“Dude, you almost done with those wings? The ticket’s been sitting there for like, twenty minutes,” Cameron grumbled.
“Yeah. Sorry.” I slid the plate over to him so he could add the dip and garnish.
“Where the hell’s your head at, man? You been out of it all day.”
I shrugged it off. “Just tired.”
“Yeah, well maybe you should take your break now. You sure as shit ain’t helping back here.”
I hesitated. Working at Buck’s wasn’t the most intellectually stimulating job, but it kept me busy. When I was alone with my thoughts, that’s when things tended to get really pathetic. But those thoughts had started to invade my brain even when I was dumping sauce on chicken parts, so I might as well take the break when it was offered.
“Yeah. Okay. Be back in a few.”
I washed my hands, took off my apron, and headed out the back door. Marla, one of our waitresses, was smoking in the space that had been dubbed “the break room” long before I’d ever worked there. She’d set her hat down on one of the stools but moved it for me as I came to sit next to her.
Every day I went to work, I thanked whatever god was looking out for me that the kitchen staff weren’t required to wear the same humiliating outfit as the rest of the staff. With bright red vests complete with fringe, bandanas, and a sheriff’s badge for a nametag, they looked like Yosemite Sam’s long-lost inbred cousins. For a brief period, the owners made us wear cowboy hats, but when Jason’s had fallen off and caught fire on a gas burner, they’d been deemed a safety hazard and we went back to our Buck’s-branded caps instead.
“Mind if I bum one of those?” I asked.
Wordlessly, she held up the pack for me to take one. I tossed her a quick thank-you nod and slid the cigarette between my lips, craving the instant rush of nicotine. I lit up and inhaled, holding my breath for a moment as that feeling of light-headedness washed through me.
“You okay?” Marla asked. “Never seen you smoke before.”
“Mm-hm.” I exhaled away from her. It seemed more… courteous somehow. “Just been a long week.”
“At least Byron won’t be in until later. Makes being here less awful. Sort of.” She rolled her eyes and dropped her cigarette butt to the ground, crushing it beneath the toe of her well-worn shoes. “He’s an ass. Been begging him to hire more servers so we don’t hafta pull as many doubles, but he keeps shrugging me off. I’m getting pretty fed up.”
“At least no one’s quit. Paul just stopped showing up when he was scheduled. Never formally resigned, just stopped coming in. Byron’s too fucking caught up in micromanaging every goddamn thing, he hasn’t even bothered to start looking for a replacement.” I shook my head, the anger surging again. “The weekends are the worst. Can’t keep up with the tickets, and then when the customers complain about it taking so fucking long to get their food, Byron delights in chewing us out.”
“He’s an ass,” she repeated.
I opened my mouth to agree with her when I saw something out of the corner of my eye. Doing a double-take, I realized that no, I wasn’t hallucinating, and yeah, that really was Jimmy walking across the parking lot.
“Fuck,” I muttered under my breath. “Gotta go.”
I stomped out my cigarette and hurried over to him, hoping to head him off before he actually got inside the building.
Buck's wasn’t my proudest accomplishment. The fact that it was pretty much my only accomplishment was even more fucking depressing. There was a reason why, in the years I’d worked there, I’d avoided having Jimmy visit. I always made arrangements to meet him at my place when I was coming from work, or I agreed to meet him in the city. There were no quick catch-ups on breaks or meeting him in the restaurant for a drink after work, because the uniforms alone were so mortifying.
It was bad enough Jimmy probably remembered exactly just what kind of place Buck’s was from back when we’d used to hang out there on weekends, sharing a plate of nachos and ordering sixteen refills of Coke apiece.
The vague authenticity of the old-timey saloon theme was spoiled by the giant red neon lettering that covered most of the front with the words “Bowlegged Buck’s Barbeque & Bar.” It was like a cross between a cattle ranch and a strip club, just with more salads.
Nothing about the restaurant had changed since then, and the thought of him seeing me in the midst of that gave me acid reflux.
I had to stop him before he walked through the doors.
“Dude,” I called from across the parking lot, jogging to catch up. He stopped and grinned at me as I took the last few steps over to him. “What are you doing here? How’d you even get here?”
“I took the bus,” he said like the answer had been obvious. “I’m going crazy just hanging out in your apartment staring at the wall and trying to figure my shit out. It was making me nuts, and so I thought I’d come down and see you.”
“Sucks you’re feeling cooped up, but I can’t really hang out, Jimmy. I’m working.” I tried to keep the exasperation out of my voice. It wasn’t his fault I couldn’t ignore my feelings.
“You’re on break, though?”
“Uh, yeah. But I gotta get back to the kitchen soon.”
“Oh.” He chewed the inside of his cheek. “What time are you off?”
“Around nine, probably.”
He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “I was thinking we could hang out, if you didn’t already have plans for later?”
I hesitated. “I’m probably hitting Lucky’s after.”
“Again?” I don’t know if I was expecting to hear judgment in his tone, but I didn’t. There was something else there. Maybe a bit of disappointment but colored with something else I couldn’t put my finger on.
“Yeah. I usually go out on Fridays.”
He checked his watch. “Well, I’m already here. I’ll just grab something to eat and head back home.”
This was exactly what I’d wanted to avoid. I scrambled to think of a reason why he shouldn’t stay, but short of almost every item on the menu being nearly inedible for someone with an actual palate, I couldn’t come up with anything.
“Come in through the back. I’ll make you a plate,” I said, finally. At least the kitchen was slightly less humiliating than the dining room.
“Great.” He smiled like I’d just offered to show him around James Beard’s kitchen rather than letting him hang out in Buck’s, and all I wanted to do was hide.
As I led him to the kitchen door, I could feel my soul actively dying. Until now, I’d been able to hide my embarrassment of a job from Jimmy. This position was so far from executive chef, it might as well have not been in the same industry.
Stepping inside, I could already hear Cameron at the prep station, rapping with zero rhythm to whatever was playing on his Discman. Motivational posters, most of them featuring cats or eagles, were hung in between the infographic food safety banners and plating diagrams. Jimmy looked around without saying a word. I’d been in the kitchen at the Carvery. This was nothing like that.
“Yo, Cam,” I said, pulling one side of his headphones away from his ear so he could hear me. “This is my friend Jimmy.”
Cameron pulled the headphones all the way off and hooked them around his neck. I could hear the heavy bass coming through the tiny speakers.
“Nice to meet you, man,” he said, holding his fist out for Jimmy to bump. “Ben talks about you a lot. You’re a chef too, right?”
“I used to be.”
Cam looked confused by the response but didn’t comment on it.
“What’ll ya have?” I asked. “We can make you pretty much anything if it’s deep-fried or comes out of a box.”
“I’m easy. I don’t need anything fancy. Just a sandwich or something.”
“Brisket?” Cam asked. “I think we got some brisket left from the lunch special.”
I shot Jimmy a look of warning and shook my head.
“Uh… you have turkey or something?”
<
br /> “Yeah, man. Whatever you like,” Cam nodded as he moved toward the fridge.
“I can make it.” I grabbed my apron from the hook and tied it behind me. “Jimmy, you take a load off. This’ll just take a minute.”
He sat on the stool near the door to wait and I got to work. I have to admit it was surprising he hadn’t offered to make it himself. Jimmy wasn’t the most laid-back guy in the kitchen. In fact, if there had been an award for poster-child A-type personality chef, Jimmy would have been the frontrunner.
No sooner had I had the thought than Jimmy was up and striding over to me. He peered over my shoulder, and I couldn’t decide if I was irritated he was once again right there or amused that he was so predictable.
“Is that blue cheese? And radicchio?”
I nodded. “Just trust me on this one.”
Just as I cut the sandwich in two and placed it on a plate for him, the printer began to spit out tickets at an alarming rate.
“What the fuck?” Cam said, walking over and grabbing them one by one to stick to the rail. When he ran out of space I knew we were in deep shit.
Just then, Marla stuck her head in through the door. “I am so sorry, guys. Party of thirty-six just walked in. No reservations. They’ve taken over the dining room, and Paula’s ready to rage quit.”
“Thirty-six? You can’t be serious. Who even knows that many people?”
“It’s a retirement party or something for the office next door.” She sounded as unimpressed as I felt. “If they don’t leave at least fifteen percent, I’m keying their cars.”
“Let me know if you need an alibi.”
She shot me a sympathetic smile and then disappeared back through the door. I did not envy her. It was going to take us some time to get a handle on the sheer number of orders going through at once, and she was going to bear the brunt of the customers’ frustration if we didn’t pull it off.
I turned back to the pass, ready to get to work, only to find Jimmy reorganizing the tickets.
“What are you doing?”
“Helping. I’m here anyway, so if you can use me, use me.” He held up a stack of orders. “This doesn’t actually look too bad. Most of these assholes want the special.”
I edged in next to him and surveyed the tickets. He was right. A good half were the daily special—the Bowlegged Sampler. It was a mountain of food, but almost everything was prepared in advance or came out of a can. “You’re right. This should actually go pretty quick.”
“So where do you want me?” Jimmy asked. There was a hopefulness to his voice that stabbed me right in the chest.
I checked the tickets again. “Can I put you on sauté?” It was the station that required the most cooking ability, and since he outshone everyone there by a huge margin, I was going to take advantage of his skills.
“Whatever you need,” Jimmy said.
I nodded and divided up the tickets between the three of us. In the end, Jimmy ended up juggling both the sauté station and the grill, while I assembled nineteen Bowlegged Samplers and Cam dealt with the fryers and the pantry.
It was hectic and frenzied, but in just a few minutes, we’d managed to bang out every dish before the order times went too long. Marla looked impressed as she picked up the first round of plates at the pass, ready to drop them off to the waiting customers.
“What the hell is going on in here, and who the hell are you?”
I turned to see Byron standing in the doorway, his arms crossed and the lines in his forehead more pronounced against the redness of his skin. His eyes were fixed on Jimmy, and he had a sour look on his face that contorted his already unpleasant features.
Byron had been there longer than I had. He was my manager when I’d started, and I’d almost walked out on my first day. He was intense, and his moods could be unpredictable. He loved being in charge because of the power he imagined it gave him. No one had the passion for cheesy Western-themed restaurants like Byron did. There was definitely something pathologically wrong with him.
Most nights days I didn’t see him all that much. He split his time between schmoozing in the dining room and holing up in his office writing memos no one read and sending reports to the owners detailing every single thing that happened under Buck’s roof.
There was nothing Byron liked more than the fact that he had his own office—though office was a stretch, considering it wasn’t much more than a broom closet with a desk shoved inside. It gave him a heightened sense of power over the already inflated ego that came from wearing his “manager” badge.
“Byron, this is Jimmy. Jimmy, Byron, our general manager.”
“Nice to meet you, man.”
Without looking at him, Byron directed his question to me. “And what’s he doing in my kitchen?”
Cam piped up. “Saving our asses.”
Byron’s whipped his head around to face Cam. “Excuse me?”
“We’d be in the weeds if he hadn’t stepped in and helped us. You shoulda seen him. He’s like a kitchen MacGyver.”
Byron surveyed the kitchen. Unlike when the last hundreds of times we’d fallen behind on orders, it didn’t look like a bomb had gone off. He walked over to the stack of completed tickets and leafed through them, then looked back at us.
“A flood of those came in at once, and there’s no way we coulda kept up on our own. Jimmy was here, so he jumped in to help,” I added, though maybe unnecessarily because Byron was now looking at Jimmy like he was the second coming.
Finally, he turned his attention to Jimmy. “You did all this?”
“I just lent a hand where I was needed.”
“Are you looking for work?”
Jimmy paused, and my brain might have started to explode. He couldn’t…
“Yeah, actually.” He tucked his hands into his pockets and rocked back on his heels. I opened my mouth to protest, but Byron got in there first.
“Can you start Monday?”
Chapter Seven
Jimmy
Ben was pissed. Ben was pissed, and I couldn't figure out why.
But I knew enough to know I'd done something wrong. Once upon a time we'd been completely inseparable, and though life had gotten in the way and we hadn't seen each other as much as we probably should have, that didn't mean I didn't still know him.
He was still Ben, and I still understood him well enough to see the signs and read them, clear as glass.
After Byron had charged in, he’d taken me to his office to sign the paperwork I’d need to become a full-fledged employee at Buck’s, then gave me the tour of the building. It hadn’t taken more than half an hour, and when we were done, I’d decided to wait around for Ben to finish his shift.
That might have been a mistake. After finishing the mini orientation with Byron, I’d returned to the kitchen to find Ben pounding out a chicken breast with more vigor than I’d ever seen.
I hung back, perching myself on a stool and keeping my mouth shut until Ben was officially dismissed for the night. It was two hours earlier than he’d expected to be off, but I couldn’t tell if he was happy about that or not.
As Ben walked past, I got up and followed him out of the kitchen and across the parking lot to his car.
He barely looked at me, and I was suddenly filled with regret that I’d stayed. I should have bowed out and gone home, left him to finish up his shift without an audience. I wasn’t sure why it had bothered him so much, but clearly it had, and now the tentative harmony we’d struck when I’d jumped in to help in the first place had been completely obliterated.
“Are you heading out right away, or stopping off at home first?”
“Home. I need to wash the stench of this place off me before I go out.” His jaw was set, and I could see the challenge written all over his face. “No one wants to fuck a guy who smells like deep fryer.”
His words hit me with an unwanted visual, and I did my best to ignore it. Who Ben fucked wasn’t any of my business. It shouldn’t be anyway, even though the th
ought of it grated. I didn’t want to imagine him wrapped up in some random guy he’d met minutes before. It didn’t sit all that well with me, but Ben wasn’t mine. He could do what he wanted.
“Mind if I get a ride?”
He shrugged and unlocked the door. “Whatever. Knock yourself out.”
I climbed in and Ben started up the car. By the time we’d made it two blocks, it had become clear he wasn’t just pissed, he was fucking livid. The atmosphere in the car was tense enough to feel like I was being choked. His hands were tight on the steering wheel, and he was glaring at the red light we’d stopped at like it’d fucked his mom.
“What’s going on with you?” I asked, deciding whatever it was, Ben would feel better if he just got it off his chest.
“Nothing,” he grunted.
“Seriously, man. Something’s up. I can’t figure out what crawled up your ass and died, but Jesus, you’re pissy lately.” I knew the second I’d said it, it was the wrong thing. But there was no taking it back, and honestly, I’d had enough of his moodiness.
He turned to look at me, disbelief and anger contorting his features. “Are you fucking serious?”
The light turned green, and the car behind us honked. Ben stepped on the gas and raced forward, throwing me back against my seat. “What is your goddamn problem?”
I don’t know if I was reacting to his anger, or if I’d just had enough of my life being in complete upheaval, but suddenly I was as filled with rage as he was. Ben’s life was fine. He had a job, a place to live, a family who loved him for who he was. Nothing had been ripped away from him. And he was pissed at me. He had no idea what I was going through, no concept of what I was dealing with.
For the first time since we were kids, I wanted to punch him.
He didn’t look any more impressed with me. He was staring at me with rage in his eyes. “You’re my problem, Jimmy.”
“Because your boss hired me?”
“What the hell do you think?” he spat.
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