That new girl server—Mara, that was her name—had fucking questions.
New, Tommy laughed to himself. Mara had started maybe a week after him. He kept telling himself there was nothing to worry about.
She’d asked if he could hang out after work, had said I have so many questions about Lilypad. Even though his heart was jumping like hot oil, he played cool, said “sure, you know Jimmy’s Pub up the street?”
He’d spent the rest of the shift jittery. Even dropped a pork chop.
Now, finished with prep, wiping down his station, Tommy had calmed. He reminded himself that a man was supposed to have layers, like an onion. A man kept his mouth shut, like a stubborn mussel.
He wasn’t going to bullshit, and he wasn’t going to fold under interrogation.
Mara said she didn’t drink, but if Tommy was going to talk outside of work, after a shift? What else was there to say? He would like at least one whiskey, please.
Jimmy’s Pub wasn’t the same environment as Mara’s usual digs, or at least what Tommy imagined them to be. For one thing, there was no stage for guys in ratty clothes to yell and make noise. For another, the two of them were the only ones here under the age of 45. Still, he figured dingy, wood-paneled walls and $2 Old Style was the great uniter.
Except, right, Mara didn’t drink.
He could tell Mara was uncomfortable, and maybe he got it. The air in here was heavier, smoggier, despite the indoor cigarette ban. Everyone else here was drinking on their own. They had come here on their own, they wouldn’t make friends while they were here, and they would leave alone.
Mara insisted on buying the first round. “It was my idea to hang out,” she said.
Tommy went mid shelf out of courtesy and ordered a Jack on the rocks. Plus a water back, hoping a feint towards responsibility would make Mara relax her shoulders a little.
“So what’s your story, man?” she asked as they settled into a high top.
“Uh,” Tommy said. “Like an alibi?”
She laughed. “Oh my gosh, can you imagine? If I thought you were the murderer? And this was my trap?”
That got a chuckle from Tommy, but he didn’t know what the chuckle meant.
“No, dude, I mean—where you from, where’d you go to school, how’d you get here, whatever.”
“Oh, I’m from all over. Chefs, you know, we bounce around.”
“I get it. This isn’t my first restaurant gig.”
They walked through their best presentations of their personal histories. Slowly, Tommy began to realize that she wasn’t suspecting him. She was just some true crime-obsessed kid who thought maybe he could add some juice to her life, make the mundane a little more interesting. Sorry, kiddo, I got nothing for you. But I can sit here and say ‘damn, that’s crazy’ with you for three whiskies.
The world started to feel a little less like a broiler, a little less like he’d stepped in wet cement. The edge was off.
Tommy ordered a second whiskey—insisting on paying, and upgrading to Buffalo Trace—and asked Mara if she was sure she didn’t want one.
“Hey, don’t mind me,” he said. “I’m always the devil on the shoulder.”
She laughed at that. She’d said no to the drink, but he could see she was loosening up. Not only did he have her fooled, he was totally making a human connection with this—what, 23-year-old? Pretty good, old man, the 30-year-old thought.
He might be a pirate, but he wasn’t the one who was off in the world, he reassured himself. People like that Chili’s GM, yeah, they were all fucked up. Their minds were on money, not on human dignity. To people like that? The world was one big mine, waiting to be stripped. People were tools to use up. Tommy, he wasn’t like that. Tommy was a servant-artist, devoting his body, devoting his functioning knees and working back and mental energy to the art of serving people a great meal. What Tommy did was holy. The Chili’s GM, always calling everyone half a shade off from cream “José?” That wasn’t normal. Normal people learned other people’s names. Now, what Tommy did with Chili’s GM? In that moment, what he was was a normal guy who did what needed doing, for the protection of other normal guys. When a dish is dirty, you wash it.
He had to change the subject before he blurted a confession to Mara. She hadn’t even asked about Chili’s.
“You know, I think I saw you the other night,” he said.
“You did?”
“I was walking past The Muse. Were you there, maybe—a month ago, some Wednesday? Or Thursday?”
“I mean, probably,” she said. “My friend Parth, his band plays there a lot.”
“Boyfriend?” he asked, with what he hoped was a disinterested, genuinely curious tone.
“Nothing like that. No, his band’s good. Crystal Lake Counselors, they’re called. Plus, I don’t know. Any night I get to see live music is a good night. You know?”
“Great neighborhood for it.”
“Seriously. You go to shows?”
That question had actually been on his mind since he saw her through the window at The Muse. In his younger years, in high school and into culinary school, he’d loved going to shows. He suspected that Mara, like him, got high off of the heartbeat of a bass, the infectious energy of a live drummer, the ear-splitting guitars, the brief handing over of yourself to a lead singer’s cult of personality. Tommy figured he could tell, after just a few minutes of conversation, that Mara was a sensualist, like him, that Mara, like him, cared about the important stuff in life. This was the foundation for real friendship.
“Not for a while,” he said. “Used to go a lot. I guess my first job out of culinary school, it wasn’t close to any good venue. Plus, the hours sucked. So I sort of forgot? About live music?”
“Oh my god I can’t even imagine that,” she said.
“Not like, I woke up one day and the whole concept was gone. Just, I stopped going out as much. I don’t know.”
“Wow, that’d be even worse.”
“What? Worse than if you woke up one day with the whole concept of live music just yanked out of your reality entirely?”
“Oh, stop talking. That’s terrible. Terrible.”
But she was laughing. The air seemed to get looser, more breathable. A man who was at least 65 walked in with a snorting bulldog. They moved like the world was a bowl of congealing grits. They took the length of the fade out to “Have You Ever Seen The Rain” to get to the end of the bar, where the bartender set a bowl of water down for the dog and a Johnnie Walker Red with an Old Style back for the man. Mara was eyeing the pair, too.
“What a life those two must lead,” she said.
They talked about the various characters in the neighborhood, the punk DIYers and retired elementary school teachers always selling crafts on the sidewalk, the street preacher with the microphone and 10-inch amp, the woman hawking Streetwise with a free Bible verse thrown in, the Vietnamese man who did photorealistic paintings of street corners, the 12-year-olds learning to skateboard after school.
Talking to Mara, enjoying a quiet whiskey after an honest day’s work? The evening was making Tommy feel like he’d made a good choice, picking Olly’s. Good people worked there. Here, Tommy could be a good person. As they talked about the various neighborhood characters, Tommy tried to envision himself, how he fit in. I feed people, he thought to himself with pride.
Tommy was getting loose. Their conversation had shifted to types of customers that drove them nuts.
For Mara, it was the people who came in five minutes before close. “That’s an easy answer,
though,” she said. “My real answer is guys who think their order is what makes them a man.”
“I think I get what you mean,” Tommy said. “But give me an example.”
“You know, a guy who says is it spicy?” She jutted out her chin and made her voice deep. “Because I like a lot of heat, you feel me? Or a guy who orders black coffee. Like that: black coffee. No please. If I do get a thank you it’s got a sweetheart tacked on. Like, you know I’m going to pour you coffee, right? And it’s your own choice, right, if you want to add cream or sugar? And I don’t, you know, give a shit one way or the other?”
“Some people need you to approve their taste,” Tommy said. “Better than people with no taste at all, the ketchup-on-a-well-done-steak assholes.”
“Oh yeah, I don’t even know how those people are alive. But I’m talking about the reverse. I’m talking about people who order medium rare steak not because they like it, but because their dads or Food Network hosts or whatever societal pressure told them to. The bullshitters. I don’t know how those people live with themselves.”
Tommy noted her phrasing. The bullshitters. “Man, I’ll tell you something, though,” he said. “As a chef? Well, line cook, but still. You know who I can’t stand?”
“Who?” she asked.
“Fucking regulars, man. Walk into the restaurant, think they own the place just because they’ve told employees their name and expect to get a name in return. Think a few 25% tips mean they can order off-menu, harass newbie servers with I’ll have the usual or whatever. Makes me sick. The world is big! Go to a different restaurant. Try Ethiopian, for fuck’s sake.”
“Really?” Mara said. “As a line cook, it’s the regulars who are the worst?”
“Oh yeah,” Tommy continued. He had a story that would get her rolling. It was about a regular at Chili’s who loved a Texas BBQ burger, “already a pretty gnarly concoction, real monument to American gluttony,” with extra cheese, extra pickles, and extra sauce. How watching this guy just masticate, sauce-drenched onion rings hanging on his (of course) goateed chin, “it’s enough to make you wanna just, you know?” and Tommy mimed bashing someone’s skull in with a brick.
Mara made a face, no doubt revulsion at the Texas BBQ Burger, picturing how gross it would get with extra cheese extra sauce and extra pickles, probably she’d had some loser high school date take her to Chili’s and order the same thing.
“Pretty gross,” she said.
Tommy relaxed his brick-holding hand and reached for his drink. “Hey, to us, though, right?” he said. “People with a little bit of class.”
Mara toasted him and sipped her club soda. They both looked around the bar. Tommy felt that sense of camaraderie you can only get by talking shit with your coworkers after a shift.
Then Mara frowned at her phone. “I’ve gotta get back to my mom,” she said. “She can’t, you know—I gotta help her out with stuff a lot. She’s sick.”
“Oh okay. Well, good health, uh, get well soon, uh, to her. Hey, we should do this again sometime.”
“Sure,” Mara said.
“To new friends,” Tommy said, raising his glass, but Mara’s club soda was gone. She gave him a lip smile, and then she was gone, too.
She left and Tommy felt like the night was a well-lit path with some sort of treasure at the end. He felt loose and elite in his chef’s whites. Like how Bourdain used to describe being a cook as being part of a pirate crew. Here he was, a quiet bar where he could drink another whiskey in comfortable silence. Gather his thoughts. Then, all of Uptown lay before him. Any experience he could stumble on would at least be a good story the next day at work.
Some song with low, rumbling guitar and brassy, 70s-funk-movie horns started playing.. Tommy felt the noirish rhythms building electricity in his limbs. He took it as a sign that he should order another whiskey, then walk the night streets. Open himself to what the city offered.
When the whiskey came, he raised a toast to the old man and his bulldog.
He resolved to try food from a place he’d never seen before tonight.