Dressed in her civvies and ready to go home, Jo Ann stopped by the kitchen entrance. Bill thought she was younger than her age, that she carried herself like a girl at least 20 years younger. He was cleaning up some when he saw her, stopped what he was doing, approach her.
He was still alone in the kitchen. Jimmy had been gone a good while now, had left him all alone on his very first night once he was sure that Bill knew how to serve every entrée on the menu.
“I just wanted to say you did good,” Jo Ann said.
“Thanks.”
“See you tomorrow?”
“God willing.”
“Don’t let Caesar get you down. He’ll leave you alone once he sees how well you do your job.”
Bill winked at Jo Ann. “Not a problem,” he said.
“Well, night then.”
“Night, Jo Ann. Thanks.”
As Jo Ann left, Bill went back to what he was doing. He was wrapping things that could be wrapped, cleaning things that could be cleaned. No new orders had come in. He’d long ago finished the soda Rosie had brought him. Neither Rosie nor Edelgarde seemed to be anywhere to be found. He wanted a coffee, wondered momentarily if it were all right to leave the kitchen unattended, decided without hesitation that it surely was and went out through the double doors to where Kalista worked.
Jimmy was sitting off to the side and slightly behind Kalista where he could not too easily be seen. Bill walked around her service counter to where the coffeemakers were.
The Falstaff Room, at least as it tried to be, was a step up, maybe more than one step up, from Suburban. It was fancier, much more elegant with its real-silver silverware and fine china. Everything had to be just so, set just so, served just so.
And Caesar watched over it like a dictator. Just before the service started every day, he checked every table to make sure everything was set straight. He checked the three girls to make sure their nails were clean, their shoes polished, their uniforms fell just so. He really believed he was Caesar, Bill thought.
When he returned from Kalista’s station with his coffee, a mug of coffee, Caesar was waiting for him.
“You can’t leave the kitchen unattended,” Caesar said.
Bill did not say anything. He looked at Caesar, consciously decided not to say anything. Instead, he sat down on Jimmy’s box and put the mug of coffee on the counter there. He was waiting for Jimmy to return to show him when and how to clean up everything.
Of course he knew how to clean things. He could clean the grill, the stove and all the equipment. He knew how to do that. The issue was exactly what he had to do and how they did it there.
So he sat and drank his coffee.
Realizing that Bill was not going to answer him, Caesar did an about-face and walked away. Still no more orders had come in.
Bill was thinking that if this were it for the job it was going to be a piece of cake. Clearly, he could handle everything all by himself. In fact, he would learn in time that he was expected to do so, especially when there were banquets going on at the same time they were doing their dinner service. That would not happen all the time, but it would happen somewhat frequently and since Jimmy’s cousin Jimmy was the banquet chef, Jimmy G. would always want to be around him.
As he drank his coffee from a mug that Kalista had taken from the main kitchen and given to him (they did not use mugs in the Falstaff room, they used matching cups and saucers) he checked the time. It was nearing ten o’clock. He’d now been on his job for eight hours.
