That goddamn gash still wasn’t healing, red staining the bandage, that dark dried crust like a caramelized spot on top of a cheese pizza but all over his fucking hand, why wouldn’t the wound heal?
He found a black bandana in his locker and wrapped it around his bandage. Yesterday, in a panic, he’d told Mara that his hand was burned, not cut. Everyone knew Gerry had been stabbed to death. How would it look for Superstar Chef Tommy to suddenly have a huge cut on his hand, after his nemesis, fucking Gerry The Landlord, had been stabbed to death? Tommy had said his hand was burned. Leaking blood would give the game away, though.
His station was not up to his standards. Chopped onion remains had found their way into the caper brine. The lemon butter sauce for the picatta looked like it would break any minute. He hadn’t changed his sani bucket since the beginning of the shift.
Whatever, he thought, invoking the ancient mantra for chefs in trouble: just get through the day.
If he could make it through breakfast service, a quiet Tuesday breakfast service, he’d be fine. He had tomorrow off. He could go home and let his hand heal. Swing by CVS and buy out the Aquaphor inventory, reapply that shit every 10 minutes, whatever he had to do.
He couldn’t work like this.
—
As soon as he’d finish plating a Farmer’s Scramble, an Olly’s Special add pork chop would come through, followed by three patty melts, a Vegetarian Scramble, Strawberry French Toast, another Olly’s Special, another Olly’s Special, another Olly’s Special.
It was like that all morning. Benny, The Busser Who Wasn’t Maria, Reliable Old Maria, was AWOL for the second shift in a row. Amparo and Mara wore faces made of long exhales and heavy eyebrows. At one point, Tommy caught a glimpse of the dining room through the expedite window and saw dirty plates on three and six. Just get through the day.
“Amparo,” Tommy heard Martín say. “That nephew of yours still looking for a job?”
20 minutes later, some wire-muscled 19-year-old with finger tats was in the manager’s office, pulling on a spare pair of no-slip shoes. He was about five foot six, but looked like someone you didn’t want to fight. Tommy also thought he looked like Mexican Billy Loomis, high-cheekboned and cigarette attractive, eyes that smoldered as a matter of course, middle-part hair that stayed in place just below his temples.
“Hey Tommy,” Martín said. “This is Diego. He’s going to be bussing the rest of this shift. You mind showing him the ropes? I figure since you got that burn on your mano, man, maybe I take over the grill for a little bit, yeah?”
Tommy remembered when he was young and fresh-faced in the culinary world, when he was a sexually competent and hungry dirtbag, the way young men are, when he didn’t know a thing about how to keep a dining room in order but he knew to do 50 pushups before a shift and roll up his shirtsleeves. Sure, he could help Diego out.
Those days felt like yesterday. How could he be 30 already? The fact was, he was still young. He wasn’t that much older than Diego, and with his guidance—get through this first shift, and probably a mentorship would blossom—Diego could be a fucking rock star, a real pirate, a kitchen god. There was that time he tried to give Benny some pointers, and Benny wouldn’t fucking listen, whether Tommy said it in English or Spanish. Diego would be different, he could tell.
“Good to meet you, vato,” Tommy said. “I’d shake your hand, but I got this nasty burn here. Yeah, smacked the top of my broiler when I was making toast at home. You believe that shit? Embarrassing. But hey, I started out bussing, too. We’ll have some fun.”
Diego grabbed a tub and the two of them stepped into front of house and that was when Tommy realized that yes, once upon a time, he had been a busser, but no, never had he ever bussed a shift at Olly’s.
Whatever happened, Tommy couldn’t let Diego see that he was out of his depth. He brushed sweat off his forehead. “So, obviously,” Tommy said. “We can see that there are no tables that need, uh, bussing right now, so, uh, let’s go check out dish.”
“You good, dude?” Diego asked.
“Absolutely, Chef,” Tommy dropped the honorific like a set of keys. “Well. See? I’m used to being in the kitchen. Changing up my game here, being in front of house again. But hey—I’ll bet you’ll earn your way to the trenches.”
Diego had a look that Tommy couldn’t read—excitement or nerves? Whatever it was, the two of them got into a groove. Diego was a natural, no chipped water glasses or forks clattering on the floor. After a while, a certain level of quiet found its way back to Olly’s. Tommy took the opportunity to show Diego proper trash and recycling procedures.
“Hey, if things are slowing down,” Martín called from the grill. “Why don’t we let Diego fly solo for a while? Tommy, I’m kinda having fun here, man. You go get started prep and I’ll finish out here, yeah?”
“Cool with me,” Diego said.
“Sure thing, just gotta get some fresh burn cream outta my locker,” Tommy said.
—
Descending the stairs, he waited for calm to come. The noise of the restaurant fading behind naked brick basement walls was usually a comfort. Being in this employee-only basement, seeing the lockers, hearing them open and close—it was a reminder of the pirate crew element of working kitchens. He didn’t care if he was aping the most cut-rate Romanticism from Bourdain’s early writings, he liked that stuff. In a kitchen, if nowhere else, you could find people who understood you. If not you, at least where you were coming from.
Hey, Tommy, you sliced your hand open literally giving Gerry death by a thousand cuts with a paring knife?? Dude! You’re a hero! We’re gonna kill the fatted calf in your honor! Call the mayor and let’s have a parade down Broadway! Put your name on the Uptown Theater marquee! By the way, need help hiding the body?
Tommy wasn’t sure people thought that way anymore. The 90s were a long time ago, and kitchens were different now. People in bank robbing movies, who only asked what getaway car you needed? They didn’t exist in real life. In real life, people were too busy getting their nephews jobs or making eyes at the bassist in the opening band at Alewives.
Tommy was old school, meant for a different decade.
Meanwhile, the calm wasn’t coming.
He had to check this wound. Digging in his backpack for fresh gauze, he gave the bandana a once-over. No blood leaking. One good thing. Sweat and summer heat were making his scalp prickly. Breathing felt more difficult than it should. But at least the bandana kept the blood hidden.
He unwrapped the bandana, his eyes following the fabric spinning off his hand. Underneath, the gauze was more gnarly than he expected. Didn’t smell great. There was crusty dried blood and glistening new blood. He could cut off his hand and plate it and say the dried blood was a sauce he caramelized with a blowtorch and he’d get a Michelin star.
Old gauze wrapped in a fistful of paper towels. That trash wrapped in a plastic grocery bag. That bag stuffed in his backpack.
All he had to do was wrap some new gauze.
Then wrap the bandana.
He was alone down here.
The blood glimmered up at him. His hands were so important. He could work such magic with his hands. He could disappear people’s hunger with his hands. He could make a woman orgasm with his hands. He could pound three shots of tequila and still make a perfect poached egg with his hands.
But not with a cut like this.
One little cut—well, not so little. Look at all that blood and say it’s a little cut, Tommy thought to himself. Little in terms of surface area on his body, he figured he was trying to say.
Just look at that blood, vato, he said to himself.
“Yo, Tommy, you still down here?” Diego’s voice came from the stairs. “They told me this is where clean towels are.”
Tommy reached for the new gauze, but ended up making a series of noises he knew sounded suspicious.
Diego emerged.
Tommy tried to keep wrapping.
“Holy fucking shit dude that’s your hand?” Diego asked. “Dude. Dude!”
“Yeah, I’m uh,” Tommy said. “Gotta redress, you know?”
Diego’s eyes were like paella pans as he looked down and away. “Dude, all I’m saying? That doesn’t look like a fucking burn, dude. That looks like you got fucking stabbed.”
Tommy would’ve said something if his heart wasn’t pressing his uvula and if his brain wasn’t made of melted Velveeta. He would’ve kept wrapping the wound, if his arm could remember how to move.
“Dude, come over here,” Diego said, walking over to the laundry sink. “Shit stinks. You gotta hit it with some soap and water. Honestly though, dude? You gotta get to urgent care or something. I’m telling you. That’s not, like, a bandage wound.”
“I know, vato, I know,” Tommy winced as water stung wound. Pink splattered in the sink. “I guess I was embarrassed? Like how’s a cook with my skills cut his hand this bad, type of thing? That make sense?”
“Yo dude, it’s none of my business about all that.”
“But you understand, right?”
“Dude, I don’t care why you lied. I don’t care.”
“Well, I wasn’t trying to lie, like, I was trying to make sure people didn’t, I don’t know, worry or something.”
“I don’t—look, it’s none of my business, okay?”
He handed Tommy a towel to dry his hand. He watched Tommy wrap the wound. And then Diego was gone, back up the stairs, where Amparo and Martín and Mara and Juan Carlos and Reggie were.
Okay. Fine. Stitches. Urgent care stitches. He looked over at his knife bag. Fucking knife bag. Carrying that knife bag makes him a walking piece of evidence. Fine. Time to go get stitches. That was fine.
He looked toward the stairs. Maybe Diego would appear, “secret’s safe with me, Chef” on his lips. Better yet, a “guess what, Chef? I got a job out in Bucktown! I got a job in Little Village! I got a job down in San Antonio, out in San Francisco, I’m moving to goddamn San Sebastian! Before I go, I promise to never tell Auntie Amparo that it looks like you tried to debone your metacarpals like a filet o’ fish!”
The stairs stayed empty.
Tommy stood in the basement. The guy who carries his knife bag everywhere got a huge cut on his hand the day after the guy who owns our building got stabbed to death. Tommy couldn’t imagine how anyone wouldn’t connect the dots. Should he run away? He couldn’t start over again, not so soon. Tommy had to look normal. The people are Olly’s, they were friends. Tommy had to assure them that he was normal.
A horrifying, humiliating, sent-down-to-the-minors thought crossed his mind. The more he turned it over, the more he realized it was the most necessary first step. No matter how humbling.
Tommy was going to start using the restaurant knives.