Cinco de Mayo, plus a couple.
Same day. Just a touch later.
A bit before the lunch service would start.
There they were squared off, Bea over by her plate warmer, Bill toward the end of the line, kind of in the middle between the line and the dish-washing machine. Paulie stood toward the middle of the kitchen looking at Bill.
“Do the clean up on the bus station out there, make sure everything is taken in from all the bus stations. Then mop the floor on that one bus station and make sure it’s not sticky.”
Paulie shook his head, again a bit too enthusiastically. He did an about-face and disappeared out the side doors to the side dining room over by Bea’s station.
“Since when you his boss?” Bea asked.
“Tommy asked me to tell him. What’s the big deal?”
“Getting pretty big for them white-boy britches, ain’t you?”
Bill thought about it a moment, thought about a response that would be appropriate. He wanted, if you could have asked him in that moment, to appease Bea, to be conciliatory without being at all apologetic. But he was tired of being conciliatory. He was tired of appeasing and letting people get over with stuff, especially her. She was demanding and getting to be abusive and a big pain in the butt.
“You been steaming all morning. What’s up your ass?” he asked.
“Say what?” Bea said.
“You heard me. What the fuck’s up your ass?”
“This up my ass,” Bea said. She stepped next to her plate-warmer, took out a dinner plate and hurled it at Bill’s feet so it hit the floor just in front of him and smashed. Pieces of the china splashed everywhere.
Bill didn’t say anything. He reached into his plate-warmer, took out a dinner plate and hurled it at her, landed it at her feet so it splattered the same way the one she threw did.
“Oh yea?” Bea reached for and hurled another plate.
Bill did the same.
“Fuck you,” Bea said. She threw another plate.
“Fuck you back.” Bill did the same.
At the sound of the first crashing plate, Mary came around from the back. She stopped at the line on Bea’s side of the kitchen. She was in time to see Bill hurl his first plate, and then she stood there, didn’t say a word, watching.
Henry Lee heard the noise. He came in from the outside, cigarette hanging from his mouth. He stood in the doorway of the kitchen, somewhat behind and off to the side from where Bill was. He watched as Bea and Bill alternated hurling plates. A big smirked hung on his face.
Lorraine was the first waitress into the kitchen. She sized up what was going on quickly—Bea and Bill on opposite sides of the kitchen, shattered china everywhere—and simply turned so that she came in one automatic door and immediately went out the other automatic door.
No one else came in.
Tommy peeked in.
Mr. Bowman, Mr. Suburban himself, happened to be there and peeked in too.
Neither Mr. Bowman nor Tommy said anything. Like Lorraine had done, they peeked in one door and headed out the other.
Henry Lee worked his way around the back and over to Mary. They stood laughing as Bea and Bill emptied their plate-warmers. Neither one was done until they didn’t have any more plates. Bea was clearly pissed off and heated. Bill was gloating, almost laughing. The more he gloated and smirked, the hotter Bea got. The hotter Bea got, the redder she turned on her black skin.
Then she was out of plates. Bill had one left when Bea was empty and hurled it. Then he was empty. They both stood by their plate-warmers in a kind of stare-down, except Bill couldn’t help but laughing. The more angry his laughing made her, the more he laughed.
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