It snowed. And it snowed. And it snowed some more. Bill did trip and it didn’t matter. They were so s!ow Bill and Marie could have both disappeared from the kitchen and not have been missed for long periods of time. Only two waitresses worked, the two who lived closest to the restaurant. Bill was too blitzed for most of the evening to worry about how he was getting home. Mary, Bea and Henry Lee left as soon as Jimmy got in. The west side did not bother to come for steaks and decided they would simply use up whatever they already had.

Winter. But then, by the weekend, the streets and highways were cleared. The city settled into its usual harsh winter pattern of bitter cold with brisk winds and an overall sense of barrenness that didn’t seem to pervade other cities in winter. Or, as Bill thought about it, the city had all of the bad parts of winter with just about none of the good parts.

Ohio State did play three straight home games, Thursday night, Friday night and Saturday afternoon. Not that Bill particularly cared, but they won all three and were having a good season thus far. Their having a good season meant good crowds at the games. Thursday and Friday saw early dinner rushes before the games and a late push afterward. Saturday was a gangbuster day. They got busy after the game cleared out and they stayed busy all night.

Bill was doing his best to keep Bea at bay, but she was getting antsy. Being busy was a blessing since no one had time to really fool around. Even Bill and Mary were all about business. Henry Lee and Marie were too.

On Saturday, when Alfrieda came with the van to pick up meat for the west side, she was perky and pesky. She bothered Bill every chance she could get. That was whenever Henry Lee was not around, like when she was behind Bill going up the stairs while he was carrying meat trays. Then, when they were on the van and he was stacking the trays he’d carried, she felt him up shamelessly. He repeatedly told her to cut the crap, but the more he said something, the more brazen she was.

All the waitresses worked Saturday night. The poor business days they’d had on the snow nights were quickly forgotten and the university basketball crowds more than compensated for the slow nights. Everyone worked hard and everyone was about business. Even when it slowed down late Saturday night, everyone was too tired to mess around. The waitresses ordered their dinners and quietly sat to eat. The cooks rested in the hall. Marie sat on Bea’s stool and read the paper.

Lorraine came in around eleven with a beer for Bill. He had not gotten high at all and he had not had any bourbon. When he knew they were going to be really busy,  he played it straight for the most part. It was bad enough when they fell behind. It was worse when it was because he was messed up. Bill didn’t ever want to give Drenovis a reason to get on his case. If Drenovis wanted to start stuff, Bill wanted to be sure he could give it back and was not in any way vulnerable.

So mostly the weekend, beginning with Thursday that week, was all business. It was fast-paced, even hectic. At times it was frenetic. Bill and all the cooks earned their pay and then some. The waitresses made out like bandits. The dishwashers ate steaks and had unlimited sodas. Bill made sure they were well taken of and had everything they needed. Jim complained again, several times, about not having a beer when he saw Bill drinking one.

“Really think you’re something,” he said to Bill. Jim was more agitated than usual and  once again Bill sensed something was festering.

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Bill should have supposed that Mary would get pissed. It started when he and Bea came up the stairs together even though Mary knew Bill was helping her. Bea was simply gone too long for her liking, and she supposed, she would tell Bill later, that they were fooling around in the storeroom. Whether it was actually the case or not didn’t matter at all.

Being pissed didn’t stop her from getting high or from sitting on the counter with her legs crossed at the ankles watching Bill and Henry Lee make the hamburgers. She swung her legs as always, and at one point she got up to get herself a good drink of bourbon. While she was up she handed Henry Lee the bottle and waited while both he and Bill drank so she could put the bottle back in the drawer before she sat down.

Then it was time for lunch. Or, it was almost time for lunch in that Bill and Henry Lee still had to cart up the meat for the service and Bill still had to do the inventory of French fries, fish, onion rings and anything else that was needed for the service.

“You did start the potatoes baking, right?” Bill asked Mary.

“No I’m stupid,” said Mary.

“Well we know that,” said Bill.

“Keep it up, boy.”

“You two gonna fight?” Henry Lee asked.

“I ain’t fighting,” said Mary.

“Me either,” Bill said.

“Good,” said Henry Lee, “cause I don’t want to hear no shit.”

Bill was busy breaking off the bleu cheese and gouging holes into what would become the bleus. Not only did he not like eating bleu cheese, but he did not like touching it either. He did not like the smell. He did not like the feel. He did not like anything about it.

Bleu cheese would not be the only food he did not like to eat in the kitchens. However, he would discover that if he wanted to get his paycheck he not only had to handle the foods he didn’t like, but he also had to prepare them and even taste them. Sweetbreads and liver were two of the things that could easily make him puke if his paycheck had not depended upon him tasting them. Then there would be other things he disliked doing, like messing with live stuff such as lobsters and trout from a live fish tank. Regarding those, he would learn that the best and most efficient way to deal with them was to do the killing quickly and cleanly.

Killing trout was a whole story unto itself. One was not accepted as a cook in one of the restaurants he would work later on in his career until one could easily capture the trout and artfully kill it without mangling it. In another place he worked, one was not accepted as a cook, stupid as it seemed, until one could open a beer bottle with the backside of a knife.

Bill learned all of these things. Bill, as a cook, learned many things, most of which he would have been better off never having to learn.

As always of late, Bill pulled the baked potatoes from the convection oven two at a time in each hand. As always, since that first day as cook when he burned his right hand, he felt almost nothing in his fingertips there. But the potatoes were the proverbial hot potatoes for his left hand. Meanwhile, Bea, Mary and Henry Lee were out in the hall. Henry Lee was telling Bea to close her legs when Bill walked out. Mary was standing by the screen door looking out into the snow. The snow had finally stopped, but the weatherman, as per the radio, were predicting more snow later in the day. They didn’t think, as Mary related it, that it would be another significant accumulation.

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The menu called for a nice, thick cream of broccoli soup which Mary started as soon as she got upstairs and finished her coffee. Bea sat longer than usual on her stool sipping her coffee and reading the racing page in the Dispatch. She asked Bill if he wanted to place a bet or if he wanted to play a number. Bill did not play the horses, but he did play the numbers for both himself and Mary. Those number bets would end up in the hands of Robert who would hand them to Mr. Bowman. Robert was the numbers runner, why he had been busted in the first place and how Bill had met him when Robert was on his work detail. Mr. Bowman ran the game. He was the money man.

By 10:00 AM just about all the work for the day was done. The snow had settled into a flurry pattern and the streets were well plowed. More than a foot of snow had fallen. The University was on a delayed opening schedule, so morning classes were canceled. Bill had still not heard from his fiancé. He tried to call home several more times but to no avail. She could have called the restaurant, but there were no calls for him. Any call would’ve been forwarded to wherever he was at the time.

Bea met Bill downstairs while he was straightening up some things in the storeroom. He had brought up everything Mary needed for the rest of this day and for tomorrow as well. He and Henry Lee were about to start grinding meat for hamburger and making the patties and the bleus. She snuggled on him from behind while he was bending over straightening up a stack of stewed tomatoes cases. He’d had to move the stack in order to get to some things that should have been rotated forward but were not. It caught him by surprise when she goosed him, so much so that he almost dropped the case of tomatoes in his hands.

“Goddammit,” he said. “What the hell?” He turned to see it was Bea. She was already chuckling, her throaty chuckle, and she was reaching out to take a more intimate feel of him.

“So you slept  at Mary’s, huh?”

“It kind of seemed like the best solution given the weather.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet. Where were her kids?”

“They stayed by her mother. Don’t ask me anything else cause I don’t know nothing.”

“I suppose all you did was go to sleep.”

“No,” said Bill. “We got high. We took some Quaaludes. I took a shower and then we went to sleep.”

“And that’s all you did?”

“Nope,” Bill said. “We slept, we got up, we cleaned all the goddamn snow off my car and we drove here.”

“So I guess you got some left for me,” Bea said.

“Some what?” Bill asked.

“Some something,” Bea said.

“I always got some something. But I got to help Henry Lee make the hamburgers. So maybe we could meet sometime later.”

“You putting me off boy?”

“Not at all darling. I just got some stuff to do.”

“Well I need some salad dressings,” Bea said. “Want to help me carry them upstairs?”

Bill could see no way out of it. So he finished straightening up while Bea watched him work. Then together they carried up the gallon jugs of salad dressings that Bea needed for her station. When he had helped her put them into their place, he checked the steamship round and checked to see that Mary had put in the baked potatoes. The potatoes were not in yet. He washed them and put them into the convection oven. Then he told Mary all she had to do was turn the oven on when she wanted to.

“What you doing, boy?” Mary asked.

“Going down to help Henry Lee make the hamburger. You want to get high come on down.”

A moment later Mary joined Bill and Henry Lee in the meat room.

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