Day 13: Failure

This is my attempt to find my way back to my original vision for the Thirty Days Project, which was to push the words out, roughly five hundred per story, to make a beginning, a middle and an end as quickly as possible. Without disrupting the rest of my life.   At 1600 words and finishing around 2:30am, I find only marginal success in my goal for today.  Let's see what I come up with tomorrow.

Failure

The Bronx. A modest-looking restaurant on the eastern edge of Riverdale. The end of the dinner rush.

Oliver racked up another tray of glasses, breathing carefully so as not to dump them. Sixteen hours into the day and you can't be too careful. All around him guys were taking bumps just to stay on track. Or so he assumed. Oliver was absolutely clean, so he didn't know. He assumed.

Then came Rob with the touch on his shoulder and the magic words, "We're cutting you, buddy. And before you go, can you empty the trash in the bathrooms?"

Oliver ditched his crappy mini-apron on top of the ice machine next to the salad station and headed out to the bathrooms. Had Saphire do a stall check, got the Women's out of the way, trucked the bag to the basement, then hit the Men's room. Filled out a family meal slip and got his burger. Tomorrow was a day off.

He sat at the end of the bar and asked Timmy the bartender for a cola and ate the burger, forcing himself to chew each bite before he swallowed and took another. The phone on the bar in front of him. Sent a text to Pete, asked was he free, and did he want to hang out?

Matt the cook had left the burger pink in the middle but seared outside. He had buttered the bun and toasted it, and toasted the outside of the bun, too, so the sesame seeds were crisp and hot all the way through. He had melted cheddar cheese on top of the burger using the salamander, the cheese just beginning to caramelize. The spongy bread in the middle of the bun was hot but still soft. None of that gourmet lettuce, iceberg instead; but absolutely crisp. The tomatoes, barely ripe, were sliced an eighth of an inch thick.

Everyone who liked burgers hoped for shift meal when Matt was cooking.

Oliver finished his burger, got up and went back to the kitchen to get his fries, the ones that came with his burger. They had just arrived on the pass seconds before. Hot from the fryer. Matt must have detected Oliver's readiness for fried potatoes by some kind of extra sensory perception. Or maybe he was the kind of cook who watched the dining room through the pass, to mentally chart everyone's progress through their meal.

The fries were hot, crisp, and salty. Oliver made a small pool of ketchup on the corner of the plate and ate his fries. Occasionally he would dip one into the ketchup, hoping to improve the flavor somehow. He loved ketchup but the fries didn't need it. They were perfect.

He looked around the dining room. There was Timmy, setting up a trio of wine glasses. Rob, cruising through the dining room giving the patrons big smiles, and touching all the female staff on the hips or waist. There was Janeane, the hottest waitress, talking to Matt. Janeane didn't have the best tits or the best ass in the restaurant, but it felt so nice to have her smile at you--and she smiled often. Oliver would have asked her out but she had been dating Matt for the past two years, so he didn't have much hope.

That's about all, here. Let's move on.

The Village. An hour or so later. A Brazilian restaurant with good sangria. Oliver sat across from Pete. Oliver had soda water, Pete had a jug of sangria and two glasses.

“You should really try this stuff.”

Oliver shook his head. “No, man, I don't really drink.”

Pete said, “is that Matt?”

Pete knows Matt. Pete knows Matt because he worked with Matt at another restaurant two years ago. Pete waited tables, and had a few regular customers who asked for him. Matt cooked, and everybody loved him. Or at least his food.

Matt's girlfriend dumped him, and he left. He ditched his apartment in Harlem, which was full of stuff that reminded him of her, and couch-surfed for a month. He ended up living in the Bronx, dating Janeane, and cooking at the restaurant where Oliver was now working as a runner, a porter, and a general mucker-out.

Oliver looked. “Yeah. That's Matt.”

Matt sat heavily on a stool at the bar. He ordered a double of Jameson. Pete gave a nod, and they headed over to join him at the bar.

Matt said, “Hey.”

Oliver said, “Where's Janeane?”

“Back at the restaurant.”

The dismissive wave ended that conversation. So the boys talked about sports. Matt knocked back a couple more doubles of Jameson. Pete finished off the pitcher of sangria by himself. Oliver drank soda. They all three watched the NBA highlights playing on the tiny TV behind the bar.

Then Pete called it a night, and for some reason--certainly a reason that he could have told anyone--Oliver stayed on to watch Matt drink. Which went on for bit longer, until Matt asked: “Why don't you drink?”

Oliver looked out at the street, watching the gay boys and the teenage thugs and the New Jersey party kids lurching past. Then back to the NBA highlights. Then to Matt's face. Matt had that stare people get when they've been drinking for a while: a bit too steady, not enough blinking. Inside his head, Oliver call this Drunk Eyes. Drunk Eyes often arrived with the Sincere Conversation About Why You Don't Drink.

“I don't know. Why do you drink?”

Matt inhaled, exhaled heavily, and said, “One, I work in the restaurant business. If you don't drink, you don't really work in the restaurant business. Two, Janeane dumped me tonight. Three, when I'm not getting my heart minced up by beautiful bitches, drinking feels good.”

Oliver said, “alright. I'll have a drink.”

Matt smiled, and said, “well, that was easy.”

It wasn't easy. Oliver had never had a drink, because he saw what it had done to his dad. Oliver never did drugs because he saw what it did to his cousin Aaron.

It wasn't easy. He had been working in the restaurant for nine months. He saw everybody getting high around him. Everybody put up with him, most people liked him OK. Janeane once said he was sweet. But Oliver never felt like anyone respected him. Oliver never felt like an adult, even if he could pull sixteens three days running, even though he never threw up in the walk-in and never started fights on the street.

Matt said, “what do you want?”

Oliver said, “Um. Don't know.”

Matt ordered him a vodka tonic.

Oliver drank it. It's an easy drink to drink, the vodka tonic. It went to his head quickly, too. A long day at work, first time with alcohol.

Oliver decided to continue the experiment. He ordered another. And another.

Matt started talking about Janeane. Drinkers trust drinkers.

Oliver enjoyed the new found trust of his hero. He ordered another drink, and soon found the courage to tell Matt how much he loved Matt's cooking. And how favorably that reflected on Matt's character on the whole.

After two more drinks, Oliver told Matt that he was the best cook, ever. Period. Not just in New York. You know? The. Best. Cook. Ever. PERIOD. Oliver poking his finger into the bar with each word.

After two more drinks...there are some gaps.

Another bar. A cab ride. The cab ride was long. Someone might have thrown up. Or maybe that was a conversation about how bad Chinatown smells in the summer. Then, a party in Bushwick. A girl in a fringed shimmy dress. The giant blue furry dog that everyone passed around. Everyone declared that this blue furry dog was the best friend a man could have. The girl in the fringed shimmy dress corrected Oliver when he said it wrong, and made him say it right: “This blue furry dog is the best friend a man could have.”

Later, sunrise over the Brooklyn Bridge.

Later, a long walk to his East Village apartment.

Later, when Oliver woke up after sleeping for ten hours, with his jacket over his head and his shoes still on, he wondered what he had done.

He looked in the mirror and saw the cut over his eye and wondered about that. The pants pocket full of marbles and pennies puzzled him, too.

Matt left the restaurant. Oliver kept working there. Business slowed down a bit, but then Rob added fajitas and a couple of Traditional Irish Specialties to the menu and business picked up again.

After a month, reckoning it was now safe, Oliver made a pass at Janeane and she said “Oh, that's sweet.”  And she wasn't mean about it at all.

Oliver thought about having a drink or two after she turned him down, but decided against it.

A week after that, Oliver joined a bunch of people walking all the way around the island of Manhattan. That's about thirty-two miles. It took him about ten hours, or a little more. At the end, Pete, and some of the guys he met while walking, invited him for a beer. Oliver joined them at the bar, and ate ravenously, but he didn't drink.

A couple of hours later, he went home and lay down in his bed. Most of his body hurt. Especially his feet.

Oliver smiled at the ceiling. He didn't normally talk out loud when he was alone, but this time he did.  He said: “This will do. For now.”

(C) 2011 Michael Bernstein