by A N Sandra
Brandon guided his new Back of the House through the prep list for the morning, and he went to bake cookies and make hamburger buns since he didn’t trust anyone else to do it. Ashley, the night hostess, had gone to culinary school for six months before making different life plans. She was, like Tilly, an organizer, so she guided everyone through the prep efficiently. Probably she did much better than Molly would have guessed someone from the front of the house could do, but Ashley obliged Molly by snapping at Annalise and Tilly when they made mistakes. Molly had different people pulled aside to speak directly to the camera so that she would have small clips to play during the show when it aired the next day. Interestingly she did not choose Maddy, Sadie, or Tilly for her interviews. Annalise was the perfect puppet, following every cue that Molly put in front of her.
“Ten minutes until the doors open to the public!” Molly called gleefully.
TIlly put down the knife she had been using, marched over to Sadie, and pulled her to the pantry area of the kitchen where she was sure couldn’t be directly seen by cameras. Out came her glue sewing gel and her scissors. In less than three minutes Sadie’s crotch was not exactly sleek, but no longer distracting, and Tilly had a discernible form under her chef coat and her face was visible.
One by one customers filed in the door, the ones off the street signing waivers so they could be seen on television. Brandon placed the Front of the House people through the kitchen and bakery as strategically as he could, giving them directions.
“Annalise, all you need to do is put cookies in the oven every fifteen minutes and take out the ones that have been baking. That’s it! Got it? Stay right by the oven.” Brandon demonstrated by putting a batch into the oven and showing her how to put the hot tray on the bake rack next to the oven.
“Ashley, you’ll make salads and small plates!”
“Got it!” Ashley smiled grimly. She knew all the salads and small plates and had enough culinary experience to pull it off.
“Billy will expedite, and Tracy will be the steward!” Brandon moved the bartenders to their stations by physically guiding them. The first order printed off the POS printer before Brandon had everyone placed.
“Grilled Rockfish Salad, no cheese at all, extra dressing; Virginia Chicken Burger, with sweet potato tater tots; Meatloaf Burger with a garden salad, Slow Burn Vinaigrette!” Brandon read the ticket out loud. He moved from station to station guiding everyone through their part as other tickets printed up.
One by one Brandon helped everyone work through tickets while it turned out that several of them had been incorrectly entered into the POS by Shelta. Through the window Maddy could be heard telling Shelta not to take any more orders, that Maddy herself would take them all.
“That’s going to slow them down,” Tilly said. She was making sandwiches as fast as she could, knowing that they did not have the exact touch that Jesus’s sandwiches had, but she didn’t care. They were delicious, and they were getting made in decent time.
“Shit!” Annalise screamed. Every head turned to see Annalise with burned cookies on the floor surrounding her clutching her arm.
“Don’t pay any attention to her!” Brandon yelled from the grill. “She only has one job!”
“She’s burned!” Sadie yelled back. She reached into the first aid kit for burn cream, which she took to Annalise to rub on her arm.
“Fuck her!” Brandon screamed, forgetting the cameras were rolling. He was having a fight or flight moment and was choosing fight. “Stay at your stations! Annalise, get more cookies in the oven now!”
Tracy started to help Sadie pick up the burned cookies and clean up the mess, but Brandon continued to melt down.
“Leave it! It’s just a mess on the floor! She’s not hurt, she’s fine! We need to get this food out!”
The entire kitchen lost its orderly momentum. Orders kept printing up, it turned out the celebrity guest for the day was Judge Itami, the Japanese Judge famous for his own reality television show where he was known for dispensing justice with Asian flare. He also did not care for his Smoked Turkey Salad with Raging Russian dressing and sent it back to the kitchen.
Michelle proceeded to try to make him a new one, while Brandon yelled that there was no time. Orders piled up around Michelle while Brandon fumed, and Annalise sniffled and tried to compensate for burning the last batch of cookies by taking the next batch out of the oven while they were still doughy in the center.
“Damn it! I need what I ordered!” Jesus stood outside the kitchen window waving a printed ticket from the POS.
“There aren’t any more Chocolate Chunky Monkey cookies!” Billy told him. “They can have Molasses Crinkles!”
“You can’t give people what they didn’t order!” Jesus returned.
Brandon left the line and got right in Jesus’s face before flipping him off. Jesus spun on his heels and went back to the dining room while Brandon went over to threaten Annalise, who would have done anything not to be there at that time.
“You have one job!” Brandon yelled.
“The oven is hot—”
“Dear Lord! The oven is hot!” Brandon was so red that he looked like Bob the Tomato. “Don’t screw up another batch! Are Chunky Monkeys in the oven right now?”
Annalise nodded, tears streaming down her face.
“Don’t burn them!” Brandon tried to calm himself, but he was shaking. “And don’t take them out before fifteen minutes is up!”
Everyone was quiet for a moment as Brandon took his position back at the grill.
“Fuck!” Brandon yelled, as he discovered he had burned the meat for several entrees while dealing with Annalise. The meat went flying across the room and more orders piled up.
“This is worse than when I got my period at school and everybody laughed at me,” Sadie told Tilly as they both set up burgers and sandwiches.
“Hell, I’m about to get my period right now!” Tilly said. “This stress is going to give me diarrhea or my period before the hour is up.”
“You’re wearing white chef pants,” Sadie reminded her. “Your period will be big trouble. National TV is not the place for that.”
“Are you kidding? My period doesn’t stack up to this—”
“No talking!” Brandon screamed at them from the head of the line.
“He’s deranged,” Tilly gasped. At that, Brandon bounced over in two steps and physically punched Tilly in the gut, dropping her instantly.
Outside the kitchen someone dropped a tray of glassware and the noise reverberated as the guests stopped talking. Tilly writhed on the floor and Brandon stomped back to the line barking orders.
While the Back of the House had no shining moments at Crackhouse today, the Front of the house was a disaster!” Molly enthused for the camera as every single Crackhouse employee skulked behind her.
No one had been punched on the Front of the House team, but they had spilled drinks on customers, delivered the wrong orders, and broken several thousand dollars’ worth of glassware and plates. It was also possible the stains would never come out of the carpet from the bottle of red wine that a customer had poured on the floor in frustration when he felt he had been personally insulted by Jesus.
Molly went on recapping the horrible ten-hour shift that had blurred in the minds of the contestants, to the point that none of them felt they could remember precisely what had happened. It would be cut and edited before it aired the next night, further removing the truth from the actual events of the day.
The Back of the House was considered the winning team for the evening, and that meant the Front of the House would have to vote someone off the show. They were crowded into a small area around the bar so that cameras could record the process.
“Brandon punched Tilly. They should have removed him from the show at that point!” Sadie said. Her lovely eyes sparkled with passion and she was so beautiful at that moment that everyone was mesmerized. Molly couldn’t bring herself to cut it later; it was dramatic TV at its heig
ht.
“Annalise only had one job to do and she blew it!” Billy said after looking away from Sadie. “Brandon was just frustrated.”
“I’m sorry,” Brandon said to Tilly. He didn’t even sound sorry and everyone looked at him resentfully except Billy.
“Men who hit women aren’t sorry they did it, they are just sorry altogether,” Tilly told him. “That was assault, and you are a creep.”
“We have to vote Brandon off,” Sadie insisted.
“If we don’t vote Annalise off we’re going to lose again.”
“We’re losers if we keep Brandon,” Sadie doubled down. She looked him dead in the eye. “You are a loser.”
Brandon kept his cool and didn’t answer even though his clenched jaw trembled, but it was too late for him. The secret ballot was cast, but everyone knew that only Billy and Brandon voted to keep Brandon and get rid of Annalise. Brandon stormed off the set, angry, after Molly said goodbye to him.
“Now I have another surprise for our contestants!” Molly went on. “Tonight, none of you will be returning home. You will be sequestered at the glamorous Hollister Manor for the duration of the show!”
Annalise really began to sob. She had repeatedly asked about such an event and insisted that she couldn’t be parted from her daughter. Molly came over and told her that her daughter would be welcome to come to the Hollister Manor with her. The sobbing intensified.
“I’ll send my personal car!” Molly said, cheerfully.
“She’ll miss school! The judge said she can’t miss anymore school on my time or I’ll lose custody!”
“I’m sure it’ll be fine!” Molly rolled her eyes.
“No, it’s not fine! I’m going home!” Annalise snapped. Tears caused her makeup, heavily applied for television, to run down her face, and her eyes narrowed as she straightened her shoulders in preparation for her exit. She was finding the backbone of personality that she rarely strengthened with use.
“My driver will take your daughter to school from the hotel every day,” Molly said. Her voice was almost deadly. This was clearly as far as she would compromise, and everyone could see it. Annalise took several ragged breaths before slumping her shoulders back in defeat and resigning to stay with the crew of Crackhouse at the Hollister Manor.
Everyone gathered the personal effects they had brought with them to the show and even the winners of the day felt like losers as they realized their real life was gone. They let Molly and Becky herd them into a motorcade of limousines to take them to Hollister Manor, the premier hotel owned by Hollister Corp.
“Everything is going to be bugged,” Tilly warned Sadie as they stood on the sidewalk waiting to get into the limo. The summer heat seemed less oppressive than the restaurant had and both of them felt better just being outside. “She sprang this on us, so we wouldn’t be ready to protect our privacy.”
“We can’t just not talk!” Sadie was frustrated.
“We’ve got to be smart,” Tilly responded. “I’ll think of something.”
Just then someone from the street wearing a hoodie pulled completely around his face bumped into Tilly. With the reflexes of a New Yorker Tilly felt her purse to make sure she hadn’t been robbed. Inside was an extra cell phone that was just like the new one Dan had helped her buy and put a firewall on. The guy removed his hood as he moved farther away, and Tilly could see Dan’s tangled hair waving gently in the night breeze. Dan had known this would happen and had brought her another phone.
“We’re going to text each other important things,” Tilly said quickly before ducking into the limo and pulling Sadie up next to her. The limo was stuffy, but filled with booze, probably to loosen everyone’s tongues. Both Tilly and Sadie looked at the bar longingly but didn’t touch anything. Annalise guzzled a bottle of expensive beer, and Billy, who had somehow ended up in their limo even though he was certainly angry at them for voting Brandon off, mixed himself a stiff Seagram’s and Seven.
No one talked at all as the driver snaked through the streets. When the limo came to a stop Tilly found herself wishing that she could trade places with a homeless woman pushing a shopping cart heaped with black trash bags that she could see through the window. Clearly the woman with the shopping cart had more personal freedom than she did at that moment.
When the limousine pulled up in front of Hollister Manor, Tilly pulled Sadie aside and thrust the cell phone Dan had just given her into Sadie’s pocket.
“Don’t let anyone know you have it. Don’t leave it anywhere at all,” Tilly hissed. She hoped she conveyed how important it was to Sadie, and she was sorry she hadn’t anticipated the sudden whisking away of the contestants. It should have been expected. Dan had expected it and been more prepared than she was.
“Got it,” Sadie nodded quickly. The two of them joined the group so quickly that they both were sure they had made a seamless exit from the limo.
Inside the richly decorated foyer a small girl wearing footed pajamas with mussed soft brown hair jumped up from a huge couch and ran to Annalise.
“Mommy, you smell like beer!” the little girl wrinkled her nose. Her voice cut through the lobby with the rich clear voice only a young child is gifted with. “And what happened to your arm?”
The Crackhouse crew laughed spontaneously. The girl was darling. The cameramen in the foyer caught the scene with smiles. This would make great television.
“I spilled beer on her in the limo ride over,” Tilly stepped up to the child and spoke loudly, for the benefit of the cameras.
“I’ve smelled like worse, and my arm just has a little burn,” Annalise told her. “Now you need to go to bed. You’ve been up late enough. You have school in the morning.”
The cameras were rolling, and Tilly hoped the part about smelling like beer wouldn’t air on national television and give the little girl’s father ammunition for gaining custody. Everyone visibly relaxed as the mother and daughter sat together lovingly.
Unlike other reality shows, the contestants on One Tough Customer did not want to be on television. None of them had auditioned for their spot, all of them felt blackmailed by Molly Hollister and not one of them expected to win the prize. All of them were playing along with Molly in hopes of not having their life destroyed by her vengeful tactics. For the staff at Crackhouse, winning would be walking away from the show able to start over. Brandon’s shameful exit had reminded them of what could happen if they lost their temper. Brandon wouldn’t work in the industry again.
“I’m Nelson.” The concierge stepped forward. He was a slender Hispanic man wearing a navy suit with a sharp red tie. His voice was rich and melodious. “I’m here to make your stay at Hollister Manor as smooth as possible. I have your room keys. The continental breakfast begins at six-thirty a.m. and ends at ten a.m. Members of the losing team each have a room service allowance of sixty-five dollars a day. Members of the winning team have a room service allowance of one hundred and fifty dollars a day and laundry service pickup is at eleven a.m. Simply leave the clothes you would like laundered in the bags provided in your closet and the maids will take them when you leave your room. I can answer any questions you have at this time.”
No one had any questions. The Crackhouse staff took their keys from Nelson and drifted to the elevator, except for Billy who went looking for the bar.
Molly left the contestants of her show when they got into the limousines and immediately went to the television studio to begin work on the editing for the show. Things had gone nearly as planned, except that Tilly and Sadie had fixed their costumes, but Molly had been aware that Tilly might be that resourceful. The whole point of switching the front and back of the house had not been just to cause chaos. Molly intended to cause plenty of that but getting everyone into different clothes would also make them look awkward.
Going through the footage that her editors had already sifted through still took hours. Molly had known she wouldn’t sleep and was taking Mexitrin, a fancy non-addictive methamphetamine that her fath
er and other executives took to work around the clock when they needed to.
Brandon punching Tilly was golden television. Shelta losing her temper with a simpering customer who ordered a chicken burger but got a beef one was almost as good. Jesus dropping the fully loaded tray, Annalise getting burned, and Esther pouring drinks with the finesse of a Viking Berserker were also going to be good for ratings.
The premiere episode of One Tough Customer was going to be amazing. Molly was sure of it.
She could almost feel the adoration she would receive for entertaining so many people so well. Control was Molly’s drug of choice. It had been since kindergarten. A few weeks into grade school Molly realized that Emily Ryan was the most loved girl in the class. Emily, who had golden hair like Molly. Emily, who did not wear clothes that were much different from Molly’s clothes, was simply more loved. Emily was always chosen first for any games at recess. Emily got a brighter smile from the teacher for the same work. Emily was adored by all. Molly orchestrated a great accident for Emily, and Emily’s family never brought her back to school, but Molly did not replace Emily in the affections of her classmates or teachers. Even though it was a disappointment that she didn’t become more loved when Emily left, seeing Emily’s empty seat did bring Molly a great deal of comfort, and a cycle of scheming and control was born.
Almost twenty years later Molly felt the pangs of desire for adoration. The old desire did not go away, even though Molly cherished the feeling of power when people scurried to bring her things or risk incurring her wrath.
“Can’t you make me more…” Molly searched for the right word over her main editor’s shoulder as he was working on her introduction.
“Don’t worry, love,” the young Brit told her. “You are going to be the most smashing thing on television when I’m finished in a couple of hours.”