Jimmy and Bill had to hustle all night long. No rest for the wicked.
Being as busy as they were meant not even time to get off the line to pee, and seeing how busy they were Tommy asked Henry Lee to hang around, which of course he did. It was not what he wanted, but there was no choice. In such matters there was never a choice. Bill would learn that the working cook stayed until his replacement came in, and if there were no replacement, if someone didn’t show up, then that cook stayed and finished out the shift, even the day, whatever the case was.
The first dinner orders started coming in even before Bea and Mary had gone home. By five-thirty the board was full.
Before an expediter was working, waitresses speared their dupes on a spindle and rang the bell if no one were there. Jimmy or Bill, whoever could get to them, pulled them from the spindle and called out the order then slid the dupe on the slide board, a long clipboard-like thing attached on the inside of the server shelf. From there each cook could read what he had to do and take care of it. A good, polished team worked together seamlessly, each member knowing what the other member was doing, anticipating what needed to be done and where help was needed.
Jimmy and Bill, having had months working together, both extremely adept at their jobs, were a great team. Bill could walk behind Jimmy and drop fries when all the steaks on his Garland were in order and he had a moment to leave them without any looking after. Bill could also read the dupes and see what Jimmy needed from the reach-in boxes, things like onion rings, pickerel and shrimp. For his part, Jimmy would set the plates for Bill and dish up the side dishes just by reading the dupes and knowing where Bill was at. They were a dance team and a good one.
Henry Lee, hanging out to see if they needed any help, stayed downstairs and cut meat for as long as he could. This meant, this night, he could stay downstairs almost the whole while. Bill and Jimmy worked as if they were on roller skates. Tommy began expediting before seven, which was unusual. He worked straight through until Lillian started at eight. Jimmy and Bill danced together—Fred and Ginger.
About nine, not having been called up onto the line, Henry Lee came up in his civvies. Standing in the doorway, he asked Bill to ask one of the waitresses to bring him a beer and he told Bill he wanted a super medium-rare. Bill immediately threw one on the Garland and rotated one off for him, which he plated. He quickly handed the plate to Henry Lee who went down the line and helped himself to a big order of fries.
Sitting in the hall on the metal milk cases which he placed so he could watch Bill and Jimmy work, Henry Lee ate his dinner. Ordinarily he would have eaten in the meat room, but he did not want to go back downstairs again. He’d put everything to sleep down there.
“How you listen to that?” he asked Bill from where he sat. He was referring to Lillian’s raspy voice, her continual “ordering, ordering, ordering.”
Bill laughed. “She never wants to pick up,” he said.
Lorraine was the one who brought the beer for Henry Lee. She walked around the line and out the door to hand it to him. Then she stopped a moment to catch a bit of the cold night air that filtered in through the screen door from the opened back door.
“God that feels good,” she said. “Like I died and went to heaven.” Then, after just a brief moment, she kind of sighed, said, “No rest for the wicked,” and headed back to work.
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“Happy?” Mary said.
“Ecstatic.”
Hands still dry and clean, Bill pulled Mary to him and kissed her full on her lips. Mary pushed at Bill but he held her until she kissed back and let herself cling to him. As they kissed he reached between them and slid his hand up her legs under her dress.
They were standing in the back toward the end of Mary’s prep station where the long section of counter space was. Bea was sitting on her stool resting. Like everyone, she’d had a tough day and was dog tired. From where she sat she could see them kissing but with some line equipment in her sight line she couldn’t see where Bill’s hand had wandered. Bea could feel herself getting roused and unconsciously licked her lips. Under the newspaper on her lap, she let her hand gently settle on her so she could kind of move to it as she watched them. Wasn’t too long ago all three of them had enjoyed each other. Wasn’t too long ago they had all and enjoyed each other.
Marie’s coming into the kitchen disturbed what was going on. She had her arms full and wasn’t quiet about coming up the stairs or into the kitchen. Seeing her, Bea cleared her throat loudly, but Bill and Mary had already started separating and were apart by the time Marie could see them.
Bill and Mary spent a solid hour doing the breading. Pickerel, fried shrimp, onion rings: trays and trays of them and then more trays and trays of them. As each tray was finished, Bill carried it down to the deep freeze. There was one separate rack set up there for these things, and he set them in order on the rack so they were rotated, oldest highest up. He did not tarry or get distracted. Having set the tray on the rack, he slammed the freezer door shut and went on back upstairs.
Once, he and Marie, who was getting extra supplies for her station, ran into each other simply by the way it worked out. Marie passed a comment about knowing Bill was kissing Mary. Bill took a moment and kissed her too, then he took a good feel of her tiny breasts. Marie kind of cooed.
“I’ll kiss them later,” he said.
“I won’t stop you,” said Marie.
She went her way. He went his.
Bea and Mary finished up. Bill helped her break down the breading station they had set up. The dish machine was in full swing now as he carried over the pans they had used. Andy was happy for the work because he was just standing there. Paulie racked dishes, rinsed them with the water spray then fed the racks into the machine. Jim and Mickey pulled the racks and sorted the dishes. Mickey, always to his dismay, had the chore of filling the plate warmers.
Bill hustled in his routine. He emptied the convection oven, put the baked potatoes into a steam table insert. He covered them with foil and carried the insert over to the steam table. Then he helped Mary carry over everything she had not yet carried: fresh pots of au jus and Bordelaise sauce, a pot of vegetables and finally the prime rib. She made sure to tell Bill the ovens were empty. After Bill had turned that one whole rib into complete ash, she always made sure to do this now.
Grandma and Jimmy in, before she and Bea left and before any dinner rush started, Mary and Bill went down into the meat room to smoke a joint in the deep freeze and drink some bourbon. After getting high, while they drank, Mary and Henry Lee discussed the meats and specials situation for the next two days. All signs pointed to new volume records, new gross sales records and long, hard days of work.
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Tommy expedited the entire lunch, start to finish. Henry Lee and Bill could have used an extra pair of hands on the line, but Bill had gotten fast and efficient, so much so that Tommy had put him in for another raise and Mr. Bowman, not begrudgingly, had quickly given it to him. It was certainly cheaper to pay Bill more money than to have to hire another cook.
Knowing they were going to be really busy, Bill made sure they not only had everything but had extra everything from French fries to setups. He sliced some of the steamship round ahead, but not much, and he made sure everything was readily accessible to him so that he did not have to take extra steps. For his part, Henry Lee slid down when he had to, to help Bill finish certain plates. If Bill had an order for several roast beef dinners, Henry Lee would work around him meaning that he would set up his own burger plates and even step behind Bill to get French fries.
Bill kept up, and more often than not he went ahead of Tommy. If there were two pickerel orders, he might pull out three and hold one in a basket. When there was a lull from things on his station, he helped Henry Lee work ahead. Falling behind at any given time meant staying behind, staying behind was always uncomfortable, not to mention not good for the business.
Mary kept track of everything. At regular intervals she came around on the line and checked to see what needed replenishing. She did not want Henry Lee or Bill to have to wait for anything, and sometimes she brought things before they needed replenishing to make sure nothing ran out.
Bea watched from her station. She was busy too. While the waitresses could take their own side salads, she worked the shrimp salads they had as a special today and made sure everything was there for the waitresses to take. As always, she kept her eyes on what the waitresses did knowing that at any given time a waitress might give away the store to make a tip.
Norma, Victoria, Lexi and one of Drenovis’ new girls were working. The new girl’s name was Arlene. She was another young one, a redhead, maybe about twenty-five. She’d only been working a few weeks and had never done a night shift. Bill had asked her about that. She said she only wanted to work part-time, so they’d given her lunches. Henry Lee, in his own crude way, had asked her how she liked the back seat of Drenovis’ Riviera. She turned her back on Henry Lee and Henry Lee had laughed a loud guffaw for everyone to hear. Bill had watched her turn red and kind of slither out of the kitchen.
After lunch, after they’d eaten, Mary, Bea, Henry Lee and Bill worked straight through the afternoon. Bea made sure Marie had everything she needed for the evening meal and then some. Bill and Henry Lee cut meat, a lot of meat such that they had enough for both stores and were well on their way into the next two days’ supply. The Buckeyes being home and being on top of the Big Ten conference were clear notices that business would be booming.
About four o’clock Mary and Bill settled in to do some breading. Marie was already in and had gone downstairs to change.
“Hope you ain’t taken none of that silly stuff,” Mary said. She had set everything up while Bill was still down cutting meat. She had called him up when she was ready to start the breading so they could both work at it and get it done quickly.
Before he started any work, he reached up under Mary’s kitchen dress and helped himself to a generous feel of her.
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They were missionary position. Bill had learned there were many ways to make Lorraine explode with pleasure. Missionary style was more work than some, but when she came this way it was stronger, deeper, and she could have multiple orgasms. If Mary had multiple orgasms, it almost always happened when he was using his tongue and kept on after the first one. Personally, he liked it when Mary’s knees were up and he was settled on top of her. He liked it when she purred in his ear, when he could kiss on her face wherever he wanted, however he wanted.
He liked it when Lorraine’s knees were up too. They had talked about it, about the ways to please each other, and they had decided there were many ways to do this. One time she had asked him what he liked most. That was the only time he could remember being somewhat shy with her and when he’d told her what he wanted, she blushed and said for sure he could have it.
“So tell me,” Lorraine said when they were getting dressed. “Tell me what you feel for me.”
“Ah, shit,” said Bill.
“What?”
“When we get to your house.”
“When we get to my house we have to be quiet to not wake the girls. You’re gonna sleep on the sofa and I’m going to bed. Then I’m going to wake you at five-thirty, wake them at six-thirty, and after all of you are gone, I’m going back to sleep and dream of how good you make me come.”
“That sounds awesome.”
“What would happen if she found out?”
“My fiancé?”
“No, mine.”
They were putting on their coats now and making sure they’d left the apartment clean and neat.
“I’d probably be a free man. She’d probably be a lot better off.”
“You really think that?”
“You don’t know me, do you?”
“Wait a minute. Do you really think that?”
Bill didn’t answer.
“You’re not gonna tell me, are you?”
“Maybe.”
“When?”
“Can’t say.”
“I’m going to keep asking.”
“You know, I think you probably will.”
Outside, the snow had stopped falling and not much of an accumulation covered the grass. The sidewalks and streets were almost clear already which meant the temperature was probably somewhere close to the freezing point, maybe just a touch above it. This was a good thing. The roads would not be too slippery and if it didn’t snow again the restaurant would be busy.
They entered Lorraine’s apartment quietly. First thing, Lorraine went in to check on her girls. She did this even before she took off her coat, before she set down her keys and her purse. The two girls were fast asleep. She fixed the covers on her youngest then softly closed their bedroom door and came out to where Bill was. He had taken off his coat and his shoes and was sitting on the sofa in the living room. She sat next to him and kissed him. Bill kissed her back, softly, fondled her ample breasts.
“You’re good for me for right now,” said Lorraine. “I needed to get back on the bicycle.”
“Seems like you’re riding pretty steady now.”
“That bastard totally devastated me, us. I was left speechless, heartless, broken. All those years I’d given to him and that’s what he gave back.”
“You doing better now?”
“I’m healing, maybe, just a little bit. I wasn’t mad at you that day, you know. He had called and pissed me off. I was just plain mad.”
“I didn’t take it personally. But I would have made sure they got rid of you. There’s no room for a first cook letting a waitress get over on him. You put me in an awkward position. I had to act.”
“Would you have fired me?”
“You’d have been gone right after that shift.”
“See. It all worked out well,” Lorraine said. “On many levels.”
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“What’s with you and Marie now?” Lorraine asked. She had not even taken off her coat, had not even dropped her purse on the table in the foyer.
“Nothing much. She’s a poor soul.”
“How so?”
“Her husband beats her. He cheats on her, flaunts it at her.”
“You’re cheating on your fiancé.”
“I didn’t meant to. I don’t flaunt it. She doesn’t know.”
“Still…”
“I don’t want to talk about it. Anyway, you’re half responsible.”
“I’m not at all responsible.”
I didn’t ask you or push you. In fact, the only one I ever pushed was Mary. She’s different.”
“Why?”
“I can’t tell you that exactly. I can only tell you that I have deep feelings for her.”
“And not for me?”
“I have feelings for you too.”
“But not deep ones.”
“Different ones.”
“Different how?”
Lorraine had taken off her coat and kicked off her snow boots. Outside the snow was still falling but there was little accumulation.
“Do we have to? Really?”
“I have to pee,” she said.
Bill followed her into the bathroom, watched her drop her pants and sit on the toilet. Lorraine didn’t say anything, didn’t think anything of it. While she peed, Bill came over her and kissed her. She kissed back, one kiss, then pushed him away.
“Wanna take a shower?”
“Definitely. Either here or at your place.”
“Here,” Lorraine said. “Let’s get the funk off.”
In the shower together, they washed each other’s backs. Lorraine wouldn’t let the feelings stuff go. She wanted to know how Bill felt about Mary and how he felt about her. Bill said he wanted to smoke a joint and not think of anything.
Then they were in her friend’s guest room, naked and comfortable under the blankets and comforter. Bill kissed her long and hard and as he did so he let his hands roam all over her body. Lorraine kissed back and allowed him to enjoy the feel of her.
“I hope you have good shifts for the next few days. We’re gonna be really busy if the weather holds out.”
“I do,” said Lorraine. “I’m early night tomorrow, doing a double on Friday and closing on Saturday.”
“That’s great.”
“Tommy looks after me now. I mean he really makes sure I get money shifts when he can.”
“Drenovis is relatively pacified with the new girls, you know the young ones that’ll ride his back seat. He still messes with Lexi. But Lexi has her own following now, guys drooling over her. Sometimes I think I should get her a job at the competition and let Drenovis lose the business.”
“I don’t understand all that power stuff.”
“Not much to understand. Robert is the key to it all. Drenovis is under him, so all he can do is make people miserable at times and fire waitresses that won’t comply with his sexual demands.”
“And Lexi?”
“She was lucky. She got picked on in front of Mary and Bea. They stood up for her. Mary has her own story.”
They had shifted and were now touching each other as they talked. Bill was busy down there with one hand while he kissed up there and sucked on her starting with her ear and moving to her breasts. He could feel Lorraine’s breathing changing, and since they had not made the room dark, he could see her close her eyes.
“You know,” said Bill a moment later, “everyone has a story and everyone’s story makes them who they are.”
“And you make no demands on anyone?”
“Me?”
“No, me.”
“Not sexual demands. Not ever. And the only thing I asked of you was that you get some goddamn sodas.”
“They don’t call it soda here. They call it pop.”
“I’m gonna pop you.”
“What are you waiting for?” Lorraine asked.
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Reposted from Newsmax. The direct link is below.
The campaign to overturn the 2016 election and bring down President Trump shifted into high gear this week.
Inspiration came Saturday morning from the altar of the National Cathedral where our establishment came to pay homage to John McCain.
Gathered there were all the presidents from 1993 to 2017, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, Vice Presidents Al Gore and Dick Cheney, Secretaries of State Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and Henry Kissinger, the leaders of both houses of Congress, and too many generals and admirals to list.
Striding into the pulpit, Obama delivered a searing indictment of the man undoing his legacy:
“So much of our politics, our public life, our pubic discourse can seem small and mean and petty, trafficking in bombast and insult and phony controversies and manufactured outrage. . . . It’s a politics that pretends to be brave and tough but in fact is born of fear.”
Speakers praised McCain’s willingness to cross party lines, but Democrats took away a new determination: From here on out, confrontation!
Tuesday morning, as Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court began, Democrats disrupted the proceedings and demanded immediate adjournment, as scores of protesters shouted and screamed to halt the hearings.
Taking credit for orchestrating the disruption, Sen. Dick Durbin boasted, “What we’ve heard is the noise of democracy.”
But if mob action to shut down a Senate hearing is the noise of democracy, this may explain why many countries are taking a new look at the authoritarian rulers who can at least deliver a semblance of order.
Wednesday came leaks in The Washington Post from Bob Woodward’s new book, attributing to Chief of Staff John Kelly and Gen. James Mattis crude remarks on the president’s intelligence, character and maturity, and describing the Trump White House as a “crazytown” led by a fifth- or sixth-grader.
Kelly and Mattis both denied making the comments.
Thursday came an op-ed in The New York Times by an anonymous “senior official” claiming to be a member of the “resistance . . . working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his (Trump’s) agenda.”
A pedestrian piece of prose containing nothing about Trump one cannot read or hear daily in the media, the op-ed caused a sensation, but only because Times editors decided to give the disloyal and seditious Trump aide who wrote it immunity and cover to betray his or her president.
The transaction served the political objectives of both parties.
While the Woodward book may debut at the top of The New York Times best-seller list, and “Anonymous,” once ferreted out and fired, will have his or her 15 minutes of fame, what this portends is not good.
For what is afoot here is something America specializes in — regime change. Only the regime our establishment and media mean to change is the government of the United States. What is afoot is the overthrow of America’s democratically elected head of state.
The methodology is familiar. After a years-long assault on the White House and president by a special prosecutor’s office, the House takes up impeachment, while a collaborationist press plays its traditional supporting role.
Presidents are wounded, disabled or overthrown, and Pulitzers all around.
No one suggests Richard Nixon was without sin in trying to cover up the Watergate break-in. But no one should delude himself into believing that the overthrow of that president, not two years after he won the greatest landslide in U.S. history, was not an act of vengeance by a hate-filled city that ran a sword through Nixon for offenses it had covered up or brushed under the rug in the Roosevelt, Kennedy and Johnson years.
So, where are we headed?
If November’s elections produce, as many predict, a Democratic House, there will be more investigations of President Trump than any man charged with running the U.S. government may be able to manage.
There is the Mueller investigation into “Russiagate” that began before Trump was inaugurated. There is the investigation of his business and private life before he became president in the Southern District of New York. There is the investigation into the Trump Foundation by New York State.
There will be investigations by House committees into alleged violations of the Emoluments Clause. And ever present will be platoons of journalists ready to report the leaks from all of these investigations.
Then, if media coverage can drive Trump’s polls low enough, will come the impeachment investigation and the regurgitation of all that went before.
If Trump has the stamina to hold on, and the Senate remains Republican, he may survive, even as Democrats divide between a rising militant socialist left and the Democrats’ septuagenarian caucus led by Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, John Kerry, Bernie Sanders and Nancy Pelosi.
2019 looks to be the year of bellum omnium contra omnes, the war of all against all. Entertaining, for sure, but how many more of these coups d’etat can the Republic sustain before a new generation says enough of all this?
Patrick Buchanan has been an adviser to three presidents, a two-time candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, and the nominee for the Reform Party in 2000. He was also a founding member of “The McLaughlin Group,” which began on NBC, and CNN’s “Capital Gang” and “Crossfire.” His latest book is: “The Greatest Comeback: How Richard Nixon Rose From Defeat to Create the New Majority.” For more of his reports, Go Here Now.
The Effort to Overthrow the Democratically Elected President | Newsmax.com
When Lorraine came in with his beer, she walked directly to Bill. He pulled her to him and kissed her on the lips, taking her between his legs where he sat and holding her to him. She kissed back and spread her legs just a touch when he reached behind her and fondled her along her butt and down to there.
“Easy big boy,” she said. “I still have one table that’s hanging on.”
“And…”
“And Tommy said he’d move them along as he could. I have the key. You want to meet me there?”
“Nah. I’ll wait.” He moved his hand around to between them and fondled her over her pants. “Too bad you’re not in a skirt.”
“What I’m wearing doesn’t seem to be stopping you. I’ll see what I can do to get us moving along.”
As they stood there, Bebe came into the kitchen. Bebe was kind of Italian looking. She had some color to her skin whereas Bill, his fiancé and Lorraine were kind of pale. She also had really dark hair. She stood only about as tall as Bill’s mother had, just barely five feet, maybe not even.
Lorraine could not see Bebe. She flinched at the sound of when the doors opened but Bill held her to him. He watched Bebe stop, take stock of the kitchen and them the proceed to the dish machine to drop off the dishes she held.
Bebe was a powerhouse of a woman. She was strong, opinionated, even brash when she needed to be. She could have said something, and maybe at a different time in a different mood she might have, but this time she noted what she saw and went about her business. Later, when he and Lorraine were together at Lorraine’s friend’s apartment, he would learn that Bebe had said something to Lorraine out by the bar on the down-low.
Despite that last table, they got out relatively early. Two more times Lorraine came into the kitchen, the last time to tell Bill she was done. Tommy still had to tally up and make the deposit, but he would take care of that while Bebe served the bar customers their final rounds.
Lorraine told Bill she wasn’t hanging around for her tips. Oftentimes, the late girl would leave with whatever cash she had collected and come in for her next shift to find an envelope waiting for her with the credit card tips and whatever else had been left. That’s what she was doing this night.
As a courtesy to Tommy, the last thing Bill did was turn off the Bunn burner.
“You staying at Lorraine’s?” Tommy asked.
“I am. My fiancé isn’t going to be home so I don’t have to travel up to the university.”
“They’re not predicting a lot of snow. We’ve been seeing the weather reports. Maybe another inch or two.”
“Well that’s good.”
“The Bucks have three straight at home starting tomorrow. We should have a strong weekend.”
“I’m counting on it.”
“Well get some rest.”
“A couple hours more than if I drove home.”
“See you in the morning.”
Tommy had locked the front doors awhile ago. He let them out with his key and even before they had taken any steps toward their cars, they could hear the lock turn from the inside. This was the standard routine and had been so even before that one time they’d been robbed. That was just a memory now with the most striking impression for Bill being them leaving their sandwich crumbs and empty beer bottles on the counter in the kitchen. At least as far as Bill knew, the police had never caught anyone for that.
Lorraine drove slowly. Bill followed her to where her friend lived, not far from where she lived. They both parked and went up and into the building.
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So let me get this right: Congress has a slush fund that taxpayers fund to pay off the women they’ve sexually abused and we, the taxpayers, are supposed to trust them as they judge over Brett Kavanaugh?
It just gets worse and worse. Just when you think we’ve come to the bottom of how low the government can go, we look at what we’re looking at now. The insanity and hypocrisy being pushed in front of our eyes are absolutely, incredibly unbelievable.
Once again, I rarely talk about myself using the word I when I write opinion pieces. But I have to say I’ve been writing fiction for about 50 years. One of the first rules of fiction is that it has to be believable. So writers talk about how the real truth sometimes cannot be written into fiction because when you see it in words in a piece of fiction, it becomes absolutely unbelievable.
The example I generally use is about the man who’s committing adultery (it doesn’t necessarily have to be a man) and goes into the very depths of a distant borough in NYC to meet his girlfriend at a restaurant for a dinner out. When I talk about this I generally use the borough of Staten Island because that one is pretty far out of the way for many people.
On the particular evening they are having dinner, the man’s wife meets up with her sister who has a friend that lives in Staten Island. The sister has plans to go and meet her friend and the wife tags along because her husband is working late. Lo and behold, don’t you know, they happen to walk into the same restaurant where her husband and his girlfriend are.
Now on some level, given that there are somewhere between twenty and thirty thousand restaurants in New York City, for the wife to walk in on the husband like that comes up to being almost-winning-the-lottery odds and therefore is pretty much unbelievable. Of course it could always be the truth and what really happened. But to a reader, the reader automatically thinks about the likelihood and says, “yeah, right.”
So we have a group of senators and congressmen who are telling us all this crap. The lefties attack the righties. The righties spend a lot of time defending themselves, which they should really stop doing, and then go on and accuse the lefties of playing the racist-sexist-all-the-other-ist cards, and on and on. At least a portion of senators and congressmen are guilty of all the same things they accuse others of. And as said up on top, we the taxpayers fund their slush fund.
No, you can’t really make this stuff up.
Into the mix come all the lefty bigwigs, Joe Biden, of course Hillary, and the great Pooh Bah Obama. Along with the biased media, they go on and make the most outrageous statements anyone could ever hear as if they are matters of fact. If this isn’t the pot calling the kettle black, I don’t know what is.
So there you have it. I’m not even going to talk about the Kavanaugh issue. What’s going on with Kavanaugh is simply a reflection of where our country is at. We can look at the whole of the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings as a metaphor for what’s going on in our society today.
I’m going to close with something that my father-in-law used to say: Man is by nature selfish and greedy.
What scares me most is that we’re beginning to see the true nature of what we are as a species. It ain’t pretty.
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Marie waited for Bill to go down to change. She could have left earlier but she hung around. When Bill asked about it, she said she was in no hurry to get back to where he was. The longer she stayed out, she told him, the greater the likelihood he’d be asleep.
Marie wanted to talk. Bill indulged her, but when she started to indicate she wanted more than talk, he gently kept her at bay.
“Didn’t you like it?” she asked, referring to the night before.
“Very much.”
“I thought it was really special.”
“I did too.”
“Well, don’t you want more?”
“Honestly, I do.”
“So?”
“Not tonight.”
“When?”
“Let’s see how it goes.”
“I could just, you know.” Marie made a gesture with her hands and one with her lips too.
Bill smiled at her. All the while they talked, they stood by each other out in the hall and changed into their civvies. Bill was changed. Marie was still standing around in her slip. But then she pulled her clothes on.
When they were both fully clothed, Bill took Marie in his arms and kissed her. After the first kiss, he kissed her a second time. This time he held her close to him so he could feel her against him.
“I could, you know, too,” he said. He made a gesture with his tongue.
Marie slapped him on the shoulder. “I’m gonna hold you to that, but not now.”
“You got it,” said Bill.
Together they went back upstairs. Marie said good night and went out into the dining room from where she could go out the front door. Bill stayed in the kitchen. He made sure the fryers were okay and that the gas jets were turned off. Then he went around back to where the leftover food still sat out on Mary’s counter. He opened the walk-in and one by one carried the bain marie pots and the tray of leftover rib into the box. He made sure all the food he put inside was properly wrapped then did a full survey of all the walk-in’s contents. The weekend was rapidly approaching.
Done with all his work, Bill went back across the line and triple-checked everything. Then, knowing everything was turned off, he finished the beer he still had and walked to the switch for the exhaust fans. He flipped the switch and the fans shuddered to a halt.
The quiet was deafening. Bill could still hear the noises ringing in his ears. He knew from experience the ringing would linger a long time.
Downstairs, he took some Quaaludes from the bottle he kept in his locker. He also grabbed two joints, thin ones, ones just for him because Lorraine did not do drugs. Every now and then she would take a toke on a joint, but nothing more than that except for an occasional Quaalude with a glass of wine.
Upstairs, one last time he went through the kitchen, front to back. This time he checked all the leftover salads, desserts and especially the pies. He made sure they were all wrapped and stored neatly. He checked the coffee urns. They were off and cleaned. One Bunn coffee pot still had coffee in it and was hot. He could see the warmer was still on, so he went through the kitchen door into the front dining room where he could see Lorraine, Tommy or Bebe. Lorraine came first. She told him he could shut the warmer off, that she’d still be a few moments and would bring him a beer.
In other places, later in his kitchen career, after his shift Bill would sit at the bar and drink. Here, the cooks did not do that, not because they couldn’t—they could if they really wanted to—but because it just didn’t seem to fit.
So he sat on Mary’s counter in the kitchen and waited for Lorraine.
