Time to Serve

Beady black eyes stared up from the rough wooden crate, pincers clattering over one another as needle legs scuttled and slipped on shingled shells. CB rested his foot on the edge of the box, the rubber Saf-T-Step tread caked with Old Bay, and let the dove-colored claws clutch at his untied laces. When one of them got a good enough grip, CB lifted his foot, like a reverse arcade machine, the lucky crustacean rising up from his confines while half a dozen of his fellows tried to drag him back down.

“Hey, Cry Baby!” Mark called from the kitchen door. “Come on, it’s time!”

A runner pushed past him, driving a steaming steel trough full of lifeless red shells and heaps of seasoning. CB shook his foot to dislodge the cling-on and hurried back inside.

Cooks and runners shouted over one another, whisking trays around speeding carts, baker’s racks rolling out of ovens or into freezers, pastry bags squeezed beneath a flurry of curse words, all to the percussive rhythm of relentless knives. Any other day, CB would be dodging back and forth among them, cleaning out the grease trap or chopping the requisite two hundred pounds of onions that had given him his nickname, but today was different. Instead of sweating through a black chef’s jacket, he was moving carefully to keep from creasing a white button-down server’s shirt, still fresh from the box. “I’m not sure about this.”

Mark waved this away with an extravagant fart sound. “Front of house get better tips, Baby, help me help you. And fucking relax; look like you tryn’a pass a bocce ball.”

“Mark, leave that boy alone!” Chef Amanda winked as CB hunched down into his stiff white collar. “Don’t listen to him, Baby, you’ll be fine. Remember, these people want to hear from you.”

Picking at his fingernails, CB watched the pierced and tattooed chef loading up a silver trolley with a mortar, pestle, and citrus juicer. “That’s kind of what I’m nervous about.”

“Don’t be.” Amanda pushed back her chef’s cap, exposing a scar that ran from her hairline down to the corner of her eye. “People take one look at this, and Christian charity puts a twenty in my pocket.”

Mark put his foot up on the edge of the table, tugging up a well-pressed trouser leg. “See this?” he said, tapping the exposed cuff. “It’s a Fitbit, but people make their own assumptions. My little ten-dollar tip machine.” He put his foot down when Amanda swatted him. “Seriously, work on your sob story. Shit, if I wanna go out, I could be the absentee dad of up to six kids.”

Amanda shook her head, spraying a little sanitizer on the vanishing footprint. “Just tell your story, Baby. Those bleeding hearts are here for a reason.”

The term on the catering company’s website was “employment barriers”. Some of the runners that lingered by the loading dock had obvious track marks, and it was pretty routine to usher in parole officers checking up on their charges, but it was up to each individual to volunteer the details of their past. Some, like Mark, delighted in weaving a sordid tapestry, and didn’t let the truth get in the way of a good punchline. Others simply disappeared before anyone learned so much as a last name.

“Gloves,” Mark instructed, holding out a box of blue latex. “Okay, Cry Baby, let’s get some rich bitches to fork over their alimony!”

CB pushed the silver trolley, watching the rapid change in Mark’s comportment as he stepped through the swinging doors into the dining room. Gliding across the carpet with silken steps, a tranquil, compliant smile pooling on smoothed features, Mark arrived at the white-clothed table with a slight bow and an inviting sweep of his open palm.

“My dear ladies, gentlemen, my associate Christopher is prepared to assemble your personalized selection. Today we have Hass avocado, fresh squeezed key lime, your choice of onion and cilantro, ripe Roma tomato, fire-roasted jalapeno and serrano, and our decadent queso fresco. Is there anything else I can provide to make your experience absolutely perfect this evening?”

A woman stuffed into a navy blue sheath nodded her bleached lob at him. She gestured to the cracked and gutted crab shells in front of her and said, “I’m done with this. Can I get some sort of towelette?” Holding her fingers up to her face, she sniffed them and sneered. “Honestly, that smell. I don’t know how you people stand smelling like that.”

“Of course, madam.” Mark lifted the pile of marine innards with reverence and care, whisking them away toward the kitchen. Heart hammering in his chest, prickling sweat circling his neck, CB faced the table of expectant smiles alone.

Naming each ingredient again, CB crushed the buttery avocado beneath his porous mortar. As he added the onion, that familiar sting assaulted his eyes, and his stomach rolled at the thought of tearing up in front of these blithe strangers. “So,” said a beefy man with a reflective bald spot. “How long have you worked here?”

“Uh,” CB swallowed. “Not long.”

“So great to have a program like this,” said a woman whose shade of tan would look lovely on roast chicken. “We are such supporters of people getting a second chance.”

What would Mark do? CB smiled. “We’re just so grateful you all choose to provide this opportunity.”

The woman with the bleached lob and smelly fingers leaned forward, squinting. “Do I know you?”

“No, ma’am.”

She squinted through her Botox while she tried to place him. “You look so familiar.”

CB kept his eyes on the mortar, its circular journey through the deep green smear. “Just one of those faces.”

The tan woman nudged the balding man and said, “See the ankle monitor?”

Mark arrived. “For you, madam,” he said, handing a packet moist towelette toward the bleached lob’s seasoned manicure. He scooped up the pestle full of fresh guacamole, and placed it in the center of the table with a flourish, and chips. “Please enjoy! Your prefixe entrees will be arriving shortly.”

Putting a hand on CB’s arm, Mark steered the trolley back through the swinging doors. “Dude, you look like you’re ‘bout to pass out.”

“I fucking hate that bitch!”

“Woah!” Mark took a step back, hands up in surrender. “Jesus! What happened?”

Chef Amanda pushed through the rushing foot traffic, pressing a quart container of ice water into CB’s hands. “You look so red.”

“One of the customers got to him,” Mark said, craning to look through the circular window.

Amanda’s brow dropped into a dark line. “Which one? The mutton dressed as lamb?”

“Judge Marianne Hardwick.”

Mark and Amanda exchanged a look. Mark asked, “Someone you know?”

CB shook his head. He glanced through the window, and took a deep gulp of water. That hated sting was back in his eyes. “You guys know I got sent to Smithfield?”

Mark whistled. “I heard some things about that place.”

“Well, it’s true,” CB growled, squeezing the water between his hands, condensation weeping from white knuckles. “Those COs, there were four of them…I was one of the kids that testified. She let them walk, every one, didn’t even put it on their records in case it ruined their lives.” The cup slipped through his fingers, ice water splashing across his shoes, a cold pool spreading across the tile. “I was twelve.”

Amanda took a hand away from her mouth to touch CB’s trembling shoulder. “I’m so sorry, Chris.”

“It’s fine!” CB snarled, jerking out of her reach. “It’s…it doesn’t matter, it’s whatever. Forget I said anything.”

Tapping a finger on his chin, Mark said, “No, I don’t think I will.” He untied the apron around his waist. “I’m going on break.”

“Don’t.”

Mark pushed his apron into CB’s hands. “Help me help you.”

CB took a step after Mark as he slipped down the length of the hall, but Amanda pulled him over to a stainless steel work station. “Here,” she said, shoving an onion in his hands.

“I’m front of house,” CB pointed out.

Amanda pushed a box of gloves at him. “Not with your face like that, you’re not. People want sob stories, but really just the story part.”

Wiping his once-white sleeve across his face, CB said, “I hate this. I hate crying.”

“That’s what you do when you got nothing left.” Amanda slid a cutting board across the table. “Can you handle a knife right now?”

CB scoffed. “I’m not gonna run out there and stab her!”

“Angry people cut themselves,” Amanda said. “I don’t want Hepatitis all over my shit. Breathe, Baby. Don’t make me put you in the walk-in to chill out.”

The gloves snapped against CB’s wrists, and he dragged the knife across the board, trusting muscle memory over his clouded eyes. The blade whacked and smacked off the ends of the helpless bulb, slicing through the taught core and chopping off petal after petal. Stinging mist sprayed from the bleeding wounds in the colorless flesh, skin ripped from the dismembered victim, about the size of a human heart. When it was dead, CB grabbed another, viciously ripping the delicate cells and mincing it to paste, tense fury burning up his tendons, juices spattering on his once-white sleeves while blood boiled in his hitching chest. After a moment, though, he was just cutting onions.

“You look better,” Amanda said. “You wanna try going back out?”

CB shook his head, squeezing the damp spot on his sleeve. “Keep me back here. I still wanna punch that bitch right in her lip filler.”

“You never struck me as a fist fight type of guy.”

“Well, you don’t know what I was in for.” CB ripped off his gloves. “Can’t we do something? Feed her crab lungs, put paraffin in the butter sauce, something?”

Amanda leaned over and lowered her voice. “We could feed her a dessert full of crushed thermometer and let her bleed glass and mercury from the inside.”

“Jesus!”

“But we absolutely the fuck won’t.” Amanda held up a warning finger. “We never fuck with the food. It is not funny, it is never okay. People eat here because they trust us, and we cannot afford to lose that trust. Even McDonald’s lives and dies by that trust.”

CB snorted. “Like you trust a judge?”

Waving her arm across the length of the vast, bustling kitchen, Amanda said, “Take a look around. Everyone here is on their last chance. If this place shuts down, where are we gonna go? I know you hate her, and you should, but she does not get to spray explosive diarrhea over all our futures. Even if you think you don’t have one. You can’t get to her without walking over all of us.”

“Why is it up to me?” CB snarled. “Why do I have to be responsible for everyone when it’s her fucking job to serve us?”

“It is not her job to serve us,” Amanda said. “It is her job to keep slapping plastic over who she is and being exactly what everyone in white suburbia expects. It is not our job to protect one another, but if we don’t, who the fuck will?”

CB sighed, and flicked a bit of onion across the table. He looked up. “Where’s Mark?”

“Oh, shit.” Amanda stripped off her gloves, peering through the round window. “I don’t see him. I don’t see her.”

“Oh, holy shit.” CB joined her at the window. “What was he in for?”

“Criminal offensive side-eye.” Mark materialized from the back of house bustle, stripping off a pair of blue latex gloves. Taking his apron back and slipping his camera phone into the front pocket, Mark chided, “You guys, stop logging customers in your respective spank banks and start plating the dessert trolley, already!”

Taking a step back, Amanda said, “What did you do?”

Mark grinned, and took his hand off his camera phone. “Who, me? I would never. Come on, you’re pushing the trolley.” CB held up his water-stained sleeves. Whacking off an imaginary cock, Mark flung imaginary jizz into the air like equally imaginary confetti. “Cuff ‘em, Cry Baby, we’re going out.”

There was really no need to worry about his sleeves; CB could see all the guests’ eyes locked in to the chocolate mousse and mascarpone crème. “Well, this looks stunning,” said the bald-spotted man. “Where the hell’s Marianne?”

The chicken-skinned woman checked the time. “She’s been in there a while." She tapped the side of her nose and winked. "I’ll go check on her.”

Mark presented the shining white china in a graceful arc. “Gentlemen, my dear ladies, we have a raspberry zinfandel reduction drizzled over Belgian chocolate, Italian syllabub with tropical champagne glaze, a fig and blueberry tart with brandy butter, kissed with crystalized thyme and rosewater crème anglaise. Allow me to serve you all a final espresso from LaVassa, with our compliments. Is there anything else I can do to make your evening satisfactory?” The balding man leaned over to shake Mark’s hand, with just the briefest flash of currency between their palms.

With the plates distributed, CB started wheeling the trolley back to the kitchen, but Mark grabbed his arm. “Stay where you are,” he hissed.

“What did you do?” CB wanted to know. Mark shook his head, his eyes fixed on the ladies’ room door.

The chicken woman emerged first, looking deeply offended. Then, the judge appeared, straightening her dress and grinning like a maniac across flushed cheeks beneath a lopsided lob. Her wild eyes caught sight of Mark, and her face flickered. Her knuckles went white in the death grip clutched around her phone. Mark held his fingers to his face, and sniffed.

Stumping on stiff legs back to her table, the judge ignored the decadent desserts and scrabbled for her checkbook, scratching frantically with her pen. “People can be so charitable,” Mark said. “Alright, I think we’re done.”

“What did you do?”

Mark helped park the trolley, and shooed the runners away from the loading dock. Moving his camera phone, Mark fished out a lighter and a pack of cigarettes. “Can I have one of those?’ CB asked.

Mark raised his eyebrows. “Didn’t think you smoked.”

“Well, we’re learning a lot today.”

Handing over the pack, Mark lit his coffin nail and blew out a smoky sigh. “You know I have a kid, right?”

CB rolled an unlit cigarette between his fingers. “No. You never mentioned it.”

Flicking his ash into the darkening sky, Mark said, “I don’t see him. Not a hundred percent sure where he is. Maybe a well-adjusted little spit-shine with a fast track to college and a boy scout sash, I don’t know. But, given what I gave him, and who his mother is, he might just as well end up in a place like Smithfield.” He parked the cigarette between his lips, and looked twenty years older than CB ever would have guessed he was. “Take care of yourself, Chris. Please.”

Without another word, Mark set out across the vast expanse of parking lot, hands stuffed in his uncanny pockets. In the company of bugs killing themselves against the bright street light, CB twisted his cigarette to bits, scattering the tobacco in the shifting breeze. He breathed in the quiet dark, the lingering steam, and didn’t even mind the smell.

Gleaming dully under the street light, a single crab sidled toward freedom, needle pins skittering on an asphalt sea.