'Course we're talkin' outta school, here, but here goes...
by Jack M.
My surname, for the record, stretches beyond a single letter. But this story is set in Club LeConte and I work there. As I don't much like the idea of being dragged into the manager's office and getting a metaphorical pistol-whipping for telling tales out of school, I think it best to conceal my identity in this way. A boy has his job to think of.
Anyhoo. Let me tell you what went on just this past Tuesday. As lunch shifts go, it was a pip.
All was as tame as rice pudding that late morning. I went about my business of brewing iced tea, of slicing lemons and polishing silver, by rote. As great actors do, I let technique take over as my soul wandered elsewhere. My yawns were given free rein, like children one doesn't care about. They opened as toothy sunflowers, unstifled and leonine. Even supervisor Wannda—sometimes tough, sometimes tender, but never ever to be screwed with—was bored.
"God damn," she said, languidly moving down the hall toward me. "Don't this suck?"
"Indeed it does," I corroborated. "Cobwebs are adorning my person like shreds of fishnet stockings."
"Jack," said Wannda, "You the king of bullshit, you know that?"
Demurely sidestepping this massively left-handed tribute, I asked, "Anything at all in banquets today?"
Wannda stirred her coffee with a pinky nail as long and as elegantly curved as a Japanese emperor's. "Ain't much," she said. "Them bankers comin' in, that's all, baby. Some big-ass merger luncheon."
"You need help, kitten?"
"Hell, no. Dip Dip's already got 'em set." Dip Dip is in fact Laura. But the computer system was unhappy with the blank left in her file's "nickname" space and supplied that rather Gilbert & Sullivanesque tag. Which is, if you think about it, kind of scary.
Just then Dip Dip bustled over to us, somewhat out of breath.� "They're here!" she exclaimed, in the manner of Hattie McDaniel informing Scarlett of Yankees in the parlor.
"Then get their damn food out, girl." When Wannda issues a command for lunch service, the ice in the water glasses rattles all by itself, and the lemon slices cower and curl into themselves, like shrimp.
"The lunches are down already. Mr. P told me they were in a hurry."
Wannda menacingly licked a drop of coffee from her nail and mulled over this seeming slight to her authority. I recalled to mind Mr. P, banker and Knoxville nabob. His name is not Mr. P, nor does his last name begin with that letter. But he has a large head, so P will do. And, again, I must be careful.
"Rosemary chicken," Dip Dip replied to my inquiring eyebrow.
"An' berry cobbler, girl. Don't forget."
"Should I give it to them now?"
By way of response Wannda indicated me with a sloshing sweep of her coffee mug, as much as to say: Well, Jack would have it out and down by now. Dip Dip scurried to fetch the desserts, and I bashfully dropped my head and chose not to think that she maybe meant, "even Jack...."
"Damn servers. Infants, all of 'em," Wannda snorted. I remembered my rank as King of Bullshit and decided that it wasn't so bad, considering. Better a king of something than a child.
Then, far too quickly, Dip Dip reappeared.
"Wannda, Wannda! I don't know what to do!"
"Lord, girl. You jus' put the damn cobbler above the plate of..."
"No, no. I can't get in."
"Can't get in the room? They must've closed the doors, the better to merge undisturbed," I said. Wannda lifted a hand to strike me, but I was too fast for her; I displayed a face of fear so pitiful, the blow was unnecessary. I've seen cunning animals do things like that on documentaries. They survive.
"No," Dip Dip said. "You don't understand. The doors are open. It's Mr. P. He's blocking them. Crying."
"Crying?" Wannda was stunned.
"Crying?" I was stunned. And thinking I would move my little bit of money to another bank that day.
"Crying," Dip Dip affirmed, her stunning seconds older and already stale. She folded her arms above her bosom, ready to take on further challenges to her report. Wannda and I telepathically shared a possible—and cynical—answer. Commensurate with her position as captain, she gave it voice.
"You think maybe there's somethin' wrong with the rosemary chicken?"
I opened my mouth to speak but was struck dumb by a flash in white and gray. Chef Huntz, Teutonic and maniacal, had flown through the kitchen doors, wielding a salmon knife like a Japanese assassin.
"Who says there's something wrong with my rosemary chicken?" Chef Huntz can detect hints of insult to his cookery as some mystics can hear the grass grow.
"You calm yourself, Chef. Ain't nobody dissin' your food."
He seethed nonetheless, a fearsome set of gritted teeth below a hat like a souffle climbing to the sky.
"A banker," I clarified, "is weeping."
The four of us stood in silence for a moment as Chef Huntz digested this.
"That's it?" His blade glistened, poised but still hungry for battle.
"That's it," confirmed Wannda. Dip Dip shrugged, unable to elucidate further.
Assassins don't much like contracts canceled at the last minute. It's awkward, having brandished one's weapon for nothing. "Aw, hell's bells," he concluded, and returned to his kitchen.
"Well," I exhaled. "Whatever the cause, we can't have seven bankers going cobblerless because of one man's inexplicable distress." This time Wannda whacked me in the arm very hard—I have a bruise, a nearly perfect purple oval—and marched to the Governors' Room. Dip Dip was silent, until I actually said, "Ow," Then she giggled.
Wannda returned shortly thereafter, slapping her hands in the dusting-off manner of one who has briskly attended to business and wants the world to know it.
"Hm, hm, hm. My, my, my."
"Would you," I stiffly inquired, "quickly get past your ballooning air of self-satisfaction and tell us what the hell happened?"
Wannda chuckled. "Your poor arm OK, baby? Then stop rubbin' it like a damn fool. Anyway. What I did, I went right up to him. Sure enough, P's bawlin' like a baby with the colic."
"What'd you do?" Dip Dip was mesmerized, and eager to learn supervisory strategies.
"I slapped his face." We were taken aback, of course, by this boldness. My own alarm was increased by speculation as to the damage that pinky nail could do to soft banker flesh. And by this unsettling and fresh taste for violence Wannda was developing.
"No, no. 'Course I didn't. What the hell do you people think I am?" Dip Dip threw a glance at my arm but we said nothing. "I said, 'Mr. P, what the hell's the matter?�' Then it all come out. It seems, from what I could understand from the damn fool, is that his wife used to make rosemary chicken for him all the time. It got to him, is all."
"That's it?" In echoing Chef Huntz Dip Dip didn't even attempt to disguise her disappointment. This sentimental explanation lacked thrills. I think she had rather been hoping for impeachment, or impotence.
But I am equipped with an expansive spirit. Poultry and despair are all part of the human equation. One learns this as one ages.
"How extraordinary. The rosemary."
"Yep. Rosemary."
"One recalls Proust's words about how the vast edifice of memory...."
"Shut your face, Jack. Nobody wants to hear about your damn Proust." And she spritzed the Frenchman's name, too. "Anyway. Seems Mrs. P's divorcin' his sorry ass this very week. He said he's been like a rock through all of it, the lawyers and such, an' everything. But the rosemary..."
���� "...was a bridge too far. For his shattered love to bear."
Dip Dip was thoughtful but said nothing. She silently padded down the hall like a Japanese maiden, to pour tea and tend to the repaired party. Wannda moved to strike me once more but dropped her hand in a spasm of good fellowship. She and I then partook of fresh coffee and cigarettes, happy to be of the ilk that sets the world right, at Club LeConte.
On Thursday we learned that Mr. P has no wife, nor has he ever been so blessed. Doubly glad I was, that I had withdrawn my meager savings from his institution on Tuesday. Heartbreak is one thing and delusion another, but a boy has his fiscal security to think of...
October 16, 2003 * Vol. 13, No. 42
© 2003 Metro Pulse
| 
