The Dishwasher

by Stéphane Larue

  “Eat, boy, eat!”

  I got a clean fork and cleaned my plate in a matter of seconds. Bébert watched me wolf it down.

  “Dude. Chew!”

  We could hear Renaud bellyaching, yelling at Bébert from the service kitchen.

  “All right,” Bébert said, “last push! Give ’er!”

  This marked the start of the most intense part of the night. Every dish from all four corners of the restaurant, from the prep room and the front kitchen and the floor, began to pile up in incredible heaps as the shift neared its end and the kitchen got ready to close. Between eleven and one I had a massive list of tasks to frantically work through.

  It started with the floor staff coming back to badger me to wash the night’s final load of cutlery, because otherwise they couldn’t polish them and finish off their other final duties. If Greg was working I’d start with the floor jobs; if it was Nick, I’d get the worst of my own work out of the way first. Even the busboys and bargirls, on the floor staff’s bottom rung, earned at least twice what I made in a night. So I wasn’t about to make my life miserable just to make theirs easier. On my second night I still hadn’t really pieced together how the whole thing worked, but I figured it out quickly enough. You had to. So I flew along at warp-speed to get the last few sets of dishes out. It was done before anyone in the restaurant could ask me for anything. The endgame was to avoid the wrath of Greg.

  Next came the random batches of kitchen dishes, and big piles of tongs and ladles and pizza cutters. Jason and Bébert would also come back to bring me a puzzle of stainless-steel containers—the inserts—and a metal plate with round holes in it, all the parts of what Bébert called the steam table, a stainless-steel basin within a large metal frame where the inserts were kept warm.

  They brought me the cutting boards from the garde-manger and the line. They were long, cumbersome, and hell to clean. Next came ashtrays from the smoking section, a thousand espresso cups, the coffee grounds container Sarah dropped off right on top of my overflowing buspans of dirty dishes. The icing on the cake was the cast-iron rectangles that covered the gas range—the piano notes, Renaud liked to call them. Once I had powered through all that, I swept the front kitchen floor—the cooks only ever did a symbolic sweep after finishing—and the dishpit floor as well. Then it was time for a wet mop, with plenty of degreaser to unstick the layers of grease that accumulated on the floor tile in the course of the shift, and break down the crud that had gathered between the dishpit tiles. Of course I’d have to redo this five or six times, since someone inevitably walked over my clean wet floor to go back and get a buspan of clean cups or bread baskets or something. It was almost like they did it on purpose.

  The front kitchen lights were dimmed now and the exhaust fan turned off. I went around emptying the garbages to take them out. The kitchen staff was chatting at the end of the bar, drinking staff beers. I couldn’t wait to finish. I went out to heave the last few bags into the dumpster and the cold throttled me—my arms and shirt were soaked in greasy water and chunks of burnt food. I was fantasizing about taking a long, soapy shower.

  I got back inside as Jade was bringing me my own beer. She gave me a smile that stopped me in my tracks in the doorway.

  “Didn’t see you there. Doing all right?”

  I have no idea what I answered. Probably an unintelligible agglutination of vowels. She burst out laughing.

  “Here, have a beer. You deserve it.”

  She sauntered back over to the bar, curly hair bobbing from one shoulder to the other. The fragrance of her perfume wafted through the air a moment before being overpowered by the smell of floor soap. The spell eventually wore off, and I took a long sip of beer.

  Bébert came across the dishpit with his gangsta limp, ready to leave. Greg was following him, just as pumped up as in the middle of the shift.

  “Can’t trust a single one of ’em,” he was saying. “Fucking monkeys.”

  “You know how these kids are. Wannabe big shots.”

  Bébert was looking for his smokes. Greg was wearing a black leather jacket that came down to his knees. His silver watch gleamed in the chink between his sleeve and his gloves, which were also leather. I could see, through his brush cut, a scar that criss-crossed his skull. A smell of peppermint followed him. In his evening wear he looked just like the restaurant’s well-heeled customers. He winked at me and said “Bye, fighter” in a voice hoarse from yelling. Bébert gave me a fist-bump, wished me luck, and lighted a smoke before venturing outside. When they opened the back door I saw Bonnie waiting in the orange and black night with a friend of hers, a punk chick with a scarf and a Perfecto leather jacket. They looked at me, not without amusement. I pretended not to see them. In my ridiculously filthy state I was in no mood for chatting with people dressed up for a night out, while I walked around in an aura of garbage juice.

  The door closed. Their shouts faded in the distance. I turned off the stereo and exhaust fan. Faint sounds of laughter and discussion reached me from the bar. I went down to the basement. In a moment of weakness I stopped in the middle of the hallway. A feeling of loneliness and sorrow crept over me, and I took a deep breath. I tried to shake it by laughing, but it came out ominously hollow. The prep room was empty, and looked much bigger now that it was clean. I walked by the white board. The prep list was staggering. I couldn’t believe the cooks could get through that much prep in a single shift. I’d closely read the list of what Bob had to get through the next day, and it made my head hurt for him. In the “instructions” column, someone had left him a note. In poorly spelled French, it said the bisque was fine. Signed Renaud.

  I shut myself in the staff bathroom to wash my arms and face. The room was so tiny and the sink so miniscule it took contortions to give myself a scrub. It was no use. I still felt like an oily, putrid mess. I threw on my dry underwear with a sense of deliverance. As I transferred my pager from one pair of pants to the other I remembered that there was a message to listen to, and reminded myself I had to call Malik, but couldn’t bring myself to do it.

  Since I was working the next night, I left most of my stuff in a corner of the staff room.

  I went back to the main floor. There weren’t any customers left in the dining room, and some of the floor staff was hanging out at the bar. The entire kitchen staff was gone. Maude was relaxed and smiling, transfigured. One of the night servers, a guy named Julien, I think, was smoking, sitting on a stool, with his shirt collar unbuttoned. He looked around five years older than me. Sarah was talking about a guy she’d met the night before at Café Central, and brought home. Denver, who’d just gotten back from the Diable Vert and hadn’t even had time to take off his leather jacket, was swirling the wine in his glass and following the discussion, looking amused. Jade was polishing champagne flutes and humming to herself. There were too many people around for me to talk to her. The boss was there too, and that was enough to make me want to get moving. She wore a loose-fitting white blouse with tight jeans tucked into leather boots. With her hands on the bar and a bottle of wine in front of her she was teasing Sarah to tell her story about the guy, making everyone laugh. She caught me as I was walking toward the front door. I thought she was going to ask me to go out the back.

  “Aren’t you going to punch out?”

  “Punch out?”

  “Yes. Punch. Out.”

  Her look was withering, as I grappled with what was clearly an elementary concept. Pretty much the entire staff was staring at me. Jade had put her head down, and Maude’s stare was seesawing between Séverine and me, like when you watch a tennis game. Julien and Denver stared at me with a slightly mocking smile.

  “Christian gave you a number, right?”

  I thought back to the beginning of the night. It was true, the chef had given me a number I was supposed to enter into the order computer at the beginning of my shift. I had to punch it in again when I finished. Except th
at as soon as I started work I’d forgotten all about it.

  “He did. But he didn’t show me how it worked.”

  Séverine looked suddenly tired. She sighed. Denver and Sarah started talking again. Julien lit another smoke, which he shared with Maude. Séverine poured them a glass of wine. She served herself too, then went over to the computer at the end of the bar.

  “Come over here.”

  She rolled her sleeves up over slender yet muscular arms, and showed me how it was done. Her instructions were clear but her hand was flying over the screen, which made the bracelet of her little gold watch slide over her wrist. She wasn’t the most patient person I’d ever come across. Her eau de toilette must cost as much as my paycheque. She didn’t react to my smell. I could picture the collision of our two olfactory auras: hers lemony fresh, almost sweet; mine musky and redolent of kitchen smells, burnt food, garbage, and detergents. Her heady perfume enveloped me like a flock of angels unsticking the sulfurous emanations of my own grinning devils, one molecule at a time. She was suddenly serious.

  “If you forget to punch out, I’ll forget to pay you those hours. Give me the ones you did this week. I’ll punch them in now. Just this once.”

  Maude and Julien were still watching. Jade too. She’d finished wiping glasses. The feeling of her eyes on me was the hardest thing to take.

  “All right. You can go.”

  Cheeks burning with shame, I set off to the entrance and pushed the first door. The second door at the end of the hallway wouldn’t budge. It was locked. My scalp was tingling, as if harrowed by thousands of microscopic needles. I made my way back into the dining room. The staff was chatting, drinking wine. The boss sent me a withering look that reduced me to a little cloud of grey smoke.

  “What’s up now?”

  I muttered that it was locked.

  “What?”

  She was coming toward me taking sharp, loud steps. My ears were as red as my cheeks, I could feel it. I cleared my throat and said it again, cursing my shyness.

  “Uh, key’s in the door. Open your eyes! Bye!”

  She gestured, as if to shoo me away, then turned back to the others.

  Sure enough, the key was in the lock. I unlocked it and set out into the clear night. I walked between the people on the street until I found a phone booth. Flipped a quarter into the slot and then dialled my voicemail.

  “You have. One. New message. Three. Saved messages.”

  I listened to the most recent. I was expecting Malik’s voice, but it was Rémi, my old roommate, whose voice exploded into the headset. “Fuck, man, are you gonna call me back one of these days? You owe me three months’ rent, it’s been like years, and you’re gonna fucking pay me, man. Then you just disappear? You better call me back. . .”

  I hung up without listening to the end of the message. Or else what, Rémi? I thought. Or else what, huh?

  Since I’d washed up at Vincent’s with my made-up story, I’d been hoping Rémi would give up and leave me alone, not go searching all over town for me. I guess I figured this was one more thing that would go away if I just kept ignoring it. It was a strategy I’d been trying out with lots of things.

  With my hand still on the frozen headset, I gave another thought to the thing that had been bothering me all night. I took the money out of my pocket and counted my wad, keeping it hidden from the people in the street. The payphone screen read 00:27. My heart started beating faster and I felt a wave of numbness spreading from my chest to the very tips of my toes and fingers. My feet were shaking, my arms felt like wet blankets. I hailed a cab. He stopped ten feet ahead, his taillights a smear of red in the amber night. I jogged through the slush to the car, opened the door and slumped down in the seat. I gave the cabbie directions, not even hearing them, as if another voice had pronounced my words, like in a silent film.

  The taxi rolled down the avenue. The light of the neon signs, storefronts, and fast-food marquees made me feel like the lead ball in a pinball machine. The darkness of the car interior resolved into something more living and colourful as we progressed. Classical music seeped out of the speakers, at a low volume, filling the car with the even notes of a cello. On the dashboard I saw the illuminated cover of a well-thumbed miniature Koran. My aunt had one like it. The driver turned onto Christophe-Colomb and sped up, we passed Rue Rachel, full of young people out partying, and went down to Ontario. He was taking me to the eastern reaches of downtown, where there was no chance of running into anyone I knew, and where, I lied to myself, I would be at peace.

  Chapter 9

  The bouncer always recognized me. I never failed to tip him when I paid my cover, but I also stood out from the other regulars who filled the club on busy nights. There was something fishy about a guy my age coming in as often as I did, especially one immune to the charms of this place’s main attractions.

  The bouncer had the body of a porn star who could bench three hundred pounds. His white polo shirt clung to his chest like a cyclist’s jersey, and his close-cropped platinum hair took on a fluorescent hue in the ultraviolet glow of the black lights. Once my five-dollar bill disappeared in his fist, a mitt like the paw of a furless bear, he’d give me a nod and an affable smile that made it hard to imagine the brute force I’d seen him marshal to toss out unruly or troublesome customers. He didn’t ask where I wanted to sit. He knew why I was here.

  I crossed the room without paying much attention to the stage around which the other patrons clustered with craning necks. Their indistinct faces blurred into the shadow like a Francis Bacon painting. From the corner of my eye I could see myself reflected in the mirrored walls as I moved through the club, my shimmering cornea riddled with dark spots, my silhouette’s dark, hazy outline diffracting against that of the two naked women in white latex boots whirling around on the chrome-plated stage. The place reeked of disinfectant and drugstore cologne. A short version of Ozzy’s “I Just Want You” was blaring with the bass cranked to eleven, drowning out everything. My heartbeat quickened under the peaks of adrenaline that spiked up even more precipitously as I neared the bar. While I waited for the bartender to come over I took in snippets of the conversations around me. One guy who was just a touch older than me and not quite at home in his suit, was leaning into the flowing hair of the stripper sitting beside him. She was straddling the line between flirty and cheeky as she fended off his advances and dodged his inane questions and probing yuppie hands, while at the same time trying to lure him back to a booth for a more intimate chat. He was almost screaming in her ear in a plaintive voice, “C’mon, tell me your name, honey. You can tell me, I’m not like the rest of these losers.”

  I tuned him out as the barmaid approached, taking giant strides behind the bar. She was taller than me, and blond, with crow’s feet her makeup couldn’t quite conceal. She always greeted me with a, “Hey, dear.” I ordered two beers and finally made my way over to the machines. My body relaxed, as if the ties that kept me trussed together had snapped. I felt a mild euphoria. Everything around me was suddenly clean and sparkly.

  Only one of the machines was in use. I checked the bonus jackpot on all three, and took the highest, the one most likely to pay out. I set one of my Buds down on the counter, next to the ashtray, and took a long sip of the other. It was ice-cold and thirst quenching, a taste of unadulterated pleasure. I pulled the wad of bills from the pocket of my jeans and took a seat on the stool. The two-hundred-fifty-six-colour screen set something deep within my skull alight. My cheeks were burning now. I unfolded my wad, pulled out a first twenty, and inserted it into the machine. On the touchscreen I selected my favourite game: Crazy Bells. I started with small bets, to get a sense of how often the right combinations were coming up. My trick was to keep playing as long as I possibly could, patiently waiting for the winning combinations to start popping up more regularly. Obviously the same strategy as every other video lottery junkie. Then I’d work my way through o
ne or two twenties, before ratcheting up my bets. I could feel the trance deepening and, after another long sip of fizzy beer, I started betting a little more recklessly. A nymphet in a fluorescent dress came and sat down right next to me. I didn’t take my eyes off the screen.

  “What’s your name, honey? I’m Sandra.”

  My bet was up to five dollars on that turn, the maximum. I pressed on the screen.

  “You look lonely. Why don’t we go to the back for a while?”

  She held out her hand for the taking.

  With superhuman effort I managed to answer, but it came from a place very far away. On the screen, in each of the nine squares, lemons, sevens, bells, cherries, and oranges flew by at breakneck speed. My eyes were trained on the screen for the red of the sevens and the yellow of the bells. I bit my tongue, hoping with all my heart they’d stop spinning in every box on the screen. I pressed the button again, to stop the spinning. The girl shrank away into the deep purple room, fading into the crowd of shadowy figures sitting at tables. In each of the nine squares the symbols had come to rest. I saw sevens—two or three of them. A cherry, which meant a bonus if I won. Another seven, and then a fifth. A hot flash shot through my whole body. My eyelids thickened and I felt my eyeballs pulsing behind them. My arm hair stood up on end. The numbers on the counter were still illegible, still spinning at full speed on their digital axis, as the total of my credits climbed higher and higher. My jaw contracted. I breathed in deeply, then upped my bet to the maximum. Another sip of my second beer, then I pressed the screen again. The reels started spinning. I hit the glass with my index. Bar, orange, orange, grape, seven, bar, lemon, bell, cherry. No win, but at least my bet wasn’t lost, thanks to the cherry. I set the reels spinning again without touching the bet, then held my breath for a while. I stared at the screen, as if standing guard. I gave the screen another quick tap with my fingertips to get the reel spinning again, followed by a second to bring it grinding to a halt. My nails made a dry clack on the screen. The symbols slowed and resolved in their boxes. My back muscles tightened. I let out a long sigh, then pounded almost my entire beer. I looked around without seeing a thing. Everything was suffused with a dewy, ultraviolet light. On the screen six of the nine squares had sevens in them. My credits had leaped to three-hundred-twenty dollars—two-hundred-forty more than I’d fed into the machine. I was on a roll. A silent euphoria heightened every one of my senses, but I controlled myself, playing it safe with smaller bets: enough for a pretty big win if I hit a combination, but not enough for a serious loss if nothing paid out. I went for one last round. Nothing. I stopped there. Got up hurriedly and printed out my wins. I floated to the bar, unable to contain my excitement. I handed the ticket over to the bartender, and she came back with the money from the till. She stacked the twenties onto the counter. I ordered another beer, and gave her a twenty, and another twenty to the bouncer who’d come back for a coke. At the end of the bar I recognized Cherry. I felt a pang in the chest, and looked down for a minute. She was sitting with a customer. Tonight’s wig was pink. She was sipping her usual gin-and-7Up, sucking the straw like a cigarette holder. She said hello with a subtle nod, while listening to some fifty-year-old guy’s story. The guy ordered something else from the bartender. The bar’s lighting revealed all the dandruff that had fallen onto the shoulders of his dark jacket. I took my beer and went to sit in the corner, to leave time for the adrenaline to dilute in my bloodstream and enjoy the slow wind-down that always followed a climax.