The Sunday Paper: “Blood Come” by Ryan Adam Murray. Part 4 of 7.
As we’re cleaning up afterward, Amanda comes charging through the doors with a concerned look on her face. She’s been busy tonight so she hasn’t been in the kitchen much, which is a shame because the window between the line and the servers is positioned to perfectly obscure our faces when she’s standing at the counter. This means we can stare at her tits with total impunity. It’s nice.
“He’s here,” she hisses at me. “Look out!”
“Who’s here?” I’m confused. It’s too late for the Chef or the owners to be hanging around, and there’s no way any reviewer worth their salt would waste time on this place. Not on a Wednesday, anyway.
“Ted!” she whispers.
“Oh…” I would bury my face in my palm if it weren’t oily and bloodstained.
“That’s just fuckin’ spectacular.”
“Hey,” says Jack, eyeing Amanda. “That sounds like bad news. If you need someone to comfort you or, you know, have wild sex with, I’m right here.”
She smiles sweetly. “If that’s what I need, Jack, you’re the first person I’ll call,” Amanda says.
“Really?” Jack says, surprised.
“Not really,” she admits, and exits the kitchen.
“Don’t feel bad, man, you know she has a boyfriend.” Nick slides over to Jack, putting a friendly hand on his inner-thigh and running it up his leg, making Jack jump to avoid having his balls fondled. His tone though is conciliatory. “And you know he’s a douche bag. Some guy who thinks he’s better than everyone ‘cause he’s never been drunk on mouthwash or shit his-self in public. You know the type.”
Nick slaps his own nuts, wistfully.
“Nick is right,” Bandula says. “She have no want for Jack and his fuck. That’s why he give the fuck to little boys,” he looks up at the invisible figure of authority, once again going into analytical mode. “To them, he feel a man. To woman, his cock is like cock of the baby.” The dishwasher makes a sympathetic face, and tries to comfort the rejected cook. “Jack?” he asks, rubbing his hands together and frowning. “Want whore? I get whores. Cheap too. You need woman who can make baby cock feel like the black adder inside. Cheap whore? She ocean of cock. Her fuck good for you.”
“Thanks man,” Jack says, with genuine gratitude. “But it’s gotta be Amanda. Boyfriend or not. Just ‘cause there’s a goalie don’t mean you can’t score.”
“What’s this now?” Fuck me. It’s his voice. I knew it was coming. He must have been standing just outside the door to the kitchen. Ted swaggers into the room, a pint in one hand and a clipboard in the other. Why does he need a clipboard, you ask? The answer is that he doesn’t, but he always carries it with him. Whenever I need to ask him a work related question he likes to hold up one finger, like a conductor chastising a particularly rough crowd into silence at a cello recital in a bad neighborhood, and contemplate the clipboard for a few minutes before responding. “This doesn’t sound like a discussion appropriate to the workplace,” Ted pauses meaningfully, and then erupts in that hideous guffaw as blood fills his head and face, twisting it into a purple leer. “I’m just kiddin’! I won’t rat you out,” he gives Jack a conspiratorial nod. “I had a dream about her last night.”
He says it the way that a normal person would say, I just got my Ph.D. in Quantum Physics, or I was just awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, or my sculpture of Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. is being displayed at the United Nations summit.
“She was naked,” Ted adds, with a wink. Then he bursts into peals of stupid laughter as Peter comes in.
The bartender gives me a telling look.
“You can’t drink in the kitchen,” Peter tells Ted, “and you’re not working right now. You really shouldn’t be in here.”
“These guys are my buddies!” Ted is thoroughly indignant. “We’re just shootin’ the breeze.”
God forbid I let him know I don’t like him. If I did that I’d end up in a forty-five minute meaning where well-meaning owner number one and well-meaning owner number two would sit Ted and I down and try to ‘work things out.’ This would end up making me look like an asshole, and Ted look like a nice guy who got treated badly when he was just trying to help. I’m not taking the bait.
“We’re buddies,” I say, shooting Peter a ‘what the fuck do you want me to say?’ look. “Don’t worry about it.” The bartender glares at me, and leaves.
“So,” Ted says, appropriating a businesslike tone, flipping through the bills from the rush. “I see that Amanda ordered a couple of steaks and a nacho twenty minutes ago. Did you make those for her?”
“No,” I say. “I kicked her in the box and told her to go fuck herself. It’s okay. We have an understanding.”
From the pit I hear Bandula hoot with laughter. The dishwasher could care less about Ted. He stays out of Bandula’s way. They never speak to each other.
Ted stares at me for a second. Then he guffaws again, but this time it’s forced. “You’re quick,” he observes. “That’s funny.” He says it as if he was making an accusation. He says it like a normal person would say, you seem to be shitting on my foot. He examines his clipboard for a moment. Nick pipes up.
“Hey Ted, I was just noticin’ the mashed potatoes today,” Ted can’t see his face. Nick is looking at me with a wicked grin. He applies the palm to his crotch and winks. “How do you make them so smooth?”
Jesus fucking Christ.
For what feels like an eternity, Ted talks. No, Ted explains. He explains that the secret to making mashed potatoes is that you have to, and for your sake I’ll paraphrase here, you have to mash the potatoes. Ted does have one talent. It’s the ability to stretch the incredibly fucking obvious into a twenty-minute speech. When he finally runs out of steam he heads back to the bar for another beer. I’m sort of impressed with Nick. He did keep Ted distracted for a while. Distracting Ted by getting him to talk about himself isn’t exactly the most difficult task in the world, but the bar is low for Nick. He had a good idea. I’m going to give him credit.
“Fucking asshole,” Jack snarls as Ted leaves. “At least he won’t ‘rat me out,’ though.” Jack’s voice is heavy with sarcasm. He’s going to hear about the Amanda shit from the Chef tomorrow. We both know it.
Re-beered, Ted comes back. I hear him saying something to Peter, followed by the guffaw. “You’ve got a good sense of humor, bud,” he tosses over his shoulder as he returns to the kitchen. If Ted is telling you that you have a good sense of humor, it’s probably because he just said something incredibly rude and obnoxious that he’s trying to pass off as a joke. Don’t get me wrong, we talk a lot of shit in the kitchen, but we’re all on the same side. When Bandula threatens me with rape and murder, I can take it as playful camaraderie. He’s sure as hell never going to go to the Chef or the owners with stories about me, no matter what happens back here. Ted is a crybaby and a tattletale. Whatever you say to him is likely to be repeated to upper management. That takes the fun out of it.
“The real reason I’m here,” Ted reveals. “Is that I have to tell you something,” he gestures to me with two fingers. The ‘come here,’ gesture. Livid, I lean over.
“What?” I hiss the word at him.
“The Chef asked me to ask you to pick up a meat order. It gets to the market-” I wave my hand brusquely in Ted’s face.
“He called. He told me,” I have no time for this. “Seriously? He told you to come here and tell me that?”
Ted stiffens.
“I was led to believe that was my responsibility,” he says, coldly. “I take my responsibilities very seriously,” he gives me a meaningful look, and taps his clipboard with a pen. “You know,” a gentle note creeps into Ted’s voice, “I’m used to gettin’ up in the morning. If you like, I can take care of it for you.”
Oh. Hell. No. Giving a task that the Chef entrusted me with to this suckhole would be tantamount to abandoning my position entirely. I’d never hear the end of it.
“That’s fine,” I manage a smile. “I have the situation under control.”
A shadow passes over Ted’s face. Oh, I get it. This is why he’s here. If he picks up the meat order he can go on and on to the Chef, the owners, to anyone who will listen about how the sous can’t control the kitchen when the Chef is away, the sous can’t be trusted to drag himself out of bed to do important work, the sous pawns off his responsibilities on Ted, the under-paid culinary genius rotting away on the day shift. The plan, shoddy, and transparent as it is, becomes crystal clear to me.
“You’re sure?” he asks.
“I am,” I say.
“Okay,” Ted gulps his beer. “I’ll be in to check on you in the morning.” He leaves. At last.
“He’ll be in to check on you, huh?” Jack throws a carrot stick at me. “Just to make sure everything’s running smoothly, right?”
“Shut up,” I mutter.
After we get everything cleaned up and put away, the three of us sit at the bar across from Peter. The place is closed but he’s still pouring. Bandula left. He has to be back in the morning. Jack and Nick are halfway drunk already, and I’m nursing a beer. “Four a.m. huh?” Peter shakes his head, “that’s brutal. Are you even going to sleep?”
“Fuck that,” I say. “What’s the point? I’ll just hang around here until three thirty. I know where the place is, and it’s not far. I can stumble over there, grab the meat order, and stumble home. No problem.”
To this day, I don’t know what happened. I’ve worked nights for years, so I normally go to bed around 6 a.m. I’m never even tired at four. Never mind at… well, whenever I finally fell asleep. Overconfidence. That was my problem. I was just so pissed that Ted would question my ability to get this very simple task done, I felt defiant. When the first wave of sleepiness swept over me, I didn’t even fight it. I leaned back in one of the booths, put my feet up, and decided to rest my eyes. I’d make it. That scruffy penis thinks he can question me? Fuck him.
The next thing I become aware of is a distant sound. Wheels on bare floor. The mop bucket in the kitchen. I hear it, but I don’t realize what it means right away. The sound stops. The door creaks open. Footsteps are coming toward me. I don’t want to open my eyes. I just hope that whoever it is won’t try to disturb me.
Then, a voice. “Beware,” it says. “The cock of failure.”
Wooden Rocket Press’ Sunday Paper posts new serialized fiction each Sunday. Return next Sunday morning for the next section of Blood Come. For other stories check out the Sunday Paper archive.
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