Quicksand Tales

by Keggie Carew

  ‘Ha!’ I shouted weirdly. His hand was hot, wet, and slimy. The blood immediately began to seep through. I looked at the clock. We would be open in ten minutes. There was a rapping at the door. I charged out. Already waiting in the street was a young couple holding a bottle of champagne.

  ‘We’re a little early,’ the girl said, ‘but if you could put this in the fridge for us, we’ll come back in five minutes.’

  ‘Bollinger,’ I said, reading the label. They smiled. I cradled the bottle of champagne.

  ‘Um. Where’s the fridge?’ I asked through the billowing steam.

  ‘Out the back.’ Livingstone threw his eyes in the direction of the back door. Which wasn’t a back door but a door to a long narrow storeroom. You could only just get to the fridge, and when you got there, only just open the door. The freezer compartment was full of snowy ice cubes embedded with peas and crumbs. On either side of the fridge were plastic stacking trays of wrinkled courgettes, deflated peppers and sprouting spuds. On the shelves above were commercial-sized boxes of tomato paste, chilli spice, BBQ sauce and mayonnaise. At the end of the narrow room was a camp bed, with a rucked-up blanket and pillow, and just beyond that was a cat tray full of little cat shits studded with cat litter, like melting chocolate fingers. I wrestled the champagne bottle horizontally in beside a bowl of chicken drumsticks, then blew out a long loud sigh; it was time to open up.

  On the counter in the dining room, next to the menus, I found a note pad and a pen.

  Six people came in, laughing loudly.

  I smiled broadly: ‘Table for . . . six?’

  I showed them one table, and they chose another. Two more people were standing waiting to be seated. Then another six. Then another couple, and then another couple. I started to get in a flap, back and forth, trying not to show it. And then four more people walked in. I grabbed the menus. The large table loaded me up with white wine for the fridge. One table wanted a jug of water. Did we have beer? No, it was bring-your-own, I told them. They sniggered. They repeated bring-your-own in what I suspected was meant to be an English accent. Then one of them said, ‘It’s BYO,’ so one of the guys got up to go and buy some beer. The second couple were trying to catch my eye, waving their bottle of red. I rummaged around and found, thank God, a corkscrew among the cutlery. I opened the wine and put it on the table, as two more bottles were passed to me. I could feel my face rigidly sporting a slightly mad smile. Four reds were lined up, and of course I couldn’t remember which table had given me which wine. Three more people were standing at the door waiting to be seated. Bloody hell. A woman at the table by the window was holding up her water glass because I had forgotten the water jug.

  I disappeared into the kitchen to find Livingstone in a muck sweat, stirring the jungle stew and chopping an onion at the same time. The sweat was rolling down his nose to the temporary reservoir of a large drop, which swung briefly before it elongated with its own weight to disengage from his nose, and fall, splash, into the stew which he was still stirring. His blood-stained plaster was now also stained with Jungle Stew. Did he notice the shadow of repulsion that flashed across my face? I had a feeling he might have.

  ‘There’s no space in the fridge,’ I said, each hand carrying two bottles of white wine.

  ‘Take something out then!’ The caustic sarcasm in Livingstone’s voice sounded like we had been unhappily married for years.

  I peered into the fridge and pulled out a plastic container of pink liquid. ‘What’s the pink liquid?’ I shouted.

  ‘Yer cocktails,’ Livingstone shouted back, as if I should have known. ‘The Python Poison’s pink!’

  There was another one, bright green. I pulled out a Tupperware box containing some curled-up cheese, an opened tin of pineapple, a punnet of weeping strawberries and a bowl of something that smelt fishy, and shoved the bottles in. I filled up the jug with water and raced back out.

  ‘Could we have some ice?’ the girl asked, peering into the jug.

  ‘No.’

  They looked at me.

  ‘I mean the ice isn’t quite frozen yet,’ I lied.

  ‘We came in earlier,’ the very young champagne couple were back and waiting by the counter, ‘but you’ve given away our table.’

  ‘Have I?’

  ‘We booked that table,’ they said, pointing to the window table. ‘I specifically requested it,’ the man said.

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m new and the last waitress took the bookings book with her,’ I lied. ‘We could ask them to move,’ I made a pained grimace, ‘or you could sit over here?’ I pointed and looked at them imploringly.

  They smiled. Thank God, they smiled and sat down. They were kind and sweet and happy and young, and it was clear this must have been a special occasion. I gave them a menu, and in through the door came a party of five. There were now thirty-two people in the restaurant and it wasn’t yet eight o’clock. Wine bottles filled the counter, the red to be opened, the white to go in the fridge. I was running from table to table in a very uncool way.

  ‘No, we don’t have ice buckets, sorry.’

  Then bugger-shit, the table of six all wanted cocktails.

  ‘Two Python Poisons, three Jungle Juices and a Crocodile Tears,’ I announced to Livingstone, who had a dozen plates lined up on his work bench. You had to give it to him, he didn’t hang around.

  ‘Ye-ah?’ he said, with challenging mockery.

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know what to do.’

  He threw down his knife, wiped his hands down his apron, and led the way to the fridge.

  ‘Glasses.’ He pointed to a tray of funnel cocktail glasses on the bench behind the withered courgettes. On the same tray were a saucer of salt, a saucer of water, a bowl of sliced oranges and a cup of mint sprigs. He turned a glass upside down with the rim in the water, then into the salt, then just sloshed the pink Python Poison from the plastic container straight into the glass, no shaking or anything. He opened the freezer, plunged his hot hand in, wrestled a bit, then brought out a fistful of stuck-together ice and chucked it in the glass with a slice of orange and a sprig of mint.

  ‘Got that?’

  ‘Yup, right, fine.’

  ‘Two Python Poisons, two Jungle Juices and two Crocodile Tears,’ I announced proudly as I put them down.

  ‘It was three Jungle Juices, one Crocodile Tears,’ the table of six informed me.

  ‘Oh, sorry,’ I retrieved one of the Crocodile Tears and headed back into the kitchen.

  As I passed the young couple they looked up and mouthed champagne.

  I knew how to open a bottle of champagne because Jonathan had shown me. You don’t twist the cork, you ease it out slowly with your thumbs, little by little. Nevertheless, I opted to do it in the storeroom to be safe.

  POP!

  The bloody thing ejaculated, a quarter of the bottle fizzing all over the place. I stared at it and lifted the bottle to the light to see exactly how much I’d lost. A significant amount. And then I went into that cool, calm state I seem to find when things have FUCKED UP BIG TIME and I need to think of something fast. And what I thought of was to top it up with tap water. I mean, they were young and happy and I really didn’t want to spoil their night by telling them their expensive once-in-a-blue-moon treat was all over the filthy storeroom floor. My guess was that they were not champagne connoisseurs. And what would be worse, to get myself into trouble and piss Livingstone off, or . . . top it up? Top it up, I reckoned. They would never know.

  I ran the tap for a minute until the water was nice and cold.

  ‘Sorry about the wait,’ I said. ‘I was just drying the glasses.’

  I began to pour a clear pale primrose liquid – with bubbles, thankfully. It looked okay to me. ‘Cheers,’ I said.

  By the time they raised their glasses, I was taking the order from a table of six. I glanced back reluctantly, furtively, poised for them to say something, but no, they were sipping away, oblivious. Right decision.

  While the young couple
were happy and ogling away at each other, the table of four were not. I hadn’t taken their order yet, and they were giving me impatient stares.

  ‘Two Tiger Tail Soups, three Snake Sizzlers, one Dead Men’s Fingers; two Jungle Stews, a Jungle Curry, one Monkey Mayhem and two Tarzan Burgers,’ I repeated back to them.

  I went round each table, then back to the kitchen with all the orders, which, one by one, I read out then stabbed onto the six-inch nail Livingstone had whacked into the shelf above his workbench.

  It was miraculous. Two soups, ladled straight out of the stockpot, a squirt from the fish sauce bottle, a dollop of ketchup, done. Ping, the microwave light flashed, four unfrozen croquettes two by two onto the plates, sprinkled with crispy bacon and a drizzling of Jungle Stew. Dead Men’s Fingers, avocado mushed up with salami bits, were squirted out of an icing bag with a giant nozzle, five green sausages on each plate, each with a red fingernail – half a radish – done. I carried them out, not two and one, as an experienced waitress would, but one plate in each hand. I had to ask who ordered what. Some of the orders were mixed up, so some plates had to go to different tables. One woman began to huff and puff a lot. The table by the window wanted their next bottle of wine – no, not that bottle. The young couple wanted a champagne bucket. Annoying. A refill of water, a clean glass, I ran back and forth. Meanwhile in the sweat-zone, Livingstone was ladling the same jungle juice over every dish: a plate of chopped-up fish fingers; a plate of mince; a plate of chicken. As Livingstone prodded a burger in the frying pan with his finger, the wet plaster was flapping like a small flag. The stew raged on, boiling its flotsam, gushing out steam. More ketchup, more Tabasco. Sweat rolling down his face, drip by drip, Livingstone bent over his cauldron and stirred.

  Tiger Tail Soup, done; Jungle Curry, done; Monkey Mayhem, done. I flew to the dining room and back to the kitchen, two plates at a time. But I was distracted. For the plaster on Livingstone’s finger, the gruesome bloody banner, was barely attached, with now just a corner battling physics and gravity.

  Two burgers out of the frying pan into the buns, tomatoes, a dollop of sauce, done.

  What could you expect for eight bucks, after all? Livingstone padded back and forth from bench to stove, his socks decorated in onion skin and chilli pips, a bit of chicken skin stuck on the heel. He picked up the wooden spoon, and the next time I looked across the plaster had gone.

  Each plate I carried out I scanned for the plaster, but everything was murky green. I tore back and forth – wrong bottle of white wine, sorry; wrong Monkey Mayhem, sorry; sorry, more water, more forced smiles, more sorries – eyes sweeping each plate in search of a Jungle Stew-coloured plaster. The tenuous hold I had on the situation was slipping further and further. Mad little squawks jumped out of my throat each time the door flew shut behind me from dining room to kitchen. One table was missing their mains, one was missing two starters, one man said his chicken tasted of fish, another said his Dead Men’s Fingers tasted of pineapple (surely a good thing?). And I couldn’t find Table Three’s bottle of wine, though I was sure they had already drunk it and were being opportunistic. Everyone seemed to be getting a little fed up. Except for the young champagne couple, who smiled every time I went past.

  The desserts were the bellows on the hell fire. The kitchen was now so hot that the ice cream melted within seconds of getting it on to the plate, and the plating-up with jungle garnish – sliced strawberry and mint; tinned pineapple and mint; grated chocolate and raspberry sauce – was my job, as Dr Livingstone was sitting outside in the trash-can yard having a fag.

  I don’t know how I got through it. Livingstone totted up the dockets on his wet worktop, which was still covered in flakes of fish fingers, bits of burgers, chicken skin and drips of Jungle Stew. I ran back and forth with bills and change. Each bill had some kind of discrepancy, the items were wrong, the total was wrong. Sorry, sorry. When I finally left, at eleven p.m., Livingstone, barely visible amongst the detritus and the Leaning-Towers-of-Pisa crockery, was halfway through a plastic container of Python Poison. Five cigarette butts floated in a pool of melted ice cream. I had three dollars in tips (the champagne couple). Livingstone said he’d call when he needed me again. I knew I wouldn’t be hearing from him. Not just because he didn’t ask for my number. I knew, as he quartered me with a sullen eye, that I would never get paid. Dispensable one-night waitresses like me were another way to keep his prices down – that and his chameleon stew, which could become any dish Livingstone wanted it to be.

  I walked quickly up Ponsonby Road. I couldn’t wait to get to the old fire station. I had arranged to meet Jonathan at Le Gourmet after work.

  When I arrived the chefs were sitting at a table in the restaurant having a beer. ‘How was it?’ Jonathan asked as I sat down to join them.

  I regaled them with every gruesome detail, the bubbling stew, the storeroom bed, Livingstone’s sweat dripping into the stew, the disappearing plaster, the menu of Monkey Mayhems and Tarzan Burgers, the chopped-up fish fingers. Hearing the squeals of horror and roars of delight, celeb chef Warwick Brown pulled up a chair. I finished off with my mishap with the champagne and topping up the Bollinger.

  ‘You what?’ Warwick’s eyes popped out of his head with unconcealed glee. ‘Bloody Moses!’

  *

  The next day I began door-knocking on the other side of the street. At least now I could say I had experience. Within four knocks I landed a job in an Italian restaurant, which lasted long enough for them to realise I couldn’t carry three plates down one arm like the other waiters. Then I got a job at the China Rose. That lasted a day: not fast enough. Then I got a job at a Creole restaurant called Mumbo Jumbo. There were other waitresses and a maître d’ called Suzanne, whose hair was piled up on top of her head in ringlets. Her hands were so perfectly manicured they made me self-conscious of my own, which I kept behind my back because there was black ink ingrained down the side of my index finger and dark quarter-moons of garden under my fingernails.

  I arrived for work at Mumbo Jumbo as smart as I could manage, my white shirt washed, my black skirt ironed, hands scrubbed, and reported for duty. Suzanne looked me up and down and sighed.

  ‘Please go and wash your hands,’ she said in an exhausted tone. I went and washed them.

  When I came out of the loo she was waiting outside. She clicked her fingers and pointed at my hands. I held them out to her. I told her the ink wouldn’t come off.

  ‘Well scrub till it does,’ she said. ‘We can’t have you serving table like that.’

  I scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed. I showed her my hands. She tsssked and walked off. It wasn’t going well, I realised. I busied myself helping the other waitresses lay the tables. Everything I did they corrected: moved a knife over, folded the napkin differently. I soon realised the culture of this restaurant came down through the maître d’. I tried to look busy and useful, but was failing at that too. Suzanne, like Livingstone, suggested I familiarise myself with the menu, which unlike Livingstone’s was on plain white paper and changed every day. This higher-class restaurant was fusion Creole nouvelle cuisine, which meant the portions were very small but very pretty. It was all the rage. I was put in the section right at the back.

  The only pleasure I could look forward to was the moment I could charge up the street and join Jonathan and the chefs at Le Gourmet, who had begun to look forward to the next installment of woe and ineptitude.

  Day three at Mumbo Jumbo (I had lasted this long) and it was clear Suzanne would have liked to grind me to a pulp with her sharp heels. Everything I did was wrong. The worse it got, the worse I got. Each time she looked over towards me (which she did frequently) my hands began to shake and the soup spilled over onto the soup-plate rim, and I would have to return to the kitchen to wipe it clean – by which time, as Suzanne testily pointed out, the soup was too cold to serve. This was their busiest time of the week, Sunday lunch, and there were people waiting to be seated. In my section Suzanne sat a family of four, Mum, D
ad and their two daughters, dressed in their Sunday best. I could tell immediately from the dad’s sunburnt neck, brown as his leather belt, and his massive hands that he was a farmer, and that this was a big day out. They pulled up their chairs, upright, proud and a little uncomfortable. The mum was freshly out of the hairdresser’s, her tight curls smelling of hairspray, her floral dress pressed, her pale-blue patent handbag perching like a poodle on her lap. The two daughters also looked like they had just come out of the hairdresser’s, their big blonde roller-curls framing each pretty face. I smiled.

  ‘G’day,’ Dad said.

  ‘Special occasion?’ I smiled.

  They all smiled. It was the youngest daughter’s eighteenth birthday.

  ‘Well, congratulations!’ I said. ‘Happy birthday! Can I get you some drinks?’

  Suzanne walked past, her head cocked for her ear to get closer. I handed out the menus. The dad ordered four Cokes with ice and said they might order a glass of wine later.

  ‘Ready to order?’ I asked about ten minutes later when I saw a lull.

  The mother ordered, the daughters ordered, then the father ordered. I looked at the father, knowing what he had just ordered for his main was the equivalent of two radishes, a sliver of fish and four dots of relish in a delightful arrangement.

  ‘If you’re hungry,’ I ventured, ‘I don’t think that will be enough. I think you should go for the fish gumbo, which is a kind of thick stew,’ I explained. The fish gumbo was the best thing on the menu and, being a gumbo, it was the least nouvelle-cuisine-y looking dish, with the most actual food in it, even including bits of sausage. He smiled gratefully and went with the fish gumbo. Suzanne whisked past, and then the mother and daughters changed their minds and went for the fish gumbo too.

  ‘What on earth are you doing?’ Suzanne was waiting for me in the kitchen.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘What on earth are you doing?’ she repeated even more severely, without explaining what she did mean.