He was sitting quietly when Mary came in. She sat in the seat next to him, unscrewed the cap of the bottle and took a drink. Her kitchen dress was mostly open now. She’d probably unbuttoned it on the way down, Bill thought, as he’d seen her do lots of times. She was coming down to change into her civvies but since she hadn’t seen Bill, she’d probably gone looking for him and buttoned one or two buttons again on the way. He could see just about her whole bra and then just about all the way up her legs to her panties.
“I just came from the meat room,” she said. “Henry Lee is waiting for you.”
Bill told her okay. He didn’t know what she’d seen, if anything, and he wasn’t letting on what he’d seen. He took another drink.
“You gonna be okay to do your shift?” she asked.
“Why not?”
“Don’t think you moving too fast?”
“What you mean?”
“Two waitresses. Messing with me and Bea, maybe gonna do something you really don’t want to do. Drinking, drugging. And you on probation too. We been through this before.”
“Mother Mary.”
“Very funny, fool. I care for you.”
“How do you know I don’t want to do what I’m doing?”
“I don’t think you know jack.”
“Maybe,” Bill said. He reached his hand to her lap and unbuttoned the buttons holding her dress closed. The dress fell open so he could see her white panties.
“Happy now?”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe,” Mary said, mocking him. “Maybe,” she said again. “What would make you happy?”
Bill reached his hand to her and felt her along the inside of her thighs up to and on to her panties. He smiled at her. “I’m gonna owe the boss a bottle,” he said.
“I’ll take one from inventory and put it back in place,” she said. “Yulie was crazy like you.” She held his hand on her a moment then kissed it and returned it to him. “Too bad you’re white,” she said. “Otherwise I’d steal you away.”
“I’m the one that’s tripping. I don’t believe that for a second.”
Mary stood up and gathered the dress around her. She leaned in and kissed Bill full on his lips. “Believe it,” she said.
Bill watched her walk out of the party room then took the bottle with him and returned to the meat room. Henry Lee was cleaning his knives having finished his work. Bill handed him the bottle, watched him take a long pull after which he put the bottle in the drawer next to the one he’d brought with him in the morning. Then they both donned the arctic parkas and went into the deep freeze.
When they’d come out and hung up the parkas, they took a drink then started carrying up the meat trays.
Marie was over on the pantry station with Bea. Bea was showing her what was done and what was left to do. Finished the briefing, she walked through the line to the door. Bill was bent over arranging the meat in the reach-in. She goosed him as she went past and told him have a good night. Then she told Henry Lee to go straight home and headed downstairs to change her clothes.
Alvin and Jimmy came in at five-thirty. Jimmy was the night line cook, the only part-time cook. Alvin had come from the west store. He would leave around eight and take Henry Lee home. Tommy came in shortly after they arrived. Bea and Mary were in their street clothes saying goodbye. It was the end of another day for them, the midst of one for Bill, Alvin and Henry Lee, and the start of one for Marie and Jimmy. Grandma had not come in yet.
All was set. All was as usual. Bill, still tripping, was on the way down.
Bill’s only thought heading downstairs was to get into the deep freeze to smoke a doobie and then get to that bottle of bourbon. He had filed the meat count in his head and was intent upon smoking the weed before carrying up the steaks. His goal now was to take the speed edge out of the remainder of his trip.
What a difference a day makes! He was proficient at carrying trays balanced on his shoulder now, and thinking about it, he remembered that first day, not even a full shift, that he was a busboy. He spilled the soup, he got a waitress, Eleanor. Or, he thought, Eleanor got me. Then there was Norma. Norma lost favor with Drenovis once his scheme to use her to antagonize Eleanor failed and he discovered she was ready, willing and able to do the cook he would have fired if he could have. Eleanor was wild. Norma was downright crazy.
He stopped in the bathroom to pee on his way to the meat room. Finished, he washed his hands carefully, spent a long while looking at his trippy face in the mirror. He watched his face do contortions even though he wasn’t moving, watched it melt into the mirror, watched the mirror melt into the wall. Time to go, he thought. Mesmerized by his trippy face, he had to pull himself away, which he finally did. He turned the corner for the meat room.
This time of day Tommy never came downstairs unless they were getting a meat delivery. Tommy was busy closing out the paperwork from the lunch, checking out the receipts, tallying and paying out the tips to the day-shift waitresses. When he finished his paperwork in the office, he checked the line in the kitchen to make sure it was completely set, then he went back out front to monitor the incoming waitresses and assign stations.
Bill counted on Tommy not coming downstairs. Apparently Henry Lee counted on it too. When Bill turned into the meat room he saw Marie bent over the band saw on which they cut the steamship round, her dress up over her back, her panties down at her ankles. She was bare-ass and Henry Lee was mounted on her like a male dog. He was pumping away.
Marie saw Bill. Henry Lee saw him. Neither one of them stopped or made any attempt to cover up. Bill lingered a moment. He was surprise-frozen and his feet felt cemented in place. To him, it wasn’t sexual per se. It was more existential, there but abstracted and non-linear, at least on one level.
“I’ll come back,” he said when he got his wits about him.
“Yeah you do that,” Henry Lee said. “You can have a turn if you want.”
Bill didn’t answer. He was shied by that remark and he backed out the doorway into the hall. He walked into the party room across the way. It was dark and cool. Only a few lights shone. One was the red exit sign over the guests’ entrance doors across the room. Another was a beer sign above the bar. A few others were floor lights that stayed lit for building code safety regulations. He walked behind the bar and took a fresh bottle of bourbon. He cracked the seal and took a long swig, then a second one, then he sat down at the bar and listened to the silence ringing in his ears. He closed his eyes and watched the dancing bears. Amidst the bears was the image he’d just formed of Marie and Henry Lee at the band saw.
At four Marie came in. She didn’t stop in the kitchen but went straight down the stairs to change into her uniform. By this time, despite the initial delay, the breading was mostly done. Bill was working on and almost finished with the last tray of onion rings. Mary was coasting, all her work done except taking the prime rib from the oven and the baked potatoes from the convection oven. She was waiting for Bill to carry out the rib and cart it to the line. She was also waiting for him to determine that the potatoes were ready and put them into a steam table insert. She sat on a stool. She was resting, drinking a beer and reading the newspaper.
Bea’s station was set, the salad mixed for house salads, the Romaine lettuce washed and cut for Caesar salads. Bea had spent most of the last hour prepping everything for Marie. She’d filled all the inserts on her station, the cold food station, and cleaned away the lunch specials. The tuna and shrimp salad were wrapped and set in the reach-in box, the tuna for tomorrow, the shrimp salad for anyone who wanted it for their dinner. She would tell Marie about the shrimp salad’s availability. Shrimp for shrimp cocktail were set in ice water in a bain marie. All the salad dressing containers were filled for the waitresses and a tray of “setups” sat in the reach-in box. Setups were lettuce, tomato and pickle stacked for garnish for hamburger platters. As a waitress picked up a burger, she stopped first for a setup and put it on the platter.
Bea was responsible for the the desserts too. Mary made the rice pudding and chocolate pudding. Bea set out full pans of each in the reach-in. Waitresses dished them up and put the dollop of whipped cream on. Then there was ice cream and pies, apple, cherry and blueberry. Today’s special was chocolate cream pie. Marie would help the waitresses with these things as needed.
The line was mostly ready. Bill had not done the inventory yet, but since he’d worked lunch and done the breading, he knew there were enough fries in the reach-in freezer and enough of all breaded items too. He would inventory the meat box and carry up trays of the steaks he needed for the dinner.
Only after he’d cleaned up the breading station and delivered the empty trays to the dishwasher did he take a moment to mess around with Mary. He whispered crazy stuff in her ear, things he was going to…
“Yeah, yeah,” Mary said not stopping reading the paper.
“Yeah,” he said. He drank some of her beer, then ambled over to the oven where the rib was. He was unaware that Mary trailed him and when he bent down to check it, Mary goosed him from behind, copping a generous feel of all of him.
“Two can play that game,” she said.
“Watch your ass now,” Bill said.
“Get the rib, stupid,” Mary said. She went back to her stool, her beer and the newspaper.
Rib and baked potatoes set on the line, Bill walked the whole line making sure everything was in place and that each item had a ladle or spoon as needed. Satisfied, he checked the meat box, made a mental note as to what had to be brought up. Then he went around to Mary and told her he was going down for meat.
Mary blew him a kiss bye. She hadn’t budged from her stool and didn’t even look up from the paper. As an afterthought, she called out “Don’t trip down the stairs.”
Bill would never be prepared for what he saw and would never be able to obliterate it from the image file inside his mind.
When Bill did the onion rings, the eggs were still trippy eggs. He saw all kinds of things in them from flowers to cartoon dinosaurs. But he could see things now and still work-function. He could do the onion rings, even keep one hand dry, and he could follow what was going on in the kitchen. He watched Mary, followed what she was doing, watched Bea washing a big sink full of iceberg. He could look down the open part of her kitchen dress as she leaned over that sink, peek in at what he could see of her bosom. At about 45 and a good fifty pounds overweight, that was more than an ample bosom. Bill had felt it several times, two large, floppy mounds capped with big dark raisins. He was going to bite those raisins one day. He knew he would.
While he was on the second tray of onion rings, Mary brought Bill another espresso. He drank it down, but then Evelyn came into the kitchen. She needed some salt and pepper to fill the shakers in the side dining room. Bea went to the store room to get it for her and Bill told her to bring him a beer. She went out of the kitchen and came back with a cold one. Bill grabbed her and kissed her, right there in front of Mary.
“That’s your mind on drugs,” Mary said.
“Is he on drugs?” Evelyn asked.
“He’s all messed up. But he’s cute.”
“He is cute,” Evelyn said. As she said this, Bill reached up her skirt and pinched her privates. She flushed red in the face and stepped away from his reach.
When Bea returned with the salt and pepper, after Evelyn had left the kitchen, after he’d finished the tray he was working on and set it in the freezer, Bill took a cigarette from Bea’s pack and lit it with her lighter. He stood on her station smoking, drinking the beer and watching her work. Really he was looking at her wide ass and thick legs and Bea knew he was looking.
“Why you so horny today?” she asked.
“He’s on drugs,” Mary said. “That’s why I’m feeding him all that coffee.
“Shit,” Bea said. “Too bad I didn’t know sooner.”
“Good thing,” Mary said. “If it’s moving…”
“Yeah, I got the idea,” Bea said.
“Ever skinny dipped?” he asked Bea.
“Not with you.”
He remembered the time they’d all tripped and gone to the quarry to skinny dip. He was driving Hank’s ’60 Chevy and the road was going up and down in ocean waves. He opened the driver’s door to make sure he was on the road. It was a three-speed standard on the column, fun to drive. Nina and Tony, in the back, had already gotten naked. Pam, next to him in the front, was stripping. When they got there, Bill stripped and dove in. He remembered that trippy dive. He remembered it all, all the way down the rabbit hole.
“With anyone?” he asked.
“Ain’t had that pleasure. You?”
“No,” Bill lied. He had no idea why he lied, but once he’d crossed that threshold, it was done.
“Why you ask then? Wanna see me naked? Hell, I ain’t shy.”
“Gonna finish those onion rings?” Mary called out.
Bill drank the rest of the beer. He put out the cigarette on the floor and kicked the butt under the table. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m ready now.”
“You could see me naked any time,” Bea said
“Don’t wear underwear tomorrow,” Bill said.
“Crazy ass white boy,” Bea said.
Bill wondered if she would do what he said and he toyed with notion.
Coming soon, a new novel.
Rose’s story is framed by a former Georgia Senator suddenly killed in an alleged murder-suicide just two weeks before publishing a scathing report linking high-ranking Georgia officials and Georgia’s Child Protective Services (CPS) to child trafficking and child prostitution.
In fact, the Senator’s death looks more like a double murder than a murder-suicide by a distraught husband, yet local police and FBI never even explore the possibility. As a result, it is later established that no forensic evidence was seriously collected. Why?
Rose can hire any writer at any price. She chooses Murph in order to stay low key and undetected and she asks Murph to familiarize himself with the Senator’s death to explain her rationale. Rose must tell her story, yet she fears the repercussions of directly challenging CPS.
Look for Rose’s Story to appear during the spring.
“Yulie was a cousin of Robert’s,” Mary said. “He was a drunk and a drug addict, but he was the best as far as cooks go. He and Robert set up the place and opened it. They hired me as the prep cook.
“I was in love with Yulie. My husband, father to my kids, left me cause he didn’t want to support his children. He didn’t want nothing but to hit it with as many young girls as he could. He was finished with me the first time I got pregnant but that didn’t stop him from making me pregnant a second time.
“Good riddance to bad rubbish, I thought. I started leaving the kids with my mother so I could work. I stayed away from men for a very long time. Even Yulie. All together, my experiences with men ain’t been so wonderful. Except for Yulie, I could have… Well anyway this ain’t about that.”
Bill looked at Mary. “How long we gonna sit here?” he asked.
“Till you drink another espresso and I finish my story,” Mary said.
“You know I know you don’t have tattoos. But they were dancing on your arms before. You’re doing a good job of bringing me down when I don’t want to come down. So I’m gonna drink some more bourbon and smoke some more weed. I am sorry about your marriage.”
“Well don’t be. I don’t need you being sorry for me.”
“I’m not sorry for you. I’m sorry you had a crappy marriage.”
“I got three lovely kids,” Mary said. “My big boy and twin girls.”
“Robert told me.”
“Well Yulie, he came out here to work when they opened this one. He used to be so drunk he’d fall to his knees during the service. Alvin be on one side of him and whoever it was be on the other side. They’d pick him up by his underarms and he’d go right back to work without missing a step. He was sweet on me and I was in love with him.”
“Okay,” Bill said. “So what’s the bad news?”
“He killed himself with an overdose. Heroin.”
“That’s too bad.”
“He wasn’t even thirty. You remind me of him, especially today. You’re about as crazy as he was and you do the same stupid shit.”
“Yeah, okay. See what I mean about bringing me down?”
“Tough titty,” Mary said. “You ready to do some breading now?”
Back in the kitchen, they spent the next hour together doing all the breading that needed to be done for what Mary hoped would be the rest of the week. Mary did most of it and Bill still hallucinated in the egg wash. In between trays, Mary put potatoes to bake in the convection oven. She went around to the line and set water into the steam table, then she poured Bordelaise sauce into a steam table insert and set it in place. She did the same with au jus. The one oven that had a kitchen towel tied around the handle contained a prime rib. Mary checked it but it wasn’t quite done yet. Looking at the clock, she told Bill to take it out at four.
When the shrimp was breaded, Mary told Bill to forget the onion rings, that they would do them the next day. She told him to go downstairs to the party room and take himself a good nap. Bill looked at Mary as if she were crazy. Then he smiled at her and said he’d do the onion rings today. “You don’t understand acid,” he told her. “I’m not sleeping for a long time, unless maybe you got some Quaaludes.”
“Boy,” Mary said, “you really are tripping.”
“Girl,” Bill said, “I really am.”
Way back when…Actually it was just about a week ago I said I wasn’t going to talk about politics much anymore. The reasoning was that these days such talk, if it is not liberal PC BS, falls upon deaf ears, ears thinking with the small head. Many people won’t get that reference. That many people won’t get the reference is part of the point. In the post modern, revisionist-history era we are losing our sense of history, of perspective and, of course, our sense of rationality. Yes, our society has become irrational and illogical and our leaders are absolutely ridiculous.
Many times in the past, this blog has pointed to the Nancy Pelosi statement regarding Obamacare: “you have to sign it to see what’s in it.” Having taught forensics for more than a dozen years and coached a high school forensics team for that same period of time, it is fair to say that the least knowledgeable forensics student could see through that argument and would label it stupid. Not only is it ridiculous, but it is sublimely absurd. Try going into a bank with your own written mortgage contract and telling the bank it has to sign it to see what’s in it.
Nancy Pelosi, in some sense, has set the bar for the ridiculousness of our leaders and our society.
Shoot forward to the Gorsuch hearings. There was Al Franken (D MN) lecturing and yelling at Neil Gorsuch about having spent his career recognizing absurdity. The picture above attached to this blog is from the movie Trading Places. The bottom gorilla in the middle is Al Franken when he was a would-be actor/comedian.
Let’s be clear, Al Franken was elected in 2008 having won by 315 votes. Initially he lost the election, filed for a recount, was supported by the heavy-hitter Democratic lawyers and then won. It was widely rumored that he won by voter fraud. In that election 1099 felons illegally voted. That number is contested. Some say it is only about 450 and only 26 of them have been convicted of voter fraud. But since that election and germane to it, 243 people were accused of voter fraud, 177 of them convicted of it and another 66 “not brought to trial” per the reports of it that can be found which date back some years. This contested election made for a veto-proof senate for then president Obama. Al Franken was for Obama a faithful lapdog, the idiot who would say and do anything he was told to say, the same idiot who now perpetrates the craziest of crazy democratic lunacy.
Al Franken, perhaps akin to an idiot, not even a first-rate actor or a competent comedian, lecturing Neil Gorsuch on absurdity? In and of itself, that is absurd and reflects the ridiculousness of our leaders. Regardless of whether you like Gorsuch as a Supreme Court nominee, he is an accomplished judge who was unanimously appointed by Congress to the US 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. His record is impeccable, and you may not like it, but he is an upstanding, well-balanced citizen.
So it is really hard to talk politics anymore. When the idiot gorilla lectures the accomplished judge about “recognizing absurdity” (Franken’s words) what more can be said? When colleges start removing scales because students’ feelings are hurt by the presence of them, when laws are only selectively enforced (as sanctuary cities do, as Eric Holder’s lack-of-justice department did), when a known liar like Susan Rice comes out to lecture the sitting president about lying…We are in the era of ridiculousness. When the needs of the few outweigh the needs of the many and the rights of criminals outweigh the rights of law abiding citizens, we are in the era of the ridiculous.
Our leaders are ridiculous. Where they have taken us is ridiculous. America is now America the ridiculous.
Mary sat next to Bill in the booth, not opposite him, not to be close to him but to stop him from getting up. Bill drank coffee, Mary talked.
Yulie was related to Alvin which was how Alvin had gotten his job. Yulie was one of the original cooks at Suburban, him and Robert.
Robert had known Mr. Bowman when he was a manager at one of the other steak houses in Columbus. Robert was the broiler cook and he and Mr. Bowman, over there, established a most complex relationship. First, Mr. Bowman ran a numbers game and Robert, who had tons of friends and acquaintances, mostly from his position in the church, became a numbers runner. That was how Bill had met him downtown that day he’d gone to check in with his PO. Robert had been busted for running numbers and was sweeping out the City Hall Annex, where Bailey’s office was located. That was his work detail. Not for nothing, but Bailey played the numbers with Robert and had seen to it that Robert got an easy sentence and easy work detail.
Robert was wildly gay. Mr. Bowman was bi. He was married with two kids, long-time married, in fact, and he was crazy about his wife and kids. But he was also crazy about Robert. Robert was a loose cannon. They became an item, hush hush around Suburban of course, even though everyone knew. At Suburban, everyone knew everything though no one said anything. That’s how kitchen families were.
Mr. Bowman made a lot of money with his numbers game. One day he and Robert were talking after they’d been together at a place Robert kept but which Mr. Bowman paid for. It was a simple, one bedroom apartment nicknamed The Upper Room, a place where the people at Suburban went to mess around with people they weren’t supposed to be messing around with, a place where Bill and Mary had not yet been but would end up going. Robert was joking and suggested that Mr. Bowman should start his own steak house. Bowman would bankroll it and run it. Robert would arrange and maintain the kitchen crew. He was sure they could do a better job than any of the other steak houses around.
“Finish the coffee,” Mary said. She got up from the booth and got him another cup of black coffee, this one with an espresso mixed in. “How you doing?” she asked when she sat back down.
“The fat lady still singing,” Bill said. “Literally.” He laughed. “I’m fine,” he said. “I’m still tripping and hallucinating, but I can work now.”
“You sure boy?”
“I’m sure. How you doing?”
“My panties are wet, thank you very much.”
“Lucky you.”
“You know we’re gonna have to finish this.”
“Of course I know.”
“Good,” Mary said.
She went on with her story. Robert and Mr. Bowman started making the rounds to all the steak houses to see what they were about and gather ideas for what they wanted. Then one day they saw the for sale sign at the place where Suburban West opened. It had the restaurant curse: the place had opened and closed multiple times and no one could seem to make a go of it there. They agreed it was perfect. Mr. Bowman got it cheap on a fifty-year lease with an option to buy. Suburban was born.
Henry Lee and Mary stayed in the hall watching Bill. From their point of view, he stood over the egg wash an insufferable amount of time doing nothing but staring into the eggs. Henry Lee swore all they’d done was smoke weed and drink bourbon. Mary sensed Bill was on something else and she was hell-bent on finding out what.
In all, she let an hour go by. Bill had still not touched one piece of fish and had not even wet his hands. When she could bear it no longer, Mary finally addressed him.
“Boy, how long you gonna stare into those eggs?” she asked.
“As long as the dancing girls dance,” Bill said.
“What does that mean?”
“It means I’m watching a show. When did you get your tattoos?”
“What you been smoking boy?”
“I popped acid.”
“That explains it,” Mary said. “Here. I’ll get you started.” She stepped next to Bill and did the first piece of fish.”
“Wow,” Bill said. “I could do that.”
“Yeah. You’re supposed to be doing it.”
“See the rainbow?” Bill asked. He pointed into the egg wash.
“Yeah, I see it,” Mary said mockingly, shaking her head. “White boys,” she said aloud but to herself.
“White boys what?” Bill asked. He kissed Mary on the back of her neck then used the opportunity of her occupied hands to reach unfettered up her kitchen dress from behind. He kissed her neck more as he took intimate liberties inside there.
“Boy, I’m gonna kill you when my hands get clean.”
“Screw it,” Bill said. He found her spot. He knew he found her spot when she stopped squealing and started squirming. “Got you, don’t I?” he said. He kissed from her neck over to hear ear, sucked gently on her earlobe, then kissed around her on her cheek until he found her lips. “Now you’re the dancing girl,” he said. But even as he fondled her, fiddled with her and kissed her, the non-existent tattoos on her arms danced and the images in the egg wash, now somewhat distorted by the waves Mary created from dunking flour-coated fish, shone brightly. “Wow,” he said. “Really trippy eggs.”
When Mary had finished all the pieces of fish on the tray and had laid them out breaded on the other tray, she did not move. She did not say anything and she did stop Bill from touching her and kissing her. She prayed Bea did not come around from her station and see them. She prayed Tommy did not come into the kitchen to see that everything was getting readied for the dinner. She hoped Henry Lee did not come up from downstairs and see her with Bill’s hand up her dress, with her now leaning into his hand and moving with his fingers.
“Don’t stop now,” she whispered to Bill amidst the kissing. Bill kept his fingers working, saw Mary with one hand in the flour and the other in the breadcrumbs kneading the materials almost like a cat. She was moving with his fingers, kissing him with her tongue. “Keep going,” she said. “Keep going.”
Bill closed his eyes. Inside the darkness were the billions of teeny-tiny dots of all colors. He could feel Mary. She was a plethora of textures to his fingers. He knew she had no tattoos but they still danced on her arms. He could feel himself, half speeding, completely buzzed and fully aroused. He pressed on her from behind. “God, I want you,” he whispered while he kissed her.
“Crazy white boy,” Mary said.
First thing when it was over, Mary put the tray of breaded fish into the freezer. Then she washed her hands and straightened her clothes. Then she took Bill by the hand and led him into the side dining room. She sat him in a booth, not that he couldn’t have done it himself, and brought him some black coffee. They sat together for about fifteen minutes during which time she told him about Yulie.
“I’ve got to go downstairs,” Mary said. “Be back in a few. Stir the Bordelaise and don’t let it burn.”
Bill told her okay and watched her head out of the kitchen. He was about to start the breading but the walls melted, the room shifted–there was too much to see. On one level, Bill had work to do. He knew he had work to do and was going to do it. On another level, each time he reached for that first piece of fish, his arm got longer and longer and the tray slid further and further from his reach. The impression of it on his mind finally stopped him from reaching for the fish at all. All the pieces of fish stared at Bill, started dancing with the music, now another famous rock song. Then they all molded together into one live fish. “Stir the Bordelaise,” the fish said. Suddenly it was wearing sunglasses and Bill was watching a famous tuna. “Sorry Bill. Stir the sauce.”
Bill turned from the counter where he was standing and went to the prep stove, maybe ten or twelve feet real distance. He took up a kitchen spoon and stirred the sauce, no problem. But then he made the mistake of looking into the pot. In that brown sauce the kaleidoscope effect went wild. He stirred again and kept stirring and in the swirling liquid the rainbow shone, stars and quarter-moons and dancing rectangles, squares and triangles appearing in the swirl, going under and reappearing. Over and over and over. The music was in the background now. He stirred and stared totally unaware of himself except as part of the kitchen, oblivious to time and how long he actually stood there. Stir and stare, stir and stare. “God this job is boring, this isn’t the real world, this is…Hare Krishna,” he thought.
Mary had come up from downstairs. She’d sat a moment with Henry Lee and they’d had a drink. They’d chit-chatted and then Mary’d gathered the things she needed from the store room and gone back up the stairs. Now, seeing Bill lingering over the sauce, she stood unobtrusively in the doorway observing him.
Of course Mary would not know what caused Bill, after what she timed as twelve minutes, to stop stirring and turn back to the fish. But that’s what she saw him do, and when he had settled himself back there, she walked into the kitchen and set the things she held in her arms on the counter opposite her stoves.
“Everything all right?” she asked.
“Just peachy,” Bill said.
“No orders?”
“Nope.”
“Stir my sauce?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“How’s it going over there?”
“Moving right along.”
“Good,” Mary said. Then, “I got to pee. Be right back. Don’t worry about the sauce. It’s done and I’m turning it off.”
“Okie dokie,” Bill said.
While he spoke with Mary, he was watching his own versions of cartoon animations in the egg wash. The music played, the exhaust fans droned, the fan from the convection oven blew. Bea, seemingly an impossible distance away, played with dancing carrots. Mostly, and luckily, although Bill was not considering it at all, the kitchen was still and no orders came in. Every now and then a waitress came through. They were setting up their stations for the dinner. The rule was no one was done until everything was reset and ready to go for the next meal, and that meant top to bottom in and out of the kitchen.
Mary had gone downstairs. But she didn’t go to pee. She went to get Henry Lee and then they both sneaked up the stairs and observed Bill from out in the hall.
