by Alan Russell
“I’m going to the bar,” said Bradford, “to get us another bottle of champagne.”
“Are you sure you’re not going to stop by the party?” asked Cleo.
“No, I’m not going to stop by the party.”
He tried to keep the edge out of his voice. Things were definitely not going as planned. By this time he had expected them to be well on their way to making wedding plans—without any talk of a prenuptial agreement, of course.
“I want to make everything better,” he said, striking a note somewhere between ingratiating and wheedling. “I had this idea of how everything was going to be, and I’m sorry it hasn’t happened that way. What I figure is that we can wet our whistles, and then get something to eat. Maybe by the time we return, some magic elves will have transformed this room. If not, we can check out and find somewhere else to go.”
Cleo’s face softened. He did care. “Hurry back,” she said.
Anyone working in the hospitality industry knows the look. It isn’t something that can be confused for anything else. The look is the picture of an employee who has the need to scream, but is restrained by circumstance or surroundings. When encountering the look, Am knew it was advisable to run the other way, because if you didn’t, the odds were you’d soon be wearing that exact same face.
Ted Fellows, the Hotel’s sous-chef, had the look. He was standing in the middle of the kitchen doing nothing. In any kitchen, the most conspicuous pose is immobility. All meals for the Hotel’s four restaurants and fourteen meeting rooms came out of the same kitchen. No one ever just stood around in the kitchen. Workers were shirking their duties if they weren’t doing three things at once.
“Am,” said Ted, waking up from his catatonic state.
“Have to run, Ted,” said Am without looking at him. “Security matter.”
“Am . . . ”
Though he slowed down, Am still refused to look at the sous-chef directly. “Is it a safety or security matter, Ted?”
“It’s a matter I know you can help with, Am.”
That was the problem with Am’s having been the assistant general manager of the Hotel for so long. No one really took his security position seriously. Was it right for him to intervene? The Japanese way was not to assign blame, but instead to fix the problem. In that, he shared a kindred philosophy.
Am stared at Ted’s nose. That gave him the appearance of looking at him without having to endure the look. “Ted, you have a food-and-beverage director. You have an assistant food-and-beverage director. You have a catering manager. You have a banquet director. And most of all, you have a chef.”
As if on cue, the chef appeared. Marcel Charvet considered himself the rightful heir to Escoffier. He had lived half of his sixty years in America, and most of those in California, but he was as French as the guillotine. And about as friendly. Marcel’s English wasn’t great, but his shouting was. Whenever he was short the word, he wasn’t short the volume—or the spit. Marcel didn’t talk so much as spray.
“Ze catering give us ze wrong information,” he shouted, moving close to give Am a shower. “I am not Christ. I cannot feed ze crowds with just a few fishes and breads.”
It was unusual for Marcel not to claim godhood. Am looked to Ted for an explanation.
“There’s a wedding dinner going on now,” said Ted. “Catering says they gave us a prospectus . . . ”
“Zay lie,” said Marcel.
“But we could never find it. We knew from the master schedule that the dinner was for two hundred, so this morning Marcel called over for details . . . ”
“And zay tell me two hundred chicken cordon bleus.”
Marcel said it with all the certainty of the French. Ted quietly offered the other side: “Catering says they specified two hundred chicken forestières.”
“Zay lie,” repeated the infallible Marcel.
Finger-pointing between departments was a way of life. More politicking goes on in the average hotel than goes on in Cook County. But wasn’t chicken chicken?
“What’s the difference?” asked Am.
“Most of the wedding party is Jewish,” said Ted.
Am remembered what Mark Twain had once written: “The difference between the right word and the nearly right word is the same as that between lightning and the lightning bug.” For some reason Twain seemed to be reverberating in his subconscious. There was another quote that was somehow appropriate, but Am couldn’t come up with it.
“I guess the chicken cordon bleu wouldn’t work then,” said Am.
The dish was made with ham and cheese, which was not in keeping with Jewish dietary laws. Ted shook his head.
“What explanation have we given?”
“I told them that the cordon bleu was meant for another party, and that we would be getting their chicken up to them shortly.”
“We zhould have just zed zat catering screwed up.”
Am ignored Marcel, save to wipe his face a little. Ted had offered a good lie, one that could be worked upon and gilded. Some complimentary wine while they waited, and another round of bread. But that didn’t explain the standstill in the kitchen. Everyone should have been double-humping it to get the revised chicken out.
“Why . . . ?” started Am.
“I am not Christ,” said Marcel, in a second rare confession. “I cannot feed ze crowds—”
Am waved him to silence. He had already heard the fishes-and-loaves analogy.
“We don’t have nearly enough chicken, Am. What we have could take care of fifty or sixty.”
“And . . . ”
The long “And” was Marcel. “Catering has not apologized,” the chef said. “Zay make ze mistake and zay expect us to make everyzing right. If zay want to get us more chicken, thatz fine by me.”
“Can we recycle the chicken cordon bleu,” asked Am, “and make it into chicken forestière?”
Ted shot another glance at Marcel. “I threw all ze chicken away,” said Marcel. He looked rather proud of what he had done. “To try and serve ze food again is against ze health codes, no?”
Marcel always thought his culinary laws exceeded any state or federal mandates, and had the same respect for health inspectors that he did for week-old fish. He would have thrown the chicken into the trash out of pique, nothing else.
“It’s too late for our purveyors to bring us more chicken,” said Ted, “which leaves the option of the local supermarkets, but I imagine a lot of those birds are going to be frozen. We can defrost them in the microwaves, but still, I’d say it would be the better part of two hours before we could get the entrees out.”
Appetizers, Am thought. On the house. But then more bad news.
“Mr. Kaufman is the bride’s father,” said Ted. “He’s already furious. He’s ready to challenge Vesuvius now. I’d hate to see him in two hours.”
“And what am I supposed to do about that?” Am snapped.
Ted shook his head. He didn’t know. He just hoped that Am had some answer, some miracle. Even the best-run restaurants run out of selections. Most kitchens use large blackboards to keep a running score of unavailable items. The universal restaurant distress code is employed, the out-of-stock ingredient identified by the telling numerical identification of 86.
Am looked over to the blackboard. Sure enough: “86 Chicken” was now chalked in, the barn doors firmly closed after the animals escaped. Or at least the chickens.
Though he knew he should be uttering a prayer to Saint Julian, all Am could think about was the origins of “86.” The terminology came out of taverns, the end result of those who had swilled too much eighty-six-proof rum. The drunks were eighty-sixed. Funny how terms evolve, thought Am, even when mankind doesn’t.
“The Colonel,” he announced.
“The Colonel?” asked Ted.
“Have your crew make the biggest and best batch of forestière sauce they’ve ever created. Ladle it on the Colonel’s birds, bathe the chicken enough to obscure its origins.”
Ted wa
s nodding. There were two fast-food chicken outlets nearby that were about to do a great business.
“I am going to promise Mr. Kaufman his chicken very shortly,” Am said. “Don’t make me a liar.”
Ted yelled some order, then ran out. Marcel went around spitting, “Who is zis Colonel?” His idea of fast food was a three-course dinner.
Am straightened his tie. Early in their careers hotel managers learn how to march smiling into the Valley of Death. Am was grateful for having learned the art of mollifying guests by tutoring under one of the great practitioners. Gary Tolliver had been a GM who always approached unhappy guests with a concerned face, always heard them out with a constant assortment of clucks and sympathetic noises. His overt distress was so great and touching that guests always went away happy. Am never knew anyone else who approached Gary’s knack. Guests always remembered him for his caring ways. They didn’t respond to Gary because he gave them the world, because in most cases he never even brought up the subject of an adjustment. And it wasn’t that Gary readily resolved their complaint. Often, he did nothing. It was just that Gary listened, and sympathized, so well.
No one needed to introduce Am to Mr. Kaufman; perhaps no one dared. He was standing outside of the Spinnaker Room wearing a tux. His arms were folded, and he was glaring at anyone who appeared to be employed by the Hotel.
Now how was it that Gary did it?
“Mr. Kaufman? Am Caulfield. It’s my pleasure to make your acquaintance.”
Why was it that guests had always taken up Gary’s hand so readily? And why was it that Mr. Kaufman ignored Am’s outstretched hand?
Mr. Kaufman started his long harangue. Am knew better than to interrupt, figuring the man needed to relieve himself of his anger; and besides, if he talked long enough, the chicken might be delivered before he finished. In the absence of roasted chicken, Mr. Kaufman accepted roasted employee. Am felt well-done after about five minutes.
“It was an affront.” (To his credit, Kaufman never repeated his descriptive words—prior to “affront” had been the words insult, travesty, miscarriage, perversion, and Am’s favorite: “A scenario that would have made clowns weep.”) “My mother, she’s almost ninety, wanted to know why they started serving the food, then took it away. I told her it wasn’t hot enough. She’s Orthodox. God forbid that I should tell her you tried to serve us ham. That was an outrage. That was offensive. I wonder if it wasn’t done purposely, wonder if it was meant as an anti-Semitic deed.”
He stopped talking, gave Am his first opportunity to answer. “I can assure you, Mr. Kaufman,” Am said, “that there was absolutely no anti-Semitic message in what occurred. It was one of those very sorry misunderstandings. Please believe me when I tell you it was just a mistake, and please accept my apology on behalf of the Hotel.”
Kaufman looked as if he still had his doubts. Am worked on those. “And as recompense for your inconvenience, I’d like to offer your party some complimentary wine.”
Kaufman showed signs of weakening. “And,” Am added, “maybe in the few minutes it takes to bring out the chicken, we can also scare up some appetizers for you.”
“What kind of appetizers?” he asked.
Am thought for a moment. The popular items were made in bulk every day. “How about some shrimp or crab cocktail? Or maybe some lobster parfait?”
Maybe Gary was successful because he just made sympathetic noises. Am, on the other hand, tried to communicate with words. In this case, apparently ill-chosen words. Kaufman’s red face showed him the error of his ways. But what had he said?
“Why don’t you offer poison while you are at it?” he hissed. “Have you been listening to me at all? Many of our guests are Jewish. Does that mean anything to you?”
Am suddenly understood. What he had offered were shellfish selections, about as in keeping with kosher dietary standards as the three little pigs.
Am spoke from his heart, even if his speech sounded like a squeal: “Mr. Kaufman, it’s not that we are anti-Semitic . . . ” His words hung in the air, made everyone walking by in the hallway pause to listen.
“ . . . it’s just that we are incompetent.”
Support for Am’s assertion came from an unexpected source. Bradford Beck was walking by, overpriced champagne in hand.
“Truer words were never spoken,” said Bradford. “This place reeks of incompetence.”
Am gratefully accepted the endorsement. “Thank you,” he said.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The swingers had been entirely too understanding, Am thought. They hadn’t checked out en masse, hadn’t said conditions in the Hotel were unacceptable to them. They were disappointed that their meeting rooms were out of service, and went so far as to say that the Hotel guest rooms needed refurbishing, but that wasn’t enough to deter them from their “love-in.”
Any other group, thought Am, would have walked out. It was just their luck to have a patient gathering of perverts. Why couldn’t they act like other conventioneers and be totally unreasonable, threatening, and uncompromising?
The good news was that the swingers seemed to be keeping to themselves, content to stay within the boundaries of their second-and third-floor room blocks. Employees (self described as “sex sentries”) were positioned around their rooms to make sure it stayed that way.
Am remembered what Harry Truman had said: “If I hadn’t been President of the United States, I probably would have ended up a piano player in a bawdy house.” Despite the fact that his repertoire only included “Chopsticks,” Am felt that he had ended up in Truman’s other career.
His walkie-talkie sounded. “Am, this is Central,” said Fred. “There is a Ms. Donnelly waiting for you at the front desk. That’s a D—David, O—Ogden . . . ”
“Understood,” responded Am.
“Ten-four,” said Fred, the disappointment in his voice palpable.
Marisa hadn’t arrived empty-handed. She was carrying two full briefcases, and had an assortment of papers wedged under her arms. She didn’t object when Am volunteered to lighten her load.
“The lives and times of Dr. Thomas Kingsbury,” she said.
“I was sort of hoping for an abridged version,” said Am. He had only assumed the burden of half the paperwork, and that was still weighty enough. He wondered if his feeling weak was the result of the day, or of his low blood sugar. He was hungry enough to eat anything—except chicken.
“Have you eaten dinner?” he asked.
“I haven’t even eaten breakfast,” she said.
“Then let’s look at a menu before we look at these papers.”
He took her to Poseidon’s Grill, the darkest of the Hotel’s four restaurants, and the least ostentatious. There was a booth available for them, which was just as Am wanted. All of the booths were partitioned off, allowing very private spaces. Am and Marisa sank into the dark burgundy leather, and were immediately comfortable. The Grill didn’t have the ocean view of the other restaurants, and wasn’t nearly as trendy. The food was familiar, and when ordering, diners weren’t required to try and pronounce unfamiliar words. Beer could be ordered from the tap, most of the brands American. The biggest choice of the evening was whether to call for rare, medium, or well-done. There are times, thought Am, when it is a pleasure not to have to think.
He looked at Marisa as she scanned the menu. She appeared different in candlelight; that, or maybe he was viewing her with new eyes. This was the closest thing resembling a dinner date he had had with anyone since Sharon. He was finally beginning to accept that he and Sharon were now just friends, but his heart was slower on the uptake than his brain. He remembered how he and Sharon had been brought together by three deaths and their resolve to figure out what had happened. Reminiscing about their courtship was like trying to remember a white-water rafting trip, the two of them navigating treacherous currents and reacting to forces greater than they were.
Was that his initial attraction to the hotel business? Had he been seduced by the sheer ener
gy of hotels? At the Hotel he knew that on any given day over five hundred rooms could be checking out, and another five hundred checking in. But the business wasn’t rooms, it was people, humanity in many guises and agendas. The challenges were always immense. Maybe he was an adrenaline junkie, needing greater and greater stimuli to kick him over the edge. It was strange, and maybe sick, that women seemed to come into his life only when somebody died. Or was that the only time he let himself be vulnerable?
Marisa looked up from her menu, saw him gazing at her, read what was in his glance, and didn’t immediately close the shutters.
“Is this the time we tell each other our carefully edited biographies?” she asked.
“No,” said Am, acknowledging the sudden presence of their server, “this is the time we order.”
She said she rarely ate red meat, and then ordered a rare New York steak with bourbon-glazed onions. He wasn’t sure whether her pun was deliberate, but smiled anyway and wondered why it was that women always announced what they rarely did. He had the sixteen-ounce T-bone, and didn’t bother to tell her that he, also, didn’t often eat red meat. But then he didn’t eat much tofu either.
When the server had left, they looked at each other again. Leisurely, fully. Though Am was famished, Marisa’s presence provided him a form of sustenance. Inside him something was stirring, something that had been missing, something indefinable except in its loss. It was nice to know that certain feelings weren’t forever lost to him. They had just been misplaced.