Last Night at the Lobster

Table of Contents

 

 

FICTION

NONFICTION

Faithful
(with Stephen King)
The Circus Fire
The Vietnam Reader
(editor)
On Writers and Writing,
by John Gardner (editor)

VIKING
Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. • Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) • Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England • Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) • Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) • Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India • Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.) • Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

First published in 2007 by Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Copyright © Stewart O’Nan, 2007

All rights reserved

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

ISBN 978-0-670-01827-7

Printed in the United States of America
Designed by Carla Bolte
•
Set in Granjon

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

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All the vatos and their abuelitas
All the vatos carrying a lunch pail
All the vatos looking at her photo
All the vatos sure that no one sees them
All the vatos never in a poem

—Luis Alberto Urrea

Darden Restaurants, Inc., raised its outlook and expects full year 2005 diluted net earnings per share growth in the range of 22% to 27%. . . .

—
MSN.com

HOURS OF OPERATION

Mall traffic on a gray winter’s day, stalled. Midmorning and the streetlights are still on, weakly. Scattered flakes drift down like ash, but for now the roads are dry. It’s the holidays—a garbage truck stopped at the light has a big wreath wired to its grille, complete with a red velvet bow. The turning lane waits for the green arrow above to blink on, and a line of salted cars takes a left into the mall entrance, splitting as they sniff for parking spots.

One goes on alone across the far vastness of the lot, where a bulldozed mound of old snow towers like a dirty iceberg. A white shitbox of a Buick, the kind a grandmother might leave behind, the driver’s-side door missing a strip of molding. The Regal keeps to the designated lane along the edge, stopping at the stop sign, though there’s nothing out here but empty spaces, and off in a distant corner, as if anchoring the lot, the Regal’s destination, a dark stick-framed box with its own segregated parking and unlit sign facing the highway—a Red Lobster.

The Regal signals for no one’s benefit and slips into the lot like an oceanliner finally reaching harbor, glides by the handicapped spots straddling the front walk, braking before it turns and disappears behind the building, only to emerge a few long seconds later on the other side, way down at the very end, pulling in beside a fenced dumpster as if the driver’s trying to hide.

For a minute it sits with the ignition off, snow sifting down on the roof and back window, the heated glass seeming to absorb each crystal as it hits. Inside, framed by the bucket seats, a gold-fringed Puerto Rican flag dangles from the rearview mirror. The driver bends to a flame, then nods back astronautlike against the headrest and exhales. Again, and then once more, as the smoke lingers in a cloud over the backseat.

The man flicks his eyes to the rearview mirror, paranoid. It’s too early and he’s too old to be getting stoned— easily thirty-five, double-chinned, his skin cocoa, a wiry goatee and sideburns—or maybe it’s his tie that makes him look strange as he guides the lighter down to the steel bowl. He could be a broker, or a floor associate from Circuit City taking his coffee break, except the nametag peeking from beneath his unzipped leather jacket features a garnished lobster above his name: MANNY. In his lap, tethered to one belt loop, rests a bristling key ring heavy as a padlock.

More than anyone else, Manny DeLeon belongs here. As general manager it’s his responsibility to open, a task he’s come to enjoy. While Red Lobster doesn’t license franchises, over the years he’s come to consider this one his—or did until he received the letter from headquarters. He expected they’d be closed for renovations like the one in Newington, the dark lacquered booths and mock shoreline decor replaced by open floor space and soft aqua pastels, the Coastal Home look promised on the company website. With their half-timbered ceilings and dinged-up fiberglass marlin and shellacked driftwood signs for the restrooms, they were way overdue. Instead, headquarters regretted to inform him, a company study had determined that the New Britain location wasn’t meeting expectations and, effective December 20th, would be closing permanently.

Two months ago Manny had forty-four people working for him, twenty of them full-time. Tonight when he locks the doors, all but five will lose their jobs, and one of those five—unfairly, he thinks, since he was their leader—will be himself. Monday the survivors will start at the Olive Garden in Bristol, another fifteen minutes’ commute, but better than what’s waiting for Jacquie and the rest of them. He’s spent the last few weeks polishing letters of recommendation, trying to come up with nice things to say—not hard in some cases, nearly impossible in others.

He could still take Jacquie if she came to him and asked. Not really, but it’s a lie he wants to believe, so he repeats it to himself. Maybe it was true a couple of months ago, but not now. Jacquie said herself it was better this way, and, practically, at least, he agreed. After tonight he won’t ever see her again. It should be a relief. An ending. Then why does he picture himself begging her at closing to go with him, or does he just need her forgiveness?

He exhales a last time and taps the spent bowl into the ashtray, stows the pipe in the console at his elbow, cracks the window an inch, flips open his cigarettes and lights one, blowing out a curling smoke screen over the dope. He closes his eyes as if he might sleep, then pushes back the cuff of his jacket to check his watch. “All right,” he mutters, as if someone’s bugging him, then slowly opens the door and rocks himself out, the cigarette clenched in his teeth. Though there’s no one around, he’s careful to lock the car.

There’s no wind, just some overlapping road noise from beyond the neat picket of pine trees, flakes falling softly on the cracked asphalt. As he walks across the lot, a crow takes off from the loading dock like an omen. He stops in midstep and watches it glide for the pines, then keeps going, palming the keys, sorting through them deliberately, the cigarette sticking from a corner of his mouth like a movie wiseguy. When he finds the one he needs, he takes a last hit before ditching the butt in a tall black plastic ashtray shaped like a butter churn beside the back door (noting on the ground several butts from last night he’ll have to police later).

Inside it’s dark as a mine. He props the door open with a rubber stop, then chops on the lights and waits as the panels hopscotch across the kitchen ceiling. The brushed steel tables shine like mirrors. The brick-colored tile is spotless, mopped by Eddie and Leron last night before closing. Eddie’s coming to the Olive Garden; at least Manny’s able to take the little guy with him. Leron can always find another job—and Leron drinks, Leron has car problems, while the Easy Street van drops Eddie off and picks him up right on time, rain or shine. And while Manny would never admit this, since they’re friends, Eddie, being eager to please, is that much easier to boss around.

Walking along the line, he passes his hand like a magician over the Frialators and the grill to make sure they’re off. The ice machine’s on and full—good. He crosses to the time clock and punches in before he hangs up his jacket, checks to make sure the safe is secure, then pushes through the swinging door to the dining room.

It’s dusk in here, rays of soft light sneaking around the blinds, picking out a glossy tabletop, a brass rail, the sails of a model schooner. By the main wait station, a point-of-sale screen glows, a square of royal blue. He hesitates at the switches, appreciating the dimness. Bottles glint in tiers from the bar back, and from the front of the house comes the filter’s hum and water-torture dribble of the live tank. If he never opens, he thinks, they can never close. It’s a kid’s wish. Whatever happens today, tomorrow the place will be a locked box like the Perkins up the road (and he’ll still have to show up in uniform for a few hours and hand out gift cards to the disappointed lunch crowd, as if this was his fault). For the last two months he’s been carefully managing down his inventory, so they’re low on everything fresh. Corporate will inventory what they can use and send it to Newington—the spoils of war. The rest, like the glass-eyed marlin, they’ll have hauled away. Probably gut the place, leave it to the mice and silverfish he’s fought to a draw for so long.

Why not just burn it to the ground? Whoever comes in is just going to want to build new anyway.

He pops on the lights for the main room and then the bar. Outside, the paper’s waiting on the walk, the news already old. He fetches it and spreads it flat on the host stand for Kendra, slipping the rubber band onto his wrist like a trendy sport bracelet—a habit from childhood, early mornings delivering the
Herald
with his father and then later by himself. The whole place may be disposable, and everyone in it, but you can always find a use for a rubber band.

He leaves the blinds down and retreats to the kitchen, stoking the big coffee urn, the spluttering heart of the house, and listens to it gurgle as he dials the safe’s combination. The fake-leather envelope’s centered with the zipper facing away from him, and locked, just the way he left it last night. From habit he checks both ways over his shoulders before picking out the key. He’s never been tempted, but today the money no longer seems his. Even if no one could blame him, he can’t see himself jumping in the Regal and aiming it for Bridgeport and Deena’s. And anyway, it’s supposed to snow, a nor’easter swirling in off the ocean, three to six inches by midnight. He pictures himself stuck on 95 with all the trucks, the state trooper with his baton of a flashlight peering in his window and saying his name. It’s just green ink on paper, and not worth a man’s honor, his abuelita would say, but, never having had money, he can’t help but think that’s what this whole deal is about.

The thing is, there was no warning. Their receipts were okay, not great but better than last year—and this was with all that construction on 9 during the summer. They hadn’t even gotten their fall numbers. The last thing he’d received from headquarters was Ty’s ten-year pin, then BOOM, like an old building being imploded, all of it falling at once like it was made of sand.