Tommy had come into the kitchen to see that they were ready, but he stood and watched Bill work. Mr. Jim and Mary watched too although they watched Tommy more than Bill. Bill, they knew, was quite adept at it now.
Bill easily cut away the slices of fat using Mr. Jim’s long slicing knife. That knife was sharper than a straight razor and Bill had learned to cut straight and true with it. The outside trimmed around, he wiped clean the slicer and set it down gently. Then he took up the boning knife and cut out the fat. Tommy watched him remove it, no meat attached whatsoever.
“See,” Mr. Jim called from the back. “The boy’s all ready. He’s as good as me.”
Tommy didn’t say anything. He turned, went to the coffee urns, took himself a cup of coffee and left the kitchen. Bill heard Mr. Jim mutter something under his breath and knew it was about Tommy. He knew it wasn’t good. However, Mr. Jim had cautioned both him and Henry Lee that as far as managers went, Tommy was a good one. He continually reminded them that they could be stuck with Drenovis all the time. He warned there were many worse than Drenovis too.
Everything set and ready on Bill’s end, sure they had enough fries, fried fish and onion rings, Bill left the line and went downstairs to the meat room. Henry Lee had laid out the meat trays, four of them in total. Bill stacked two and hoisted them on his shoulder. Every time he hoisted trays on his shoulder he was mindful of how terrible he was as a bus boy, of how he’d spilled the soup on a customer that time, his first night working, when the customer’d been abusive toward him and the waitress, Eleanor. He’d stuck up for Eleanor and almost gotten fired on his first night’s work. Eleanor had taken to him, went sweet on him, showed him how easy it was to bed a waitress. Eleanor had been his first in the line of waitresses and other females with whom he cheated.
He went back downstairs to get the other two trays. Henry Lee could have taken them, but he wanted to smoke a joint and get a drink of whiskey. This time Mary followed behind him. She went with him into the meat room and was quick to go into the deep freeze to get high. Henry Lee went in with her.
“Boy got your head messed up don’t he?”
“It’s them damn drugs. But they sure felt good at the time. That’s not all that felt good.”
“Yeah, well tell it to the judge.”
They smoked their joint all the way down till it was scorching the freezer mitts then came back out into the meat room. Bill was waiting for his turn and quickly went inside alone. He didn’t take long and when they’d all had a drink of bourbon and straightened themselves up, Bill hoisted the last two meat trays up on his shoulder and they went up for the lunch service.
“What the hell wrong with you?” Bill heard Mr. Jim ask Mary when she was back on her station and beside him. “Goddamn drugs,” he said. “You know how many people they done killed? You got kids you got to look after, girl. Get your goddamn head right.”
When Bill heard Mr. Jim start in on Mary, he’d stood by the deep fryers and listened to what he said. Through one of the spaces, he could see her and he could see she was wasted, truly wasted. She had the faraway eyes, what he called sour cream eyes because they were like little marbles in pools of white mucous-like goop. The Black Beauty could help fix that, he thought.
