“Jesus Christ, that’s not bisque, it’s lobster Bovril. It’s salty as fuck!”
He was yelling at no one in particular that it’d take a full truckload of cream to dilute the salt content. Then he sighed theatrically, and mopped his forehead with the sleeve of his chef’s coat. He kept on mumbling between his teeth, as if the chef were there in front of him, insulting him, repeating his insinuation that the man needed to lay off the booze.
Bob came through the prep room, clean and changed, with a different Red Sox cap on his head and a smoke in his mouth.
“Hey Bob, taste this.”
Bob tasted it and broke out into a cheerful, loud laugh that was all the more striking next to Renaud’s caustic rage. He was obviously used to dealing with mistakes like these.
“No worries, Renaud. I’ll take care of it tomorrow morning. See you later.”
He put a hand on Renaud’s shoulder before setting off.
Renaud lowered his head in a gesture of discouragement. I ran up to the main floor with the first batch of pasta. I’d barely set foot in the kitchen when Jonathan yanked them from my hand, thanking me as if I’d come bearing water in the middle of the desert.
The noise from the dining room, which was already full to capacity, blended in with the cacophony of the kitchen. The first service of the night was in full swing. Every element on the range was covered with sizzling, smoking pans. I wondered how Bébert could tell them apart, and keep track of all the ingredients that went in each. He was yelling at a waitress to come explain the goddamn extra she wanted for fifty-three. Jason, with a furrowed brow and reassuring calm, was setting out plates on the pass-through.
It seemed more intense to me than the first shift, as if the novelty had worn off and I could now take the full measure of the chaos that obtained in the front kitchen. I already felt dizzy from the noise and the incomprehensible dance of the cooks’ movements.
Bébert was tossing out instructions in his commanding voice, like the captain of a ship in a storm. He was always doing two things at once, if not three. He flipped the prawns in one pan while examining the ingredients in the others that stood lined up and waiting to be thrown onto the heat. Without taking his eyes off the pans, he asked Jonathan how his side was coming, and Jonathan would yell something back. Though he was on the hotside, not one plate left the kitchen without being inspected by him. Everything was coordinated with a military precision, to the sound of his orders ringing out over the noise.
I turned around to go back downstairs to finish the prep when Bébert yelled at me to pick up the pans, while I was here. His tone was sharp; he wasn’t kidding around. Bébert was now fully immersed in the rush. Nothing else mattered.
I took all the dirty dishes down to the dishpit. That’s when I came across Carl, my partner for the night. I hadn’t seen him arrive. It was like he’d just materialized without anyone noticing. He had a round, hairless face, wore a backwards baseball cap, and looked around my age. He was casually putting away clean dishes. The stacks of dirty dishes had doubled since I started. I shoved the burning hot pans in a corner and introduced myself.
“Oh, cool,” he said without looking at me or shaking hands. “I’m Carl. Can you finish this?”
He nodded at the caddy overflowing in every direction with dirty dishes.
“I’ve got to make a call.”
He didn’t wait for an answer, just put on a coat he had hung by the door, the one people used to go smoke outside. He pulled a flip-phone from his pocket and disappeared into the alley. I thought of my lettuces soaking downstairs and the lamentable state of the prep kitchen it was up to me to clean. I thought about the last batch of calzone dough I had to make. But I decided to make a start on the mountains of dirty dishes instead, until Carl got back. I ran through a first rack of plates and coffee cups, then tackled the pans. Not the load I’d just brought in, the ones that had probably been there since the middle of the afternoon, encrusted with cheese sauce. I hadn’t even filled half a rack when I heard a menacing voice call out.
“Cutlery, motherfucker.”
I turned around, startled, as if I’d been caught with my pants down. The guy was obviously older than me, by at least ten years. I could see patches of grey in his close-cropped hair. A two-day stubble darkened his cheeks, his shirt was askew, his open collar revealed a heavy gold chain, and a chunky watch hung from his wrist. He glanced at the shelves, to make sure what he was looking for was still there, then gave me a withering look. I was transformed into a pillar of salt.
“Where’s your sidekick? I asked him for cutlery twenty minutes ago.”
He kept looking at the shelves, shifting piles of dishes with angry, impatient movements.
“Who do I have to bitch-slap to get something done around here?”
Reflexively I almost answered that I didn’t know, but stopped myself just in time. That was when I noticed the big plastic bucket overflowing with cutlery. It looked like every knife, fork, and spoon in the restaurant must be there. I could hear the pasta machine I’d left running, grinding away empty, along with pans clattering against each other and scraping the rings over the gas. The bell on the line was ringing incessantly, as if someone with Parkinson’s had their hand stuck to it. I looked at the open door to the alley. Everything slowed down and I saw black for a minute, like when you get up too quickly. Then reality kicked in, and I snapped out of it. I turned back to the manager.
“Give me two minutes, I’ll do it.”
I picked up the bucket and emptied it out in the dishpit. The guy headed back to the dining room, furious as the moment he’d burst in, swearing at whoever cared to listen in a rough yet high-pitched voice. With fear in my heart, I frantically sorted utensils and ran them through the machine three times in the hope of removing all the spots. The last cycle had just finished when I heard a hurricane of fuck this and fuck that exploding into my dishpit. The manager grabbed the cutlery like the defibrillator needed to resuscitate his dying mother.
“I’m coming, you gang of monkeys.”
One thing was clear: whoever this “gang of monkeys” was, I never wanted to be part of their crew. As soon as he was out of my field of vision airways cleared up and I could suddenly breathe again. My muscles and thighs relaxed. I let myself decompress a minute and then went outside to see what the fuck Carl was doing. The alley was deserted. I swore angrily at the cold air, and went back in, leaving the door half-open.
I got back to the prep kitchen: it looked like the smoking ruins of Rome after the passage of the Visigoths. I pulled myself together. Renaud was in the cooler arranging buspans of linguini and farfalle he’d pre-cooked. I didn’t dare mention that Carl was MIA. I decided to finish the calzone dough quickly, figuring I’d have time to spin the lettuce after burning through the worst of the dirty dishes. I heard Bébert yelling something into the stairwell. I was pretty sure it had to do with me, but I was almost finished. I picked up the pace a notch, careful not to mess anything up. Bébert wouldn’t think twice about sending me back to do them again if he found even one or two not up to snuff. The calzone dough was more delicate than focaccia dough, and would tear at the slightest jerk. Little puffs of heat kept hitting me while I started and restarted them, a little more nervous each time. Bébert yelled again.
“Renaud, quit wanking around and get up here. Fuck!”
The door to the walk-in slammed shut. Renaud yelled at him to chill out, he was coming. I stacked up my last batch of pasta just in time to follow Renaud up the stairs.
In the dishpit I found Carl, phone wedged between shoulder and cheek, putting away the dishes I’d washed while he was out. He was talking about quantities and prices in that coded language I’d heard before, from my first girlfriend’s friends. He hung up, happy as a clam, and informed me that he was going out for another smoke. Just five minutes. I watched him walk out again, too taken aback to say anything. I just s
tood there, with my mouth hanging out. His shameless capacity to fully and completely not give a fuck was astonishing.
I threw two racks through the machine and went to see what was going on in the service kitchen. Renaud was on the hotside now. He was leaning against one of the shelves of the dessert station, which was empty for now, staring out at something in the warm dim light of the dining room. Bébert was back on the pass, filling up the fridge with fresh backups, singing a nursery rhyme that recounted the story of the castration of Renaud the guinea pig. The sous-chef had seen enough of Bébert’s sense of humour to stop listening.
Jonathan was checking the croutons toasting in the pizza oven. Jason, tongs at the ready, was sitting on the garde-manger fridge, his gaze empty, lost in thought, dazed by the first rush of the night. There was something almost frightening about their calm. A storm was brewing. The air was charged, electric; the dining room a flurry of activity in an orange-hued darkness, a system gathering and ready to descend on us. Any moment now something was going to blow. But for now the emptiness stretched out before us. Every movement partook of its usual precision stripped of its habitual speed. The service kitchen, like a self-regulating organism, was saving its energy. Under the powerful exhaust of the hood vents you could hear the faraway tinkling of cutlery on porcelain, and the hum of discussion.
I ventured a glance into the dining room, over the shelf Renaud was leaning against, and could make out, at the far end of the bar, a lineup of customers waiting to be seated. I took advantage of the lull to pick up as many dirty dishes as I could. I raided the space under the oven. Bébert, chill as ever, asked me to bring back clean pans and pizza plates “before we get juiced again.” His eyes were busy counting the diners gathering between the door, while he played with his tongs and started singing his nursery rhyme again.
I got back to the dishpit where I was greeted by a draft of cold air. The manager came back in from the alley. He smelled like tobacco and was rubbing his arms for a little warmth. Carl followed him in, imploring in a whiny tone.
“Come on Greg. Come on!”
“Forget it, man. What am I supposed to do with your sorry-ass shake? I’m running a business, not a charity.”
“Please, Greg. Come on.”
“Fuck off, go back to your schoolyard.”
Greg set off toward the dining room, laughing. It was one of the coldest laughs I’d ever heard. I piled up buspans of dirty dishes on the rack behind me and went back to work. I assumed Carl would do the same.
Instead he acted like I wasn’t there, and picked up the cell phone lying on one of the shelves, then disappeared back out into the alley. I looked around. Dude was seriously pushing it. I tried to imagine the dynamic between him and Dave, and could see why my friend had been so keen to palm his job off on me.
Bébert’s bellowing reminded me that the cooks needed dishes and clean pans. I brought up a big stack of each. I couldn’t believe how heavy the galvanized porcelain serving platters were.
“Don’t drop that,” Renaud said, still leaning against a shelf on the line. “That’s a week’s pay you’re holding there.”
He was looking at me and furrowing his brow. The plates suddenly seemed even heavier, and I almost dropped a couple as I shoved a pile onto the garde-manger shelf.
I went and did another batch of dishes in the hope of keeping my head above water. Carl kept breezing in and out, disappearing outside or back toward the kitchen with little piles of clean dishes. He’d unhurriedly put away whatever came out of the machine, and bring me back whatever didn’t meet his standards of cleanliness. He was far less discriminating when it was his turn to wash.
I kept working and didn’t complain, my face hardened, abstracting it all, trying to ignore my growing irritation. By concentrating on the arrangements of dirty dishes in their racks, I managed to catch up after half an hour.
I ran the cutlery from the second sitting through the machine before Greg had time to ask for it. When he came and found them on the shelf, clean and sorted by type, he went out of his way to thank me and told me I was “a fighter, not a waste of space like your little friend there.” I wasn’t sure whether he meant Dave or Carl. Maybe both. Either way, I felt better staying in the man’s good books. It was hard to say how exactly Greg’s presence made me ill at ease. But when he was near I’d watch my every move. He exuded something akin to a total lack of empathy. And you could tell he carried an explosive charge on a short fuse, liable to blow at any moment.
The sprawling heaps of dirty dishes seemed to be regenerating less quickly. Carl had gone outside for the fourteenth time, to smoke or do whatever it was he did out there. I took a deep breath and went back down to the basement. I’d allotted myself fifteen minutes to finish the jobs I’d left half-done.
Just when I was starting to tell myself that the worst was over, I remembered the massive steam pot. It was a boneyard of charred carcasses, slices of boiled carrots, and burnt half-onions.
I attacked it first. To begin I pulled out the biggest pieces and threw them in double garbage bags, which I’d laid out in waxed boxes the way Bébert showed me. I soaked the pot in hot water and half a litre of degreaser. While it was soaking I spin-dried the lettuce and swept the floor, which was strewn with slices of vegetables, grey flour, and splotches of sauce. Then I hurriedly scrubbed out the steam pot with a steel scrubber that chewed away at my hands. The smell of seafood and detergent was more revolting than a rest-stop outhouse in the middle of a heat wave.
My pager started vibrating while my head was still buried in the steam pot. I glanced at the screen. Already 8:15. I had a new voice message. That was when it hit me that I hadn’t called Malik back.
I was finishing mopping the floor when Bébert crossed the prep kitchen with a plate of pasta in one hand and a sweaty, greasy cap in the other.
“Isn’t that your partner’s job, usually?”
“What?”
I kept mopping furiously, the way I’d learned from my old boss when he caught me limply spreading dirty water around the floor of a room we’d finished renovating.
“The second guy in is supposed to clean the prep room, usually. Just before the first guy goes home.”
I’d stopped mopping.
“We don’t close together?”
“Together? Why not three or four of you? Nah, dude, first guy leaves at ten. Just after the second guy finishes the prep room, and takes fifteen minutes for dinner.”
I didn’t move. Bébert looked me up and down.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, it’s fine.”
I emptied my mop water in the sink and hurried upstairs.
The kitchen was in another lull. Hidden behind his oil and vinegar bottles, Renaud was checking out a couple women sitting at the bar, laughing into fluorescent pink cocktails. Jason, quiet as ever, had taken Bébert’s place on the line and was portioning out pasta for the next rush. The buspans of dishes were full. Carl was joking around with Jonathan, both of them leaning against the garde-manger fridge. Carl saw me coming.
“Cool, man, you got that done fast. I can leave early.”
Before I could get a word in he cut me off.
“I know it’s supposed to be my night to close, but I talked to Christian. He said I could leave first tonight.”
He pulled a calzone out of the big pizza oven and served himself on a big plate. The smell of crusty dough and grilled peppers made me salivate. He poured two big ladles of tomato sauce over them. My stomach was rumbling.
“I’ll get you back, man.”
He slid by me with his meal, giving me a pat on the shoulder on his way. I was starving to death. I heard him heading down the stairs to the basement. A feeling of rage and powerlessness welled up in me. Jonathan looked away. Renaud kept right on feasting his eyes on the two women.
I went back down to the dishpit, dizzy from
lack of food. The dishes had piled up in my absence. Carl couldn’t have washed more than two plates and maybe a pan. Tops. I changed the garbage bags, which were full already, and got ready to get back to the work Carl had never really started. Bébert walked into the pit and put his empty plate on the rack. He made some room on the clean dish shelf and set up the little boom box from the prep room, and tuned it to the alternative rock show on COOL-FM.
“Here, put some music on and I’ll give you a hand with this shit.”
He stumbled over to the door and opened it a bit. Lit a smoke and watched me work for a minute. Despite the hunger gnawing at me I tried extra hard to pick up speed, to prove that I wasn’t lazy.
“He’s a bit of a dogfucker, eh?”
I was scrubbing an aluminum pot. The bottom was plastered with a layer of burnt gorgonzola. My sweat was dripping into the stinky brown foam loosened by the scrubber.
“Who?” I asked without stopping my work.
“Don’t give me ‘who.’”
He crushed out his smoke in the ashtray on the shelf by the door.
“I’m gonna talk to Renaud.”
As he turned back toward the kitchen he turned up the stereo. It was “Aerials,” by System of a Down.
“Stay strong man. And next time he tries to pull a fast one on you, put your foot down.”
Bébert came back ten minutes later with a big plate heaped with steaming hot pasta.
“Here, take five minutes and eat.”
“What is it?” I asked, just to be polite.
I was so hungry that if he’d waited another moment I would have grabbed the noodles with my bare hands, fuck cutlery.
“Linguini Carbonara. It’ll put a little lead in your pencil.”
I looked down at my plate. The richest pasta on the menu, with three big ladles of reduced cream sauce, parmesan, bacon, grilled chicken and egg yolk.
The Dishwasher Page 10