Wendy bobs his head.
I slap him on the shoulder. “You’re gonna do fine.”
Craning across the pass to check the door, I see that we’re still in the clear. I check my watch.
“Breaks!” I shout. “Rotate out. Make it fast.”
James slides up next to Wendy. “You smoke, little boy?”
Wendy says no.
James shrugs. “You should learn.” Then he slides away.
FIFTEEN MINUTES.
I pounded a beer and half a cigarette in three minutes, but my hands won’t stop shaking. After blowing it with the fish, I’m triple-checking everything, all the long-haul stores: line butter, grill oil, bags of frozen fries stacked like sandbags on cardboard on the floor next to Freddy. Bread. Cake batter in five-gallon buckets. Fish batter in deep six-pans that we don’t even need now that the fish has been fucked up.
I duck out the back door for another couple drags and look up into the sky, trying to read some kind of portent in the stars, the position of the moon. Cooks—at least most of those I’ve known—are highly superstitious creatures. We are animists, brooding deists who see a cunning and malevolent intelligence in almost everything. We believe there are plots against us, conspiracies hashed out between the potatoes and management, and that fate always has worse in store. We have charms, rituals against fell destiny. Lucky pans, lucky boots, a favorite knife or spoon. Certain songs on the galley radio mean the world. AC/DC has always meant bad things for me. I believe I can calm eggs just by speaking to them in gentle tones. I sing sometimes to my ingredients. My favorite spatula—the one I inherited from Jimmy—bestows on me special powers.
On the line, I believe that there’s life in almost everything. I know that almost everything is out to get me.
• • •
EIGHT MINUTES.
Hero is standing just outside the line, leaning against the tiled corner, sucking on a Marlboro Light. James is laughing. I can hear him before I can see him. Wendy has a nervous, snuffling grin. And Freddy is dancing.
Freddy is doing the running man in front of his fryers—reaching out, touching the handles of his fryer baskets, popping up into the air, spinning, patting his hands down the length of the cutting board, touching his knife, a door handle, dropping into a squat, bouncing up again. Pantomime of panic, of adrenaline jitters, and he’s panting, “Okay . . . We got . . . Okay . . . Now this . . . Right here . . . Okay . . .” He stops, freezes, looks up, bellows, “RADIO!” then gets right back at it.
Hero cracks up. James loses it. Wendy giggles, and even I can’t help laughing, though it’s me Freddy’s making fun of. It’s his impression of me on my first night on the line, working fryers for the night brigade, and it’s a good one.
“You should be swearing more, Freddy,” I say, then turn to Wendy. “He’s right, though. I looked just like that.”
“Dude, we thought you were gonna die.” Freddy is catching his breath. “You were trying to cook everything yourself. The whole line. We just stood back. And ‘Radio’? That just kills me.”
James explains, “His first night, Jason was banging the fryers so hard he knocked the radio off the shelf, right into the oil.”
“Fried the fucking radio,” Hero adds.
James. “Do the voice again, Freddy,”
“Funniest thing.” Freddy laughs. “The way you stopped. ‘Ray-dee-ooooh . . .’” He howls it, drawing it out mournfully. It’s like that scene in the movies where the cop loses his partner or the soldier his best buddy—wailing the name to heaven. Everyone laughs. I laugh. James has tears.
Radio: now code for a double load of fries, both baskets full and down. It’s a panic call, works for almost anything. Radio toast means just cook it till I tell you to stop. Radio browns. Radio cakes. The splash from the oil almost blinded me that night. It missed my right eye by half an inch, blistered my face. I still have the scar. Funny shit.
I guess you had to be there.
MIDNIGHT, MORE OR LESS.
These things don’t happen on the dot. They happen when they happen. We’re standing around, joking, catching a ticket here and there—the printer clacking, pausing, waiting, clacking again. Probing attacks. The enemy feeling out our defenses. But then we all go quiet, straining to hear, to sense the rush descending like a high-pressure system sweeping in. You learn to feel it in your bones: one minute nothing, the next you just know it’s time.
James says, “Here they come.”
“ORDERING . . . Country-fried steak going OE mash. James: double, no triple. Triple halfs going middy-well, middy-well, well. Drop three fries, please. Three burger setups to the board. Wendy: three burger rolls to the board. Adding fries going gravy. Hero: I need OEs, two on two—that’s three all-day. Browns three times, going bacon/cakes, bacon/cakes, white toast. Two sides of three.”
“CF, four fries, thank you.”
“Three OE, browns, two bacon. Thank you.”
“Mid, mid, well halves. Setups. Thank you.”
“Adding on: browns-times-four, Hero. Wendy: two white, two wheat. Scramble times two, OE—that’s four all-day—sunny. Split, split, two links. Cakes: two tall. That’s two tall, two sides of three all-day, Wendy.”
“Two scramble, four OE, sunny. Seven browns. Meats holding eggs, thank you.”
“Hold up, Hero. Five OE. Six. Six OE all-day. Freddy, I need two more fries, both going fish so two fish dinners fries. Adding on, Wendy: white, side of three.”
“Six all-day, CF, two fish.”
“James?”
“Wheel. Talk to me.”
“You are solo on those burgers-going-fries, fries-gravy. Brick ’em. Sell it on go.”
“Bricks down.”
“Wendy?”
“Yeah.”
“Wendy, say wheel.”
“Wheel.”
“I need four white, two wheat, two full stacks, three sides of three, three hamburger buns to James. Take your time. Get it right.”
Breathe. I’m rolling two omelets myself. Watching six orders of hash browns—now eight orders of hash browns—cooking in a puddle of oil on the grill. I’m poking these first couple orders into the slide, pushing them down to make room for new ones, watching the server’s trench, and chewing—working my jaw, feeling the muscles clench and unclench—flexing my fingers, bouncing on my toes. Antsy.
“Floor!” I shout out into the trench. “Come on. Keep ’em coming.”
In answer, clack clack clack clack from the printer, the spooling paper curling toward my grill. Such a sweet sound when you want it. When you’re expecting it and keyed up and hard for it. When you need it to let off the pressure of waiting for it to come anyway. The greatest sound in the world sometimes. Also the worst. Definition of a love/hate relationship, this way I feel about the printer. Like the bass drum in a parade, I can feel it tapping and clattering in my chest and belly, tickling that sweet spot between lungs and guts. I want to climb up onto the pass and hump the printer. Love it right up. Sometimes I hear the fucking thing in my sleep.
“Going down . . .”
Hero: “That’s what she said!”
“Going down . . . Wendy: Texas for french. Side of three. Hero, OM going links. That’s it.”
Freddy: “Wheel, fries coming up. CFS in the window. Waiting on . . . ?”
“OE/mash. Say again: OE/mash, please. That’s a single. Hero?”
“Put it up, fryers.”
Freddy puts a leathery, up-from-frozen chicken-fried steak on a plate, big blob of up-from-powder mash from the steam table, naps both with peppery white gravy, then sends it skidding down the hot aluminum of the pass shelf. Hero catches it without looking up, slides a perfect binary set of over-easy eggs onto the empty third of the plate, and pushes it to the top of the pass.
“Eggs say sell me!”
“Sold,” I bark, pull the dupe off the slide, check the server name. “Mary, pickup!” I slap down the check and I’m feeling good. That’s one. Only a couple thousand left
to go.
James: “Fryer. Burgers. Po me. Wendy, I need burger rolls, little buddy. Like right now.”
Freddy’s pulling fries. I turn and see Wendy standing still, eyes banging around in his skull. I reach out, touch him in the middle of the chest. Just touch him. He jerks as if I’d stabbed him with a hot fork.
“Hey, Wendy. Relax. Breathe. We’re okay. Your man needs burger rolls. I need toasts and cakes.”
Hero yells, “Wendy, Texas for french.”
“Hang in,” I continue. “Just listen. Do what you’re told. You’ll be cool.”
“I need a knife,” he says quietly, in a small voice. I look down at his board. Afraid to ask where anything was, he’d been spreading butter with his fingers.
“Eggs in the window!”
“Fries waiting for plates!”
“Jesus . . . ,” I say.
THINGS ARE LIMPING ALONG. James and I are sharing the weight of helping Wendy do his job, holding his hand, walking him, time after time, back up out of the weeds. It’s not impossible. On a busy line, everything is about time. Time is broken down into discrete intervals and repetition. How long does it take you to reach for an egg? Crack an egg? Whisk an egg and spread it across the shimmering steel of a flattop grill? You time those, put them and their required motions together in series: that’s a unit. The assembly of ingredients atop this skin of egg is another. Rolling the omelet, folding it using only the blade of the spatula, and lifting it onto the plate? A unit. Put those three units together, you have an omelet. Somewhere in there is always ten seconds to call a check, search the rail for an AWOL plate, help Wendy make toast. The thing you give up is the time you might’ve taken to rest, to take a breath, to collect yourself. Ten seconds at a time.
Clack clack clack.
“Ordering . . . steak/eggs, steak/eggs, motherfucker . . . Meat loaf going dinner salad, please, James. Short stack blue, two sides of three. Dammit. James again: club sandy going fries, please. Freddy, help James. Those steaks are mid-rare, middy. Hero: eggs are scrambled. Side bagel, dry. Side bacon.”
Clack clack clack.
“Adding on . . .”
Freddy: “Wheel, selling fingers/fries, cheese sticks, fingers/mash, fish times four.”
Me: “Hero?”
“Two minutes.”
“Eggs and browns sell me, buddy. Poachers, four over.”
“Two minutes.”
Freddy: “Fryer dragging eggs, dude. Come on.”
Hero scowls, lagging.
Me: “I’m selling the check, Hero. Plates are one, two, three, four, five-up—right in front of you.” To the trench, shouting: “Floor! I need Summer, Mary, Blond Mary, right now. Orders up!” To the line: “Adding on . . . Easy layup. Two quarter cheese, both mid-rare, both fries, setups to the board. Freddy, that is . . . That’s twelve fries all-day.”
“Wheel. Twelve, thank you. Fryer is six up, six down. Waiting meat and eggs!” Freddy bounces a frozen french fry off Hero’s head.
“Fuck you, Freddy. Wheel, overs up, poachers up, browns up and down. Sell it.” Hero reaches over and shoves Freddy. Freddy just laughs.
And then comes the explosion—a huge, chuffing whoof from behind me, sappers inside the wire. I feel scorching heat and smell burning hair. Someone is screeching. I hear cursing like I’ve never heard before. I spin around, see flames. Somebody hits me from behind.
“Man,” Hero shouts, “you’re on fire.” He hits me again.
It was just my hair—rat-tail of my grown-out Mohawk, lit like a candlewick. Wendy has retreated, shaking, all the way to Freddy’s end and looks ready to leap into his arms.
“Extinguisher!” I yell. James is already running for it, shoving Hero and me out of the way. I lose my balance and put my hand palm-down on the flattop. Don’t even feel it. There’s fire on the back line, scorch marks on the plastic. We’ve got about ten seconds before the ANSUL system goes off—the automatic fire-suppression equipment under the hood that will fill the entire line with chemical smoke and foam. “What the fuck happened?”
“Four-burner!” Hero yells, pointing. He shoves past me. One of the toasters is on fire. I grab it, tear it out of the wall and hurl it back into the kitchen through the open door. Hero slams both fists down on the edge of the cutting board covering the gas four-top, pops it out of its place and drops it to the floor—partially melted. When it comes free, flames leap in a huge mushroom cloud, then collapse into a minor inferno on the stovetop.
“Extinguisher for fuck’s sake! James!”
There’s a god-awful banging coming from the kitchen. Hero is trying to kick the melted, smoking cutting board clear.
Hero: “Gas is on!”
Me. “What?”
“Gas!”
He runs his hand along the tops of the dials that control the gas to the burners, yelps, kicks a massive dent in the front of the antique four-top. The fire dies down but doesn’t go out. With its leaky lines and bad seals I wonder what it would take for the entire thing to go up like a bomb. I lift a bucket of sanitizer water from the end of the cold table and dump it over the top of the stove, dousing the remaining flames. Smell of hot bleach. Smoke. Everyone freezes, all eyes on the gleaming silver nozzles of the ANSULs.
We wait for it.
And wait.
James comes around the corner at a run, hits the soapy bleach water splashed onto the floor, and goes out lateral like in a Benny Hill sketch—feet out from under him, hanging in the air. Then he goes down on his ass. Make it better? The extinguisher lands right on his stomach, knocking the wind out of him. Could’ve been funnier only if it’d hit him in the nuts. Then went off.
Clack clack clack clack.
“Okay, someone tell me what the fuck just happened?”
Clack clack clack clack.
Here’s what happened: No one had shut off the gas to the four-burner after thawing the fish. When we’d popped the filters out of the ventilation hood to get the poached-fish stink out of the line, the resultant suction had snuffed the flames and pilots. With the fires out, no one had thought to check to see that the gas was actually shut off—which it wasn’t. All four valves were turned to full-on, and since the numbers had long ago worn off the dials themselves (two of which were missing anyway, leaving just metal stumps like on a broken car radio), no one had noticed. I don’t know the math—what volume of flammable gas was being pumped out every minute for a couple of hours—but later that night, after business is done and we are talking about it, rehashing the whole scene and laughing so hard we cry, I feel as though we had gotten lucky. Most of the gas, I assume, had been sucked up into the hood. Some of it apparently hadn’t. Add a spark (probably from Wendy’s toasters), and boom—one very localized Hiroshima. A giant column of flame that probably just missed blowing the roof off the building, seeing as the ventilation ducts were likely full of gas as well.
So we’re down one toaster, one cutting board and one haircut. The back of my neck is red and burned, the calluses on my palm seared. (It smells like barbecue, just so you know.) Hero burned his own hand pretty good on the two dials. (I crank down the two stumps with a pair of tongs.) James bruised his ass and can’t stop laughing. Wendy, though unhurt, is completely traumatized.
I ask James what took so long with the extinguisher.
It was locked, he tells me; the latch that connected it to the wall bracket closed with a little gold padlock like one a teenage girl would have on her diary. He’d tried to pry it loose with a soup ladle and, when that didn’t work, had bashed it off with the baker’s gram scale: the heaviest thing close at hand.
“Locked?” I say, outraged. “They can’t lock a fucking fire extinguisher! What if—”
James reminds me of a couple months ago when we’d thought it would be funny to surprise one of the FNGs with a shot from the extinguisher while he was outside smoking. This had turned (as these things will) into a fire-extinguisher fight. After that, management had locked up the firefighting equipment. And James is
right. I guess I’m not that surprised.
“That was a good night,” I say.
“Damn good night.”
“We should do that again.”
“Maybe later, huh?”
Clack clack clack clack.
WE’RE BEHIND NOW, and coming up on the bar. It’s actually been a pretty light hit so far, all things considered. A warm-up. Undercard for the main event, complete with fireworks. We scramble to catch up, each of us in the slot, working with mechanical precision—crack, shake, flip, turn, crack, turn, flip. Everything is right where I reach, my hands falling unerringly on target. Orders are all coming up at the same time. It’s magic time. Checks are being sold seemingly the minute they come out of the printer, as fast as I can yank them off the slide. For a blessed few minutes we hit that groove where nothing outside our little box of steel and fire exists, where the entire universe is reduced down to the moves that we all (even Wendy) know by heart: flip, turn, reach, crack, reach, turn, flip.
“I need Blond Mary, Summer, Wally, Slim. Sold, sold, sold and sold.”
Slapping dupes down onto the hot metal of the pass, pinning them under plates. A refire on a steak buries James temporarily, screws up his rhythm on the grill, but he recovers fast, dancing out of the weeds.
“Wheel, refire medium. Sold!”
“Mary, Mary, Slim. Orders up, you fuckers. Sold and sold.”
We’re cooking so fast that we’re running out of room on the pass. Plates are getting stacked on top of plates.
“Floor! Goddammit, I need servers. I need pickups.”
I see a waiter go skulking by: Slim, the fat kid. “You!” I point, hoping to pin him to the floor with my magical wheelman superpowers. “Don’t walk away from me, motherfucker. Go get your friends. Checks up!”
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