The end of day two was like the end of day one, drinks in the chef’s office, Jimmy Banquet Chef sitting comfortably behind the executive chefs desk, his big chef’s hat sitting prominently on the desk. Jimmy G and Victor sat in the two matching armchairs facing the desk. Bill stood.
The three Greeks spoke among themselves in their native language. They conversed, they laughed, they drank. Bill sipped at his beer but he did not drink any hard liquor.
“So,” the banquet chef said, “you handled about all they can throw at you tonight and you did it as if it were nothing.”
“It is nothing,” Bill said. “No disrespect, but that’s a slow night in the place I come from.”
“Ya,” Jimmy G said. “See. Bet you ten dollars Caesar tells the chef he was horrible.”
“He would too,” Victor said. “But I went by personally and watched him work. And Kalista says the girls told her he was great.”
Jimmy G said, “They’re very happy to have a regular cook. Me too. Now I can go back to sleeping.”
All the Greeks laughed. Bill was happy. He was glad he handled everything, more glad it was relatively easy. He was pleased that it seemed as if he were fitting in, and he knew his capabilities and his fitting in with the Greek Mafia meant Caesar would not be much of a problem overall. In the big picture, he knew Caesar would find a way to make peace. He’d do it in a way so as to save face, which was okay with Bill because all he wanted was a place to work, a place where he could feel comfortable and make money, the more money the better.
Bill did not know it yet. Bill could have no way of knowing, of seeing into his future. Making money, putting money in the bank, meant security. Bill never wanted to have to borrow again. Most especially he never wanted to ask someone for a loan (like his father-in-law) and be turned down. So making money and having savings would always be a thing for him, and more of a thing as he got older.
“All day tomorrow for you,” Jimmy Banquet Chef said. “The luncheon goes off at 1:00. I need you here at 10:00.”
“No problem,” Bill said.
“I’m going to teach you how to run that big rotary oven. The meal is easy. Roast tenderloin, scalloped potatoes and broccoli. I want you to see everything, all stations and all prep. Then I want you carving the meat at the dish-up.”
“Fine with me,” Bill said.
“Then Thursday you’re in at 6:00. That breakfast goes off at 9:00.”
“You can rest in between,” Jimmy G said, “on the clock.”
“Don’t teach him bad things,” Jimmy Banquet Chef said. “I’ll have other work for him too. The chef wants to see him work. Tomorrow and Thursday will be good.”
“After that, won’t matter what Caesar says,” Victor said.
“Doesn’t matter now,” Jimmy Banquet Chef said. “He’s a keeper unless he screws up big time, you know, by stepping out of line.”
“Stay away from those girls for the first three months,” Jimmy G said. “Especially Millie. Rosie I can talk to. And I will. But Millie, I’ve never seen her like this. She’s a wild card.”
“I hear everyone talking about Millie,” Bill said. “Anyone want to tell me what’s going on?”
“Apparently she’s quite taken by you,” said Victor. “Apparently she’s been telling everyone that she thinks you’re quite special.”
“Well,” Bill said, “I can’t control her, but I can keep away from her.”
“For ninety days,” Jimmy Banquet Chef said. “Just for ninety days.”
By Peter Weiss
The view of the room was not perfect from inside the kitchen. Across from the kitchen’s service window was a service area, a full set of shelves with all china and linens and cups and saucers, just about anything and everything needed for the dining room. Another station like this, but much smaller, was situated along the counter wall where the window ended, directly in front of the walk-in wall on that side.
From the Garland side Bill could see toward Caesar’s maître d’ stand, not even all the way past the shelving to the stand itself. From Jimmy’s side, Bill could see a few tables along the wall out past the shelving.
They started clean-up a little later. Kalista, dear aunt that she was, kind lady to Bill always, brought them espresso. Bill stood by Jimmy. He didn’t even bother to start wrapping the food yet.
He could see past the end of the shelving, mostly to the front corner of the room. Rosie and Edelgarde stayed around there. They were talking, sipping coffee after eating their dinners. Kalista had given them baklava, homemade. She had offered some to Jimmy and Bill too. It was so sweet, so good, you could choke.
While everyone was hanging out, Caesar did the tally. Bill saw him stop in the corner and talk to the girls. When he was gone, presumably back to his maître d’ stand, Edelgarde came over to Bill, stood close to him as she could be from the other side of the counter.
“Hundred twenty-six,” Edelgarde said. “That’s the count. Best we’ve ever done on a Tuesday.”
“Good, Bill said. “So you made money?”
“We always make money,” Edelgarde said. “This is one of the fanciest places they have in Cleveland, relatively speaking.”
“And the men like the uniforms too,” Bill remarked.
“Don’t you?”
“Who wouldn’t?”
“So they get a good look. And that’s all they get.” Edelgarde smiled. “Policy is no dating customers.”
“And you never have?”
“Nope. Never.”
“What about co-workers?” Bill asked.
“It’s frowned upon. No set rule that I know of.”
“You never told me about Millie,” Bill said.
“Ask Rosie,” said Edelgarde. Then she leaned in just a touch more, a scooch closer. “You can more than look, you know,” she whispered, “with both me and Rosie.” She winked at Bill, straightened up, headed off.
“Ya,” Jimmy G said. All the while he’d stayed silent. Now he looked up at Bill from where he sat, looked up over his reading glasses at him. “They all like you. Millie too.”
Before he’d been a cook Bill would have wondered about this, about his being attractive or appealing to women. Suburban had wiped his handsomeness doubts from his mind. Whether it was the power-position or just that (and they didn’t know this) he’d lost 70 pounds and was a svelte, sleek, skinny one thirty-five, or that he was young and seemingly confident — whatever it was – restaurant women threw themselves at him, sometimes very openly, very ardently, sometimes very persistently such that he had difficulty reasoning why he shouldn’t have some fun.
That he was married now, really married, actually married, ceremony, ring and all, did make a difference, and while he’d been all-but with Arlene, a friend and then friend with benefits, and all-but with her after he was married, so far he was still mostly straight with his wife and trying, trying oh-so-hard to remain so.
Here, up here, was Millie and Rosie and Edelgarde. Jesus Christ. And it was only the second day. When it rains it pours.
“Ya,” Jimmy said again. Then he put the newspaper down on his counter, took off his reading glasses, put them away carefully in their case which he stored on an upper shelf over his counter, finished his espresso. “You did very good tonight,” he said as he stood up. “No matter what Caesar tells the chef, I know, the girls know, the banquet chef knows. Very good,” he said.
By Peter Weiss
“So what did I do to Millie?” Bill asked.
Rosie and Edelgarde were finishing their dinners. They sat at a small corner table, one out of the way, one where Caesar usually sat singles, sometimes young couples he judged were not too savvy in dining.
“That sole meuniere was great,” Edelgarde said.
“Mashed potatoes too. They were different. What’d you do to them?” Rosie asked.
“I spit in ‘em,” Bill said.
“You can…,” Rosie started.
Edelgarde cut her off posthaste. “Don’t you dare go there,” Edelgarde said.
Rosie laughed. Bill looked on. He had a good sense of where there was and what Rosie was going to say.
“I put some extra garlic and butter in them for you, that’s all.”
“Well the meal was great,” Edelgarde said.
Bill was standing facing Rosie and Edelgarde. The girls, sitting, could see past him. They saw Caesar looking on. They saw, they interpreted what they saw, as displeasure in his expression.
“Caesar’s watching us,” Edelgarde said. “He looks pissed.”
Bill smiled. The notion crossed his mind again,. the one of victory. The more everyone liked him and took to him, the more alienated and diminished Caesar became. This, Bill knew, was humorous yet perilous.
Hist first day in the workhouse when he’d run into the mean guy, Ronnie, the one who asked him what he thought his wife was doing out there while he was locked up in here: he was mean but not dangerous. The dorm tough, whom he identified and noted that first day: he was ominous and dangerous, an X-factor, a random factor hanging in space out there that could become perilous at any moment.
Well, Bill thought, Caesar could be, on his level, something like that. Caesar was like a viper ready to spring at any moment and he would hurt anyone to get at Bill.
But Caesar had a whole host of people in higher positions who although they respected the job he did as maître d’ did not like him as a person. This meant he, Bill, had strong allies and it meant Caesar could be handled.
“Fuck him,” Bill said.
“No,” Rosie said. “Me.”
“Don’t you have any shame,” Edelgarde said slapping Rosie on the arm. Then she said, “Me too.” Then she Rosie both laughed and their laughter was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Caesar slithered over to where they were and immediately asked if they had work to do.
Rosie and Edelgarde looked away from him. Bill looked directly at him but didn’t say anything because it wasn’t worth the effort. In his mind he was thinking: he’s not talking to me is he? And even if he is, he isn’t my boss.
Rosie and Edelgarde, almost as if they were attached at the hip, made a motion toward getting up. Bill, sensing and assessing the situation, simply said, “Well ladies, enjoy the rest of your meal. I’ve got stuff to do.” He made a somewhat cordial gesture toward Caesar. “The ladies tell me it’s been a very good night volume-wise,” he said.
“Yes,” Caesar said. “We did well.”
“I’m glad,” Bill said. “I hope my cooking will help volume stay good.”
Caesar did not say anything. Bill knew, and it was apparent in Caesar’s body language, that the last thing Caesar wanted was to be engaged in conversation. He did not respond to Bill, just made a small grunt-like sound, turned and walked away.
Bill went back to the kitchen. Jimmy G was sitting reading a Greek newspaper. He was wearing reading glasses. Bill went past him over by the Garland, over by where he could see out through the open-hearth window and partly into the dining room.
By Peter Weiss
Nancy, you should be ashamed of yourself. You’re a lying sack of potatoes and much worse than that.
America, if you believe the garbage coming out of the mouths of the Despicable Democrats, you should be ashamed of yourself too.
The single most dangerous thing in America at this time is the absence of an unbiased media. America’s greatest danger is a media that pretends to be unbiased but which is absolutely in the pocket of the Democrats. As their trumpeters, the mainstream media, Pravda USA, have aided and abetted the Despicable Democrats in attempting to sell their spiel.
Those wild and woolly, holy unhinged lefties the biased media herald present policies that cost more than America could possibly afford even if every taxpayer paid more than 50% of their income, maybe 60% or 70%, and don’t think the Dems won’t take that if they can get it.
Fifty percent of the people of this country pay no taxes at all and all the free stuff these idiotic lefties offer (thus pandering to that 50%) will be paid for by—guess who—you if you are one of the ones who pays taxes. So put that in your pipe and smoke it!
Elizabeth Warren’s math doesn’t add up. If every billionaire gave all their billions, we still couldn’t pay for her healthcare plan alone. We’d still be about a trillion and a half dollars per year short. Then there’s the Green New Deal.
And so it goes. Facts be damned.
So there will be an impeachment. Realistically, given how over their skis Pelosi and Schiff are, given how biased the media (Pavda USA) are and how false their narratives are, it’s about 99% certain. It’s being driven and rammed down our throats. We have no say in the matter. They will do what they want to do and claim, with the backing of the mainstream media who sit in their pocket, that it’s what we want.
It’s the narrative presented by the biased mainstream media which is the most ominous and dangerous thing America faces.
The worst parts of it all are their fake sanctimoniousness and their fake narrative of upholding the Constitution. Why impeachment is their duty, they say.
Nothing could be further from the truth. In less than a year now, at the ballot box the American people can decide for themselves who they want to be president. So that part of their claim is a lie too. They claim there is precedent. Indeed, for this situation there is none.
Nope. They, the Despicable Dems are driven by hatred and disdain, not just for President Trump, but for the American people overall. Trump is a threat to them because his success demonstrates their half-a-century and more of lack of success. Trump demonstrates the very real notion that their political class, the American Politburo, is unnecessary, superfluous.
They’re disgusting. Putin is laughing because the Despicable Dems have done for him everything Obama should have seen and stopped in 2015 and 2016. Obama didn’t do anything because he thought Hillary would win.
Yes, Nancy, when you go on TV and say that President Trump is an imposter, you’ve tipped your hand. We know where you stand and we know you don’t care about us or our country. Your hatred and your fear of losing your gravy train is far more important to you than America is.
You should be ashamed of yourself, Nancy, but it’s clear you have no shame, same as you have no morals and no longer have any integrity whatsoever.
By Peter Weiss
Originally posted in August 2018 and reposted in April 2019: it’s that important
No Truth, No Justice. What’s next? The American Way?
Well, we can kiss truth goodbye. When you can’t believe the FBI Director and the former Director of National Intelligence was found to have lied under oath… Or maybe we should look at Susan Rice, you know the Benghazi video lie, or Hillary herself, who lied to the parents of the deceased while telling her own daughter the truth… Oh the loss of the truth in America is clearly demonstrable and ever-apparent.
I know. The left-leaners will say Trump, Flynn, Manaforte and a whole host of righties lie. But doesn’t that just underscore the point?
Loss of the truth gets worse. It gets downright disgusting. Not only can we not trust politicians, but we are witnessing the complete breakdown of the free and independent press, and this is more dangerous than any lying politicians. The facts are clear. Ninety percent of all stories regarding President Trump have been negative. It’s unheard of. The media have an anti-Trump agenda and are using their powers to attempt to destroy him. When the free, independent press gets biased, no matter for which side, it’s no better than Putin controlling his press in Russia. In effect, as the in-the-tank-for-the-Democrats media continue to claim (and still with not one shred of evidence) Trump is connected to Putin, they are actually doing Putin’s bidding for him: weakening America by fabricating what the public sees and hears.
A biased press is un-American and the left-leaning media are moving America into very dangerous waters. They claim to talk for the American people. They profess to know what Americans want and need. At best, they can only speak for the half of the population that didn’t vote for Trump, the ones they call the deplorables. Their premise and their claim are false to begin with.
Justice got kissed away on the tarmacs. If there were any doubt remaining about the outright bias in the media, any doubt remaining about their political agenda, that doubt died on the tarmacs. The biased media never truly explored the actual connection between Bill Clinton and Loretta Lynch. It never took the time to explore the lack-of-justice department’s attempts to stymie FBI investigation. The Democrat-leaning media ridicule the very notion of justice, just as they ridicule the very notion of truth.
The greatest threats to America are no longer external. They tell us it’s Russia, China, Iran and North Korea. They tell us it’s ISIS and Islamic Extremist Terrorism. They even try to tell us it’s global warming as the greatest threat.
But…
The real threat to America is internal. It is the persistent and determined undermining of the American Way, of one of the core premises of our democracy, which is a free and unbiased press. The Democrat-supporting media are putting America in true jeopardy and peril not by their opposition to anything President Trump does even before he proposes it, but by attempting to destroy his presidency through ridiculous hyperbole and ignoring in their reporting what is actually happening.
So what’s next? Destruction of truth and justice is pretty much done. Is destruction of the American Way next? Revisionist history aims at that. In its biased and slanted coverage of it, it would seem the biased media will settle for nothing less.
11/20/2019
Now we know what’s next: faux-impeachment, aided, abetted and lauded by the biased media, Pravda USA, a wholly partisan affair now less than one year from an election in which the people of America can of their own volition decide who should be president.
Wouldn’t that, if it were unprejudiced by a four-year attack on the president from the democrats, be the real American way? Wouldn’t that be real truth, real justice, really what America is about?
By Peter Weiss
Jo Ann asked Bill to put two hamburgers together and make her a chopped steak. She watched Bill as he washed his hands then took two of the patties and made the steak. He did it efficiently, quickly, so adeptly that she asked him how many times he’d done it before.
“Really?” Bill said.
“Really.”
“Thousands.”
“Looks like it,” Jo Ann said.
“I’ve done all of this thousands of times, give or take. Never made frogs legs before, but you sautéed one item, you can sauté any item.”
“You can carve too.”
“Why you surprised?”
“She’s surprised,” Edelgarde said coming up to the open-hearth window, “because you should have seen some of the cooks that tried out before you.”
“Really?”
“Apparently, it’s not so easy to find a good cook,” Jo Ann said.
“You’re a good cook,” Edelgarde said.
“Thank you ma’am,” Bill said.
He greased the grills on the broiler and cleaned the spot where he set down Jo Ann’s chopped steak. While the two girls stood watching, he waited a bit then turned it to diamond-mark it, then he flipped it. Only then did he walk away from the Garland.
Jimmy G had disappeared soon as it slowed down. He went off to the main kitchen, to see his cousins. Only the banquet chef and Victor were still working, but Bill wouldn’t learn this until he and Jimmy G went on their rounds back that way.
He had other orders while he cooked Jo Ann’s dinner. He had a deuce with just two prime ribs and he had a four-top with three steaks and a broiled filet of sole. Edelgarde left shortly after her brief part in the conversation.
“You are a good cook,” Jo Ann said. “Personally, I hope you’ll stay around.”
“I just got here,” Bill said.
“You gonna work banquets too?”
“That’s what the banquet chef wants. Me, I want to work. I want to make money.”
“Well there’s plenty of work here. They have banquets all the time. Wait till you do the grand ballroom ones, sometimes like five or six thousand people.”
All the while they spoke, Bill went about working his orders. Caesar was watching from a distance, listening to the conversation too. When he’d had enough, or at least that’s what Bill and Jo Ann figured, he came by the window and scolded Jo Ann for standing around. She told him she was finished and waiting for her own dinner, but Caesar said he didn’t care, that he didn’t want her hanging out. Jo Ann gave Bill a look before she went out to where Kalista was. Kalista had made her a salad.
Jimmy G didn’t come back until after 10:00 when it was just about time to start the cleanup. Bill had finished up all the tables and had cooked both Rosie’s and Edelgarde’s dinners. Jo Ann had cut out. She’d come back in her civvies, tight jeans and crisply-starched, lacy blouse.
“That chopped steak was good,” she said. “Thanks.”
“You look nice,” Bill said. “No flirting or anything, just you look nice.”
“Love you too, hun,” Jo Ann said. She stopped over by Rosie and Edelgarde and Bill saw them all together dealing with their tips.
Edelgarde and Rosie ate together, late, when they had served all their customers and no new tables had come in. Rosie asked if Bill would make them sole meuniere. He said sure, and he did a really nice job of it, finishing it off with the classic lemon-butter sauce.
Like almost everything he prepared, thanks to Mr. Jim who taught him to aim for perfection, which meant aesthetics in flavor and appearance, their plates were gorgeous on top of being delicious. When Rosie picked them up she smiled at Bill told him they looked great. He’d fixed the plates with mashed potatoes and vegetables.
“What did you do to Millie?” she asked him.
“What do you mean?” he asked back.
By Peter Weiss
By all standards, as Rosie told it, Bill’s second day in the Falstaff Room was exceptionally busy. They started shortly after 5:00 and worked pretty much straight through until shortly before 9:00. There were brief lulls every now and then during which times both Jimmy G and Bill ran to the men’s room. On his run Bill found himself walking briskly with Rosie.
“Ooh, I have to pee,” she said.
“Me too,” Bill said.
“Wanna go together?” Rosie asked.
“Maybe when I’m off probation,” Bill said. “That’s another 88 days.”
“I can wait,” Rosie said. “I’ll just have to play with myself between now and then.”
“I’m not waiting for you,” Bill said. “I’m peeing and heading back.”
“Spoil sport,” Rosie said.
But she hurried and was waiting for him when he came out of the men’s room. She was standing there adjusting herself in her uniform. Bill watched her, watched her pull here, shimmy a bit, pull there, make sure her breasts were covered but her cleavage was distinctly visible.
Between 9:00 and 10:00 they had more tables. Jimmy G worked less and Bill worked more, but that was okay because Bill, when they weren’t very busy, didn’t need Jimmy. The only thing he was still a bit lacking in was the correct garnish for each plate. But he was getting it down, and the girls, all of them, did not mind telling him if he missed something or had the wrong garnish on a plate. They were all happy because no plates came back, all steaks were cooked properly and the customers seemed eminently satisfied.
Several times Kalista brought them in espressos. Jimmy put Bill’s down on the counter by the prime rib and Bill drank it off quickly almost in one gulp. When he was thirsty, he asked one of the girls to get him a cold drink, diet soda. They were all happy to keep him happy because it was clear that he was not only capable but actually quite good at what he did.
Only Caesar was unhappy. He wasn’t unhappy at how busy they were and he wasn’t unhappy at how smoothly the kitchen ran. He wasn’t unhappy that all the plates Bill put out were not only correctly prepared, but were aesthetically appealing as well. Or, as the girls started saying, he put out, Bill did, gorgeous plates, clean, crisp, steaks diamond-marked and prime rib straight and even, the tail appropriately trimmed.
Caesar was unhappy because if this night were any indication, he was going to be stuck with Bill, or, as he thought about it, Bill was going to survive his probation and go on to be the regular Falstaff Room cook. This meant his role would be somewhat diminished, especially since the chef did not seem to be backing him up.
Bill was used to handling much greater volume. When it was all said and done, even when doing it all mostly himself, this was a piece of cake. He was fast, agile and accurate and he had a good head for the orders and the sense of how things went in kitchens.
Jimmy Banquet Chef came by toward the end of their run. He came to see how things were going, stopped first to talk with his aunt, Kalista, who told him that Jimmy G said Bill was super. Then he stopped at the entry to the Falstaff Room kitchen where he stood for a few moments watching Bill and Jimmy work.
If anything, Jimmy Banquet Chef saw Bill work around his cousin Jimmy G, saw that Bill was much more fluid and could accomplish two or three things to Jimmy’s one. Not only could he do that, but he could read what Jimmy was not going to get to and get to it ahead of him, always telling Jimmy G that he had it. This allowed them to keep the flow and not fall behind.
And so it went. Day 2.
By Peter Weiss
So let me get this right: Congress has a slush fund that taxpayers fund to pay off the women they’ve sexually abused and we, the taxpayers, are supposed to trust them as they judge over President Trump?
It just gets worse and worse. Just when you think we’ve come to the bottom of how low the government can go, we look at what we’re looking at now. The insanity and hypocrisy being pushed in front of our eyes are absolutely, incredibly unbelievable.
Once again, I rarely talk about myself using the word I when I write opinion pieces. But I have to say I’ve been writing fiction for about 50 years. One of the first rules of fiction is that it has to be believable. So writers talk about how the real truth sometimes cannot be written into fiction because when you see it in words in a piece of fiction, it becomes absolutely unbelievable.
The example I generally use is about the man who’s committing adultery (it doesn’t necessarily have to be a man) and goes into the very depths of a distant borough in NYC to meet his girlfriend at a restaurant for a dinner out. When I talk about this I generally use the borough of Staten Island because that one is pretty far out of the way for many people.
On the particular evening they are having dinner, the man’s wife meets up with her sister who has a friend that lives in Staten Island. The sister has plans to go and meet her friend and the wife tags along because her husband is working late. Lo and behold, don’t you know, they happen to walk into the same restaurant where her husband and his girlfriend are.
Now on some level, given that there are somewhere between twenty and thirty thousand restaurants in New York City, for the wife to walk in on the husband like that comes up to being almost-winning-the-lottery odds and therefore is pretty much unbelievable. Of course it could always be the truth and what really happened. But to a reader, the reader automatically thinks about the likelihood and says, “yeah, right.”
So we have a group of senators and congressmen who are telling us all this crap. The lefties attack the righties. The righties spend a lot of time defending themselves, which they should really stop doing, and then go on and accuse the lefties of playing the racist-sexist-all-the-other-ist cards, and on and on. At least a portion of senators and congressmen are guilty of all the same things they accuse others of. And as said up on top, we the taxpayers fund their slush fund.
No, you can’t really make this stuff up.
Into the mix come all the lefty bigwigs, Joe Biden, of course Hillary, and the great Pooh Bah Obama. Along with the biased media, they go on and make the most outrageous statements anyone could ever hear as if they are matters of fact. If this isn’t the pot calling the kettle black, I don’t know what is.
So there you have it. I’m not even going to talk about the impeachment issue. What’s going on there is simply a reflection of where our country is at. We can look at the whole of the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings and the impeachment farce as the metaphors for what’s going on in our society today.
My father-in-law used to say: Man is by nature selfish and greedy.
What scares me most is that we’re beginning to see the true nature of what we are as a species. It ain’t pretty.
By Peter Weiss
Day 2.
Setup was exactly the same. Jimmy G and Bill made their rounds, gathered the things for the Falstaff Room. They made two trips, both leisurely and pleasant in that they stopped to chat with all the people Jimmy G knew, which was everyone.
The main kitchen was slow, nothing going on for this day except the little bit of cooking for the Falstaff Room. Two of the chickens roasting were for the personal dinners for the banquet chef, Jimmy G, Victor, Kalista and Bill. Three others were for the rest of Jimmy’s banquet crew, the regular crew that worked every day whether they had banquets or not.
The calendar board always on prominent display on the wall next to the chef’s big window which overlooked the kitchen showed that Wednesday and Thursday were big days. Wednesday had a lunch and a dinner party, the lunch for 300 and the dinner for 450. Thursday had the breakfast for 400, a lunch of 350 and a dinner for 675. Friday had one big banquet for 1100. That would be in the grand ballroom.
Jimmy Banquet Chef took Bill on the side before he and Jimmy G made their final trip to the Falstaff Room. Jimmy Banquet Chef explained that Bill could make as much overtime as he wanted. All he has to do was let him know how much he wanted to work. Bill told him he would be happy to work as much as he could because he was into making as much overtime as he could. He told Jimmy Banquet Chef that he was used to working long hours, that he worked from opening to closing down in Columbus on what was supposed to be a split shift but which worked out to be a straight-through workday.
And so they had an understanding. Jimmy Banquet Chef told Bill he would give him as much work as he could so long as it didn’t conflict with the Falstaff Room service. He told Bill he could always use a good carver and a good all around cook. He told Bill he would check him out when he helped make the scrambled eggs for four hundred people.
After the Falstaff Room was all set up and Jimmy G and Bill were ready for work doing the service, Jimmy G and Bill sat together out on Kalista’s station with Victor and Jimmy Banquet Chef. They ate roast chicken with a scrumptious gravy, fresh-made mashed potatoes and deliciously-prepared broccoli sautéed in garlic and butter. It was pretty much a meal fit for a king. Kalista added a wonderful Greek salad to it all, the real deal.
Caesar passed by several times. He was clearly dismayed by their including Bill with them. Caesar had gone to have words with the chef about the incident inside the Falstaff Room kitchen when Bill stopped him from touching things.
Bill did not hear from the chef as yet about Caesar’s complaint. He would discover later in the week that the chef and Jimmy Banquet Chef had a good laugh over Caesar’s complaint. He would also learn that the chef told Jimmy Banquet Chef it was about time someone put Caesar in his place.
The girls of the Falstaff Room did exactly the same things the same way as they had done the day before. Jo Ann was in first and set up what remained to be set up. There wasn’t much since Rosie and Edelgarde had left it all the way it was supposed to be the night before. Then, when Rosie and Edelgarde were in, Caesar went through the room and checked out everything the way he had done the day before. He lined up the girls, checked them out, checked their fingernails, adjusted their uniforms, made sure their little French Maid’s aprons’ bows were straight.
After the inspection, Rosie came close to the service window and winked at Bill. “Bastard,” she said to Bill about Caesar.
