The dinner rebounded beautifully from the night before and Tommy found himself in the kitchen expediting for several hours. Lillian worked Thursday through Saturday, so she would be in tomorrow. Meantime, Bill was glad he hadn’t tripped. The last thing he’d done was get high in the deep freeze, again, just before he came up on the line for the service.
Like always, he had helped Mary finish her setup, not that she actually needed his help. He took out the baked potatoes, ever conscious of the lack of feeling in the fingers he had burned that first day on the line as a cook. All healed now, what was a big negative had turned to a big plus. He could hold really hot things in that hand and grab things other cooks shied away from or needed a side towel for. He carted over the prime rib and carried over the steam table pans when they’d been filled.
He did not deny himself. Between trips from the back to the front, he helped himself to generous servings of Mother Mary. After the first time, when she’d fought him, she relented and let him have his way. He’d take her in his arms, press her tight, reach up her dress in back and feel her behind. Or he’d come up behind her and grind on that soft, curvy structure she had back there while reaching in front to feel her breasts. Once, he’d invited her to sit up on the counter so he could kiss up her legs, but she’d smacked him upside the head for that suggestion. Or, what she really said was that he could kiss and lick anywhere he wanted when they were alone at her place or in The Upper Room. She did not stop him from kissing her lips, or her ear, or her neck. She tolerated him, sometimes looked at him in a kind of disbelief, the way she used to look at Yulie. When she stepped back and looked at him this way, she was simply acknowledging in herself that she was watching a man who was most all the time drunk and on drugs. Bill and Yulie had that in common, only Yulie was into shooting up too. Bill, although he had snorted heroin and smoked opium, did not shoot up.
Then she and Bea and Henry Lee were gone. Marie in her sunglasses, Jimmy and Grandma were in place. Waiting for orders to come in, Bill was fooling around with both Victoria and Lorraine. The quality of the interplay was different for each waitress—he was gonna do Lorraine after the shift—but with each he could have a real conversation, say whatever was on his mind without having to hold back. Both of them, in turn, responded honestly and candidly, not worried about being embarrassed or shouted out.
Just after Tommy left the kitchen, Lorraine brought him his first beer. By then, some of the early girls were already ordering their dinners. Jimmy stayed late. Grandma did too. Bill knew he was going to run behind all through clean-up. Then, as luck would have it, they had late customers. It was change-the-grease night, so of course the late customers came while Bill was changing the grease.
Bill fed both Victoria and Lorraine Supers. He kept an eye out while they sat in the hall and ate, cleaning up as they did so. He didn’t finish the grease till after midnight, He noted Jim hanging around the knife sheath while the dishwashers were waiting for their transport. This wasn’t extraordinary, but Bill noted it.
“Could sure use a beer,” Jim said.
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