Last Night at the Lobster (6 page)

“We’ve only got the one.”

He leads her to the stockroom, reaches up and takes down a cardboard box from the top shelf and undoes the wedged-together flaps. Side by side, they peer into it like a treasure chest. In a nest of tissue paper rest a dozen heavy molded glasses lumpy as ice sculptures—ugly, Manny’s always thought, despite having seen them go for thirty dollars on eBay. The company offered a series of ten, but that was last year. The only people interested in them now are collectors; headquarters sent out a memo this spring warning against selling them outright. The rules still apply: The guest has to buy the right meal.

Just as Manny remembered, they’re all number threes, an octagonal rocket that’s supposed to be the Tybee Island Lighthouse in Georgia—so famous he’s never heard of it. He leaves the box down so when Jacquie comes back he can wrap the glass again and fit it into its spot. Another thing to inventory.

The stockroom isn’t a room at all but a hallway behind the grill with shelves on each side rising to the ceiling. As he waits, surrounded by identical drumlike cans of Sysco pickles and sliced mushrooms, plastic five-gallon jars of ketchup and honey mustard and cocktail sauce, Manny hears Ty riding Fredo (“That’s not where that goes. Move out the way”), the transformerlike hum of the ice maker and the cyclic rinsing of the dishwasher. She kissed him here a dozen different times, mashed into him against his half-joking protests that they’d get caught. Some of the dustier cans probably witnessed them—the maraschino cherries and baby corn, maybe. It seems wrong that even these perishables have outlasted what he thought was eternal—still thinks, really—but there they are, solid evidence. The glasses too, even though they were supposed to be a limited offer. What isn’t? He needs to remember that with Deena.

In a minute Jacquie’s back without the glass. “She says she’ll take all of them.”

“They’re one to a customer,” he says, a reflex, and realizes from her look that he’s being stupid. “Sure, whatever.”

She gives him a different look when he takes one for himself.

“I can’t believe you’re really going to miss this place.”

I can’t believe you won’t, he wants to say, but just shrugs. “I guess I’ve been here too long.”

“I guess so.”

He doesn’t know why this is a joke (it’s a lie, first off), but like all of his exchanges with Jacquie lately, he tries not to analyze it too closely, since it will come to nothing. They’re just talking.

“What are you going to do?” he asks.

“Get a job—what do you think?”

“After today I’m not taking Crystal, so . . .”

“Manny,” she stops him. “I thought we already talked about this.”

“We did—”

“Don’t start this again. Not now.”

“I should have told you before—”

But here’s Rich coming up behind her like a ghost. “Sorry. We need more oil.”

“S’okay,” Manny says, letting him squeeze past, but Jacquie’s already walking away. He could run to catch her, even with the box in his arms. Instead, he walks them to the break room, carefully backing through the door, and unpacks them on the table for her.

“Thank you,” she says.

“You’re welcome.”

“She’ll be very happy.”

“Yeah.”

Roz stiff-arms in with a full bus tub, catching just the last of this. She shakes her head theatrically, as if he’s making a big mistake, and keeps going, into the kitchen, hollering, “Got another present for you, Eddie.”

Nicolette pushes through after her, holding a knife and a spoon and swearing under her breath. “Here. If someone’s throwing their silverware on the ground, do you take it away from them or give them more?”

“Give them more,” Manny says.

“For real. You do that in the nursing home, you don’t get it back. And you definitely don’t get dessert.”

“He’s eating dessert?”

“He’s out there right now, going on his third spoon.”

It’s overkill, a second table touch on a four-top, but he can justify it as a follow-up on the spill. While the moms have their coffee and compare their lists, the kid’s tackling a Fudge Overboard, a mountain of brownie, ice cream and aerosol whip smothered in chocolate sauce. Manny’s seen guys his size quit on it, but the kid’s halfway done and still shoveling.

“How was everything today?” Manny asks the moms.

“Good,” the kid’s mother says, “though I do think our server could have been more courteous.” She looks to the other mother, who confirms it. “She seemed to have a problem with Martin, even before his accident. I think a restaurant that advertises itself as a family place should be prepared to deal with children.”

“I understand,” Manny says, but stops short of apologizing. Any other day he’d probably comp the kid’s dessert, but for all her attitude, in this case Nicolette’s right. He’s not going to reward Mom for letting the kid run wild. “Would you mind filling out one of these comment cards? Thanks. Next time you’re here we’ll take special care of you, okay? You have a good day now.”

“What an idiot,” he tells Nicolette in the break room.

“And you know they’re going to screw me. After all that bullshit.”

“I got her to fill out a comment card.”

“You didn’t.”

“I did. You can call her around four in the morning and read it back to her.”

Nicolette jumps from her chair and pumps a fist. “Unh! Yeah, son! I know someone who’s getting some late-night takeout. Get the door, it’s Domino’s, bitch!”

Manny puts a finger to his lips, and she chills. This is their secret, a breach of the rules that could get them both in trouble, but worth it. As big a pain in the ass as Nicolette is, she’s still one of his servers.

When he swings back into the bar, Dom asks if he still wants the beer nuts.

“Toss ’em,” Manny says, and has Dom run him a Diet Coke with lemon. Lunch is winding down, and he needs a shot of caffeine, especially with the day so dark. His cuffs are still damp, covering the rubber band. He takes the glass to the window and peeks between the blinds. Snow streaks past sideways as if he’s riding a train, and he wonders how it looks from the back window of his apartment—the yard that slopes down to the creek a perfect white except for the dotted line of a cat’s tracks. He imagines lying on the couch under his old Patriots sleeping bag all day tomorrow and watching the games, not even getting dressed, leaving his dishes around like he’s sick. No, he needs to be here, he needs to see Deena. If he leaves her place right after dinner he might make it back to catch the end of the late game. And that quick it will be Monday and all of this will be history.

Outside, a skinny dude in a hoodie with his hands jammed in the pouch skirts the lower edge of the lot, hunched against the wind. He ignores the stop sign and crosses the road, headed for the mall. Where the hell did he come from? Not the front door—Manny would have seen him leave—and for an instant he thinks it’s the homeless guy who gave them problems this fall, hunting for unlocked cars and climbing the fence to the dumpster. It’s only when the figure stops to let an SUV back out and the brake lights show his face that Manny recognizes Fredo.

“What the fuck.”

He clacks his glass down and hustles outside, the ball of keys banging at his hip. The ice melter’s worked, but only to the end of the walk. Three steps into the lot, his shoes fill with slush and he has to retreat. “Fredo!” he calls into the blizzard. “Fredo!” With the snow it’s hard to see, but he swears Fredo looks back once, just briefly, before going on, making straight for the bus shelter by JCPenney. “Okay,” Manny hollers, arms stretched wide as if calling him out, “you can forget about your check.”

The first thing Manny does is make sure he’s punched out, which he is.

“I don’t know,” Ty says. “He just took off his apron and left.”

“You didn’t say anything to him?”

“Like what?”

Like: Are you really that stupid, or are you purposely trying to fuck this up? Like: Who told you to do that, because it sure as hell wasn’t me. Like: Now I’m going to have to replate the whole thing, which is a waste of my fucking time.

“Did
anyone
try to stop him?”

Rich and Leron and Eddie look over but don’t say a word, as if this doesn’t concern them. Jacquie pushes in to refill a pitcher at the coffee station and watches them, sensing the drama.

“Fuck Frito,” Ty says. “Eddie can handle backup.”

“Aren’t you the one that told me we couldn’t do dinner with three people?” Manny asks.

“You really think we’re going to serve dinner?”

“We’re going to be open for whoever shows up.”

“Then we’ll be fine,” Ty says, “because no one’s gonna show up.”

Manny can’t dispute this, the way it’s snowing, but he won’t lose this argument either. When logic fails, a manager can always pull rank. “Someone’s going to show up, and if no one does, we’re still going to be ready for them. We’re still in business, and we’re still getting paid. I didn’t come in today to play babysitter. Now let’s get these desserts out and get this place squared away.”

As halftime speeches go, this one doesn’t inspire much of a response. Ty wanders back behind the hot plate, Rich tagging after him. Eddie and Leron turn away and silently unload the bus tubs and rack the dishes at their regular pace.

“You knew something like that was going to happen,” Jacquie says in the break room.

“What?” Manny says, though he knows what she’s going to say. He hired Fredo (as he hired Leron), seeing in him the ghost of his younger self—another lost New Britain kid at the bus stop, going nowhere. He gave Fredo a chance, and no matter what, he’ll never consider that a mistake. He wants to believe that with another cook— someone with more patience and less of a temper—Fredo would have made it, but he’s never worked with a cook like that. Honestly, a cook like that probably doesn’t exist. The only person who would put up with Fredo’s slowness is Manny himself.

“I’m surprised he came in,” Jacquie says.

“I’m surprised anyone came in,” Manny says. “I’m surprised I came in.”

“Why do you have to go and make a joke about it? I don’t know if you know this, but a lot of us only came in because of you.”

“Like you.”

“Yes like me. You think I came in because I got nothing better to do? Yeah, right, I’m here for the big money. Jesus, Manny, think for once.”

She blasts him and walks away, something she has practice at, just as he has practice at turning her words over, trying to see what they really mean, and then holding that meaning at a distance, since everything between them is tentative and temporary, like the fine print on the menu says, subject to change without notice.

Roz swings in shouldering a tray of lipstick-smudged wine glasses and peeled beer bottles and gives him a sympatheticfrown commonly reserved for toddlers, pouting with her bottom lip out. “Uh-oh. Looks like there’s trouble in paradise.”

“This is paradise?” Manny asks.

“Could be if you play your cards right.”

She says it in passing, and is well into the kitchen when he lets out a single uncensored laugh, shaking his head at her ability to tease him as much as the ridiculous idea that he ever had cards to play.

Out front, the kid is leaving. Nicolette’s boxed Mom’s leftovers in a styrofoam clamshell and returned her credit card, said her good-byes and fled for the break room. Only now, with her Visa safe in her wallet, does the mother slide the comment card into the hinged leather folder, setting it beside the tea light. Manny lurks at the main wait station, watching them file past the grandmothers, who turn as one to remark on the boy, the only child in the whole place. Manny resists the urge to go over and placate the woman further—not hard, considering the kid is jumping around her legs like a hyper poodle.

Now they’ve stopped. One of the grandmothers wants to offer the kid something from her purse—a piece of hard candy, just what he needs.

“Keep moving,” Manny murmurs to himself.

The mother’s politely declining—no, thank you, we couldn’t possibly—when the kid puts a hand to his mouth as if to cover a burp, bends at the waist and gushes all over her boots. A big butterscotch-colored flood, with chunks. And he’s not done. The gagging is audible over Kenny Loggins, making one side of the retirement party turn in their chairs.

“Get him outside,” Manny quietly urges, but the mother and her friend are trying to comfort the boy, not manhandle him to the door, and with their help he empties himself onto the carpet while the grandmothers gawk at one another, scandalized.

“Can
someone
please get him a glass of water?” the mother shouts, stuck in the puddle, since borrowing one of the grandmothers’ is out of the question.

Manny has a pitcher right there at the station, and a spare goblet.

“
Thank
you,” the mother scolds him.

“We’ll take care of this here,” he counters. “You can clean up in the restroom.” But first he needs to wipe off the uppers of her boots so she doesn’t track goop through the whole place. He kneels and wets a napkin in the ice water. Close up, the stuff smells like a mix of sour milk and fresh dog shit.

“Be careful,” the woman says. “Don’t soak them.”

Lady, he wants to say, they’re
boots
.

While he scrubs the stinking rug and fills a bus tub with nasty rags, Nicolette has to relocate the grandmothers to a booth as far away as possible, which is the equivalentof seating and serving them again. Jacquie takes a tray over. So does Kendra, as Roz shares an open-mouthed look of surprise with him. While he’s down there, he notices a couple spots of gum on the underside of the table, and before he can stop himself, he thinks he should find the putty knife later and take care of them.

He’s just breaking out the disinfectant spray when the mother stops him. The kid and the other mother are waiting by the live tank, the colored lights playing over their faces.