Jimmy slid off the line, out the door and down the stairs.
Bill said, “Come on, Alfreda, put the knife down. Let her be.” He stood less than five feet from them. “Come on, girl. You cut enough hair already.” He gently stepped closer, but Alfreda stared him down.
“Don’t you take another step. You come any closer, I’ll cut her skin.”
“Okay. Okay.” Bill put his hands up in front of him in the calm-down gesture and stayed where he was. “You don’t want to do this, girl.”
“Oh yes I do.” She laughed wildly and started cutting at Marie’s hair again.
A big mess of hair was already on the floor at Marie’s feet. “Skinny, skanky piece of shit,” Alfreda said. “He ain’t screwing you no more.”
“Come on Alfreda, calm down.” Bill talked softly. As he spoke now he saw Henry Lee out of the corner of his eye. Henry Lee was limping on his bad leg. “Let her go, sweetie. You know your man loves you like no one else. I have to hear him swearing it all day long down in the meat room.”
“Don’t con me,” said Alfreda. But before she could say anything more, Henry Lee stepped up behind her and snatched the knife from her hand. She turned to attack him but no sooner did she lift a hand than he smothered her so she couldn’t move.
“Thanks man,” he said to Bill.
Bill nodded. Then he smelled the burning steaks and ran to the Garland. He pulled open the drawer and looked at the mess. Every steak was gone, some of them already near ash. He took up the tongs and grabbed them one by one, tossing each one into the garbage.
By this time Tommy was in the kitchen. He knew better than to step between Henry Lee and Alfreda so he came over by Bill. Marie, freed from the clutches of the crazed wife, grabbed her purse, slinked out of the kitchen and downstairs to change into her civvies.
“You got it under control?” Tommy asked.
Bill was already replacing the burnt steaks on the grill. He put them all to one side where there was no char, took a side towel, placed it in his tongs, dipped it into the deep fryer and used it to wipe down the grills, greasing them where the steaks were not. Then he moved the steaks to the cleaned side, diamond-marking all of them by rotating them, and cleaned the remainder of the grills.
“See what messing around gets you?” said Tommy.
Bill shot him bull daggers. He was messing around with Mary, Bea, Marie and three of the waitresses. Alfreda had come on to him too.
“It never leads to any good,” Tommy said. “Now I’m gonna lose a salad girl and there’s gonna be all kinds of problems both here and out west.”
Bill had lined the burnt steaks up on the rim of the charcoal grill. After he flipped the replacement steaks and made sure all the steaks working on the grill were okay, one by one he took up the burnt steaks, examined them carefully checking out both sides of them as he held them in the tongs. One by one, almost as if it were spitefully, he conspicuously tossed them into the garbage. Then he took down all the dupes, handed them to Tommy and told him to start picking up orders.
While Tommy expedited and they worked orders, every now and then Bill checked to see who, if anyone, was coming up the back stairs. At one point, very quietly, Marie crept past the kitchen entrance and slinked out the back. Bill never saw her again.
