Last Night at the Lobster (2 page)

He counts the bills twice, then locks the envelope and the safe again and fills the cash drawer of the POS behind the bar, snapping the spring-loaded holders down like mousetraps. When he’s done he washes his hands, scrubbing between his fingers and singing “Happy Birthday” in his head like a surgeon. Ever since a salmonella outbreak in Tennessee, headquarters has been pushing food-safety awareness, and as with every corporate decree, Manny’s done his best to lead by example. He’s whitewashed graffiti and pushed the heart-healthy menu and taught his crew that every little bite counts, trying to produce a magical dining experience for his customers. He’s done everything they asked, yet there must have been something more, something he missed.

Using the new handheld sensor, he checks the temperature in the reach-in and the walk-in and the freezer, saving the numbers in the arcade-gunlike device as he goes, a night watchman making the rounds with his time key. He runs down the preshift checklist, ticking off his chores in order, getting the soups going in the double Hobart. The snow will help sell the chowder to all the mall-crawlers, the gumbo not so much. It’s going to be psycho out there.

There are exactly four shopping days till Christmas, and he still has no idea what to get Deena. Not something for the baby; they’ll have to buy that stuff anyway. She’s already warned him she wants something romantic, like the necklace he bought Jacquie for their six-month anniversary, except that’s too expensive, especially with his future so uncertain. Lately she’s been hinting that they should get married—not just for the baby, but for them. When she starts in on it, Manny just shuts down, he’s not sure why.

The question hounds him through the stockroom and back around to the front. The live tank is festooned with a single merrily blinking string of colored lights, some mangy gold tinsel and a misfit assortment of ornaments that have survived a dozen off-seasons at the top of the storage closet. He’s skimming the surface, watching the logy veterans mounded in the corners and thinking of earrings, when the Easy Street van flits by in slices between the blinds. The driver’s a good ten minutes early— probably worried about the snow. Manny leaves the dripping net balanced on the filter and heads for the back so Eddie won’t stand there knocking on the door frame the way they’ve taught him at the group home.

Manny strides to the far end of the bar, dips his hip at the corner, then squares, stutter-steps and shoulders through the swinging door. It should be no surprise that his body has memorized the geometry of the Lobster, but today everything seems alien and remarkable, precious, being almost lost.

He reaches the loading dock, and there’s Eddie coming down the van’s steps one at a time like a child, his head bent as if one ear is glued to his shoulder. His eyes bulge, magnified by thick Medicare glasses, and he wears a permanent grimace as if every movement is an effort. Because of the way his knees developed, Eddie needs two canes to walk. As he heads for the dock, his legs buckle with every step, making him lurch wildly as if he might fall, his canes busy outriggers, saving him again and again. Not that Manny notes this anymore, it’s just Eddie walking. Every couple years Manny has to write an evaluation for the foundation, and each time he writes, “Eddie is the best worker I have.” And while that may be sentimental, and in some ways untrue (he considers Roz the star of the floor and Ty the anchor in the kitchen), it’s no coincidence that today Eddie is the only person from lunch shift to punch in on time.

“Big Papi,” Eddie says.

“El Guapo.”

“Know how much it is now? I heard it on the radio.”

“How much?”

“Two hundred million.”

Manny whistles. “How many tickets you got?”

“I got five already. I’m gonna buy five more if I’m allowed.” Behind him, the driver waves, and Manny waves back, freeing him of this responsibility. “How many do you have?”

“Bruh, I don’t have money for presents.”

“Maybe you could buy me some later.”

“Maybe.”

Eddie hangs one cane over an arm and grips the rail of the stairs. Manny knows to let him do it himself, and then when he’s made the top, shakes his hand—a formalitythat has nothing to do with this being the last day, except Manny can’t help but realize this is the last time they’ll go through this ritual. How many others, he wonders. Is it going to be like this all day?

Inside he sets Eddie to work on dusting the front—the blinds and then the woodwork—while he changes the oil in the Frialators and gets them heating. Last day or not, he has to stick to the checklist, and lugs a heavy bucket of dark, stinking sludge outside and across the lot to the grease-only dumpster. A sparrow in a bare tree watches him pour it in, riding a branch as it bobs in the wind. The cold makes him realize he’s no longer stoned, that that private part of the day is over, one more last thing.

As he’s coming back, thinking of a cigarette, Ty cuts him off with his decked-out Supra, honking, then jerking forward so Manny can’t get by. Manny holds up the dripping bucket, threatening to tip it over the long hood, and Ty whips into the spot beside the Regal.

Ty’s styling in a black leather jacket like Manny’s, but the real deal, not from Men’s Warehouse, the shoulders and waist tailored, trim. With his pencil mustache and close-cropped goatee, he looks like Mekhi Phifer on
ER,
the same sly smile.

“Say, chief,” he says, peeling off a driving glove to give Manny a soul grip. “What the fuck are we doing here? We’re just going to have to close early. It’s supposed to snow like two feet.”

“Three to six inches.”

“They said twelve to eighteen five seconds ago,” he says, pointing at his car.

“Yeah, when’s the last time they were right?”

The clouds are right down on the mall and the wind is picking up. Why should he care if they close early? He doesn’t know, but the idea is disappointing. He already feels strange about walking away from the place, as if there’s something he needs to prove here, some job left undone. At the Olive Garden he’s starting at assistant manager, and while he knows they couldn’t just give him his own place, and the pay’s the same, he sees it as a demotion. Deena’s happy that he’ll be cutting back on his hours. He should be too.

“I still can’t believe this shit,” Ty says. “This is the kind of shit the navy used to pull on us. I can’t believe I gotta put up with it in real life.”

“You don’t
have
to,” Manny says.

“I do if I want to keep eating.”

Ty’s run the kitchen since Manny was a green trainee. He came straight from the submarine service, and on the line he projects that buttoned-down, no-slack attitude, keeping things moving and chewing out anyone who falls behind. Of all of them, Ty probably has the best shot at finding a comparable job, but Manny felt he needed to be loyal to him, meaning he was letting go of Derek, who usually handled lunch shift, and Rafael, who sometimes covered weekends. They both understood, they said, and, though it went unsaid, they expected him to understand why they stopped coming in after that. Ty says he doesn’t mind the fourteen-hour days as long as he gets paid, but with first the seaters, then the servers and finally the back of the house deserting in bunches, the last few weeks have been hectic, and Ty’s been coming in later and later. In a way, they’ll both be glad when today’s over.

“Who’ve I got on line?” Ty asks. “And don’t say Frito.”

“B-Mac, Warren and Rich. And Fredo.”

Ty turns around and heads for his car.

“Where you going?” Manny calls.

“Home. I can’t run the line with three people.”

“Five. And I’ll be helping out.”

“We can’t do Saturday dinner with four people.”

“Five—and I thought we’d be closed by then.”

“You better hope so, cause I swear I’ll kill Frito if I have to correct his shit all night.”

“You won’t,” Manny promises, but just to reel him in. Everything today is going to be a test of loyalty (he’s heard of headquarters sending spies to check on inventory, especially the lobsters and liquor), and he needs Ty. He’ll do whatever he has to to get them through this and to the Olive Garden.

“Okay,” Ty says, “but Rich is baker. I gotta have my boys with me.”

“Fredo’s on backup, how’s that?”

“Just keep him out of the alley and we’ll be all right.”

Ty trades his expensive leather for a spotless chef’s jacket and apron, cranks the radio on the shelf above the sink by the back door (Ludacris, thumping) and sets to work in the walk-in, choosing today’s specials from what’s marked fresh by the color-coded rotation labels. By process of elimination, he announces, the vegetable’s going to be cauliflower, which means whoever’s assembling is going to have to do a hell of a job garnishing to give the plates some color.

“White food for white people,” Ty says.

“Break out the red peppers,” Manny says. “It’s Christmas.”

The coffee urn is popping, and Manny stands on a chair and scoops regular into one side, decaf into the other. As he’s fitting the lids back on, Roz waltzes through on her phone, smoking, though she knows she’s not supposed to in the kitchen. She gives him a two-fingered wave with the butt and disappears into the break room.

While there’s still an hour till they open, it hasn’t escaped Manny that the only crew to show up are the ones he’s taking to the Olive Garden with him, as if the others have stayed away to teach him a lesson. With all the problems they’ve had with staffing, he’s been able to offer lots of overtime—a bonus during the holidays—but maybe he underestimated their pride. He’s not sure he’d come in (but that’s a lie: He’d even be on time).

A couple minutes later, as if to disprove his theory, Leron, of all people, appears, shaking snow off his skully and poking his fade back into shape with his fingers. Sometime between closing Wednesday and now he’s picked up a blood-crusted mouse under his left eye. He saunters by Manny, now working on salads at a cutting board, acknowledging him with a soft “All right,” and there’s no disguising the reek of weed clinging to his army jacket. He punches in and stays in the back hall a long time before coming out in a black do-rag and an apron and reaching for the box of latex gloves.

“Hands,” Manny says, jabbing a knife at the sink, and Leron smiles like he almost got away with something, or maybe he thinks Manny’s kidding, to still give a shit at this point. It’s impossible to tell with Leron. From the day he started he’s acted like he doesn’t want the job, but here he is, after missing last night and not bothering to call in. Without a word, he takes over chopping lettuce for Manny. He’s way faster, yet only his arms and hands move, the rest of him stock-still, mouth closed in a flat line, eyes sleepy and unblinking. Ty said he knew a youngblood in subs like that, ended up killing his wife on liberty and they didn’t find her till they were well under way. Ty’d take him his meals in the brig. For months the guy didn’t say a word, then one night when Ty was picking up his dinner tray, the guy goes, “The beets were good.” Having been lost and irresponsible for a while in his early twenties (how Jacquie would laugh at that), Manny wants to think Leron’s troubled but good at heart. He’s seen how Leron helps Eddie when clean racks pile up on the ass end of the dishwasher, witnessed him stick a Band-Aid on Eddie’s hand when he cut himself on a broken water goblet, all with the same placid face. He imagines Leron’s different at home, or with friends— that away from the Lobster he comes to life again.

For now Manny’s just glad he’s here. They’re forty minutes away from opening, and he’s got no line and only one server. It’s not lost on him that Leron’s in, while Warren, who he’s taking to the Olive Garden, is more than an hour late.

In front, Eddie’s finished dusting and is sitting in a booth, rolling silverware into paper napkins, slowly filling several white buckets, one for each dining room station. Roz is spraying down her section, all elbows and scrawny arms, her Clairol-blond ponytail bobbing as she swabs the tabletops. Despite her girlish barettes, Roz is old enough to be his mother. She’s a pro, with black nurses’ shoes and calves like a mountain biker—and a lifer, the only one fully vested in Darden’s retirement plan. They don’t even make the nametag on her uniform anymore; he’s tried finding it on eBay. Manny can’t ask her to do Jacquie’s or Crystal’s or Nicolette’s booths, so he grabs a squirt bottle of Windex and starts in on them himself.

“What,” Roz says, “you bucking for a promotion? Where’s your girlfriend anyway?”

“Which one?”

“Everybody laugh,” she tells the room at large, and Eddie looks up. “The boss made a funny. I’m sure she’d love it if I told her you said that.”

“She’ll be here.”

“I don’t see why. You owe her money or something?”

It’s another jab, but Manny can shrug it off. He’ll take this shit from Roz because he knows their situation looks ridiculous from the outside, and she doesn’t know the whole story. What he owes Jacquie is so much more than simple loyalty. He’s failed her in greater ways, things beyond apology. What Jacquie really thinks is a mystery to him. A year ago, she signed the card with his gift “Forever.” Now they barely talk. The baby’s not the only complication, or Deena, or Jacquie’s boyfriend Rodney. All of that’s extra, or at least that’s what Manny likes to think, separating himself and Jacquie from the rest of the world. From the beginning there was something dream-like and surreal at the heart of what they had, something unbalanced (anyone could see she was too beautiful for him), but that, like every other serious thought he’s had about them, is a guess.

“She’ll beat Nicolette in,” he predicts.

“You really think she’s coming.”

“Yeah,” he says, then, “Which one?”

“Nicky,” Roz says, because Nicolette hates that name.

“She will if she wants her check.”

“Now that’s lazy, when you can’t even get direct deposit.”

“I’ll tell her that.”