When Jux arrived at the restaurant with his old purple juice bar apron neatly folded under an arm, the high summer afternoon was humid and bright. Some unpromising clusters of thunderclouds blotted gray the sky to the east beyond the city and the buzzing of cicadas was ubiquitous, even permeating the dining room of the restaurant and still audible above the chatter of happy hour patrons and the clinking of bulbous wine glasses. Kieran, the restaurant’s sommelier and master bartender, greeted Jux with a toothy smile. “Well, hello again,” he said. “You’re not here to give Abuse a ride, are you? You’re way too early for that.”
Jux shook his head. “Not this time,” he said. “Actually, I’m here to meet Chef Jessup about working a few dishwashing shifts until I get a faculty position somewhere or succeed at being a public intellectual.”
Kieran scrunched his nose a bit, the smile mutating into something like a terrified scowl. “You’re funny.”
“I’m totally serious,” Jux said. “I need a job, and I have a Master’s in English Literature, so Abuse said he could hook me up here. I’m probably not going to be able to accept free wine from you while I’m waiting for him to get off, because I’ll be working, too.”
Kieran slapped a palm downward. “Everyone drinks here,” he confided, “especially toward the end of the night.”
“Well, I’ll probably be avoiding it anyway,” Jux said.
“Don’t be so sure,” Kieran said. “You might feel different soon.”
A tall server with a floppy pompadour jaunted past with a stack of small square plates.
“Packie,” Kieran called.
The server stopped and turned, irritated and aloof. “What?” he asked. “Can’t you see I’m taking empty bread plates to the kitchen?”
“Tell Jessup that Jux is here to see him about working the dishpit,” Kieran said.
Packie eyed Jux. “Okay,” he said. “So you’re the new dishwasher?”
Jux shrugged.
“Because we’ve been going through bread plates like free crack this afternoon,” Packie said. “Bread plates and mac flights.”
Jux looked around like a curious student.
After Packie left, disappearing through the hall behind the bar, Jux asked, “What’s a mac flight?”
Kieran squinted at Jux. “Are you working tonight?”
Jux shrugged again. “That was not, uh, discussed,” he said. “I brought my Juka Juice apron just in case.”
“Are you going to wear those shoes?” Kieran asked.
Jux glanced nervously at the bartender and then looked over at the short hall corner to the kitchen. When he eventually looked back, Kieran was hanging chardonnay glasses by their bases from a high rack over the liquor spread. Most of the bottles were flavored vodka. Jux didn’t understand why bubble gum-flavored vodka existed, but he did understand that now wasn’t the time to ask. “What’s wrong with my shoes?” he asked instead.
Kieran’s eyebrows vaulted. “They’re white,” he said ominously.
Jux looked down. They were not really white but more a kind of smoggy cloud streaked with various stains and scars. “I don’t care about these old bitches,” he explained.
“They won’t last long,” Kieran intoned, hanging two more glasses and then shutting the door of the small bar dishwasher. “Nose lip?”
“Huh?” Jux asked.
Suddenly a short and portly man with a broad, jaw-dominant smile and a double-breasted but only partially-buttoned white chef’s coat emerged from the kitchen. “Jux,” he said, holding out a hand. “So you’re doing some dishes, huh?”
“Um,” Jux said. “If that’s what you need. I brought my Juka Juice apron.”
Jessup nodded slowly and grinned squintingly as if he were assessing a Rush concert tee. “Niiice,” he said. “Juka. Juka. We got a bunch of aprons back here, but, yeah, we’re short-handed tonight, so you can work all the way through close if you want.”
Jux agreed and was about to head back to the kitchen when Jessup pointed down and said, “I’ll let it go today because you didn’t know, but you got to have nose lip. End of the week at the latest.”
Jux watched him, waiting, and then looked at the bartender. Both the bartender and the chef had noses that were kind of fat and acne-scarred, and both had lips pink like pork. “What’s nose lip?” Jux finally managed to ask.
The bartender’s jaw slackened beneath gaping eyes. “Shoes.”
Jux looked down at his weathered off-white athletic shoes. “So these are the wrong shoes.”
“Don’t you know about grease?” Kieran asked, magnificently gobsmacked.
Jux’s eyes were wide, too. “Like the viscous material,” he asked, “or are we talking about the musical for some reason?”
Kieran rolled his eyes and then glanced at Jessup for a moment before looking back at Jux. “I hate that musical,” he complained. “It’s so gay.”
“John Travolta, man,” Jessup said, nodding.
Kieran frowned at him. “John Travolta isn’t gay,” he corrected, “that we know of.”
“I just mean he was in that movie,” Jessup said.
“He’s probably bi,” Kieran concluded. Then he screwed up his face. “Why are we talking about John Travolta’s flabby old ass?”
“I’m sorry,” Jux said. “I… it’s just…” He trailed off and began gesticulating with a hand as if presenting each and everything his eyes set upon. “Grease. Nose lip. What is nose lip?”
“Are you saying ‘nose lip?’” Kieran finally asked.
Jux nodded. “Isn’t that what you’re saying?”
Kieran snorted. “Why would we say that?” he said, stifling laughter. “That doesn’t mean anything. It’s ‘no-slip.’ As in no-slip soles.”
“Like the bottom of your shoes,” Jessup contributed.
“Thank you,” Jux told him, “for the clarification. I wouldn’t want to think that slippery souls are common among those who’ve worked in a restaurant.”
“Cause you’ll slip,” Kieran said. He leaned in and continued with a whisper. “A few years ago, this teenage kid, some son of a kitchen neighbor or something, didn’t have no-slips, and they kept telling him to get them but he didn’t and everything was fine for a few weeks but one day he was taking up one side of a stock pot of boiling calf bones on the move and slipped and fell backward, spilling the broth all over his jeans and falling backward—”
“Come on,” Jux interrupted.
“No,” Kieran insisted. “You have to wait. Not only did he burn himself with scalding broth and lacerate himself with a bunch of heavy bone shards. When he fell, the back of his head hit the edge of the fryer and it tipped—”
“No,” Jux muttered.
Kieran, wide-eyed, continued, “He deep-fried his scalp.”
“Ugh,” Jux said disgustedly. “Are you serious?”
Kieran was nodding gravely. “He had this really lush, long hair, kind of like yours,” he said, “and it was all burned. And you could see the bone of the skull in some places. And the smell.” He briefly contracted his face and body as if executing a purge.
Jux stared at him. Then he turned to the chef.
Jessup held up his hands. “Before my time.”
“Stay alert,” Kieran warned. “This place is haunted.”
Jux stared down at his shoes and listened past the clamor of the dining room to what was surely an active cicada somewhere inside and nearby.
“Don’t worry,” Jessup said as he delivered Jux a slap on the back. “We’re not letting you anywhere near the fryer tonight. All you’re probably going to be worrying about are plates, pans, a couple cutting boards, and a bucket of knives.”
What the Sommelier Says…
“A few years back we had this server here who used to work kitchens. He only had nine fingers, and he thought the front of the house was safer. Problem was he was a total dunce, an absolute buffoon, and he managed to burn his face off at the coffee machine. Idiot, right?”
-Kieran
Tati's Wine and Spirits 