Bill dreamed. Of late he was not sleeping enough to dream heavily, but Marie had started something off and this night he was home relatively early and would get about three and a half hours uninterrupted sleep. That was a lot.
Vengeance. He did not think about getting vengeance with the undercover cop who led the conversation that aired at his trial. He was positive he was entrapped because that same cop he was entrapped by tried to sell him weed about six weeks after the day he’d gotten busted at the riots, which weren’t riots when he was busted, only demonstrations. Undercover FBI and undercover cops started the riots.
Still, no thoughts of vengeance. The only real thoughts were about conspiracy and conspiracy theory—how most anyone who had not actually experienced conspiracy at work had real trouble believing in conspiracy and conspiracy theory.
Marie was more complicated than he’d imagined. Inside what he’d thought was a senseless head were real feelings, feelings of curiosity and wonder which led to desires. He imagined she really did desire trying a white man, that somehow this was important to her in her life. Then there was vengeance. If what she’d said in the car was accurate, Marie was into getting even with her husband. That would explain Henry Lee and any others if there were any. Bill made up his mind to ask her about it.
Vengeance. He dreamed about Jenny, Pam’s cousin. Pam was the girl he’d lived with for more than a year until he’d left her suddenly—one of his first times bolting. Jenny had a coat-hanger abortion on the day he and Pam were having a party. The timing just worked out that way because he and Pam didn’t know about the abortion. Only Nina, Pam’s and Jenny’s other cousin, and Jenny’s boyfriend, Peter, knew. Apparently they drove a long distance to get there, and then a long distance back.
Jenny was on her feet at the party for awhile, but she got dizzy and swooned and so they laid her down in the bedroom where she started to bleed and eventually had to be taken to the hospital. But not before Peter, in his crazy head, came on to Pam in the kitchen while she was getting stuff to bring out to serve since the party was getting into full swing. He tried kissing her and feeling her up, was actually pretty relentless about it until Bill walked into the kitchen to help Pam. Caught in the act, Peter walked back out to the living room.
After Jenny recovered and heard about what Peter had done with Pam, she cornered Bill one afternoon while Pam was at work and Peter was in class. She’d gone over by surprise, told Bill she didn’t know if he was gonna be home or not but wanted to give it a try. She told Bill it was for vengeance and he had to do it, that it had nothing to do with Pam and everything to do with Peter.
“Believe me, Pam will understand completely,” Jenny said.
Bill didn’t understand but he got the message when Jenny leaned down and opened his fly.
“No pleasure for me,” Jenny said. “I’m gonna do nasty things with you, things maybe you never even thought of, then I’m not washing up, and tonight, after Peter does what I tell him to, I’m telling him exactly what I made you do by threatening to tell Pam you came on to me. For the rest of his life Peter’s going to know he got your leftovers and you’ve been inside every orifice I have, and I’m going to know that that shithead paid for what he did to me. And if he doesn’t stay with me, good riddance to bad rubbish.”
Bill woke with a start. His alarm had not gone off yet and of course early as it was, it was still dark outside. He took his fiancé up in his arms and made desperate love to her with a deep fear inside him.
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Back in his car and on their way, Bill breathed easy for the first time. He had never seen this policeman before and he was thankful the cop didn’t phone in to have him looked up. He wasn’t supposed to be drinking at all on his probation. He’d admitted to having a few beers, not a smart move, he thought, but better than getting busted for lying on top of everything else.
Everything else. Bill didn’t think about it much at the time, but being in the same car late at night with a black woman could have gotten him in deep shit. Worse, it could have gotten Marie in deeper shit. The one thing they both had going for them was that they worked at Steakhouse East. Otherwise…
“Good thing we work there,” Marie said when they were a distance away. “You could have been beaten senseless. I could have been raped then killed. They could have arrested you for it, said you were a bigot and a hater. They could have made it stick with you having a record.”
“Assault and battery.”
“I’m telling you, you don’t know how lucky we were. This ain’t no liberal place except by the university. They could have just beaten the shit out of both of us cause we’re an interracial couple, even though they don’t know we’re not a couple.”
“Next time don’t get so messed up.”
“How else could I get you alone in the car?”
Marie reached over the gear shift and rubbed Bill’s thigh. She smiled at him and lifted one leg so her legs were apart and angled. She opened her coat and slowly lifted the dress she’d worn to work.
“You don’t give up, do you?”
“Hey, I know a good piece of meat when I see one.”
“What a thing to say!”
“I never had a white guy before. I want to try one before I die.”
“Marie…”
“That’s about the most honest I can be. What else you want me to say?”
“Don’t say anything. Put your dress down, bundle up and I’m dropping you off.” They came to a light and stopped momentarily. Bill looked at Marie. “Just what do you think you’re gonna get with a white guy?”
“How the hell should I know. What did you get with a black woman? With the black women you been with?”
“Different outer colors with the same insides. That’s it.”
The light changed and he started driving again. Marie began telling Bill where to turn and when they were getting close. She bundled up her coat and withdrew into herself. Except for directions, she didn’t speak again until they were parked in front of her house.
“I’m still gonna take my turn if I can have it. That’s on you.”
“Why?” Bill looked directly into Marie’s eyes as she faced him.
“Because I’m curious. Because I’m young and attracted to you. Because like Henry Lee, my old man is hitting anything that moves, specially things ten years younger than me, and I’m only twenty-nine. Because in my whole life I might never get a chance to be with a white guy again and I want to. Me. I want to. I’m entitled to what I want if it don’t hurt nothing or it just hurts me.”
Bill didn’t know what to say, so he didn’t say anything. As they sat there, the door to her house opened. It was a half double. Bill could see a man standing there in the light from inside the house.
“I got to go. See you tomorrow. Thanks for the ride.”
“Take it easy,” Bill said.
“You be careful,” Marie said. “This neighborhood ain’t safe for you.”
Bill watched until Marie was safely inside the house and the door was closed before he drove off. He drove straight home, showered, slipped into bed next to his wife-to-be. For her part, she sensed him there and snuggled up against him.
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Our real enemy is not external and our greatest problem is not climate change. Climate change is at best an issue and perhaps a concern. Iran, North Korea, Russia and China are foes, even enemies. But they are not the real danger facing the United States. Even Radical Islamic Terrorism, a danger for sure, isn’t the real danger. The real danger facing us comes from within. It is the willful attempt at destroying a presidency, an attempted coup d’état in the premier free country of the world.
It seems unbelievable, unreal, way out there. An overthrow of our government? To even say it sounds silly, even fantastical. However, all the elements are in place and at play. The government is divided. The country is divided. The media are biased, even controlled. Protests and protesters are paid by anarchists like George Soros and his cronies, and their true goals are couched by their labeling anyone who opposes them as racist.
Division, media control and paid opposition make the perfect storm for toppling not just this presidency, but any presidency.
There’s more. The deep state, as they call it, is actively anti-Trump and remains powerful because Congress is still dilly-dallying in approving Trump nominees. The deep state leaks false stories to the biased media who run with them, true or not. The politically correct, corrupt politicians, more accurately those who are paid off by big money, holding to the whims of their benefactors’ purse strings, dance to the rhythm of the false stories. These politicians are corrupt and even immoral in many instances, no better than the old Communist Politburo we used to abhor and chastise through the Cold War in the fifties and sixties. In fact they are very much the same as them. Some of these politicians, you know who they are, are driven by personal animus toward the man who is president, by simple hatred for him, and they are willing to put their personal feelings ahead of national interest. That is narcissism, even hubris, the very same qualities for which they attack the President.
Worst of all, and a common thread across the camps of those who would undo the presidency, is a willingness to re-write history. In their misguided political correctness they are willing to tear down the statues of our founders and heroes and replace them with icons of socialists we once reviled. Revisionist history alone threatens the presidency, the Constitution and our very existence as a nation.
Yes, our real enemy is within. The first thing a dictator does when in the midst of a coup is seize the media and suppress it completely until the coup is a fait accompli and the new dictator controls them. Here, now, for the most part, our media are already no better than Pravda was. They are biased, controlled and paid for by political foes. They spew pure liberal propaganda spun by presenting nearly incessant anti-Trump news, real or not. Facts and fact-checking are things of the past, replaced by gossip, purposefully incorrect leaks and outright fabrications. Thus the media are, in and of themselves, the greatest of the dangers within.
It’s simply the turnaround at work. See The Turnaround. So the real danger within is our overall erosion from within. Its origins, as stated many times here, emanate from human selfishness and greed. That selfishness and greed have caused our leaders to dumb-down education and brainwash the upcoming generations that have no context for the realities of socialist dictatorships, for their evils and failures. With no context they are easily cajoled into thinking those systems are preferable to our freedom and capitalism and easily led into any other thing the leftists would have them believe.
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Bill and Marie went down to change together. They had done this many, many times and Marie always took her civvies into the ladies room to change there. Bill used the open store room since it was easier and faster and no one was around this late at night. In the morning he, Bea and Mary uninhibitedly changed together in the hall.
Marie really was messed up. Before she went to change, she went into the meat room and took another long gulp of bourbon. Bill followed her in and took a small sip, but not much. He was driving and he wanted to be mostly straight.
After she drank and Bill had tucked the bottle away, she hopped up on the counter where Mary always sat, crossed her feet at the ankles and swung them the way Mary did.
“What you doing?”
“Pretend I’m Mary.”
“Get out of here. And let’s get out of here.”
“Aw, boo-hoo.” Marie jumped off the counter and almost fell, actually did fall into Bill’s arms. He had to catch her to stop her from falling. She kissed him and pressed herself to him, but he led her by the hand back into the hall where Marie simply stood and stripped without going into the ladies room. Naked on the bottom, bra on the top, she stood before Bill who, because he couldn’t help himself, bent over and kissed her once, there, just a quick fun kiss. Then he slapped her bare ass and told her to get dressed. She turned around and told him to kiss her ass first, which Bill did, one cheek then the other. Then he slapped her again and told her move along.
He drove carefully, maybe too carefully, because they were only a few blocks from the restaurant when Bill was pulled over. For the life of him, he couldn’t tell what he’d done wrong and he was scared, but he felt lucky because he was not drunk and he wasn’t carrying any drugs at all. Everything he had he’d left in his locker at work.
“License and registration.”
Bill handed them to the officer silently praying first that Marie wouldn’t say anything and second that he wouldn’t get busted for breaking probation by not going straight home. In the first month they’d watched him all the time. In the second month it was sometimes. Now it was hit and miss, meaning sometimes they were there, sometimes not, mostly not, and even if they were they didn’t generally hassle him though sometimes they followed him at least until he hit the city limits. This time he hadn’t seen them and he had turned out of the parking lot in the opposite direction since Marie didn’t live in downtown Columbus.
“Where you headed?”
“Just dropping her off and then heading home. I do something wrong?”
“Checking you out.”
Marie bent over Bill so she could see the policeman’s face. “Good evening officer.”
“Evening ma’am.”
“It’s my fault he’s going this way. I had too much to drink and didn’t want to drive home. We work together.”
“You have some ID, ma’am?”
Marie reached in her purse and handed her ID to Bill who handed it to the officer.
“Where’d you leave your car?”
“At work.”
“What you been drinking?”
“Bourbon and beer. I don’t know what got into me.”
“Anyone at home waiting for you?”
“My husband.”
“You been drinking?” the officer asked Bill.
“A couple of beers over the last few hours.”
“Wanna walk a straight line for me?”
“Want me to?”
“Please.”
Bill stepped out of his car. The officer went back to his cruiser and asked Bill to walk over. He did. When he got there, the officer handed him both IDs.
“Make sure you take her straight home then head home yourself.”
“I will, sir.”
“And you be careful.”
“Yes sir. Good night officer.”
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Especially To My Family, Friends, Readers and Followers, and to everyone, a most wonderful and joyous Thanksgiving and best wishes for a safe, healthy and happy holiday season.
Peter
Second verse, same as the first. The beer was waiting for him, unopened, tucked in on the line on the steam table’s upper shelf. He used a knife to flip open the beer bottle and walked over to Marie so she could get some. He was ever conscious of Jim watching him. He could sense Jim kind of licking his lips, as it were, over that beer. While Marie sipped at it, he reached up the back of her dress and helped himself to some more of her. He was clueless as to why he did this. He hadn’t planned it, hadn’t desired it, hadn’t even thought about it other than to not do it. Yet here it was, here he was, just doing what he knew he should stay away from doing.
Marie didn’t stop him, didn’t let on to anyone who might have come into the kitchen and glimpsed their way that anything was happening. She stood close to her counter with the beer so Bill’s hand and arm were as hidden as could be. He could tell she was getting aroused; he knew she was cause he was. She inched close to him as she could get and whispered “Don’t stop.” But Bill had to stop. He had to do that second fryer and finish up his work. More important, they were in the kitchen.
So he went back to work. Marie told him, while he was down on his knees draining that second fryer, that she was going down to pee. This meant he should watch her station. But they were pretty much through with orders. Victoria had brought him another beer and told him no one else had come in. It was getting on toward eleven-thirty. Most likely they had seen all the business they would for the night.
He was still on his knees when Marie returned. She stopped by him and sipped from his beer, told him she’d stopped in the meat room and taken some more bourbon.
“I am so messed up,” she said. “Don’t know how I’m gonna drive home.”
She was standing over him, kind of, but not quite. As she admitted how messed up she was, she spread her legs for Bill to look up them. He saw she had taken off her panties and was showing him what she had.
“You like?”
“What should I say?”
“Say you like.”
“I like.”
“Gonna drive me home?”
“I’m not gonna let you drive if you’re too messed up.”
“I’m too messed up.”
“What about your car?”
“I’ll get a ride here tomorrow.”
“Maybe Tommy drop you off.”
“Get out of here. I ain’t riding with him.”
“Okay. But all I’m doing is dropping you off. I’m tired and I need to get some sleep tonight.”
“No problem.” Marie laughed.
“What you laughing at?”
“Just a crazy thought.”
Marie took another sip of the beer, put the bottle down and passed through to her station. Bill kept at draining that second fryer and when he was done, he did the same as with the first, got water and poured it through to clean it out. Then he wiped down the fryer with an already used kitchen towel.
After he’d double-checked everything, he lit that second fryer and watched the gas jets fire up. He wanted to make sure the grease was melted and was set for the morning before he went home.
Once he saw it starting to melt, he dragged the stock pot to the end of the line. There, he picked it up and carried it outside. Outside, he set it down by the grease drum. He took the metal cover from the drum and then very carefully hoisted the stock pot up so he could dump the hot oil into it. That done, he covered the drum and headed back inside with the last pot from him for Andy to wash.
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Bill found the orders tucked underneath the bell. One was for three hamburgers medium-rare. The other was for two Supers, one rare and the other well done. That was a couple, he thought. They probably disagreed on lots of stuff. He laughed to himself, took a moment to grease the grills with oil from the fryer he had not cleaned yet. He did this because the grills had been idle for awhile and they were very hot. He didn’t want anything to stick, especially the hamburger meat.
The meat sizzled loudly when he put it on the grills. The two Supers he placed carefully and rotated quickly to diamond-mark them. The rare one, once marked, he flipped and pulled to the front of the drawer so it was not under the heat. The other he left to cook. Next he put the burgers on. These he left awhile so they could sear on the down side and cook some on the top side.
Meanwhile he fetched two orders of vegetables and heated them in a sauté pan he placed on the charcoal broiler, one side of which he kept lit until the end. He also fetched two baked potatoes.
By the time the sides were plated before him, the steaks were ready. He flipped the burgers, plated the steaks, speared the rare one with a red rare-sticker arrow from his supply. He tucked the tongs under his elbow, set the plates up under the warmer lights, tapped the bell and headed down the line for French fries. He poured and dropped three orders of fries, reached into the cooler for three set-ups. They kept a tray of set-ups on the ready: lettuce slice, tomato slice, two pickle chips. All he had to do was get them and set them on the plate. Next were the buns, which he toasted under the broiler. They only took a few seconds. He flipped the burgers another time, went down the line and picked up the fries. When he saw they could go another minute or two, he dropped the basket back down, went back to the broiler, plated the burgers.
Victoria came in for the steaks. Bill watched her take them with no caps, both in one hand. She went back out the door, but not before Bill told her to come right back for the burgers.
He was spilling the fries onto the plates when she returned. As he set up the burgers for her to take, he asked her to bring him another beer. Only then did he reach under the steam table to the shelf and take up the beer that was there. He finished it quickly, then opened the case of cubed grease, cut open the plastic, hoisted the case and spilled out the cube on top of the empty fryer’s gas jets. For that fryer, he double-checked. He made sure the gas was off and had been off. He made sure it was clean. He made sure the drain was shut so nothing could spill out. Only then did he retrieve the small pot, take out the towel on which it sat, replace the towel with a clean one folded to fit the space. Then with the utmost care, he lit the fryer’s pilot light, turned on the gas and watched as the gas jets fired up.
“Come on Marie.” He motioned with a head gesture for her to go out with him.
Outside was chilly. If he’d had to guess, it was pretty near the low forties, high thirties. He lit the joint before they stepped out the door, but they didn’t smoke until they were outside and around behind the building, which was not far from the back door. As they smoked, he reached up Marie’s dress. She shifted how she stood so he could help himself to whatever he wanted. Unshyly and completely without inhibition, she helped herself to some of him too.
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Bill’s instinct was to tell Jim to step away from the knife sheath. His gut was screaming at him to say something and somewhere inside his brain he knew that he should listen to his gut. Nevertheless, the kitchen door opened and Victoria came in carrying a beer for him. She handed him the beer and took the plate for Bebe. Bill watched Victoria walk out of the kitchen, checked out her ass, then he noted Jim staring at that beer.
He went back to work on his knees on the rubber mats. Pot by pot, over and over, he drained the grease, poured it from the small pot to the big stock pot until the fryer was empty. Then he washed out that fryer by taking pots of water and running it through, emptying the water pot by pot into the big stock pot. The water still bubbled and popped since the grease was hot.
When he was satisfied it was clean, he left the fryer to drain whatever water was left inside into the small pot. It was just drips now and so he was not concerned about an overflow. He took a good swig of the beer then hid the bottle on the steam table’s underneath shelf, stood up, lit a cigarette, told Marie he was going downstairs to get a cube of grease.
Marie had already finished her clean up and she was sitting on Bea’s stool. She was smoking a cigarette, which she did not often do, and she was drinking coffee. When she saw Bill head out the door and knew he was on his way downstairs, she got up and followed after him. She caught up with him, as she knew she would, in the storeroom. He was about to hoist a cube of the solid grease onto his shoulder.
“What’s up?” said Bill, seeing her.
“I was wondering if you got any weed. And maybe a good stiff drink.”
“I can’t stay down here too long.”
“I know.”
“And I don’t trust that one dishwasher. I’d fire him, but he needs the job.”
Bill led Marie into the meat room, to the bourbon drawer. He took the bottle from where it was hidden under a stack of kitchen towels, handed it to her, watched her as she twisted the cap open and wrapped her lips around the bottle. He could not help but note her skinny, shapely fingers as they grasped the bottle. His eyes were also drawn to her lips surrounding the neck of the bottle and how she sipped, how it passed down her throat as she swallowed. He was tired, but not that tired, and a faint desire stirred in him which he quickly tossed aside.
“I can’t go into the deep freeze. But here’s a joint.”
“We could go out behind the building. Tommy won’t care even if he catches us.”
“He’ll care. He just won’t say nothing.”
“So…”
“So what?”
Marie stepped close up to Bill and kissed him. “So let’s go get high.”
“I have to finish the grease.”
“Why you stay away from me? Henry Lee said he don’t mind. It’s all good fun.”
Bill didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. Literally, he was saved by the bell since they both heard the bell being rung from upstairs meaning there was an order.
“We got to go.” He took the bottle back from Marie, grabbed a quick sip then capped it and replaced it in the drawer. As he was following her out, he copped a feel of her ass. He couldn’t say why he did it, just impulsively. Marie, for her part, stopped and bent slightly over so he could get a good feel.
“Go underneath, baby,” she said.
“I got an order.”
Bill stopped in the storeroom on his way up and carted up the first box of grease.
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The night lumbered on. The rush came and went, and like all nights, when it was their time, Grandma and Jimmy changed to their civvies and quietly went out the back door and home. It was another change-the-grease night, so at eleven, after he’d fed the help, all but Bebe, Bill broke down the steam table, wrapped the leftovers, readied them for the walk-in and scrubbed down the line. That done, he went and took himself a coffee.
Marie was already pretty much done. She was sitting on Bea’s stool reading a book.
“Prime rib any good?” she asked.
“Same as always. You want some?”
“Wanna share?”
Bill did not say anything. He walked to the knife sheath and drew out the slicer. Then he walked to the back and set the rib on a cutting board on Mary’s counter. He cut a thick slice, trimmed the fat from the tail, separated the little tail from the main piece of beef and ate it. Then he cut the beef in half, cut one half into eat-size cubes and put them on a plate. He did the same with the other piece of meat and put those cubes on a second plate. The first plate he brought over to Marie. The second he covered and set up under the warmer lights.
Soon after he started on the first fryer, Victoria came in. She was closing girl this night. She ordered Bebe’s dinner. Bill told her to take the plate out to the hall and after he’d emptied the draining pot into the big stock pot, he stood from on his knees and walked to the doorway past which Victoria stood eating the cut-up prime rib.
“I don’t have to you-know-what for this do I?” She shook her butt playfully.
“Only if you want to.”
“I might after what I heard from Lexi.”
“Was I good?”
“She gave you an A+.”
“Is that good?”
“Enough to pique my interest.”
“Well, I feel so relieved.”
“She wasn’t one to be shy about it.”
“So much for discretion.”
“She was pleased as pleased could be. Not gloating or bragging or anything like that. She was just plain happy.”
“She has a really healthy attitude toward sex. Like the women’s libbers over at the University.”
“Yeah. But she ain’t free and easy. She turned Drenovis down. And she doesn’t use her sex to get tips.”
“I respect that.”
“Me too.” Victoria was finished eating. Bill took the plate from her and led the way back into the kitchen. He handed the plate to Paul and watched Victoria head out the door to the front dining room. Then he went to the broiler, fetched a steak for Bebe from the meat cooler and threw it on the grill.
From the corner of his eye he could see Jim watching him. The dish machine was idle now. Having eaten their dinners and finished their break, Paul, Jim and Mickey stood around hanging out. Andy was back to the sink. He was still washing pots.
Bill flipped Bebe’s Super and moved it to a fresh spot on the grill. Then he plated a baked potato, slit it and scooped some butter into the slit. He had to go to the back to get vegetables, which he did, spooning them from the steam table pot he had stored back there into a side dish he carried with him. When he returned to the line, Jim was standing by the knife sheath.
“You want something?” Bill asked. He stepped to the broiler, took up his tongs, plated the steak. He noted that the butter inside the potato slit was melted and sat there in a little puddle that looked picture-perfect. Then he looked to Jim.
“Nah. I don’t want nothing from you.”
Bill saw Jim was studying the knives in the knife sheath. It seemed he was preoccupied with them of late and while there was nothing Bill could put his finger on, it played on his mind. He set the plate up under the warmer lights and tapped the bell for Victoria.
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Marie sat on the lettuce cases. Most of the lettuce had been used already so while sometimes the stack was higher than the milk cases, this time they were about even. She sat with her legs open, purposefully, and she rocked her knees, not nervously, but by habit.
Bill could not help but seeing up there. Having consumed most of his coffee, he dumped the espresso into his coffee mug and put the espresso cup down on a case next to him. He leaned back against the wall and looked out toward the screen door. It was open and a nice late-November chill seeped in.
“Me ’n Henry Lee almost got caught by Drenovis today.”
“I know. Mary woke me up. I was sleeping in the party room.”
“He’s a sneaky bastard, and a nasty one too.”
“I ain’t arguing with that.”
“He won’t be back tonight, though.” Marie winked at Bill and spread her legs wider.
“No, he won’t.”
“Well then, we can do what we do.”
Bill smiled. “We’re gonna put up the dinner, finish out the orders, clean up and go home.”
“Whatever you say, boss. But I got some great ideas.”
“I’ll bet you do.”
“Wanna hear them?”
Before Bill could respond, they both heard a loud shouting in the kitchen. Bill jumped up and went in. Mickey and Jim were at it, fighting over who was doing what spot on the machine. They had had this fight before. Unloading the dishes that just came from the machine was one job and delivering the stacked dishes was another. Jim liked unloading even though the dishes were hot and could scald your hands. Mickey liked that too because the stacks of dishes were heavy and had to be carried to the plate warmers. Carrying them meant they could drop and dropping dishes could lead to losing your job.
Jimmy was standing there looking at them. Grandma didn’t even come around from the back stoves. Seeing Bill come into the kitchen they went about their work. Both Jim and Mickey stopped the loud talk, but Mickey could be heard muttering in his deep voice calling Jim a host of things of which crazy and stupid were the nicest. Jim, for his part, had headed for the knife sheath, but seeing Bill come in he stopped in his tracks and did a right turn which took him toward the front of the dish machine past which was the pot washer sink where Andy stood minding his own business. Paul, the special needs kid who lived in a group home, was guffawing, half laughing, saying “You guys” over and over to himself. He was visibly upset and started pacing in circles.
“Knock it off,” Bill barked decisively. He walked toward the dish machine, toward where they all were. “It’s okay, Paul,” he said quietly. Then, “Cut the muttering, Mickey. I don’t want to hear another word. And you, he said to Jim, “you keep that temper in check. I don’t want to see you fly off the handle again. You got it?”
“Think you’re something, huh? You ain’t nothing but a young squirt.”
Bill stepped right up to Jim, toe to toe. “Listen here, I’m your boss, like it or not. You talk back to me again, that’ll be the minute I fire you. And if you think I’m kidding, say another damn word.”
Jim sized Bill up. They stood pretty much face to face, about the same height. Jim was more mealy, older and grey-haired. He was heavier set, maybe even stronger. But Bill, thinner and more agile at his young age, even tired as he was and still a little high, stood tougher-looking.
Jim lingered a moment, eyeballing Bill. Bill eyeballed him back, even stepped a bit closer so they were almost touching noses. Jim finally backed down by retreating a couple of steps then turning and walking away.
“I told you guys,” Paul said. “I told you, I told you, I told you.”
“Settle who’s working where or I will,” said Bill. Then he walked to the end of the line where the knife sheath was and stood there.
“Ooh, you make so hot,” Marie said as she stepped past him and through the line to her station.
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