“There are a lot of people with less ability than you who are able to pick things up a lot faster. You just aren’t getting it.”
I reflected on the work I’d done recently, banging out the Bread Bar cooking, working the bouche station. Cardoz kept talking, but the words never reached my ears. For two minutes, I sat watching the screen saver on his computer cycle through its geometric permutations. And I noticed that there was a photo right above Cardoz’s head of him and Martha Stewart.
I came back to the moment as he was saying, “I’m not firing you. But right here, right now, if I don’t see more effort on your part … so that’s it, plain and simple.” He paused. “Do you have any questions?”
“No, I don’t.”
“You understand why I’m telling you what I’m telling you?”
I smiled. It was completely fake. “Sure.”
“No, I need you to tell me you understand.”
I looked again at Ty, who looked at me for the first time but then turned his head away.
“Yeah, I understand. Thank you for your honesty.” I stood up. “Okay. I better get back to the chicken.”
I got back to my station and it was clean. Akhil walked by and said, “Dwayne put the chicken into the walk-in for you.”
I went back to the walk-in and stood leaning against the wall with my head down. I ran through all the progress I’d made, all the days cooking as fast and as hard as I could, the nights at the fryer. At that moment, that precise second, I gave up.
Other than for professional reasons, I didn’t speak to Ty or Cardoz for weeks, and when I did, it was strictly kitchen business. I kept my head down, shift after shift, face angled into the steam of the kettles and skillet, or focused entirely on my cutting board, trying to work as hermetically as I could.
I confided in Dwayne. As he was taking an inventory in the Bread Bar’s walk-in one evening after service I finally told him about the meeting with Ty and Cardoz. I’d held off for a few weeks because I had difficulty getting my mind to process it. He leaned back against the wall, the two of us standing in the deep chill under a few bare bulbs, and he just shook his head. “I’m guessing that’s their interpretation of a motivational speech,” he said.
“Am I that incompetent? You can tell me. Seriously.”
“No. No, you are not incompetent. Do I wish you were just a little bit faster? Sure. You’re new to this, though. I’ve watched you since you came here. You didn’t know what the hell you were doing. Scrambling around, one hand not knowing what the other was doing. It took you ninety hours to get that list done. But here you are. You’ve made huge, huge steps. You’re on your way.
“You’re not ever going to get positive reinforcement here. You’re as good as your last service. Doesn’t matter what came before. They’re not ever going to tell you you’ve done a good job. It’s always going to be, ‘what have you done for me lately?’ But on your last day, which is coming up, they’re going to take you aside and tell you what a great job you did. Watch. And, by the way, you might want to start bringing in a few changes of underwear to keep around. It really sucks to come out of that ice bath and not have anything to change into. They’ll probably do a couple test runs on you, too. Be forewarned.”
Nelly and I had arranged for someone to sublet our apartment so we could save some money on rent for a couple of months. The subletter would be moving in a couple days after my externship at Tabla concluded. One night, I sat in the window with a beer and was going over the calendar, trying to figure out when we could get a cleaner in for a few hours to give the apartment floors and walls a good scrub. The CIA’s externship program requires the externship to last 126 days. I was scheduled to do my last day at Tabla on October 10. I counted backward. October 10 meant I would have worked 127 days at the restaurant. No, uh-uh, I thought. They cannot have one more day from me than I need to give them.
Ty and Cardoz were on a business trip during my last week. They’d be returning two days before I left. Chris was in charge of scheduling. I told him that I needed to make a change to the staff calendar, that Friday the ninth, not Saturday the tenth, would have to be my last day. It took some cajoling, but he finally agreed and made the switch. Someone else had asked if he could pick up a few more hours, so Chris gave him my Saturday slot. In my gut, I knew this was a shit thing to do, with both Ty and Cardoz away, but it was hard to shake how angry, how bereft, I felt after Cardoz’s talk.
During that week, whenever Dwayne mentioned I had just four then three then two days left, I’d break out in an ecstatic, spastic dance, something akin to the way Deadheads danced, but as if they were cranked to the gills on meth.
Ty and Cardoz were back toward the end of the day on Thursday, jet-lagged and wired from traveling.
I was cleaning my tools at the end of my shift, and wiping down my station, when Ty bobbed up behind me. He got right up close, causing me to take an involuntary step backward, but I was up against the worktable and there was nowhere to go. Ty was pissed.
“What’s this nonsense about you leaving tomorrow? You’re scheduled to be here through Saturday, and we have an event Saturday afternoon.”
“Stan’s taking over.” I paused. “I’m sure he’ll do a better job.”
“Why are you leaving early?”
“We have a subletter coming. I have to make sure they get in. I’ve got to make Friday the last day.”
Ty made a gesture that signified I’m done listening to your bullshit and walked away. I could almost feel the anger streaming off him. I finished cleaning up, waited until Ty was away from the pass and kitchen door, and left quietly for the night.
I woke up ecstatic on my final day. Even my dreams during the night had been easy. I drank coffee and sang to myself. I packed three extra T-shirts and three pairs of boxers, because I had no idea how many times I’d be dunked. The plan was, Nelly would have already arrived from Saugerties and handed off the keys to the subletter by the time work was over. All my things were packed. I’d leave Tabla at around 6:00, be home by 6:30, and we’d drive back upstate, arriving around 8:30. We’d head out for a celebratory liberation dinner. I selected music for the ride up.
I left the house at 9:30 and got to Tabla at a few minutes after ten. I entered the old MetLife building, said hello to the same security guard I’d seen every morning since June, and wished him good luck. I climbed the stairs, changed into my uniform, and strolled into the kitchen.
Ross stopped cutting herbs when I walked in. “I hope you enjoy frigid, ball-shattering cold water baths,” he said. “What I think needs to happen is that we test out the ice bath with a few different levels of ice. So prepare yourself. I’m envisioning, I don’t know, at least two dunks in the bath. Oh, by the way—you’ll never know when it’s coming.” I made my way through the kitchen. Woodrow, Sam, everyone kept up a constant warning of how cold the water was going to be. I was actually looking forward to it.
I got to my station and looked at the prep list. It was a simple day: kalonji, lamb stew, and a bunch of busywork.
Thank you, Dwayne, I said to myself. The butcher wasn’t done with the lamb so I set about the grunt work. I peeled some papaya, put it on the slicer, and julienned it. I made green sauce for the halibut seviche. I prepped the kalonji, and got it going in the steam kettle. It was about 11:30. I wiped down my cutting board, swabbed the worktable, and Dwayne arrived.
“This guy,” he said, extending his hand. “This fucking guy. Last day. I didn’t give you much to do because I figured you’d want to get out of here right before family meal. Plus, you’ll need to change your clothes several times today.”
I was opening bags of chickpeas and soaking them for the next day’s prep when Ty arrived. He moved through the kitchen saying hello to everyone, but walked past me without a word.
The butcher told me the lamb was ready. I put the meat in a large mixing bowl, seasoned it heavily with salt, and plunged my hand in to mix it up. I cranked the tilt skillet to high and gathere
d garlic, ginger, pepper, cloves, and cardamom, making a paste with the garlic, ginger, and some water. I opened the dairy refrigerator and pulled out six quarts of yogurt, poured it into a bowl, and whipped it until it was smooth. I went to the bathroom. I bullshitted with Akhil and Woodrow. I went downstairs to the Bread Bar and hung out for a minute with Dwayne, who was checking the status for the lunch service.
When I went back upstairs, I passed Ty on the way. He didn’t look at me.
“Ice bath! Ice bath!” people called out as I walked back through the kitchen. I poured some oil into the tilt skillet, and it immediately began to shimmer and dance. I tossed the spices in and stirred them in the oil. When I could smell the spices, I threw in a portion of lamb. Dwayne walked past me, with Ty on his heels.
Ty stopped. “That skillet’s not hot enough.”
I looked in. It was exactly as hot as it had been every time I made the lamb stew. Fuck this, I thought.
“It’s not hot enough. Take that meat out, dump the oil. Scrub it down and start over. Now.” He moved over to the kalonji. “This is too hot. It’s already starting to burn. Pour it out and put it into the other steam kettle. Scrub out this one. And watch the heat this time.” He walked out of the kitchen.
I turned to Dwayne. He looked shocked.
“What the fuck?” I asked. Dwayne moved over next to me.
“Listen to me: Everything you do today, you need to do perfectly. He is on your ass, and he’s going to make you miserable. Do everything right. Don’t take any shortcuts.”
I turned the skillet off and took out the meat. I poured out the oil into a bucket, put an inch or so of water in the skillet, and let it soak. I moved the kalonji from one kettle to the other. It splattered all over my apron.
It took around twenty minutes for the skillet to cool down enough for me to scrub it. I turned it back on, all the way up, and let it heat. In the meantime, I diced some ginger. After thirty minutes, I poured some oil in. I grabbed a cube of lamb and tossed it in. It jumped and sputtered and began to sear. Dwayne was nearby, meticulously cleaning the tops of some okra. Ty passed and said, “It’s still not hot enough.”
Dwayne looked up and shook his head. I started cutting up tomatoes. The tomatoes were to be put into one of the steam kettles and boiled with a bit of water. I’d strain them later and give the liquid to the Bread Bar. They’d use it to make rice pilaf.
I finished cutting the tomatoes, about seventy of them. My fingers were shriveled from all the liquid, and my cutting board sat in a puddle of it. I put them into a steam kettle, stirred the kalonji, and went back to the skillet. It had been on for an hour.
I tossed the lamb in.
“It’s still not hot enough,” Ty’s voice came from behind me. “Get it out, scrub it down, and start again.” I didn’t turn around. My head hung. My eyes watered a little, out of sheer frustration. I took the lamb out and then looked at the clock. It was around two. I knew there was a meeting between Cardoz, Ty, and the sous-chefs. I waited until I saw Ty and Dwayne and Chris and Ross leave the kitchen, then I put the lamb back in. I finished half an hour later and turned the tilt skillet over to Woodrow, who was waiting to make soup.
At 3:15, everyone had been back for a while. This was when the morning and evening shifts turned over, and usually when the ice bath dunkings occurred, so everyone could participate. But the bath was full of bains-marie holding sauces and my kalonji. I roasted the okra while I waited to get dunked.
After an hour, the bath was still full. A lot of the morning guys had gone home. Twenty more minutes passed and it was just about time to eat family meal. I would need to stick around until the lamb stew came out of the oven and I could ice it down. I noticed no one was talking to me anymore. I strained the tomatoes and went to eat something.
After dinner, I stood by my workstation, waiting on the lamb. I had packed up most of my stuff. Stan came by and handed me a note. It was from Dwayne. I need you to deep-fry cashews for salad. Do a week’s worth.
“Is he kidding?” I asked Stan. This would take a while.
“No, he’s not kidding.”
Every burner on my stove was in use by garde-manger and pastry. It was too close to service to use any of the line stoves. I’d have to wait. It was also, I realized, too close to service for me to get dunked. The ice was still full of sauces.
Ross came by and shook my hand. “I’ve enjoyed your being here,” he said. “You helped us out a lot. I think when you get back to school, it’s going to be nothing. You’ll be running circles around most of your peers.”
“You never got to dunk me,” I said.
He gave me a sort of sad smile. “Yeah, we got a little too busy today. You lucked out.”
No one had seemed any more busy than usual. I saw Ty come into the kitchen, and it hit me why I hadn’t been dunked. I remembered standing next to him a couple of months back, watching someone get tossed in. “They do this to you when you leave if they respect you,” he’d said.
I was actually surprised as I stood at my station how hurt I felt.
At 5:30, I took the lamb out, put it into hotel pans, and iced them down.
At 6:00, service started.
At 6:30, a burner opened up on the stove and I deep-fried the cashews.
At 7:45, I finished changing in the locker room. I put my stuff in a corner and went back into the kitchen. I said good-bye to a few people, but dinner service was in full swing and they couldn’t really engage. I walked to the front and thanked Ty and shook his hand. He wished me luck at school. Cardoz had already gone home.
Downstairs, I went to the Bread Bar and found Dwayne. He thanked me and told me I’d done a good job.
“You’re not going to disappear, right?” he said. “You’re going to let me know how it’s going at school, correct?”
“Of course. I think I’m actually going to miss you.”
“Yeah, I imagine you will.”
“Hey—did Ty tell you guys not to dunk me?”
“I don’t know,” Dwayne said. “I think it was something like that.”
And then I left. I stood outside on Twenty-Fourth Street for a moment, waiting to feel liberation. I just felt exhausted.
There were delays on the trains, and I got into the apartment at 8:45. Nelly was pissed, but when I explained, she softened. “Well …” she said. “You never have to go there again. You never have to put up with that shit again.”
“I can’t believe I didn’t get dunked.” I looked at her. “My feelings are really hurt.”
She rubbed my shoulders. “Do you want to have a beer before we hit the road?”
“No,” I said. “I just want to go home.”
The following week, I sat down at my desk in Saugerties and I e-mailed Ty, Chris, Ross, and Cardoz. I wrote very nice, fawning thank-you notes. I got very nice responses from each of them.
Two more weeks passed. We had our first frost.
11
AFTER THREE WEEKS OF lying around, processing the flow and ebb of the summer, watching the foliage turn luminous and then fall from the branches, it was time for school to start up again. My desire to go back was only moderately stronger than my desire to be given a catheter.
I started Quantity Food Production, twelve days of, basically, cooking food in huge quantities, on November 9, at 3:45 in the morning. I’d be doing the morning shift for six days, then switching over to the dinner shift for six more.
For the first day and the next five afterward, I got up at 1:30 in the morning, usually the time I went to sleep. The school hadn’t revalidated my parking pass, which unlocked the electronic gates of the lots near Roth Hall, so I had to park in the open areas half a mile away. My body shook with exhaustion; I was near delirium. It was turning cold.
The first morning, I arrived at 3:30, fifteen minutes early. I went to the QFP breakfast kitchen and found that class had already started. I looked at my watch and at the time on my cell phone. They were both correct. I walked in, stunned that I
had missed something as big as the start time on my first day. I had made a point of arriving early on day one.
Chef Joe De Paola, a tall guy about my age, was in midlecture as I came in, and he stopped.
“You must be Jonathan Dixon. Well, I think it’s just a great way to start this class by being fifteen minutes late. Way to get off on the right foot.”
“I apologize,” I said. “I thought—I was certain—that class began at three forty-five. I thought I was early.”
“Your group leader sent out an e-mail the other day announcing class was at three fifteen the first day.”
I was coming back from externship. I had never even met anyone in this new group before. I had no idea who the group leader was. And I hadn’t gotten an e-mail.
“I never got that e-mail,” I said.
“I’m so sick of hearing how people didn’t get an e-mail.”
“I’m really sorry, but I never got it.”
“Well, since you’re here now, you can get this: You fail for the day.”
I sat down. This was beginning to feel too familiar. The mixture of resignation and resentment, of feeling that the flow of things was passing just beyond my reach and comprehension, of feeling fucked before I even started—it made me want to cry. I thought about—later—pulling De Paola aside and explaining that being late wasn’t who I was, that I was exactly the opposite, but the persona he was wearing for this class was stern and unblinking. I didn’t see the point.
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