The Dishwasher

by Stéphane Larue

  Once the cutlery was clean I hurried off to the dining room to take it to Nick. On my way back past the front kitchen Bébert ordered me to come pick up pans and “the shit under the oven,” which a cook was sorting between two orders. The blond waitress who’d showed me around earlier intercepted me before I could find Nick and snatched the cutlery from my hands.

  “About time!”

  She was colder and snappier than earlier. She called Nick as she turned around.

  Behind her I caught a glimpse of the dining room. It was totally full now, like a concert the moment before the headliners take the stage. The light was even dimmer than when I got there, all you could see was a swarm of shadows milling around, letting out peals of laughter and making extravagant gestures. Little lanterns on the tables illuminated the moving, blurry features of innumerable diners. Ghostlike smiles, implacable expressions, light-coloured shirts and plunging necklines, all in the warm yellow of the scarce light. You could see the silhouettes of servers gliding effortlessly between tables, vigilant and alert.

  The woman I’d seen coming out of the basement office was up at the bar. She was settling up with two couples and ordering around the bartender, who was flying all over the place while this other woman calmly joked with her customers, as if they were old school-friends. I didn’t know yet, but there was only one bartender, Sarah, who took orders for the entire restaurant. The other girl, the barback, mixed cocktails and poured pints. Once the couples were on their way, the woman from the office noticed me and gave me a withering look.

  “What, want to pull up a stool? Get to work. You shouldn’t be out front.”

  Then she disappeared into the dining room with a bouquet of cheques in her hand. That was when I understood she was the owner. Nick gave me a thumbs up for the cutlery, which he was already polishing, in big handfuls.

  I was on my way back to my pit when I got a feeling that one of the customers sitting at the bar was watching me. He’d left his sunglasses on: a massive bald guy in a light suit with a very close shave. He must have been somewhere between fifty and sixty. He was sitting in between two couples with a glass of white wine and a butane lighter in front of him. His hands rested on the first one and then the other cufflink adorning his thick wrists. No one, not even the bartender, seemed to be paying attention to him. I thought of Kingpin in Daredevil. It made me smile. I went back to the kitchen.

  I manoeuvred between the salad girl and Bébert, and squatted down to pick up the stuff lying on the ground under the pizza oven. The heat was unbearable. Cooks were blindly chucking empty backups without a thought for the dishwasher struggling to gather it all up. I made several trips back and forth between the kitchen and the dishpit with my mess. I struggled to maintain the pace and keep the machine running. Bébert came back periodically with buspans of dirty dishes from the floor. He said he was helping me out because it was my first shift, but I’d have to get faster.

  Little by little, I slipped into a sort of trance. As the night went on my every movement became instinctive. Like a machine, I converted dirty dishes into clean. When I checked the time on my pager, covered by an oily film in the pockets of my soaked pants, I could feel that I’d lost track of time a bit. It was already ten. I thought about the prep kitchen waiting to be cleaned, the counters to be washed—my counters—strewn with veg, flour, and puddles of oil, and the giant steam pot full of chicken carcasses I would have to empty and scrub.

  It was dizzying. I’d never had so much to do and so little time to do it. Since my shift started there hadn’t been a moment’s calm, not one second when I felt that I’d gotten on top of the work and the countless individual tasks piling up one on top of the other, broken only by periodic crises, each more acute than the last.

  I went down to the basement to tackle the prep kitchen. After portioning out the stock the way Bébert had asked me, I started emptying the steam pot. Little chunks of burning hot chicken crumbled between my fingers as I scrubbed the walls of the giant pot. I had to settle for scraping off the chicken bones with a big perforated metal spoon, the one the cooks called a “spider.” I threw it all in a big garbage bag. The grease was splattering my face, and I had little bits of bone all over my skin. The smell of chicken broth at once repelled me and made me hungry. Through the stairwell I could hear Bébert yelling at me to come pick up the dirty dishes. I ran up the stairs, slowed by the two bags slung over my shoulders. Halfway up, one of them split, emitting a juicy gurgling as its contents spilled out behind me. Chicken rib cages, slices of veg, and strips of boiled flesh ran down the staircase like an oozing oily sea. I froze. My cheeks were burning. I ran a greasy hand over my face as I watched this puddle of waste spread out over the steps. I was seriously tempted to give up and run out the back door. I choked back a tear. I felt like an idiot. The voice of my old boss ran through my head, “If your shovel breaks, you use your bare hands.” I pulled it together, and ran off to get a dust pan. Bébert appeared at the top of the staircase and swore. I was sure I’d be fired on the spot. He leaped over the spill and came back with the empty lettuce-box.

  “Put a garbage bag in there, fast!”

  I did as I was told. He started picking up the boiling hot chicken residue with his bare hands. I put down the dustpan and tried to copy Bébert, tried to go as fast as he was.

  “Throw coarse salt down on the steps, that’ll absorb the fat. Then sweep all this shit up and give the steps a good mop with degreaser.”

  He let me finish. Went to the cooler and came out with a backup of smoked salmon, and got back to the front kitchen, as if the accident never happened.

  It must have been around midnight. The clamour in the dining room seemed to have died down. I was stacking clean dishes on the shelf while the cooks brought back the last of the empty backups and the rest of the greasy containers chucked under the oven during the night’s final rush. It was time for one final push. A little later Bébert came back to my dishpit, now almost clear of dirty dishes. He set a pint of beer down on one of the shelves where I stacked clean dishes. His chef’s coat was unbuttoned, exposing an old undershirt. With his lips, he pulled a smoke from his pack and lit a match with one finger. I was filling the mop bucket with hot water and degreaser. He watched me work for a minute. He held out his pack. I said I didn’t smoke. He shrugged his shoulders. Then he started talking, holding in the smoke.

  “The beer’s for you, by the way. You earned it.”

  I reorganized a buspan of coffee cups.

  “That wasn’t half bad, for a first shift. You’re gonna have to pick up the pace a bit, but you look like you’ll figure it out.”

  Just as I was about to thank him, I almost dropped a pile of saucers.

  Bébert started giggling. He was leaning against the door, opening it to exhale. Renaud called him from upstairs, said this wasn’t Club Med.

  “I’m not your bitch, man. Two minutes.”

  Bébert threw his half-smoked butt through the crack in the door, then slammed it shut. He gave me a tap on the shoulder.

  “Seems like you’ve got some guts. I hope tonight wasn’t too much for you.”

  “No,” I managed.

  He nodded toward the kitchen.

  “Okay, I’m going to go shut that fucker up, then I’ll help you finish up here. Kitchen’s closed.”

  I waited till he was gone to take another sip of my pint. I was way thirstier than I thought, and tossed it back in two deep swigs. No beer ever quenched my thirst like that.

  When he came back, Bébert scoped the empty glass, and laughed.

  “Damn, you’re a thirsty kid.”

  He put down a bucket of kitchen implements and a dented pot.

  His whole aspect changed. His light eyes were sizing me up.

  “What are you doing after?”

  “Who, me?”

  “Yeah you, fucknuts.”

  “Uh, I don’t
know.”

  Of course I knew. I had to go back to Vincent’s apartment. That was one of Malik’s conditions. I had to go straight home after work. No setting foot in the bar.

  “We’re going out for a beer. You in?”

  I hesitated. Bébert gave me a big, cocky smile, watching me struggle to answer.

  “No, I’m gonna go home. I’m staying with a friend in Ahuntsic, it’s pretty far.”

  The last bus was in under an hour. The eighty bucks Malik had lent me was tucked away in my wallet. The frantic pace of the shift had almost let me forget, but now I thought about it again. It was inevitable. I started cleaning my dishpit.

  “Get the night bus, man. There’s one that’ll take you out there. Go finish your close. You’re coming with us.”

  Chapter 4

  The dining room was empty save five or six couples talking quietly in the light of tiny lanterns scattered like dying embers. Behind the bar Nick kept right on drying wineglasses. The owner was gone. The waitress who had set me up at the beginning of the night was printing out sales reports and folding them into long stacks of paper. Her name was Maude. At one end of the bar a server sat in front of an ashtray, cashing out. At the opposite end the kitchen staff was standing around, finishing their staff drinks. All the tension had been released. Everyone’s faces and bodies looked more relaxed, and their voices were softer and more poised. The bartender and the kitchen staff were trading wisecracks and talking about people I didn’t know.

  I discreetly went over to sit with them. My presence didn’t make a ripple in the conversation. I leaned up against the bar and waited to see where the night would take me. My hands were chapped from all the water and detergent. I half listened to the overlapping conversations.

  The girl cook was barely recognizable in her civvies. She turned out to be a little punk rocker and was wearing an Iron Maiden Killers t-shirt. Her hair fell down over her cheeks in long, spiky tresses, and seemed even deeper purple without her hairnet and cook’s hat. Her name was Bonnie. I’d later learn she was an Ontarian who’d come to Montreal three years ago. She was telling a story I had a hard time following in broken, mumbling French. Sarah the barback was listening, and so was Jonathan, the garde-manger who worked next to the pizza oven, where I’d spent most of my shift getting in his way.

  As far as I could make out, Bonnie’s story was about one time she was walking up Sainte-Catherine and two idiots in a car whistled at her, so she threw her half-drunk latté into their window when the light turned green. While everyone laughed, Renaud said goodnight and buttoned up his coat. With brown hair greying at the tips, he looked like a prematurely aged teenager. Bébert gave him the finger, with a mischievous smile on his lips, which were wrapped around a lit smoke. While she talked I took a closer look at Bonnie’s features. She had a little flat nose, and chewed on her bottom lip when she listened to a story. A scar ran down her left cheek to the bottom of her jaw.

  Bébert slid his empty glass down the bar toward Sarah, expecting a refill. She rolled her eyes and asked the barback to pour him one last pint.

  “You know I’m punching everything in, Bébert,” Sarah said as she fingered the little screen.

  She was around my height and had long black hair, up in a pony tail that fell right in the middle of her delicate shoulders. Little wrinkles lined the corner of her eyes and a natural pout gave her a bored look. She must have been around three years older than me, but treated me as if a decade or more separated us.

  “What about Christian’s beers. Do they all get punched in?” asked Bébert, snottily.

  The barback poured two pints. She put one down in front of Bébert, and the other in front of me. I stuttered, unsure whether I should take it. I’d already had my staff beer. She smiled as she gave it to me. Her name was Jade, and she welcomed me to the team. Nick gave us a sideways glance as he swung a white cloth over his shoulder, for the glasses. Jade reminded me of someone. I thanked her for the pint and put my coat on. I chugged back my beer to feel the alcohol chase away my inhibitions. Jade asked Sarah something, then went down to the basement. You could hear Jonathan yammering on in a high-pitched voice about medieval roleplaying. Bonnie was visibly listening just to be polite.

  At the other end of the bar, Maude and the server cashing out were arguing about a cancelled order. She came up and gave us a dirty look, clearly eager for us to be on our way. Jonathan stopped talking and took a final sip of beer. Nick started moving faster, as he sorted and put away the remaining glasses.

  “You all know what Séverine thinks about staff camping out at the bar.”

  Bébert emptied his pint in one swig, mumbling that it was fine, we were on our way out. I hoped Jade would come back up before we left, so I could say bye. Nick looked up to tell us he’d meet up with us after.

  “Get moving, it’s already almost one.”

  A few customers were still deep in conversation, lingering as if they had the whole night ahead of them.

  Outside we were met by a wet cold. It was below zero again. Bébert took two king cans of Blue Dry out of his backpack.

  “Roadpops?”

  He passed the first one to Bonnie, and opened the other one. She took a big long sip and then passed it to me.

  I grabbed the ice cold can in my ungloved hand, and murmured an inaudible “thank you.” She didn’t react. Light snow began to fall. There was still plenty of action on the avenue: groups of partiers hailing taxis, walking uncertainly from one street corner to the next, constantly interrupted by hiccups of laughter. The office party season was getting into swing.

  From the first sip, the acrid, metallic Labatt Blue coated my mouth. Nothing could be further from the two red ales I’d had earlier. I looked up at the cottony sky. The alcohol was starting to soften me up nicely. The occasional fat snowflake crossed the streetlamps’ yellow halo. I told myself that, wherever the night took me, I’d act as if Malik were right there beside me.

  Bonnie and Bébert were talking and sharing a smoke. I followed in silence, feeling almost safe in their company. Jonathan was trying to draw me out, chipper as a camp counsellor. He had a baby face and a patchy, downy beard. He was telling me that for my first shift I’d done really well. I said I’d done my best. He asked what I studied, if I’d worked in another restaurant, where I was from. I answered him, newly nervous again and talking fast. But there just wasn’t much to say. Graphic design; no; Longueuil. Jonathan looked at me, said, “Okay, cool.” When the beer came back around to him he took the can.

  I was walking forward, staring at the sky, trying not to think about the eighty dollars in my pocket. I could picture the bright colours of the LCD screen as if they were right in front of my face. I took another sip of the Blue and figured everything would be just fine. The top of the can stunk of tobacco. When you thought about it, Malik would have wanted me to go out and have a beer, see some people.

  Our little crew ended up at a place I didn’t know, the Roy Bar. As we walked through the heavy door a dozen customers greeted my new companions, as if they’d been waiting for them. Our arrival attracted a little too much attention for my liking, and like a third wheel I had no idea where to stand. One of the bartenders wrapped his tattooed arms around Bonnie and lifted her off the ground. He looked like a beefier version of the kids who used to spend the summer working on tricks and collecting injuries at the Boucherville skate park. The place actually reminded me of the skate park in a lot of ways. The walls were covered in graffiti, the speakers blared Pennywise. A massive plastic hammerhead shark hung over the pool table. The bar was full of baggie-panted dropouts with their hoods up playing eight-ball. The average age couldn’t be over thirty. The real regulars, seated in a line along the bar, were in their mid-thirties. They looked like a punk band after the show.

  We took our place at a big round table covered in skate stickers. I could feel my boxers, still soaked by the dishwater. Surely t
he fetid smell of grease was still clinging to me. I threw my bag between two chair legs, discreetly laid the book I’d been carrying in my back pocket on the table, and took my seat with the firm intention of holding my ground until the bar burned down or this night was sucked into a black hole. I was exhausted but almost felt good. The pressure had dropped again.

  Bébert did a tour of the room, saying hi to pretty much everyone with handshakes and fist bumps and low fives. He moved from group to group, like a king making the rounds of his fiefdom. You could hear his deep laugh exploding all over the place. I had a look around the room, and was relieved to see not a single VLT. I gently breathed out all the air I’d been collecting in my lungs, and my back muscles relaxed. I unbuttoned the plaid shirt I wore under my coat for extra warmth.

  The bartender who had hugged Bonnie was at our table now, placing pints of red ale in front of everyone. Bébert bought the first round.

  Nick showed up twenty minutes later, bundled up tight in an $800 leather coat. Jade wasn’t with him, nor was anyone else from the floor staff.

  “How’d we do?” Bébert asked.

  “Sixty-two hundred, man!” Nick answered.

  “So you guys made coin. Shooters on you!”

  Bébert laughed and called the bartender over.

  “Yo Sam: ten vodka shots. On his tab.”

  Then Bébert turned to Nick.

  “Man I can’t wait till we get rid of Christian. We’re gonna get ours.”

  Nick gave him the finger and made a face. Then he took off his scarf and coat, and threw them on the back of the chair, and sat next to Bonnie.

  “You look nice tonight,” she said.

  For a second his confidence deserted him. I don’t know why, but that gladdened me. At the same time, I figured it would have happened to me as well. And he must have had a good head start over me, with Bonnie. Maybe they were even seeing each other. The bar was almost full now, and the hum of conversation was getting louder. Bébert and Jonathan were yelling, as if they were still in the front kitchen. The vodka shots showed up. Before we had a chance to put back this round Bébert had already ordered the next. Jack this time, his tab.