SPLAT CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Traffic was very smooth going into town. She was going to be on time. What do you know. She turned down Montgomery Ferry from Piedmont and drove slowly by the mansions of Ansley Park, past a smiling nanny out strolling the baby and walking the dog while the parents slaved away at law firm and hospital, respectively. The nanny looked happy and at peace, a state Suzie longed for. She looked settled, and privileged, and lucky. Suzie found herself wishing she could be like that. That she could have a good life. That she could be lucky. And not screw up so much.

She noticed something different when she went in the kitchen. The punchclock was gone, and the wall behind it was a much brighter, unstained, beige. Instead of the grimy gray, clunky old clock and card rack, there was now a computer sitting on a kitchen stand, the monitor glowing with a swirling screensaver of wire whisks and wooden spoons.

Chef was in his office, and looked up when she came in. Seeing her confusion, he got up and came out to help.

‘Hi, I’m Chef Henri,’ he shook her hand. He was within a foot of her height, so she didn’t have to crane her neck to look him in the eye. How refreshing. Short curly red hair, clean shaven. French. ‘I see you’re having difficulty with the time system,’ he observed kindly. ‘We had a meeting this morning. Most of the dining room staff missed the training. I’ll show you how it works.’ And he took her through the new procedure. Clocking in was now done with a touchscreen computer. He showed her a bunch of features and options. Her eyes glazed over. ‘It’s easy, really.’

Suzie disagreed. What was easy was stamping the time on a card.. But she didn’t say that. ‘Actually, can I talk to you for a minute?’

‘Come into my office.’

Said the spider to the fly, she thought. Suzie followed him into his small, glass-walled office. She decided that she liked him. He seemed sympathetic and patient, not at all temperamental like Chef Ricardo. He looked approachable and laid back. And to see his office, it was as if he didn’t do anything but sit back in his leather chair with his feet up, doing baton tricks with his pencil and leafing through recipes.

His office was glass on two sides, one side revealing the time computer and everyone coming or going, the other overlooking the whole kitchen like the bridge deck on a ship. The new chef went to give a brief glance out over his battalions hot side, cold side, pastry, sauces, freezers, storage. His army was functioning smoothly, the troops positioning themselves for the dinner rush.

The table to his right was full of smiling, happy black cooks chopping up vegetables for the evening’s meals; to his left the Charcutier and the Rotissier were discussing the steamship round of beef for the banquet in the Ladies Slipper Ballroom. Ahead, the old black ladies were putting the last of the desserts aside to cool, and a pile of boxes and barrels clustered at the far end of the kitchen – a Sysco delivery being carted off to various storerooms, freezers, and coldboxes.

Inside his office, Suzie couldn’t hear the noises of the kitchen. Just muffled bangs and shouts and the soft zing of the fan motors reverberating in the overhead pipes. All the office space that wasn’t window was bookshelf, with hundreds of thick, heavy, well-thumbed cookbooks bending the shelves in the middle. Here and there were souvenirs a beat-up mixing bowl, an enormous wire whip, a plate from every restaurant he’d ever worked, a big chef’s knife hung on the wall like a samurai sword. His desk held a neat stack of cooking and food service magazines, a picture of his wife and kids, a note pad, 2 pens, and a brand new computer, still with that new computer smell.

Chef turned to look at Suzie, ”So, how long have you worked here?’ he asked, taking his seat and putting his feet up.

‘A few months.’ She wanted to begin the conversation amiably, like Yeah I love it here and isn’t the weather nice lately. But strong feelings about being a waitress prevented the smalltalk. She rolled her eyes. ‘It feels like I’m in hell.’

He cocked an eyebrow and twiddled his pencil, waiting. ‘I don’t know if you know, but um,’ she waffled, ‘I’m not really a waitress…I’m not supposed to be upstairs in the dining rooms…I’m supposed to be here, I started down here…’ She paused, a little flustered.

She tried again. ‘They hired me down here a couple of months ago, under Chef Ricardo.’ Now she was talking too fast. ‘I really like working in the kitchen, and I want to come back down as soon as I can. I don’t mean to bother you about it, but you said Open Door and all. I thought maybe nobody’d told you…’

He put his feet on the floor and sat upright, shaking his head. ‘I didn’t know you were part of the kitchen staff. Why did they put you upstairs?’

Suzie thought how kind his eyes were. ‘I don’t know. Chef said they needed me until they hired new wait…uh, servers. But it’s been a long time and they’ve gotten some new people and haven’t really done anything about letting me go back downstairs.’ She relaxed a little more, and thought she probably shouldn’t get too comfortable around the boss, but she felt at ease in his office. She warmed up to happy memories of working in the kitchen. ‘I really like being down here in the kitchen.’

A Sous-chef appeared at the door, but waited outside in the passage for Chef to notice him. ‘Okay. Tell you what. I’ll talk to the Service Manager about the situation, and maybe we can find a place for you back in the kitchen.’

He got up and stood leaning on his desk. ‘Have you ever considered attending a culinary school? You need a degree to work in a good restaurant these days.’

She shook her head. ‘No, I’ve never really thought of it. I figure I’m learning as fast as I can right here.’

He looked dubious. ‘What were you doing before you got sent upstairs?’

‘Oh, everything.’ She spread her hands. ‘I got moved around a lot, the grill, the sandwich bar, the prep work. Basically I was helping the cooks and the porters. Just learning the ropes.’ She noticed his diploma on the wall, Le Cordon Bleu.

He turned serious when he heard she was starting at the bottom in his restaurant, and seemed suddenly preoccupied about something. ‘Well, we’ll see. In the meantime, do a good job as a waitress, and I’ll talk to your boss.’ He looked over at the Sous-chef and nodded, and Suzie slunk out as the Sous-chef sauntered in.

She stopped at the table where Maurice, Jemal, Frenchie, and Charlie were cutting up vegetables. They weren’t smiling anymore, once Chef’s face disappeared from the window. But they were glad to see Suzie, and offered their shoulders and necks for her to hug, their hands full of knives and bits of vegetable matter all over their aprons.

‘Hey, kid, what’s up?’ Maurice asked. ‘How you been doing upstairs?’

She kicked the metal legs of the table. ‘Well, I was just asking Chef if I could come back down here. I don’t like it up there.’

He frowned. ‘Well, you probly should just stay up there and be happy. Things ain’t so good down here.’

‘He’s a fucking hardass, that Chef,’ Frenchie muttered.

Maurice looked around before saying, ‘He says he’s fixing to fire some people, and he won’t say which ones.’

Javel nodded, scowling. ‘We got to take tests and shit, and he be writing us up for little things that don’t matter.’

‘But I thought he was nice,’ Suzie objected.

‘He’s probly nice to women and children, maybe.’ Someone said.

Someone added, ‘He’s just nice to you cuz you work upstairs.’

‘Butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth,’ Someone said, and they all nodded.

‘He’s a real sneaky bastard, too.’

Someone said, ‘He’s too get up and go, he’s wearing us out.’

‘Hell,’ Someone said. ‘It’s hectic enough when dinner’s getting fixed without him making us do drills and shit when we get a few moments to breathe.’

Someone grunted. ‘Well, let’s see how long he lasts.’

They all nodded and agreed. ‘Punk ass white boy.’

They went back to their chopping, and Suzie went upstairs to join the ranks of the house slaves.

The waiters at the White Magnolia Club reminded Suzie of lobsters in tuxedos, with white napkins over their claws. They lurked in the shadows, making sure nobody saw them to ask for anything. They always waited until the members were starving, and then they’d appear loaded down with the food, sailing out awkwardly bearing enormous numbers of plates on their pincers, sweeping to the table and placing them down gracefully with their long claws. Sometimes they whanged around upsetting everything with their massive tails, but I think we’ve had enough of that metaphor.

Suzie took care of her usual three tables in the Jasmine Room. A member and his teenage son were at her first table. ‘Hon, order us a couple of gin and tonics.’

A newly pre-divorced couple, her getting her last look at the club, he lording it over her already. ‘All our friends will stick with me, hah.’

Her favorite was that older member having his peas and pork roast while reading his book. The perfect southern gentleman. ‘Thank you ma’m, I’m going to have some of that delicious tapioca pudding for dessert this evening, if you don’t mind. And you could just leave off the whipped cream if you please. I like it just the way the cook made it.’

She took a break after her tables were settled with their food. A bunch of waiters were hanging out in the servants’ quarters smoking cigarettes. She took an informal poll. Professional waitering was not the number one ideal job choice for any of them.

‘Heavens no. I’m just doing it because it leaves my days free to practice,’ Frankie insisted, posing languidly by the window.

Martha exhaled smoke rings from the couch, her head pointed at the ceiling. ‘There are plenty of people who’ve been waitresses all their lives, but I don’t think they’d call it a profession.’ She was scornful of her job.

‘I think they used to have schools in Europe where you could get a degree in waiting tables,’ Suzie suggested.

‘I don’t believe it,’ Martha protested.

Yolanda spoke up from her usual spot in front of the open window. ‘In many parts of the world, working in the hospitality industry is very respectable career.’

‘No way.’ Martha looked around for agreement. They all nodded. ‘Okay, it’s a hard job, I’ll give you that. It takes skill. Training, intelligence. But a degree? Doctor of Table Service? Bullshit.’

Suzie walked over to the cracked mirror and looked at her face closely. ‘I’m just asking because I was talking to Chef, and he said I had to have a degree to cook.’ She was getting a bunch of little pimples on her cheeks. From the makeup she’d put on back at the hideout. Gross.

‘A degree? What for?’ asked Estelle, who’d started out cooking and came to the front of the house with the promise of better money and less work, both of which turned out to be lies.

‘I was just wondering?’ Suzie began. ‘What if you had to have a license to be a waiter?’ she flumped down on the couch and scratched her legs where she was sure she’d gotten poison ivy. ‘And have to go to school for it and pay thousands of dollars for a piece of paper that says you know how to serve food?’

‘Girl, you think too much,’ said Martha.

Estelle. ‘Well, if you have to go to college to cook food, the day can’t be too far off.’

‘Especially if someone gets some money out of it.’ This was from Sally, who was on her cellphone with her husband.

‘The Service Manager has a degree,’ Suzie pointed out.

Yolanda scoffed. ‘What did they teach him? To be snotty and suspicious and wear a stick up his ass?’

Frankie struck a pose. He was first violinist in the Sandy Springs Symphony Orchestra. ‘A glorious career in food service management.’ He waved his hands like Vanna White. ‘Such vistas await. General Manager after twenty years. Ooh.’ He sat down with a plump next to Suzie. ‘I’m glad I’m sane. I put my ambitions into tangible things, like art.’ They all laughed.

In general, the waiters at the White Magnolia Club weren’t the snappiest rubber bands in the box. Good waiters went where they got the best tips, not to a private club where they were only paid hourly. That’s like working for a non-profit company in the midst of Corporate America, where the non-profit piously justifies below-industry wages as your altruistic contribution to the cause.

The waiters at the Club got slightly better base salaries than regular waiters to make up for not getting tips. However, being paid slightly less badly meant they had less reason to work hard in order to charm tips out of the diners. The knowledge of which gave them attitudes. And so the waiters in the White Magnolia Club, like the cooks downstairs, tended to run the game for the benefit of the staff, not the customers or the boss. Which actually makes a lot of sense, if you’re a worker. It’s a well-known fact that everybody likes to run things to suit themselves. Why not the help?

The party broke up in the servants’ quarters, and they all came out to see what they were needed for. Suzie heard the bong of the grandfather clock, downstairs in the hall. A feeling of dread came over her. Eight o’clock. The Ed and Jerry show was on any minute.

Over the weeks, she felt like she’d been subjected to a thousand reruns of the Ed and Jerry show. Every few days they’d meet each other in the bar after work and whisper conspiratorially in the corner near the potted plants, and then make a dash for the Honeysuckle Room when they heard it ring eight.

She wasn’t sure how, but they were worse, more obnoxious and annoying every time she saw them.

Ed was so like a bulldog: little, thick, short arms and legs, a fat, jowly face, squinty eyes. He walked pigeon-toed with his back arched and his arms carried out to his sides like a weight lifter. He wore suspenders to strap down his basketball stomach. They pulled his pants high above his socks, like floodpants. They pulled his package high, as well, the crotch fitting tightly around his nuts. It reminded Suzie of those Amazon tribesmen who tie their dicks to their waists, like they had permanent hardons. Maybe it’s the same airflow issue as with guys who wear shorts. Who knows?

Ed didn’t look to be in the best of health these days. His thin hair was turning transparent, rather than gray. His face and nose were red, especially since he’d had four scotch and sodas downstairs in the bar. He was fidgety, keyed up, impulsive. Full of testosterone. Kind of like Suzie felt like when she was chasing some miscreant.

Jerry the lawyer was always the same, dickless and dry like Bob Cratchit. His Suzie Q chorus was flat and toneless. He always had a downer comment, and when he laughed it was hunched over and silent, his hands clenched and raised up to his shoulders. Cadaverous. Like Death. Chain smoking against house rules.

The third chair rotated, and sometimes there was a fourth. Sam the architect had been constant in the beginning, but he hadn’t been around lately, and Ed and Jerry had started complaining about him behind his back.

The guest for the evening was Bill, managing partner of Strunk and Driver, Crass and Craven. Bill was into real estate law. And he was very well connected at the Capitol. Ed and Jerry were taking time to point out the picture wall in the corridor before escorting him into the room. Suzie saw them standing there as she brought silver out of the pantry.

They were in profile, Ed and Jerry standing back jangling the ice in their glasses, the guest bending over to peer at some racehorse. He was making the usual noises in front of each picture, like a Catholic doing the stations of the cross. It was a fetching sight; Suzie wished she had a camera. Eventually they crossed over the floor and entered the Honeysuckle Room.

‘Goddamn it’s good to see you, girl,’ Ed bellowed as he sank into his chair. ‘Come on over and let me give you a little squeeze.’

Suzie ignored him and set out bread and butter and an ashtray for Jerry. Her time in the kitchen had left her with a gnawing anxiety, and she was wearing an I’m Special And Don’t You Fuck With Me attitude they could see.

‘Good evening gentlemen,’ she said, standing tall and folding her napkin over her arm. She looked each of them calmly in the eye, willing their obedience.

‘Good evening, Ma’m,’ they replied in unison, and Ed continued, ‘And how are you?’

So far so good. ‘Splendid, and yourself?’

‘And isn’t it a lovely evening?’ Jerry sneered.

‘And how about those Braves?’ Ed cackled. They went on with an exaggerated politeness that made Suzie’s skin crawl.

She interrupted them before they started bowing and shaking each others’ hands. ‘I just wanted you to know that Miss Charlene made up some tapioca this afternoon, and I’ve put some aside in case you want it.’

The men drooled. That is, Ed drooled, thinking of Suzie covered in tapioca. Jerry licked his lips and put his napkin to the corner of his mouth, thinking of how long he would make each spoonful last. And Bill drooled because Miss Charlene’s tapioca was one of the big draws at the Club.

The drinks came, and she fetched them from the dumbwaiter. They interrupted their chat and toasted Jerry, who was leaving his law firm to start a temp agency.

Then Jerry went back to explaining to Bill. ‘It’s like outsourcing, only better. We’ve got contracts at state and local levels all over Georgia, and we’re opening branch offices in thirteen other states as soon as we clear a few hurdles.’

She left them alone to check on the Jasmine Room. But only for a moment. Ed and Jerry wouldn’t be ready to order for at least forty-five minutes, but they needed to be kept well oiled. They were a squeaky lot.

Only one table was occupied in the Jasmine Room at the moment, but it was only Eight. Things tend to happen at eight; it’s the magic dining hour. Parties that reserve rooms for six sit down at the bar until eight, and parties that reserved for nine come an hour early. So it was likely to be a busy night, even though right now she had a mild mannered business type with his mistress, out working late. They were easy to please, and would rather she not hover and ask if they needed anything.

So she went back to her room. Bill was advising them about their options for dealing with a certain issue in their project’s critical path. ‘Every month’s delay in starting construction is probably costing you $50,000 in insurance alone.’

Ed moaned, feeling the pain. ‘And the price of lumber keeps going up – it’s hurricane season, goddammit. And steel. And fuel costs.’ They all shook their heads morosely, staring down at their glasses. Then they took long drinks, and turned to look expectantly at Suzie.

She handed out more drinks and gave them menus. Jerry lit another cigarette. They were talking about the planning phase, getting permits. Zoning. Inspections. The talk bored her. Then came Frankie’s discreet knock at the door to alert her to new customers in the Jasmine Room. As she left, she heard Bill advising them to be patient. ‘They’re doing what they can, but there’s too goddamn many little nitpicky rules, and they can’t waive them all.’ She was out the door before they started talking about the bribes and kickbacks they’d negotiated with various offices.

The Jasmine Room was controlled pandemonium. Every table was full, and everybody was talking at once. Judging by their clothes and attitudes, they were late for wherever they were going, and in a real rush to get some dinner down and get to their cars. She dove in, and soon had her tables gnawing on bread and water while they waited on more drinks and their appetizers.

She came back into the Honeysuckle Room to get food orders. They were bitching about their old buddy Sam and the architectural drawings for phase three. ‘He’s holding you up,’ Jerry whined. ‘His people have been working on these plans for a year now, and you still don’t have the final drawings. You need to be contracting now, not sitting on your hands letting prices go up. ‘

‘Fuck him,’ Ed agreed.

She stood patiently, waiting for their orders. They continued to complain about Sam for a few moments, then Ed looked up. ‘I need another drink, Baby Doll. Keep them coming.’ He rustled his menu at her. ‘I’d like to keep you coming,’ he muttered. She ignored him, standing near the door with the table between them; safe.

Jerry usually got whatever chicken was on offer, so she translated the menu for him. ‘Tonight we’ve got fried chicken and gravy, with greens and candied yams.’ It was actually on the menu as Poulet Frit au Sauce, Feuilles de Chou Sauté, et Igname Confis. But Suzie had smelled the heady aroma of Joseph’s fried chicken when she was receiving the evening menu with the other waiters, and decided it needed no embellishment. In fact, she looked forward to snitching some off his plate when it came up in the dumbwaiter.

Bill was going for the breadbowl full of shellfish gumbo, featuring Gulf shrimp, lump crabmeat, and Louisiana oysters. It came with hush puppies and fried okra. Both side dishes were tempting, but she knew she could resist all but the smallest taste. She planned on having a big spoonful of his gumbo, however.

Ed dithered a bit, and asked her opinion, and made an innuendo, but in the end decided on pecan-crusted ribeye steak, rare, with creamed spinach and cornbread. They all wanted to start with a martini glass of Georgia peanut soup as an appetizer, and ordered another round of drinks, perhaps on top of the drinks they’d just ordered that she hadn’t punched in yet.

They went back to their discussion as she whisked their menus away and left for the pantry to place their orders.

‘People are still refusing to get out?’ Bill asked.

Jerry grunted. ‘Mostly old ladies, don’t want to settle up and go live with their kids.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Bill suggested, his voice dropping. ‘I can speak with some colleagues as early as Tuesday, and we can bring the holdouts to the table willing to agree to anything.’ His eyes got shifty as he talked about solutions. Friends in the trash removal business.

Ed raised his glass in a toast. ‘We’ll kick their asses.’

‘In the end, of course’ Jerry said tapping the ash off his cigarette, ‘It’s far more cost effective to start condemnation proceedings against the whole area.’

Ed winked. ‘Even people who want to sell?’

‘Of course. Especially them. People think they’re going to get rich once a developer’s interested in their neighborhood.’

Ed snorted. ‘You got that right.’

‘Condemning it’s easier,’ Jerry added. ‘The City declares blight, condemns the neighborhood, and hands it over cheap.’

Ed grinned. ‘A dollar.’

They raised their glasses. ‘To eminent domain,’ Ed toasted. ‘One of God’s blessings on His Chosen People. Right this minute, thanks in part to people we know,’ they raised their glasses again, ‘the City is fixing to declare the place ours.’

Jerry added, ‘Hell, nobody’s going to complain. There’s nothing but old houses there, all of them falling down. Unsafe, unsightly. We boarded up the ones we bought.’ He finished his drink. ‘Made it look even more blighted.’

Suzie walked in with their drinks and served them around. She noticed that Ed had been playing with himself again; excited about whatever they were discussing. His napkin was tented up in his lap and his eyes were swollen. Charming.

‘Our redevelopment plans meet all the official guidelines,’ Jerry was saying. He took a drag and blew smoke at Suzie, glowering at her. He ticked the points off on his fingers. ‘It improves Atlanta’s image, makes it more economically and socially attractive, puts the land to its highest and best use, and maximizes its potential tax revenue.’

Ed laughed. ‘What could be higher and better use than stores and condos and gated communities? The City guys drooled when they saw the tax projections.’

Suzie left the room. She was out of the room when they mentioned the name of the new development. And it’s a good thing, too.

She’d ducked out to see if their soup was up yet. Pôtage de Graine d’Arachide. She dipped a spoon in it while she was in the pantry. Peanut butter, carrot, celery, onions, chicken broth, lemon juice, a little flour to thicken, cream. Not bad. Chocolate would be good on top; maybe she should go talk to Miss Mabel about it. She needed a friendly face.

Ed was bragging about how easy it was to sell a plain old box for megabucks just by giving it a few custom twinges, and using a couple of fancy phrases, like calling it conservation-zoned when it was actually being built on toxic waste. He was proud of the shortcuts he took, the completely fake old-house designs with miniscule closets he passed off as heritage. His houses had all the problems of old houses, but not due to termites, age, or weather. What was wrong with his houses was shoddy workmanship and cheap materials, slapped up without regard for life or limb.

She passed out martini glasses full of what looked like tan sludge and they dug in. Bill lapped it up with his spoon, Ed picked it up and drank it like a cocktail, and Jerry made a face and pushed it away. Maybe she’d save his to eat later, if there weren’t any cooties in it.

Bill referred to some park. They’d been talking about keeping a vacant lot in their new development and calling it a park, and listed the grants and tax breaks this qualified them for. Suzie figured they were talking about the same parklet when she later heard them planning to grade it and install drainage and start marking it up for curbs. They made it sound like a big deal; putting such unusual care into designing a green space. It made her wonder.

She stooped down to get the ketchup from the sideboard cabinet, and Ed reached over with his spoon and thwacked her backside. ‘130-acre recreation center,’ he was telling the boys, but Suzie lost track of what they were saying when he thumped her. She began fuming with thoughts of revenge and missed the extent of their plans. ‘A skating rink, a bowling alley, a go-cart track, rock climbing walls, a 395-room hotel and conference center, an eighteen-hole golf course, miniature golf, pitch ‘n’ putt, and a driving range. Oh yeah, and a mall.’

Bill whistled softly, impressed. Jerry waited until Suzie went to the pantry for ketchup before whipping out a map to show them what they were going to do with the site.

The Service Manager was prowling around the back of the pantry, and with the imprint of the spoon still smarting on her butt, Suzie took the opportunity to have a word with him about the members keeping their hands to themselves. He listened patiently and kindly, while she worked herself up relating instance after instance of outright sexual harassment. His face grew more grave with every mention, and at last he grew exasperated, rolling his eyes and running his hands through his hair.

‘What am I supposed to do?’ she finished.

He shook his head. ‘I don’t know’. He looked at her and shrugged. ‘You could get another job,’ he suggested.

She looked an I Could Bring A Lawsuit look at him, but she saw him looking This Is Why People Who Complain Get Fired back at her. Okay. She took a breath. The dumbwaiter made its clunky arrival noise, and her salads for the Jasmine Room were up. ‘Can you maybe assign me to another area?’ she pleaded as she loaded the plates down her arm. ‘Like, I’ll work six tables in the Jasmine Room, how about?’ Her feet swelled as she said six.

‘Well,’ he smiled faintly. ‘Maybe I’ll talk to the member and see if he won’t calm down a little. He especially asked for you, you know.’

She was glum, ‘I know.’ She turned around toward the pantry door.

‘I’ve heard good things about you,’ the Service Manager said to her back, ‘We want to keep you around. So do a good job.’ He gave her a Just Being Friendly pat on the ass as she walked away.

The main course was up for the Ed and Jerry show. Suzie went into the pantry and loaded up a tray with their food, sampling and tasting and wishing she still worked in the kitchen. She served Bill his Pain à Tremper de Fruits de Mer avec Crevettes, Huîtres, et Crabe, Faire Silence Chiot, et Gombo. She gave Jerry his chicken, and slapped Ed’s Entrecôte Etouffé Écrasé de Pecan, Épinard Velouté, et Pain de Mais.

‘Et voilà,’ she said, the extent of her French.

‘Gimme some steak sauce, Darling.’ Suzie bent to fetch steak sauce and mustard from the sideboard. Ed turned his attention to the curve of her tuxedo skirt while waiting for his sauce. ‘Hey, Baby,’ he said, grabbing the ketchup with impatience and jerking it up and down onto his steak, ‘Why don’t you think about becoming a real estate developer? I could teach you the ropes real fast. You’d be good at it, a pretty little thing like you.’

She put the steak sauce on the table in front of him, and wondered aloud what pretty had to do with career choice. ‘Actually,’ she said, ‘I’m thinking about going to cooking school.’

He grinned and subtly put his hand on his crotch. ‘Come and cook me,’ he suggested.

‘Deep fat frying is what I’d do with you,’ she remarked, and sidestepping his attempt to grab her, flung herself out the door and left them to eat their dinners.

She went out and got sweet tea and another round of drinks for the tables in the Jasmine Room, and then their main courses were up. After serving them and seeing them all busy shoveling it down, she went downstairs for a breath of real air. On the way down the stairs, she thought of dessert, and decided she wanted to find herself a spoon and raid the dessert cooler like old times. She found Joseph, instead, just finishing up his work.

‘Come out with me for a smoke, girl. Tell me what’s going on.’

They walked through the dark parking deck toward the light of the entrance, and stopped next to the trashcan to look out at the trees and the buildings of Midtown. Suzie leaned up against the wall to massage her aching back, but even though the sun had gone to bed, the wall was still hot, and she decided to pace instead. Joseph lit his cigarette and undid his apron.

‘Do you think Chef will let me come back?’

‘Child, you don’t want to come back. You can make good money being a waitress.’

‘But I like to cook. I want to work in the kitchen.’

They stood there regarding the yellow clouds hovering in the night sky.

‘Honey, I got to tell you,’ Joseph said after the pause. ‘You just don’t fit in here.’

Suzie stiffened. ‘Just because I’m a girl, right?’

‘No,’ he replied. ‘Just because you’re white.’ Joseph was a patient man, and explained it to Suzie like she was his little sister. ‘If you’ve noticed, all the cooks are black. And all the Managers are white. And you’re white. So you belong in Management. Not in the kitchen.’

Suzie didn’t like being on the receiving end of patience. ‘But I haven’t been here long enough to manage. I don’t know enough about how things work.’

‘That’s right. So you need to get yourself to a cooking school, and then come back into the kitchen as a chef, if that’s what you really want.’

‘But I’m already here. Learning by experience.’

‘But, Honey, you can’t get anywhere in this kitchen. If you were a man we would have run you off by now, but everybody likes you, and you’re here because of Miss Charlene, and that makes you okay. But only in this kitchen.’

Suzie thought for a moment. ‘Is that what the Black Mafia means?’

He sighed. ‘It’s a brotherhood thing. You go to work in a black kitchen, you want to be black. You work in a white kitchen, you go to cooking school, cuz they don’t run things the way we do, and you can’t get there from here.’

She felt frustration clawing at her. ‘But I don’t have any money to go to school. It’s hundreds of thousands of dollars. Oh, I don’t know how much it is. But I can’t afford it.’

‘No, I guess you can’t. But you just can’t start at the bottom anymore and expect to make Chef. You could have twenty years ago, but now you got to have a degree. Those aren’t our rules, those are the rules if you’re white.’

‘I’ll bet if I worked really hard, I could make it.’

He shook his head. ‘Sure. But you’ll have had to fight twice as hard the whole way. Besides,’ he said, delivering the coup de grâce. ‘Women can’t make it to the top in the restaurant business. That’s the Male Mafia for you.’

Suzie got heated. ‘They can too. The Executive Chef at the White House is a woman.’

‘Fine. But look around here at the club. How many women Sous-chefs do you see? How many cooks? How many porters? You’re practically the only girl in the kitchen, except for Miss Charlene and Miss Mabel, and this is their restaurant.’

Suzie felt her hands clench into fists. ‘This is ridiculous. You’re telling me I can’t get anywhere because I’m not black, and I can’t get anywhere because I don’t have a degree, and I can’t get anywhere because nobody wants to hire a girl.’ She hit the wall in anger, risking a bruised fist.

‘It’s even worse being a black man. This is as high as I can go in this restaurant, you know. At half their salary, and I’m doing all the work.’ He watched her fuming. ‘Don’t feel so bad. You’re young. There’s lots of things you can do. You may not have two dimes to rub together, but you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth, just because you’re white. Theoretically, you can do anything. You could marry one of the members, who knows?’

‘Don’t go there,’ she bristled. ‘I’m so miserable in the dining rooms. The members are assholes. I never laugh, I never have a good time, I never get to hear jokes or hang out with people I like. It’s terrible.’ She felt tears coming into her eyes.

Joseph ground out his butt into the tray and took off his apron, hanging it over his arm, like a waiter, and bowing and waving her in front of him. They started back to the kitchen.

‘So how come you don’t work as a waiter?’ she asked as they made their way through the dark garage.

‘Oh, I couldn’t take it. I’d end up throwing food in someone’s face. See, the reason I like the kitchen is because we’ve got all the power. They wait on us to get fed. You waiters are just house slaves.’

They were at the computer and Joseph began his clocking out procedure. Suzie paused. ‘Well, I guess I’d better get back upstairs.’ She remembered, ‘Hey, I never got a taste of Miss Charlene’s tapioca from the fridge. That’s why I came downstairs.’ She patted her belly. ‘I need some comfort food.’

Joseph turned to her with caution in his face. ‘Oh no, girl, don’t go doing that,’ he said. ‘Chef Henri had cameras put up to watch the coolers. You can’t go in there without being caught on tape.’

‘Shit.’ Sure enough, there was a tiny black camera in the ceiling, pointing at the door of the pastry cooler. And another one aimed at the meat freezer. And another in the back corner where cooks went to talk behind Chef’s back. ‘Are there microphones, too?’ Joseph shrugged, who knows?

Suzie went back up the stairs, feeling hopeless. She went in to clear the dinner plates in the Jasmine Room. Now very late to whatever it was they were dressed up for, one table signed and ran, another went downstairs for another drink before going, and the third table insisted on dessert, coffee, and liqueurs, and wouldn’t leave until Nine-thirty.

The men were finished with their meals. She cleared the plates away and brought out the dessert menu and ordered more drinks. They got up to stretch their legs and drain their lizards. Ed returned from the bathroom with a circular wet spot marking his strangled balls.

He came to the door of the pantry, where Suzie was loading a full bus tray into the dumbwaiter to go downstairs. He pressed himself up behind her, moaning and reaching for her breasts. She felt momentary panic as his dick pressed up against her butt. She was trapped by his arms, and smelled his fetid breath over her shoulder. But then she remembered what she’d learned in truckstops. Down came her foot on his wingtips. He backed off and Suzie turned to face him, angry.

‘Listen,’ she said. ‘I don’t have to put up with this kind of behavior from you. I’m trying to be nice about it and not say anything in front of your friends, but you’ve just got to treat me with more respect if you want to get along with me.’

He reached for her breasts again, singleminded. She brought her knee up to within millimeters of his crotch and he backed off in a hurry as she brushed his vulnerability. ‘Do you ever listen to a thing I say?’

‘Oh, Baby,’ he whined, ‘don’t get upset. I don’t mean nothing by it. You’re just so cute and tempting.’

‘You know, I don’t care. I need you to behave yourself, or I’m going to end up doing something drastic.’

He went back to the Honeysuckle Room, whinging, ‘You just got no sense of humor is what. I don’t mean nothing by it.’

She came in a few moments later with drinks and deserts on a tray. He was standing near the door, and grabbed her ass as she carried the tray to the sideboard, nearly making her drop it. She snapped at him, ‘Stop that.’ He lunged again but she avoided it, and he settled back into his chair.

As she was passing out bowls of whipped cream-covered tapioca, Jerry was saying, ‘Pennies on the dollar compared to ordinary contractors. No benefits or Workman’s Comp, either. It’s a great deal.’

Bill grunted his approval around a mouthfull of pudding.

‘Certified skilled workers, guaranteed,’ Jerry continued. ‘Free site manager, too. Comes with the contract. Leave the driving to us.’

She left them discussing new legislation. ‘We’re pushing a bill that throws the weight of eminent domain behind us,’ Bill said between mouthfuls. ‘Plenty of people feel that property rights shouldn’t get the same level of protection as other fundamental rights, like free speech and the right to assemble.’

‘The right to bear arms,’ Ed piped up.

‘We’re making the whole process easier. Like instituting a brand new quick take procedure. Fill out a form, pay a fee, and voilà, the city condemns the land and hands it over. All streamlined and legal.’

Ed raised his glass. ‘Now that’s what I like about the South.’ They drank another toast. ‘If we could only do something about those damned guerilla liberals who pick at us over cutting down trees and displacing poor people.’ He sighed. ‘We got another public hearing next week.’

‘We’re taking care of it,’ Bill reassured him. ‘We put a rider on the eminent domain bill to supress dissent as a matter of security. ‘

Ed smiled. ‘Now that’s what I’m talking about. And we live to see the day.’ He raised his glass and they toasted once more. ‘You know, I have always said that the world would be a better place if we could just criminalize protests.’

Bill agreed. ‘They’re just frivolous attempts to stop progress.’

Jerry muttered, ‘Neighborhood activists, scum. Goddamn crackpots.’

Ed nodded to Bill. ‘I just love this new bill of yours.’

They all had a good laugh. Suzie, who was in the room with the bill for Ed to sign, felt ill overhearing them, and pushed Ed off coldly when he went to put a folded bill into her cleavage. They left laughing about her shyness.

She went into the servants’ quarters for a few moments to calm down. Nobody was there, so she sprawled on the couch and shut her eyes. She felt tears coming, and had a soft cry for a few minutes. The whole waitress business was horrible, and if she couldn’t go back down to the kitchen, she didn’t know what she was going to do.

After eight and a half minutes of sniffling and wiping her eyes, she went back to the Honeysuckle Room to clean up, and found an interoffice envelope one of the assholes had left under the table. She wasn’t sure who left it. She thought they might still be down in the bar, so she took it and went looking, but they’d already gone, so she went back upstairs and started closing. She forgot about it until she was ready to leave, and by then the Service Manager was long gone, so she tossed it into the back of her car and figured she’d just hand it back to them the next time they were in.

* * *

next, suzie becomes a celebrity, sort of