But the nights were very quiet and Tommy took solace in that. Esserine minded her own business all the time. She watched over what the waitresses did, making sure they only took what was appropriate and proper. Sometimes, though, when they weren’t ready for it, she caught them off guard and gave them a lecture on the bible, especially Norma, Lexi, Lorraine and the freckled new girl, the redhead, Arlene, who wasn’t really so new anymore. Arlene only worked nights occasionally, and she kept to herself. She was one who had not gone to Drenovis’ back seat and she had not messed with Bill. Yet. Esserine was dead set on making sure she didn’t.
With Esserine working, Tommy felt he didn’t have to be in the kitchen so much. Esserine kept the morality mostly in check. No one cursed in front of her and when Bill did, she reminded him that the Lord had not meant for us to use those words. She could do this by simply covering her ears and letting Bill, or Jimmy if it was him who let it slip, see her pain, so to speak, at which point they would apologize and clam up.
This winter night, into March now, Esserine sat reading the newspaper. When she was finished, she set about cleaning her station. She was the cleanest, tidiest, most quiet, most meticulous of the help. She had come three days after Alfreda cut Marie’s hair right there by the salad station, grabbing handful after handful and shredding it on the kitchen floor at their feet.
Lovingly but gingerly, Esserine wiped the outsides and bottoms of the salad dressing crocks then covered the crocks with plastic film wrap when they were clean. Leftover tossed salad put away, her counter clear, she soaped down the counter and wiped it until it shined. Next she started on the glass-door reach-in box beside the coffee urn, where the desserts and prepared salads were kept. Inside, she lifted all items on the stainless steel bottom, wiped them and then the stainless steel. That done, she washed the glass doors. With this completed, except for cleaning the coffee urns, which was her last chore of the night, she was finished.
The exhaust fans droned on. In the background, all the other usual sounds banged out their tones. The dish machine splish-sploshed endlessly and the chatter of the dishwashers hummed beneath the water jets. They worked furiously to finish up, to wash the last pots, run the last dishes, mop the floors and clean up their station.
Bill had drained the first fryer and was standing before it getting ready to go outside to empty the grease into the outside barrel so he could wash the fryer out. Lorraine had brought him a beer and he stood with his butt against the steam table shelf. He drank the beer slowly, not sorry that Marie was not there to take some of it. He noticed Jim standing by the knife sheath and thought it odd, but he let it go because Jim had done that before. So he stood relaxed, sipped the beer, stopped momentarily to light a cigarette, take a puff and set the cigarette down before he finished the beer. Then, cigarette in mouth, he used a soiled kitchen towel and his tongs to clean out what he could of the schmutz at the bottom of the fryer.
He was about to lug that stock pot of hot grease outside when Arlene came in. She had another beer for Bill and walked past Jim and onto the line to hand it to him.
“Bebe sent this,” Arlene said. “She said she wants a super and you’d know how to cook it.”
Bill said, “I know how to do a lot of things.”
Arlene smiled at him. She said, “So I heard.”
“Bout time for you to find out, don’t you think?”
“Maybe.”
Bill liked that answer. He smiled and told her to come back in a couple of minutes with another beer and a glass of bourbon.
