Last Night at the Lobster (7 page)

“I want to know who your supervisor is.”

“I don’t have a supervisor, I’m the manager.”

“Okay, let me make this easier for you.” She speaks precisely, enunciating each word as if he might have trouble understanding. “Who do I have to write to to complain about what happened here? Because I don’t think a child being sick is something to laugh at, and I saw at least one of your employees laughing at my son.”

“I’m sure that’s not the case.”

“I’m sure that
is
the case, and I
am
going to write a letter to someone about this.”

“I can give you another comment card.”

“I don’t want another comment card. I want the name and address of someone who’s actually going to do something.”

Manny’s tempted—as he’s never been before—to tell her her kid’s a brat and that she’s a terrible mother, and a terrible human being, but instead he gives her the contact info for the regional director and apologizes just to get her out the door. He smiles and eats a big shit sandwich in front of everyone, and if they don’t understand, Manny does: Like his face-off with Ty, it’s just the cost to be the boss.

The wetted carpet reeks like an overpowering cheese. He fogs the spot with disinfectant, then spends a couple minutes at the hygiene sink washing his hands. Once the mess dries he’ll vacuum, but not with guests present. The idea is to let things settle, let them all forget. Impossible in real life, and yet here it works perfectly. In fact, once the kid and his mom are gone, an infectious laughter circles the room as if they’ve all been holding it in, the grandmothers included, hooting and slapping the tabletop so hard their silverware rattles.

Manny needs to let it go too. The big party’s done, and Jacquie and Roz can use a hand settling their checks. He fingers the screen of the POS, swiping cards and printing slips. In another idiocy of corporate procurement, the system is brand-new. He likes the speed and the neatness of the transactions, and the feeling of completion, of closing the deal, money in the till, as if it somehow counts in his favor. At the Olive Garden, as assistant manager, his receipts will blend in, just one ingredient in a larger pot, and, aware of how selfish it sounds, since he’s always preaching teamwork, he thinks that’s a loss.

As the party filters out, Manny posts up by the host stand, following protocol, and thanks them as they pass, a kind of receiving line, Kendra behind him like a bride, reminding them to drive safely. The boss in the bow tie shakes his hand. “Thanks for getting us in on such short notice.”

“Not a problem. Thanks for thinking of Red Lobster.”

By now he says this as a reflex, but what does it mean? Who, besides the people who actually work here, thinks about Red Lobster? And even they don’t really think about it. Maybe Eddie, who seems happy to have a place to come every day, or Kendra, who doesn’t always, but Manny can’t imagine Rich or Leron wasting much thought on what’s just a job. Maybe Manny didn’t think enough of it either, all the years he took for granted that the Lobster would be here. In that way, he thinks, he’s just like Eddie. And now it’s too late.

Like they did on the way in, the party bunches up under the marlin, the snow outside an obstacle. One by one they retrieve their jackets from the coatrack (one woman, strangely, carries an umbrella) and button up before braving the storm, then leave in waves, leaning on one another for balance, and again Manny wonders what it would be like to work there—or anywhere else, really, since it’s obvious he can’t waste his whole life working for Darden Restaurants, Incorporated.

When the last of them are gone, he notices an ornament on the floor by the live tank, an ancient pink-and-cream-striped bulb cracked in pieces like a bird’s egg, the largest showing its shiny silver insides. It’s something that might have come from his abuelita’s tree. Someone must have brushed against it and not heard it hit the carpet. The irony bothers Manny: something so delicate that had survived so many Christmases; one more day and it would have made it. Or maybe what bugs him is how sentimental he’s getting, seeing his own fate in every little thing, as if he’s helpless. He grabs the push sweeper from beside the host stand and rolls it back and forth until all the shards are gone, then deposits them in the kitchen garbage, knocking the head against the rim to empty it.

“Easy there, chief,” Ty says. “You break it you bought it.” He’s perched on a stool at the end of the grill, leafing through the
Courant
while Rich works the ass end of the dishwasher in rubber gloves, pulling burning plates off the racks and stacking them in rollaways.

“You guys all done with lunch?”

Ty holds both arms wide to show off the spotless counter.

“What’s our dinner special?”

“Whatever’s left.”

“Make it lobster tails,” Manny says, hoping they can get rid of some. “What’s for lunch?”

“Whatever you make,” Ty says, but Manny’s not going for the joke. “Whatever people want. I’ve got some snow-crab legs—if we’re not saving them for dinner.”

“I’ve got to go to the mall, but make sure everyone gets something.” Meaning Roz, who’ll drink coffee instead of eat. Even at 50 percent off, the food’s not a bargain. Sometimes a manager’s got to exercise his discretion. “And tell everyone it’s free today.”

“Nice,” Rich says, giving him a gloved thumbs-up.

“Sure you want to leave me in charge?” Ty asks.

“Who else is there?”

“I’ll be in charge,” Eddie says. “I’ll give everybody a raise.”

“Okay, Guapo,” Manny surrenders, “you’re in charge.”

Out front the grandmothers are taking their time, asking Nicolette for refills on coffee, oblivious of the fact that they’re the only customers. Or maybe they’re afraid to go outside; the snow’s drifting against the concrete legs of the benches, the wind sending snakes skirling off across the lot. Dom is predicting two feet for this stretch of 84, more in the western hills.

“I think we’re basically screwed,” he says, “if we weren’t already.”

“If people can’t drive,” Manny reasons, “they’ve got to stop somewhere.”

“Not if they never leave home in the first place.”

Manny points to the windows. “It’s not even three o’clock.”

“So how long do you wait before you call dinner?”

“What, you got a date or something?” Manny says, then, arbitrarily, “Four thirty.”

Kendra’s restless, and Nicolette’s frustrated with the grandmothers, now trying to pay their checks with expired two-fer coupons. With no one else in the place, Manny can hear her laying down the law from across the room. “I’m sorry, ma’am, even if this coupon
was
valid, that offer’s only good for one meal per table, not two.” Logically, Nicolette’s got them, but the grandmothers keep pleading their case. The volume escalates, and Manny has to step in.

The grandmothers insist they’re two tables, since they asked for separate checks, and the coupon’s barely expired. Nicolette hands it to him as if it’s dipped in anthrax. The expiration date is last Saturday, close enough, except as he’s standing there he notices the ceramic holder that should be full of sugar and Equal and Splenda and Sweet’n Low packets has been picked clean—always a danger with these cottonheads, their memories of the Depression pushing them beyond thrift into greed. It shouldn’t matter to him, since anything not in a sealed box will probably get tossed, but now he feels doubly fooled.

“One table, one entree,” he rules, and short-circuits their arguments with a raised finger. “And I’m only doing this because it’s Christmas.”

“I’m never eating here again,” one of them says.

“I thought this was supposed to be a nice place.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way,” Manny says. “You can fill out a comment card if you like.”

Back at the main station, Nicolette says he shouldn’t have given them anything. “Bet you twenty they don’t tip me.”

“Too easy,” Manny says, and then is wrong. The grandmothers leave Nicolette a single penny—a penny Nicolette runs to the front door and flings into the storm after them. “Fuckin’ old biddies, I hope you crash!”

She still has to clear their coffees, but steams straight for the break room, empty-handed and swearing. As her tantrums go, this one’s minor. It’s only when she reappears a minute later in her jacket with her bag over her shoulder that he realizes she’s serious.

“Let them go,” he says.

“I want my check.”

“No you don’t.”

“You want to see how much I made today?” She threatens him with a folded wad of ones. There can’t be more than twenty dollars.

“It’s been slow.”

“It wasn’t slow for everybody, was it? Just me. Now why would that be?” She scratches her temple, then holds a flattened palm out like a game-show model toward Kendra, standing at the bar with Dom, then bends it toward Manny. He deserves this, partly, for keeping her away from the big party, and he can’t promise to make it up to her at dinner. “I shouldn’t be surprised. I mean, one of them’s your girlfriend and the other’s your mother, so right there that leaves me out. I don’t mind working a crappy shift as long as I have a fair shot at making some money, and you know that’s true ’cause I worked every fucking lunch for the last month straight when I could have just said fuck you. I knew you were shorthanded. That’s why I came in today, and look what I get. So that’s it, I’m done. All I want is to get my check and get the fuck out of here. You don’t need me anyway.”

“I gave you good shifts too,” Manny says.

Nicolette just stands there, adamant, admitting nothing. He knows he’s supposed to ask her to stay, maybe beg her, but lunch is over, there’s no one here and the snow is falling hard.

“I’ll get you your check,” he says. “You already punch out?”

“Yes.”

And in back she has; it wasn’t a bluff.

Jacquie and Roz already know, sitting at the table in the break room as if nothing’s wrong.

“Oh well,” Jacquie says.

“It’s not like she did anything around here anyway,” Roz says, and he thinks maybe he’s soft-hearted, because he wants them to miss her.

He wants to shake Nicolette’s hand, as if to settle things between them, but she just takes the check, slips it in her bag and pulls on her gloves. Like Fredo, she has to make the trek to the bus stop, and she’s already bundled up. Kendra and Dom haven’t budged, so they have an audience as Manny escorts her to the door.

“Thanks,” he says in the semiprivacy of the vestibule, and not just from habit. She did work for him, and he does appreciate it.

“Fuck you,” Nicolette says. “You fired me instead of Crystal—that’s what it comes down to—and do you see Crystal anywhere? No, but here I am like an idiot, so just fuck you, Manny.
Thanks,
” she mocks him, her final word.

As always, he’s aware of a crowd at his back. He knows they can’t hear everything, but he also knows the glassed-in box will broadcast the tone of his reply like a drum. He wants to say he didn’t fire anyone, that he fought hard for those five spots, and that, honestly, he would have taken anyone ahead of her, even Le Ly, who could barely speak English.

“Good luck,” he says as she pushes into the storm, and gives her a stiff salute of a wave. Watching her go, he thinks it’s wrong that instead of sadness or anger, all he feels is a selfish, indifferent relief. It feels—in this case, at least—like he’s admitting defeat.

When he comes back in, Kendra asks if she can have her check, and instead of telling her she can leave too, without a word he goes to the safe and gets all the checks except his and hands them out, throws his coat on and stalks right by Roz and Jacquie—Roz calling, “Hey, don’t go away mad!”—and through the deserted dining room and past the vacant host stand, bulling through the vestibule and into the whipping, whirling snow, striding away without looking back, sliding in his useless shoes (yes, he’s going to have to deal with the snowblower), thin socks already wet, following Nicolette’s half-filled tracks across the lot toward the dark, spotlit block of the mall. Without thinking, he strips the rubber band off his wrist and fires it into the air, where it disappears among the flakes. This is what quitting must feel like, Manny thinks, this righteous exhilaration, but by then it’s evaporating and he’s tired, across the access road and slogging along in the cold. He still needs to deal with Deena’s present, a question he’s put off too long already. Helplessly he remembers pinching the tiny silver clasp of the necklace open to put it on Jacquie that first time, Jacquie bending her head forward, gathering up her hair with one hand so he could see the wispy beginnings of it, and the knob at the top of her spine, the freckle next to it a perfect circle.

A blade bangs down and a big diesel roars, the scraping so close he could swear it’s going to run him over, but no, it’s just a trick of the snow and the weird, muffled quiet. There’s nothing behind him but empty spaces, a few parked cars drifted to the hubcaps. The truck’s all the way across the road, peeping then lunging forward again, its headlights sweeping across the Lobster like it’s opening night. The plow guy has arrived.

The mall swallows him. He swings through the first bank of chromed doors, wipes his shoes on the ribbed rubber matting and swings through the second set into a tepid, empty hallway. Like the Lobster, the Willow Brook Mall isn’t new, and the overhead fluorescents are as dim as the kitchen’s, and dully reflected underfoot. Somewhere a brass ensemble pipes a dirgelike “Good King Wenceslas,” otherwise the only signs of life are two WET FLOOR pyramids like tiger’s teeth—CUIDADO: PISO MO-JADO, translated too late for his abuelita, with a featureless stick figure falling back, one leg straight out, the other bent at the knee, a hand thrown up Travolta-like, as if he’s dropping into a break-dance or sliding home. A connoisseur of mopping, Manny notices it’s a slapdash job, wet-mopped but not rinsed so the dirt is drying in a switchbacked ribbon, yet out of professional respect he detours around it.