’s lesson number one. But you did right standing up for the waitress.”
“What’s going to happen?”
“Nothing. Drenovis is a pussy. He won’t do nothing. He’ll bitch and moan and he’ll go to the owner. Don’t you worry your mind about it. I got your back.”
Robert went out to the hearth and back to work. Bill sat. Bill sat some more. Bill sat even more. While he sat Alfreda came in from the line and sat with him a moment. Alfreda was the pantry lady and backup prep cook. She was also married to Henry Lee, the butcher for both Suburban Steakhouses, Suburban West and Suburban East. She asked why he was Robert’s boy. Bill said to ask him. She accepted that answer. Bill noted she seemed to be looking at him as if he were a lollipop. He knew it was a crazy thought, but he couldn’t shake it. She smiled sweetly at him before going back out to the open hearth.
At about ten o’clock, Robert brought him a steak with a baked potato. Bill sat eating when the waitress came in with a beer for him. She leaned over him, offering him a full view of her bosom.
“Anything you want hon, let me know. Anything,” she said with a wide smile and a little shimmy.
Drenovis came back in the kitchen while Bill was still eating. He saw him with the steak and was about to throw a fit, but Robert came out from the line.
“You give him the steak?” Drenovis asked.
“Double cut,” Robert said with a big grin. “What’s it to you?”
“Goddamn it,” Drenovis said.
“I told you, leave the boy alone. You got a problem you see Mr. Bowman.”
Dismissing Drenovis, Robert asked Bill if he had enough to eat. Bill shook his head yes.
At closing, after the line and kitchen were cleaned and shut down, Drenovis came into the kitchen. He paid all the dishwashers in cash. He was about to leave the kitchen when Robert stopped him. “Pay the boy,” he said.
Bill boarded the Suburban van with ten hours’ pay, a whole sixteen dollars. He sat by a window and looked at the night while the van sped toward downtown. The van driver said he’d pick them up at eleven in the morning, same place. He reminded them that if they wanted the work they’d be there on time.
It’s really hard not to be indignant about the purposefully posing Despicable Dems attempting to look self-righteous as they go after the new president over Michael Flynn. What one doesn’t see is the smug glee on their faces, the crossed fingers hoping that not even a month into his presidency they can bring Trump down. But that is what is really there.
Make no mistake. That is what is going on here. The Democrats, with virtually no power in the House or Senate, have but one play now and that is obstruction with the intent upon destruction.
Why?
Because he’s not a Democrat and what the Dems want is their power back?
Because he’s white?
Because he’s a man?
Because he intends to do away with political correctness, support Israel and defend Christianity?
Because he invokes God?
Because he believes in lawfulness?
The same Despicable Dems standing up there and calling for more investigations regarding Flynn and what the President knew are the ones who did not attend the Inauguration and called the new president an illegitimate president. They are the same ones who obstructed any inquiries into Eric Holder or Barack Obama (who we now know is organizing and instructing the protests against President Trump). They are the same ones who would not call for Susan Rice’s resignation even after she willfully lied to the American People about Benghazi, who did not do anything to Eric Holder even after he was in contempt of Congress. They are the same ones who defend criminals (because they are not white), who were complicit in the first black president’s black attorney general circulating a memo to his department not to prosecute blacks. They are the same ones who still delay the new president from having his cabinet, their MO: obstruct, obstruct, obstruct and the American People be damned.
So let’s not kid ourselves, please. These Despicable Dems want to obstruct the government. Their only goal is to destroy President Trump because he stands a chance of preventing them from allowing enough people into the country to ensure they are always elected. These are the same Despicable Dems who do not accept the election results, an action their own candidate declared un-American and an attack on the very pillars of our Democratic Government.
What we don’t hear (because the media is in the tank for the Dems and the libs) is that for the first time in history, not even a month into the new president’s term, the exiting president is organizing demonstrations against his successor. What we don’t hear is that the Democratic supporters and money people, to wit George Soros, are bankrolling the demonstrations and promoting anarchy. What we don’t hear is that the media, specifically the New York Slimes and Washington Compost are owned by people who vowed to prevent Trump from getting elected, who financially supported the Democratic slate throughout the country and who colluded against Trump, often defaming him and his family wrongfully and maliciously. This is part of the media that shared debate questions with the democratic candidate and lied about it.
Make no mistake. The Despicable Dems feel threatened and are striking out like the proverbial cornered cat, claws out, with no regard for the damage being done to the country, and even worse, with no regard for the American People for whom they so desperately claim they speak.
Yes, John Lewis said we’ve come to a dangerous time. But it’s not because of anything Michael Flynn did or President Trump has done. It is because the democratic party’s entire goal is to destroy the newly elected president simply to keep their own power and their failing status quo which the new president threatens. They will stop at nothing, spare no one (not even the President’s ten-year-old son). They distort facts, control the media and promote anarchy.
Perhaps it is the beginning of the end, for surely if the Despicable Dems continue in their wanton destruction of the peaceful transfer of power, we are doomed to their social policy failures and overall ineptitude which now span over sixty years.
Either we have a country or we don’t. Either we have law and order or we don’t. Either we have our Democracy or we don’t. The Despicable Dems clearly aim to usurp our Democratic way of life. The greatest sadness is that it is for nothing more than their own desire for power.
So, the furnace was repaired after three service calls on a weekend, one late at night on Friday, two on Saturday. Finally, Saturday afternoon we were comfortable enough to leave the house. The cats needed cat food and with the new storm coming we were unsure if we could get out on Sunday.
The furnace repair bill was quite hefty. Labor rates are more on weekends and the furnace needed expensive parts. A large chunk of my monthly income (from pension and Social Security only) went, and it isn’t even mid-month. It being cold and snowy, we’ll need an oil delivery too. I also had to pay car insurance this month–it just worked out that way.
Hey, all you big shot Democrats who claim you speak for The American People, on my pension and Social Security I still have to pay Federal and State Income Tax, so my take-home is already diminished. Maybe this month, with all the extra bills, we won’t eat out as much as we sometimes do. Maybe we won’t eat out at all. I might not buy some things for myself that I need. We actually joked about spending the money on the cat food. We bought soft food, the ones they like. But we have a big bag of hard food. They could have eaten only that. They would have been okay.
Hey all you multi-millionaire Hollywood elites who pretend to be like the regular American people, claim to speak for them and go on to incite them, you know who you are, my considerations here are pretty common. I don’t have a home in Florida so I can live in Beverly Hills and use Florida residence to not pay taxes in California. Hey, one who wants to burn down the White House, you live in London a good deal of the time, don’t you? If I’d said what you did, little old me, I’d have been arrested. Your considerations aren’t like mine, like what most of The American People’s considerations are. We turn off lights to keep electric bills down. We make selective decisions to figure out what we can afford. If gas prices soar, we don’t buy new washing machines when we need them. We fix the old ones. On fixed incomes, we repair furnaces and live in the cold while they’re being repaired. We don’t replace furnaces unless it’s the only option, and then we look for zero percent financing if we can find it. We don’t advocate for welfare benefits and free college for illegal aliens when we have to pay higher taxes to support it and doing so means we can’t take care of our own kids the way we would want to. We think about things like inflation, job security (working means we might be able to afford to go to one of your movies or concerts) and getting by from week to week. Those are our considerations.
Now I’m lucky, better off than many people. I have savings and my income in retirement is sufficient for now. I don’t know if it will be sufficient ten years from now since, hello, it’s fixed income and won’t increase. I bought the cat food and if I cut corners this month, it won’t be at the expense of my wife or child. I’d only cut on myself. I think about those real American People less fortunate than me but equally put upon by your leftist ridiculousness. Many of these people would have to pay fifteen percent interest on a furnace repair like I just had done because they would need to charge it and not be able to pay off the credit card bill all at once. Many of them never eat out. Many of them skimp and cut and clip coupons much more so than we do in my household. And many retirees eat the cat food I bought for my cats themselves.
Hey, you Leftist Hollywood elites and self-appointed Democrat spokespeople for The American People, how about taking into your neighborhoods a few busloads of illegals that the Feds send in in the dead of night? How about putting them in schools with your kids?
Oh, I forgot. You only pretend to be like us so you can claim you speak for us.
Who are the American people the Democratic leaders keep saying they speak for? the American people they claim President Trump and the Republicans do not speak for? Why are the democrats working so hard to continually script that illegitimate-president narrative? (They’re working so hard at it they’ve enlisted the same media that was in the tank for Hillary and the same anarchists who perpetrated chaos during the campaign and after the election, claiming they speak for the American people too.) Why do the Democrats, the anarchists and the media insist so emphatically they speak for America? that their values are the American values? Where do they get off making this claim?
These are real questions. Of course the Democrats would say they are not questions at all. In fact, they claim it is un-American to even ask them. So, I ask, when did they become the gods and we become the deplorables?
I would suggest that any one political party or any one group that claims to represent “American values” or “The American People” is delusional, and I would further suggest that in so doing the Democrat-Progressives-Leftists have become delusional, disoriented and have lost their way.
So, Thursday we had about fifteen inches of snow. My neighbor plowed my hilly driveway with his tractor, which helped me out immensely. I finished the work with my snowblower, a snow shovel and a broom. Friday morning, we had a two-hour school delay so the time the school bus was coming for my ten-year-old now conflicted with the doctor appointment that I had scheduled a month ago. I took my child with me then dropped her off. Friday night my furnace went out. We had an emergency repair, but the furnace only worked a few hours and then quit again. My wife, my child and I slept in clothes with four quilts and blankets.
It snowed during the night, another few inches. I called for furnace service at one in the morning and the repairman said he’d be here at eight. I was up and out at seven with the snowblower, shovel and broom so he could get the truck up the hill and have the access to the furnace he would need.
He came and left. The furnace worked for less than an hour. We’re on the third service call now. We’re all bundled up in the cold. Tomorrow we’re supposed to have another nor Easter and at least another foot of snow. I’m hoping the furnace will be fully repaired so we’ll have heat. We have nowhere else to go, no second and third home. I’m on a pension and Social Security, a fixed income, so I’m hoping the furnace repair bill will not mean I have to deplete savings to cover it. Thank God I have savings.
Get the picture?
I’m not complaining and actually I’m very thankful. I worked all my life, two and three jobs and as much overtime as I could get. I have a pension and a home. Many people don’t. I’m relatively healthy. Many people my age aren’t so fortunate. I have savings to draw upon if I need to.
But here’s the point: Madonna, Ashley Judd and all the silly, Democrat proselytizing Hollywood elite don’t speak for me. They don’t share my concerns or my values. They have bodyguards, spare houses, people to shovel for them and drive them, even fly them. Al Franken, Chuck Schumer, Hillary Clinton (who just bought her daughter a ten million dollar home), don’t speak for me. They are far removed from real American values. So are most of our leaders, all those millionaire Senators and Congressmen. The more they say they speak for the American People, the more the American people know they don’t.
It takes a big “pair” (lots of chutzpah) to claim you should be elected because you’re a woman or because you’re African American. It takes a bigger pair to say you are the authority of what the American people think or feel. Maybe those Despicable Dems and their in-the-tank media and Hollywood elites and their George Soros paid anarchists ought to check out their minds.
If he’d ever have been tested prior to this day, Bill would have discovered that for all intents and purposes he was spatially retarded. No kidding. No exaggeration or overstatement. Eventually he would have aptitude testing and this would be the unadulterated result of his spatial relations test. He would score so low that his actual mark was below where the measurement scale began. The employment counselor suggested he steer clear of things like mechanical drawing, architecture and pretty much anything having to do with depth perception and eye-hand coordination. Suddenly Bill would understand why he had been so bad at art in school and why he misjudged distances and often bumped into things. But he was not privy to this information when he was handed off by Robert to the waitresses who led him onto the dining room floor to bus tables for the first time.
Bill needed this job. Bill was grateful for the job. Nevertheless, later on, in the midst of the dinner rush, surrounded by people he had to clean up after and serve, he found himself immersed in an internal struggle, a personal fight within his psyche. Goddamn college graduate busboy, he told himself. He unleashed a slew of expletives at himself and despite fighting to disengage himself from the internal battle, he sunk deeper into it. An overwhelming sense of less than overcame him. He felt conspicuous, self-conscious, uncomfortable, and all this going on inside his head distracted him and made him more clumsy than he already was.
He did the best he could. He’d never carried a tray full of dishes, never balanced a tray on his shoulder. He didn’t know where anything was. The discomfort level shot up and up. He realized he simply hated it.
The waitresses helped him along as much as they could. But the more discomforted he felt, the more gawky and awkward he became. At war with himself and hating what he was doing, he still persisted. He plodded on.
Maybe it was inevitable. Maybe not. The busier the dinner service became, the worse it was for Bill. When the customer called him boy, he bristled, but he went to the table and asked what he could do. He even called the customer sir.
“Take this soup away, boy. Now.”
“Yes, sir.”
The customer lifted the soup bowl to hand it to Bill, but Bill misjudged the distance between them and while he was able to retrieve the bowl on its saucer, a bit of soup spilled on the customer’s suit. Bill saw it and apologized immediately.
“Sorry, sir. Excuse me.”
“You clumsy little bastard,” the man said. “Ignorant little shit.”
“I said I’m sorry,” Bill said.
“Kiss my ass you little twerp.”
Bill was still holding the soup. He toyed with spilling more, even fantasized about throwing it on the man. Only survival, truly and unequivocally needing the job, stopped him from doing it.
The waitress came by. She interceded best she could, but when the customer repeated that Bill was an ignorant shit and then called her a silly little twat, Bill stepped between her and the customer.
“I apologized,” Bill said. “I truly am sorry. But now you’re just plain rude and abusive.”
“F–k you,” the customer said.
Bill couldn’t help it. He let the soup go, all of it, all over the customer’s nice suit.
“Sorry,” Bill said. “It must have slipped.”
“Go into the kitchen,” the waitress said. “And don’t come back out.”
Bill did as he was told.
Right there in Bailey’s office, the big, black teddy bear of a man took Bill in his arms and hugged him. He hugged him tightly a second and third time then said out loud, “Huh glory.”
“You two know each other?” Bailey asked.
“Yes,” the man said. “We’ve met.”
“Well then,” Bailey said, “I’ve got work to do. Good luck, Bill.”
Robert put his arm around Bill and led him out of the office. In the car Bill would learn his name and they would formally introduce themselves to each other. Robert was the broiler cook at Suburban Steakhouse West, which was where they were headed. He was busted for running numbers and was sentenced to a month in the workhouse. The owner, Jim Bowman, had gotten him out early, petitioning the court that he was necessary to the business. In its infinite wisdom, the court had granted the petition and converted the jail time to a fine and probation. Bowman had paid the fine and all was right with the world. Like Bill, Robert had been assigned to Bailey for his year’s probation.
“Lord have mercy,” Robert said as he drove.
Bill filled Robert in on all the details of his case, about his background and his education. Robert assured him it was just a bus boy job and he didn’t need his education for it. He also assured Bill that as soon as he could he would get him into the kitchen so he could keep him under wing.
Bill sat in the front seat of Robert’s station wagon and thanked God. This was nothing less than a gift directly from God. God is good, he thought. Despite all the horribleness of the past seven months, from his arrest through his jail time and inclusive of the lack of money, God had continually shown Himself. God has always been there, Bill thought.
Robert pulled into the entrance and drove around back where he parked in a spot marked off for employees. He and Bill walked up to the back door, the kitchen door, where Robert stepped in first. As soon as they were both inside, Robert put put his arm around Bill and called out. “Listen here y’all, see this boy, he’s mine. Everyone takes care of him.” He let Bill go and led him around introducing him to the kitchen staff.
Bill sat around while Robert changed into kitchen whites and then went around seeing everything Robert chose to show him. Bill noted that Robert’s feet hung out of his shoes at the heels and Robert shuffled along.
Bill got the complete tour of the prep kitchen, the line, which was an open hearth that faced out to the dining room, and the dishwasher area. There were two entrances to the hearth, one from the prep kitchen and one at the end of it past the broiler. There, past the broiler, were two half doors through which, Bill would learn, Robert would poke his head every so often to see the dishwashers were keeping up. The dish machine and pot washer sink were to the left as he poked out. The double doors to the dining room were to his right. Waitresses and bus boys brought trays of dirty dishes through those doors but all food was picked up from the open hearth.
Bill waited around a lot that first day. He didn’t do much work until the dinner service, when he was put into the dining room to bus tables. A college graduate bus boy, he thought. Big whoop.
