They had one more little hit.
During the lull, while it was quiet, everyone rested some then re-set everything for the next flurry of customers.
Bebe came in to order dinner for herself. She did not come empty-handed. She brought beers for Bill and Alvin and a Coke for Jimmy. She ordered a Boston medium-rare. She did not have to tell Bill how she wanted it cooked, but she did anyway.
Next were the waitresses. They came in in shifts to order their food. Because it was quiet, they were able to take several booths in the side dining room and sit there. Since everyone was working, those who ate did so undisturbed. When the first group finished and was ready to go back to work, the second group ate their food.
“You’ll need to change the grease,” Tommy said. He came in after it had been quiet for awhile. He checked all around the kitchen while he spoke to Bill. Bill saw him do the survey, saw his eyes pause on the four burnt steaks sitting on the stainless steel shelf of the charcoal grill.
“I know,” Bill said. He knew Tommy wouldn’t say anything about the steaks. He also knew Tommy was probably dying to know why they were there. Bill had purposefully left them there for anyone and everyone to see.
“If it stays like this, I’m sending Lillian home. The west is coming for more meat, but they’re quiet too. Alvin can go back over. You and Jimmy can finish it out here.”
“No problem,” Bill said. “Stays like this, we’ll be getting out about on time.”
“You gonna leave those there?” Tommy asked.
Bill smiled. “I thought you should see what I burned. All those steaks I cooked—you’ll get the count—those are the ones I couldn’t get to. Just those four little ones.”
“We’re guessing around twelve hundred,” Tommy said. “Give or take.”
“You already talk with Henry Lee?”
“Yup. And based upon his inventory, that’s the estimate.”
“Not a bad day.”
“Not over yet. But we’ll have a lot of work tomorrow.”
“Think we’ll get much more?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.” Tommy smiled, did one of his about faces and went right on around to the back, to Mary’s station.
Bea and Esserine were washing one last case of lettuce. Esserine was doing the washing while Bea cleaned and straightened everything. She wiped all the salad dressing pots and those that were not to her liking after she wiped them she changed for clean pots. That done, when she delivered the dirty ones over to Andy she asked him to make sure to personally bring the washed ones back to her.
Mary had a lot of work. She was emptying her ovens when Tommy ambled by. He saw her bent over. She was putting baked potatoes into a steam table pan.
When she stood up and set the pan on top of one of the stoves, Tommy asked her if she was okay.
She ripped aluminum foil from her roll and covered the potatoes, reported that all was fine as she did so. Then she told Tommy that they went through almost all the vegetables, all the potatoes except for that one pan and most of Grandma’s chicken too. She told him he should cut off the fried chicken and send Grandma home. Tommy said he was going to do that at five.
Mary’s next chore was to empty all the big pots into little ones that could be used for storage. She could see there was enough Bordelaise sauce for the next day and that they would be throwing out a good deal of soup. Maybe because the weather had been warm the soup didn’t sell. She would also be dumping the remainder of the au jus. Wasn’t much of that left. They still had one complete prime rib.
