High Season

by Jim Hearn

  Soda looks at Choc for a beat, then glances at Carla and makes his decision.

  ‘I don’t know, Chef . . . I’ll have to talk to Jesse,’ says Soda, not pleased with the prospect of turning up to work without his mentor in the kitchen.

  ‘Will you do the next week even if you decide to leave after that?’ I ask.

  Soda is the one I’ve been most worried about if I sack Jesse. I don’t want to lose them both; I can’t afford to lose them both at the same time and do another day, let alone two weeks.

  ‘He’s been out there for over twenty-five minutes now, Soda. The joke’s over, mate,’ I say.

  Soda looks around the kitchen at everyone, his blue eyes unhappy. ‘I’ll do one week, for sure—but after that . . .’ He shrugs.

  ‘That’s fine, Soda. I understand he’s your friend. But I just can’t run the kitchen with this bullshit any more,’ I say, putting down my knife. ‘Thanks for doing the week. I’m going out to talk to him.’

  I take off my apron and walk out of the kitchen, stopping off in the restaurant to tell Scotty what I’m about to do. The restaurant looks a picture, all flickering candles in petite glass bowls, polished cutlery and pink frangipanis.

  ‘Fuck him, Chef,’ Scotty says, shaking his head. ‘You’ve carried that prick for a couple of months now.’

  ‘He hasn’t been going bad that long,’ I protest.

  ‘Bullshit! He’s been pleasing himself for at least a couple of months. It’s no good for the rest of the team. They lose respect.’

  ‘He’s not a bad kid, Scotty,’ I say, half hoping he might change my mind on what I’m about to do.

  ‘Yeah, well, go have a beer with him tomorrow. This is work, mate. Vinnie would have cut him loose six months ago.’

  I might have given Jesse more scope to mess up than Vinnie or Scotty or anyone else would have, but that’s my right and privilege. Jesse was a team man from day one, backing me up every step of the way. So it’s truly awful to be contemplating sacking him.

  As I walk up the tunnel it’s difficult not to reflect on all the other times I’ve had to do this. It’s not something I enjoy but there are times when it’s easier than others, and this is probably the hardest. The reason I’ve let thing slide so long with Jesse is because I was just like him when I was his age. Even if he thinks I have absolutely no idea what he’s doing, I know what’s around every corner he turns, over every rise. The thing is, you can’t tell anyone anything when they’re in the zone like Jesse is and I was. The words just float through you like so much hot air.

  I check the toilets in the hope that he might be sick but he’s not in there. He’s not in the coolroom either, so I walk out towards the pool, but he’s not in the Moroccan hut. Which is weird. I really can’t see Jesse just running off home or into town after coming to work in such a positive frame of mind only an hour or so ago. I push open the back gate and step into the small patch of rainforest. It’s already getting dark out here, beneath the canopy of trees, but I catch sight of Jesse sitting on the same log Choc was perched on earlier today.

  ‘Fuck, Jesse! It’s been half an hour!’ I explode, suddenly furious.

  Walking closer, I see that Jesse is slumped back into a branch. And as my eyes adjust to the light, I see he has a syringe dangling out of the crook of his left arm and a tourniquet wrapped around his left bicep.

  ‘Jesse,’ I shout, reaching out for him. ‘Hey!’ I rip the syringe out of his arm, loosen the tourniquet and go to lift him off the log. He falls heavily to the damp ground.

  ‘Jesse!’ I shriek, slapping him hard across the face.

  Nothing: except Alice’s weird text message flashing through my mind.

  ‘Jesse!’ I cry again, hoping my voice might carry back through the gate.

  But it’s like I’m in another world out here, a secret garden covered in skin; like a drum my voice will never break.

  ‘Jesse,’ I say, shaking him, like, don’t be a fuckwit.

  ‘Scotty!’ I scream. ‘Soda!’ I’m aware of not wanting to upset the hotel guests, which is not something I should be worrying about. But I see what they’ll see. I see the workers pulling focus onto themselves and distracting the guests from their good time. I see their faint disgust, their barely disguised annoyance. This is not what they paid a thousand dollars a night for.

  ‘C’mon, Jesse, breathe!’ I’m repeating what the doctor said to me in St Vincent’s all those years ago. It had worked for me. I breathed in deep. I’d been searching for something . . . unaware of what it was . . . until the doctor’s command gave me a focus, his voice breaking through my confusion to locate the source of my hunger. His command insisting that I allow my lungs to take possession of their object of desire. It was like I needed to be reminded to do something I’d never had to think about doing before.

  ‘Breathe!’ I order Jesse.

  But Jesse looks tired. And peaceful. Dreamy. Entranced.

  ‘Scotty!’ I yell again.

  Upstairs, in the guest rooms that wrap around the pool, the silhouettes of the fortunate play out their roles across slight white curtains, oblivious to the drama below. The sound of the pool pump and air-conditioners and the hot-water systems and running taps seem to crowd out my voice. Sounds of insects and birds and cars muffle my cries.

  I concentrate on giving Jesse mouth to mouth; I push the palm of my hand into his rib cage. I repeat everything, over and over and over. Like a machine. Like I know I must. I scream out. I continue CPR for minute after minute. I count out the repetitive actions in my head.

  I’m beside the Memorial Baths in Rockhampton gaining a Bronze Medallion. I’m twelve years old again. I remember everything I was trained to do. Hand over hand, I press one thousand and one, one thousand and two, one thousand and three into Jesse’s flat chest.

  ‘Help!’ I yell. I’m just a kid again. Helpless. ‘Help!’ I cry.

  But no one arrives.

  Jesse is cold. He’s deep blue and icy cold. He’s dead. The various processes of death have taken over his body. It’s like all my training was for nothing. It’s like . . . the end of something and the beginning of something else.

  After a while I stop and look at Jesse in disbelief. How did this happen?

  I am disgusted with myself that I left him out here so long; that I didn’t listen to the loudest voice in my head as the minutes ticked over in the kitchen, the voice that insisted I come stomping out here, kicking and screaming and yelling.

  You stupid, stupid kid, I’m thinking. I smooth his fringe across his face the way I know he likes it; to make it like the photo he has of himself inside his mind.

  I resolve there is no emergency. I feel a powerful need to talk with Alice.

  I push back through the gate into Rae’s. I walk back through the tunnel to the phone in the kitchen. I am not sobbing, but tears run down my face. I call an ambulance. Then I call the cops, though Jesse would hate them seeing him like this. Then I call Alice and tell her what happened. She’s devastated. She understands. She knew something had to give; she says to be careful driving home.

  Scotty and the boys slowly gravitate towards me as I talk on the phone. They hear my conversation with the operator as I request an ambulance and tell them why I need it. Then Soda runs down the tunnel, clattering over the floorboards which Vinnie installed cheaply in order to give some semblance of designer decor between the restaurant and the male toilets. And it’s strange that at this moment I feel resentment at Vinnie’s choice of materials to refurbish the tunnel. It’s not my name over the door.

  I walk back out to the patch of rainforest. Scotty, Choc and Carla follow me. It feels more damp than it did a couple of minutes ago. Leaves rot in shadowy spaces. Ants are everywhere and they’re already beginning to crawl over Jesse. I imagine a shrine. It’s too early. I imagine Jesse’s funeral: it’s too early, impolite. I think of service tonight, of the customers, the rush, the adrenaline. And it’s all too late.

  Soda is doing CPR, just like I
did. He’s screaming at Jesse to wake up, to snap out of it. No one knew Jesse had been using heroin. How long had he been on the gear? How could he? Why didn’t he talk about it? And the worst thing for me as a former user was how much sense it made of all his behaviour. Of course Jesse was on the smack. Everything fitted. This was the moment we’d all been waiting for. It wasn’t me sacking him. It shouldn’t have come to this but it’s strange how you can feel a moment unravel. We thought he just needed more time, more love, some understanding. But all along he had a secret, a new love, a new best friend and a reason for living.

  And now he’s dead.

  Scotty takes over from Soda with the CPR for a couple of minutes. He’s serious, focused, but it’s obvious his efforts are useless. Everyone knows it’s just about doing something. And when he finally gives up and collapses onto the damp ground, Soda takes over again, insisting it isn’t too late. No one wants to let go. We can’t. We love him.

  Everyone’s distraught. The sirens sound. Choc walks out of the forest to guide the paramedics to where we all are. It’s dark by now. Torches are shining, and people are speaking with gentle authority. The paramedics seem to feel the waste, the sadness and the absurdity of such a short life: the dreadful, pressing, knowing that it didn’t have to be this way; the shame that it is.

  As Jesse’s body is loaded onto a stretcher, I feel strongly that I don’t want to leave him alone. That it’s my obligation to travel with him to wherever he has to go. I feel compelled to explain things to various people.

  ‘I’m going with him,’ I say, taking hold of the stretcher as if to add weight to my statement. After they slide Jesse’s body onto a silver trolley, one of the ambulance officers ushers me into the back of the wagon.

  It’s strange watching them work on Jesse’s body in the back of the ambulance. And what’s most odd about it is how I seem to know everything they are doing. How does that happen? It’s not as if I was ever conscious when I ended up in the back of an ambulance. Maybe it’s from watching too much television? From always knowing when I used that I was only ever a heartbeat away from where Jesse is now: dead in the back of a meat wagon.

  The sirens are on but there’s no great rush, no panic. There’ll be no miracle. The paramedics reckon Jesse’s been dead for about twenty minutes. They show respect to me, out of respect for the dead. I feel deeply ashamed, enraged and grief-stricken. I’m crying, shaking my head.

  ‘I can’t believe he did this,’ I tell the paramedics.

  They shake their heads. They know. They’ve seen it all before.

  ‘He’s been in before, you know,’ says the driver.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I ask.

  ‘He’s overdosed before. Jesse, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I tell him. ‘Jesse.’

  ‘He’s overdosed a couple of times,’ the driver tells me. ‘I didn’t think we’d get him back last time but he responded to the narcane.’

  ‘He was gone too long this time,’ the guy in the back says. ‘It’s a time thing.’

  ‘I couldn’t . . . I didn’t want to go out . . .’ I say.

  ‘Mate,’ the guy in the back says, ‘he’s the one sticking needles in his arms. That’s the risk junkies take.’

  ‘He’s not a junkie,’ I say. They’ve got Jesse all wrong.

  ‘Intravenous drug user,’ the driver suggests politely. Like he doesn’t want to upset me. Like he knows the truth is hard to bear.

  ‘Jesus!’ I say. ‘I was a fucking junkie, mate. I used more than this little cunt spilt.’

  ‘Did you give him the dope?’ the driver asks.

  ‘No!’ I yell. ‘I haven’t used since I was a kid.’

  ‘Did you know Jesse was using?’ the guy in the back asks.

  ‘No,’ I say, shaking my head. For such an expert, I don’t know much about anything. ‘No,’ I say again. ‘I didn’t know Jesse was using.’

  In a flash I recall all the times I used smack. I recall all the different kitchens, all the lies, all the dirty, blunt syringes; the chemical smell of hospital wipes, of bleach. All the times I tried to redeem myself to all the different head chefs, governors and restaurant owners. I remember all the times I lied, because I had a secret.

  The driver calls in to the hospital that he has a DOA. He’s respectful, upset even, as he speaks into the radio.

  Dead on arrival. Jesse. But Jesse’s just a kid, for fuck’s sake.

  ‘You can’t . . .’ I begin, but I can’t continue. I’m overwhelmed. Like I haven’t been for such a long time. I want to protect Jesse’s legacy, how he’ll be remembered.

  Inside the hospital I’m asked to wait. I sit in the public lounge with mothers waiting to have their sick babies seen to, backpackers with blisters they need busted and dressed. There are no screaming emergencies, no chaos. Jesse is the lead story and I am his witness, yet even to me the staff are relaxed, calm; they don’t want to upset me any more than I am. I know they’ll perform whatever procedures they have to with Jesse, with his body. And I know it will all come to nothing.

  It doesn’t take long for the doctor to come out. Ten minutes, maybe twelve. The boxes are ticked and the circles crossed.

  ‘Are you related?’ the doctor asks.

  ‘No, mate, I’m his boss,’ I say.

  ‘What’s your name?’ the doctor asks.

  ‘Jimmy,’ I tell him.

  ‘Well, I’m sorry, Jim,’ he says. ‘He’s gone. I have to phone his parents. Do you have their number?’

  ‘No,’ I say, slapping at my pockets, as if for some reason I might.

  ‘That’s all right. He’s a local. We’ll have his number here somewhere,’ the doctor assures me. ‘There’s nothing more you can do now. I’m going to phone his parents and organise what needs to be done. You might have to make a statement to the police—they should be here soon.’

  ‘Okay.’

  And suddenly it’s like, I know, Doc, I’ve seen it all before.

  30

  The weeks that followed Jesse’s death were like the early days of Alice and me all over again. Only this time she set the table, cooked and cleaned, settled the kids and listened. It felt in some ways that my life had come full circle. I started off by telling her every little thing to do with Jesse, about how this led to that and what everything meant . . . and then, when the words ran out, I just let go and floated down. I stared up at Alice and the boys, who seemed so large and alive; so full of energy and laughter and tears and petty resentments and love. And I knew they were worried that they couldn’t reach me, that I was there but someplace else.

  My mind raced back across time. I ran through all the ways in which I knew Jesse, all the times I could have said something but didn’t—because what do you tell a kid who’s determined to find out for himself? I remembered all the effort we put into crazy dishes and ridiculous menus; how he’d cough when he was anxious and pull at his hair when he was thinking. And I couldn’t help but recall all the other times I’d spent in hospitality; what led me to Rae’s and Alice and Jesse. What hospitality meant to me. How was it that I’d spent so many years cooking other people’s dinner. It seemed such a bizarre thing to do.

  When my mother organised the job for me at Oliver’s all those years ago, I could not have guessed at the ramifications of her decision. And it wasn’t that hospitality inspired me to become a great chef—that’s someone else’s story. The thing I realised most of all was that hospitality had always held a space for me. It was the home I never had: like all this time I was actually the guest, dressed in checks, working out the back. How many kitchens had I walked into and started work, heating, chopping, bending, inventing? How many times had I been shown something new? Watched a young kid’s eyes light up when I taught the same thing to him or her years later? How many steaks had I cooked? Pans had I tossed? And why?

  It seemed to me that people’s ideas about what hospitality means are formed by their experiences of home. I felt strongly that Jesse’s death and my youthfu
l misadventures spoke to what it meant to be a child, a dependent being. I recalled all of my childish expectations, hopes and desires and recollections of pleasure. I felt ripped off that hospitality hadn’t held a space for Jesse; at least, not like it did for me. Hospitality is primal; it speaks to nerves and pleasures and senses, rather than to languages, laws and numbers. And while for some people their desire is to transfigure hospitality into something scientific, when the sun goes down it is our bodies that require sustenance and sleep. Tables, chairs, beds, shelter, food, bathrooms . . . these are the base elements of what the human body requires for comfort. Not to address these things, or to address them in such a way that is somehow extraneous to hospitality, is to misunderstand what hospitality is.

  It has never ceased to amaze me the impact that good food and a pleasurable dining experience can have on a person. So many people choose a restaurant as the place to seduce someone, to ask their lover to marry them, or blow up and fight with them. So many people have the time of their lives or settle large business deals over a great dinner out. Hospitality is a place where pleasure has not just a right to exist, but an obligation to be recognised.

  I needed to find a reason to keep cooking after Jesse died; a reason to stand at the stove and suck up the pressure and push out the plates. A reason to train one more kid to cook a steak. And I’m not sure I found one convincing answer, but I did find a reason to smile again and trust fate’s hand. When Alice and the boys finally did reach down and pull me up, I understood that it was our memories that mattered now. What we made of our lives with each other was all that really counted. It was the feelings that we shared that would form the stories of our lives.

  In different ways, all of the crew felt responsible for Jesse dying. Vinnie shut the restaurant down for a few days out of respect and organised for someone to cook for the hotel guests. Like the rest of us, Vinnie needed some time to regroup. We all hung out for a while. We organised the funeral. We were as close as a crew could get. But there was no way we were ever going to be able to bring back the magic. We’d done nearly three years together and I’d done a year before that trying to get things to click. We’d created our version of what the best of hospitality looks and tastes and smells like.