I

            In the fray of one First Friday, Packie was firing on all cylinders and racing deftly from table to table while the rest of the servers and the entire back of the house had careened off deep into the weeds. The art walk evenings were always busy, but the winter season was in full swing and, somewhat unsurprisingly, the restaurant found itself unprepared for the four-hour nonstop crush of walk-ins.

            Every seat in the dining room was occupied and a horde of patrons was gathered at the entrance waiting for the hostess to tell them about the 45-minute wait. Servers fumbling with multiple orders and precariously-balanced plates bumped into each other. A cascade of glass shards—the result of one of the servers’ clumsiness pouring at table—skittered as it was dumped into the trash at the bar, at the sound of which Kieran turned and scowled at the server doing the dumping. Something like a line had formed along the wine-rack wall as patrons waited with subtle confusion for one of the gender-neutral bathrooms to open up. One patron, coming out of the bathroom, slipped on a wad of wet paper towel and almost fell. Two of the servers were engaged in a heated dispute over a handful of napkin-wrapped sets of flatware even though there were plenty of prepared sets remaining at the station by the defunct retail cheese case.

            In the kitchen, things were just as bad. The ticking sounds of the ticket printer were now just a part of the general ambience instead of audible indications of new orders and Boof at expo was agitatedly gathering up the paper as it emerged as if attempting to execute the coiling of an endless rope. The long counter by the dishpit was heaped with filthy returns and Jux was furiously trying to get some of it clean in order to restock the top of the island so that the cooks had something upon which to place the food they were sweating over. On both the hot and cold sides of the line, there was no more room on the clip for new order tickets and all the pending ones dangled there while Danny navigated a mess of vegetables and Junior and Abuse juggled a complexity of frying pans. Three prepared pizzas—prepared but not yet fired—sat in the window while Duke banged out a few wads of dough for the next round at the prep-table-turned-pizza station. Also in the window were several completed orders waiting for pickup, their accompanying tickets sticking out from beneath the plates like mocking tongues. Every light on the server callboard was flashing and every cooler door was hanging open. A thin red liquid was seeping out of one of the coolers and pooling up in the filthy open circles of a rubber floor mat. So much was going on that, at any given moment, anywhere in the restaurant, nobody knew what was going on.

            Except for Packie: when this kind of business happened, he didn’t get overwhelmed or frazzled. He saw lots and lots of tip money to be made, so he pressed on with a white-knuckled intensity that only annoyed the other servers and infuriated the kitchen as he barreled across the dining room upselling patrons into the high-ticket specials and bottle after bottle of appropriately-paired and similarly-overpriced wines. He was the tallest employee at the restaurant, a fact that was only emphasized by the douchey pompadour that dangled like a cockscomb from his massive cranium as he darted about brandishing an obsessed lusty grin. The woman at C3 needed another glass of the Pinot, D4, E37, and E12 needed water refills, the man at A121 needed ketchup, D6 and F41 needed their bills: it went on and on and yet all of these things he managed to keep straight as he sought out the ends while taking new orders in the meantime.

            When, at one point, his order of operations again directed him into the busy kitchen,  Max and Crystal were both waiting to collect their own orders from the window, but Packie pushed past them and gripped at one of the island’s support poles and leaned to Danny on the cold side to say, “I need three bread plates.”

            Danny was in the process of making quenelles out of scoops of paté. “I don’t see that ticket, motherfucker.”

            “You can read?” asked Packie after a quick smirk. He moved to the hot side window, missing Danny’s extended middle finger coated in the paste of a tortured goose’s liver. Through the hot side window and over several various hot plates featuring short rib, filet mignon, duck breast, and salmon, he reached his arm and pointed to the meager collection of remaining warm baguettes atop the oven. “I need three bread plates,” he said to the back of Chef Junior’s head.

            “We don’t offer bread plates on First Friday,” Abuse said as he pinched the sided of a roasted duck breast with gloved fingers and then transferred it onto a waiting pillow of red wine risotto on a plate.

            “They want bread,” Packie said.

            Chef Junior turned briefly from his sauté. “Did you ring it in?”

            Packie tilted his head and looked at Junior as if the chef were a reluctant potential lover. “Come on,” he reasoned with intense sparkling eyes. “They’re thirty minutes in. They need some bread.”

            “Sounds like you’re the one looking for bread,” Danny said as he slid an oversized square plate of pâtés and olives into the window. There was a wedge of bread on the plate, too.

            Crystal winked a thank-you to Danny and Danny reciprocated before she left to deliver the plate to her table.

            “Did you give her bread?” cried Packie as he swooped past Bill the Expo. “I saw bread on that plate.”

            “That order gets bread,” Danny said as he turned to rummage through the cooler.

            “They need bread or they’re going to leave,” Packie warned.

            Chef Junior looked over at the row of orders hanging from the long clip. “Which tables?”

            “E66,” Packie barked.

            “You said you wanted three bread plates,” the chef said.

            “It’s a three top,” Packie said. “Come on, they’re cool and everything, but they’re getting upset.”

            Chef Junior shrugged and went back to the pans. “Let them leave.”

            “What?” cried Packie. “They just ordered a bottle of the Rigaletti.”

            “If they’re hungry,” Chef Junior said, “they can order like everyone else. I’m not going to start sending out bread plates now.”

            “They’re still deciding,” Packie protested.

            “Deciding what to order,” Chef Junior asked, “or deciding whether or not to order?”

            “That doesn’t matter,” Packie said.

            Chef Junior hooked his service rags on an oven door handle and left his pans to address Packie closely. “We have twenty empanada orders left. You get your sliced bread if you promise to deliver at least half of those orders before we’re done here.”

            Packie smiled. “I will deliver.”

            After a moment of contemplating the mook’s face, Chef Junior nodded and then looked over at Danny. “Give him his bread,” the chef said. “If he doesn’t deliver, he doesn’t get bread again, ever.”

            While Danny was begrudgingly slicing up the bread as Max watched—it was Max’s table whose order Danny had been interrupted from filling because of the incident—Crystal emerged from the dining area to collect a new batch of orders. She watched the exchange of the sliced bread as if a witness to an illegal weapons transaction.

            Packie somehow gathered up all three of the small plates in one hand and swiftly left the kitchen.

            “I hate that motherfucker,” Max said.

            Danny nodded seriously at him through the window. “I do, too,” he said. “He’s like a fucking bitch tank.”

            “Cocaine,” Max said with a bit of a huff and a shrug as he checked the order tickets and collected twin orders of the filet.

            “That’s not cocaine,” Crystal said as she reviewed her own tickets. “Not this early in the evening. He’s just an asshole.” She simulated scissors with two fingers. “I want to snip that hair right off.”

            “Hey,” Max said, moving reflexively to the side and touching the fringes of his reddish fro. “Leave me out of it.”

            “I wasn’t talking about you, Max,” Crystal said with mocking sympathy. “I was talking about walking cock-and-balls.”

            Speaking of whom, Packie blustered back into the kitchen and went straight to the cold-side window. In the process, his body and movement forced Max aside and Max almost lost control of the orders he was in the process of delivering. There was no recognition of this encroachment and Max inhaled furiously and exited to the dining area after feebly calling “corner.”

            “Dude,” Packie said to Danny through the island window.

            “What the fuck do you want now?” bit Danny.

            “What do you know about ‘check engine’ lights?” Packie asked with the same urgency he might have had while asking how soon a pizza was going to be ready.

            Danny, fists full of arugula over a large stainless mixing bowl, cocked an eyebrow up at him. “Like in a car?”

            “Yeah,” Packie said. He laughed and looked around the kitchen. “Do you know of some other kind of ‘check engine’ light?”

            “Why you asking me about that shit?” Danny asked as he resumed the mixing of the salad. “You think I’m going to know about that because I’m Mexican?”

            “Christ the buttfucker,” muttered Abuse as he stared down at a large pan filled with seasoned filets of salmon going for a hard sear in shimmering EVOO.

            “You’re not Mexican,” cried Chef Junior, brandishing tongs in one hand and a folded service towel in the other.

            “We’ve been over this many times,” Abuse said.

            “Mexican-American, Bitch,” Danny responded, adding, “and German-Idahoan, a little bit, but you know I don’t like to talk about that.”

            Abuse looked over at the window at Packie. “Are you picking up an order?”

            “I’m serving our customers,” Packie said.

            “Well, serve your customers elsewhere unless you’re picking up an order,” Abuse articulated.

            “This doesn’t concern you,” Packie told him.

            “It doesn’t concern any of us,” Abuse said, “except you, so get the fuck out of the kitchen.”

            Boof held up his hands in a gesture of peace. From one hand dangled a collected sheaf of unread tickets. “Guys,” he said reasonably, “the night’s not over.”

            Nobody cared about what he said.

            “Clear on D9,” Danny called out as he slid three house salads into the window.

            Abuse and Junior looked over at their window and nodded at him. Danny then leaned over the steam table and punched the button to call the server.

            “Seriously, dude, don’t ignore me,” Packie insisted, backing away from the salads. “Do you know about ‘check engine’ lights or not? It’s a simple fucking question.”

            “Bro,” Danny said with a brief glance at him. “I’m three niçoise deep right now. Plus, you see all this?” He motioned at the abundance of tickets hanging from the rack. “Please leave me the fuck alone. I don’t know shit about cars.”

            Packie rapped his knuckles on the surface of the island window. “That was a simple enough answer, right?” he asked, grinning maniacally. After a quick tick of the head, he looked over at the dishpit. Jux was doubled over and thoroughly-invested in the scrubbing of pans. “What about you?” Packie asked. Jux apparently didn’t hear him, so Packie approached just as Crystal rushed into the kitchen to collect the salads.

            “These mine?” she asked Danny.

            “Yeah,” he said. He pointed to the one to his right. “No croutons.”

            “I see that,” Crystal said, picking them up and adding, “Thank you, Danny,” before leaving the kitchen.

            Danny watched her leave. “Anytime, Girl,” he called sweetly back. Then he turned toward the dishpit and exclaimed through his teeth, “Day-um.”

            Jux was laughing at Danny.

            “Dude,” Packie hollered at Jux. “Did you even hear me?”

            Jux hung a pair of clean-dripping saucepans from a hook. “How could I not have?” he asked, hunkering down on another set of pans.

            “So answer my question,” Packie demanded. “Do you know anything about the ‘check engine’ light?”

            Jux shrugged. “I fucking hate cars, man.”

            Packie smirked at him and then at the rest of the kitchen crew. The others were all looking at him except for Duke, who was bobbing his head up and down as he plopped thin slices of spec onto the pizzas he was composing before popping and locking the leftovers back into the appropriate ninth housed in the topping station. Duke might have been listening the entire time, but there was no way to know. He understood flow and focus and there seemed like nobody in the kitchen—in existence perhaps—that was better prepared to avoid the Packie steamroller.

            “I’ll remember this,” Packie warned them before rushing back out with several invisible daggers planting themselves into his back. He couldn’t feel the nasty stares, though, because his body was vibrating too quickly. The cells of his composition were humming; for hours now, a kind of oppressive heat had descended upon him, firing his cylinders and compelling him forward without a shred of self-consciousness or social awareness. If he’d have been asked at any given point, he would not have been able to say exactly how many tables he had or what his tables needed, but the inability would merely have been an inability to organize it into something communicable. Even if he wasn’t able to clearly list all of the things he was doing, he was yet able, and consistently able, to do them without complaint from the patrons and inevitably getting good tips. His average gratuity rate was always at least two or three-tenths of a percent above all of the other servers—and some weeks it was a full two or three percent more, maxing out one week of Valentine’s Day at an inconceivable average gratuity of 34.3%. It was often enough the case that his tips were the result of exploiting the best tables on slow nights at the expense of whichever poor server happened to be scheduled the same day, but nobody questioned that he was pathologically dedicated to the satisfying the caprices of his patrons. Packie patronized the guests to a fault, at least in the eyes of everyone else in the restaurant (except for Brian—who appreciated Packie’s pluck and pompadour—and Sommelier Kieran—who cared not a bit because he didn’t understand why anyone was worried about tips when they’d been given Queso Iberico instead of Manchego or when the latest vintage of cabs coming out of his favorite Napa winery were clearly a few rungs below what they should have been). When one of Packie’s tables needed something, there was neither thing nor person-thing that was going to impede him from getting that need satisfied. On the craziest of nights, like this First Friday, he was barreled forward by a spark that was more than the money he’d get from the tips. The fires compelled him toward an unknowable mastery and even if he couldn’t tell you how many tables he had, he knew—and he’d remember the slights, too.

             After Packie left the kitchen and filled some waters here and delivered some bills there and greeted new tables over there, he found his way back to E66, where the three guests were sipping from their second bottle of Rigaletti and munching through the previously-delivered bread. The dinner menus were still at the table amid the crumbs and drips of red vino, but none of the guests at the table seemed to care that the menus were still there. Packie approached the cloud of laughter that they were emitting as if he’d been in on the joke the whole time. They grinned up at his approach.

            “How’s the bottle?” Packie asked them.

            “Mmm,” said one of them as she put a hand over her mouth to conceal the chewing and held up a finger.

            “She’s trying to say it’s great,” said another with a wink at Packie.

            “Awesome,” Packie beamed. “Have we decided on a meal?”

            The chewing one was still working things out, but she made clear that nobody else was going to speak before her. She made a show of swallowing and then after a quick wash-down with the red she looked up and asked, “Did you find out?”

            Packie’s eyes burned with dense intensity for a moment before he said, “I can take a look at it if you want.”

            “Would you?” the guest asked as she tapped a long, decorated fingernail against the side of her glass.

            “Don’t do that,” said another. The two at the table who were not the woman were difficult to tell apart and Packie wasn’t trying. “Don’t you see how busy this place is? I’m sure he has better things to do than troubleshoot your LeSabre.”

            “Not at all,” Packie interjected with as sincere a wiry smile as he could muster. At that moment, across the room, Kieran the bartender swiped a special sword down at a bottle of champagne, opening it the “traditional” way before a cadre of be-fuck-alled bar patrons. As spectacular as the feat happened to be, it was almost immediately subsumed by the general tumult of the dining room. From the bathrooms there was something like a shriek, but it probably wasn’t a big deal because a couple of those waiting in line used it as a cue to break out into a little archaic dance and then there was an eruption of laughter.

            “Are you sure?” the woman purred at Packie. “You’re not too busy?”

            “I’m sure,” Packie gulped.

II

            Almost a half hour later, the kitchen found a moment. Max and Crystal and Lyle and that new guy whose name nobody seemed to know had collected all of their orders and, for the first time all night, the line of hanging tickets was tightening. Duke was already wrapping up some of the unused ingredients at the pizza station and Jux, face practically submerged in the dishwater, was scrubbing at pans. There were still a few plates waiting in the window, however.

            “What the fuck, man?” Abuse muttered at the precisely-temped filets. He punched the server-call button for Packie several times and shook his head.

            “It’s almost over, ——,” Boof the Expo said.

            Abuse glowered at him. “Don’t invoke my name,” he commanded.

            “Just saying it’s almost time to relax,” Boof said.

            Abuse looked around. “Where’s Junior?”

            “I think he went to check out the front case,” Danny said.

            Abuse hummed. “I’m going out for a minute, then,” he said. “If Sir Cockface comes in to get these, the medium-well is the torched one on the right.”

            Danny nodded.

            After a quick rummage through his sack hanging from a peg on the wall of the back storage room, Abuse went out onto the dock and lit up. He whispered a few untoward things over the course of the first few puffs of the Pall Mall and then set to working at his phone while occasionally scowling across the dock at the bright headlights of some guest’s vehicle that were only partially blocked by the half-opened bay doors. Moments later, he heard a voice and a responding call and the lights flicked on and off and on again a few times and then there was the sound of a vehicle’s ignition.

            “What about now?” a voice called out. No audible response, but the voice said, “Okay, one more time. What about that?”

            Abuse’s scowl intensified. “I know that voice,” he muttered, looking past the screen of his smartphone.

            “Let’s give it a drive,” the voice suggested.

            Abuse was now moving across the dark patio of the loading dock, deftly maneuvering between the remnants of busted tables and unstacked delivery crates toward the place between the bay doors through which he might be able to see what was going on. By the time he got there, however, there had already been a series of slammed car doors and all he saw was the tail end of a car peeling out of the lot onto Main. Abuse frowned and flicked his cigarette into the parking lot and closed the bay doors after him. Then he went inside, back to the kitchen.

            The steaks were gone from the window.

            “Max took them,” Junior explained with a shrug as he seared a filet medallion in a pan. “Apparently Packie is MIA.”

            “Let’s hope he doesn’t come back,” Abuse said. He looked at the pan. “What’s that?”

            “Kieran’s staff meal,” Junior said. “Got to keep the sommelier happy. Can you buzz him for me? I think this piece of meat is scared enough to his liking.”

            Abuse leaned over and pressed the appropriate button on the console and then sighed and stared down at the crusty ring of dried chowder around the inside of a nearly-empty sixth in the steam table. The sudden onset of fatigue troubled him, so he steeled himself with a deep breath and went back out to his bag to crack open his third Lo-Carb Rockstar of the evening. When he got back to the kitchen, Kieran was there at the window.

            “You didn’t cook it too long, did you?” Kieran asked, examining the medallion with obvious skepticism.

            “Hard sear on all sides,” Junior assured him. “I know what you want.”

            “Good,” Kieran grumbled as he took the plate. “I hope it’s still cold in the middle.”

            “What’s up with you?” Junior asked with a giddy smile. “First Friday not busy enough for you?”

            “A bunch of drunk idiots that wouldn’t know good wine from shitpuddles in a rest stop bathroom,” Kieran said. “Fucking children.”

            “I don’t know,” Junior said. “I’m pretty sure they were all adults out there.”

            “We only moved three bottles of the Rigaletti Riserva all night, can you believe that?” he said obliviously.

            “Yeah, well,” Junior said as he took a couple of pans and a pair of tongs over to Jux at the dishpit, “not everyone appreciates fermented grape juice like they should, the plebeians.”

            “They wouldn’t know how to appreciate it, anyway,” Kieran said.

            “At least you had Packie to help you out on that, though,” Junior said, looking around at the kitchen staff with a smile.

            Kieran scowled at him. “What are you talking about?”

            “Two bottles,” Junior said defensively. “Two of the three bottles were for one of his tables.”

            “No, they fucking weren’t,” Kieran said. “All three went to the bar.”

            “And no one gets to the bottle but through you,” Junior said.

            Kieran nodded in agreement. “Packie’s got his head up his ass.”

            “That’s accurate,” Abuse noted.

            “Wait a second,” Junior said. “Are you absolutely sure you only moved the three bottles at the bar? We all know about Packie, and I think we all know he doesn’t make stuff like that up.”

            “Or get it wrong,” Danny admitted.

            Kieran looked impatiently down at his meal and then told Junior, “Check the system if you want. I don’t care.” And with that he left the kitchen.

            Junior, in fact, did go ahead and check the system. The night had been such a slog for the kitchen that, although any of them on the line might be able to remember how many pâté plates or pork butt empanadas they’d gone through, none of them could possibly remember with any reliable specificity the precise tables to which the food had gone. While Junior was out front going through the hundreds of orders they’d filled, the kitchen set into some serious cleanup. Duke was already done with the pizza station, and he emphasized the progress by slapping the sparkling-clean surface of the stainless steel prep table with a wet rag and announcing that he was going to put on some music. While a new album by Eminem starting blasting, Jux was already loading the dishwasher up with the last of the plates and getting ready to start hitting the service equipment that the others were bringing to him as they closed up their stations. Abuse and Danny had settled into their usual race to see who could wrap things up at their respective stations the quickest without error, so there was simply no talking: just plastic wrap adhering to the sides of stainless steel containers and the high-pressure stream of water coming from the dishpit’s spring-suspended nozzle. Occasionally, Duke busted out with a little rap-along with Eminem, but otherwise there was no human voice in the kitchen until Junior rushed in with a printout.

            “Okay, this is crazy,” he said, frowning at the paper.

            “What?” asked Danny.

            “So, does anyone remember what table it was that Packie was bitching at us for?” Junior asked. “The bread thing?”

            “Which bread thing?” asked Abuse with a roll of his eyes.

            “Yeah, I know,” Junior said. “Seriously, though, that table he was obsessed with getting bread for while they drank their second bottle of whatever the fuck that wine is that they’re jizzing over out there.”

            “E66,” Abuse, Danny, Duke, and Jux all responded in unison.

            Junior nodded at them, wide-eyed. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s what I remember, too.”

            “What’s the deal?” asked Danny.

            “They were sitting on menus and glasses of wine for what—like two hours?” Junior asked.

            “At least,” Abuse said. He looked over at the chef and then cocked an eyebrow. “What have you got there?”

            “This is a summary of all the orders for E66 tonight, from here and from the bar,” Junior said.

            “And?” asked Danny, now clearly irritated.

            “And we were turning out plates to E66 all night,” Junior said. “There’s no gap.”

            “What?” Duke asked, suddenly engaged. He went to the chef and leaned in to take a look at the printout, which Junior quickly relinquished.

            “Oh, shit,” Duke said, shaking his head. “Something is definitely not right. These are pretty quick turnarounds.” He shoved the printout back at Junior. “Take it,” he said. “I can’t look at that shit. I’m going over to Pig Pull after this to help them do their deep clean, and I can’t be wondering about shit like this all night.”

            “There’s none of that fancy wine on here, either,” Junior added with a baffled stare at the paper.

            Danny was motionless. The ninth he was in the process of wrapping was upside-down and purple juice from the wine-poached pears was dripping onto the cutting board. “Ghost table, bro,” he said, immediately cringing at his words.

            “Somebody was probably just ringing in the orders incorrectly,” Abuse said. “There are times to contemplate the mysteries, gentlemen, and this is not one of them.”

            “Yeah, I don’t know about that,” Junior said. “Packie has his many faults, as we all know, but ringing in orders incorrectly is not one of them.”

            Abuse sighed resignedly.

            “Danny,” Junior said.

            “What?” Danny asked, looking at him with a mixture of fear and surprise.

            “You’re dripping,” Junior observed.

“Oh, snap,” Danny said with a look down at the puddle. He passed the container for another quick midair rotation, sealing it completely.

            It wasn’t long before everyone in the kitchen had forgotten about the mystery and, since neither any of them nor any of the servers in the front of the house really cared to find out why Packie had disappeared, everything was shut down as normal and around 2:30 a.m. Abuse and Danny and Jux turned off the kitchen lights, locked up the doors, and went out into the darkness of the morning.

Engine Checked

I

            The afternoon was bright and pleasantly cool outside and Teatree and Crystal were starting out their opening duties at the bar and dining area when Packie approached the glass front door and knocked.

            Teatree was in the process of funneling the dregs of one bottle of wine into another, so Crystal said she got it and went to the front door and knelt to work at the bolt. It was a tricky bolt that locked the door into the fixture in the cement and nobody had convincingly proven to have found the sweet spot. Many staff members were under the impression, provided initially by none other than Brian Tati himself, that expert locksmiths had been called in to diagnose the lock and been apparently unable to discover anything wrong with it despite it being a headache to open every single day. In fact, only one locksmith had ever been consulted, someone with whom the owner had dealt with before on unrelated developer business and this locksmith had informed the owner that the lock had been installed sloppily and that to fix it they would need to either fix the door or fix the fixture into which the bolt went. The owner had dismissed the suggested “necessity” of fixing the bolt and then turned around and assured the staff, on several occasions, that the door lock was working just fine and that they were simply having difficulty learning how to operate it. So Crystal wasn’t looking too closely at Packie on the other side of the door when she knelt to engage in battle with the lock. She pulled up at the door and tried the little handle, pulled left and tried, pulled down and tried, pulled up again and tried, and then, when she was about to give up, she tried again without pulling on the door at all and it opened right up and into the restaurant along with the faint stench of old urine and the whooshing arrival of the light rail and the balmy scent of the mesquite trees lining Main and the honks of horns up at the intersection came Packie, walking quickly past her as usual without a greeting or a thank-you. Once he’d passed, Crystal closed the door and replaced the bolt and stood and, to her surprise, Packie was still standing nearby—and he was giving her something that seemed like a nice smile.

            “Thanks,” he told her.

            It seemed sincere. Crystal eyed him warily. “You’re welcome?”

            Then Packie did something she’d never witnessed him do before; he executed a brief-but-formal half-bow.

            “Ah,” Crystal said, skirting around him as quickly as possible with her hands palm-out as buffers. “So nice of you.” She immediately focused on her path along the north windows to the defunct retail-case-turned-server station, but didn’t get far before feeling that gaze and she looked back and, yes, Packie was smiling at her. He even did another little half-bow and he hadn’t even gone past the hostess’s podium. “Yikes,” she said quietly with raised eyebrows as she resumed folding sets of flatware—knives and forks only—into large crimson napkin-squares.

            “You’re alive,” Teatree greeted Packie from across the dining area at the bar.

            “I am,” Packie said awkwardly as he looked around at the restaurant.

            “We knew you’d make it back,” Teatree added, not looking at Packie. Teatree was already consolidating the contents of another set of bottles left over from the nights before. “Couple take you home with them?”

            Packie stared at him. “What?”

            Teatree looked up briefly and then continued recycling the vino. “Like a swinger couple or something,” he suggested. “Did you score with a swinger couple, dude?”

            Packie approached the bar slowly and leaned over the tops of the highchairs to spread his hands out on the cool, smooth, sparkling black surface. He stayed like this for a few seconds.

            Teatree noticed, of course, and he asked, “Anchoring yourself?”

            “Something like that,” Packie said, eyeballing the display of infused vodkas like an astronomer analyzing data collected from a comet probe.

            “Still clocking in at the same place,” Teatree said, indicating a monitor at the bar with a free hand.

            Packie looked strangely over at the monitor and then nodded what was apparently intended as a thanks.

            Teatree tossed an emptied bottle into the garbage and scratched his short, clean beard. “You look different,” he said. “Did you get a haircut?”

            Packie provided no response. “Still clocking it at the same place,” he said, looking across at the monitor.

            Teatree nodded and slipped into the kitchen. Above the boiling water and chopping of carrots and crackling of something in the fryer there was an energetic Afro-beat track coming from the speakers near the ice machine. Jux was in there by himself, working on prep at the cold side. He didn’t notice Teatree’s entrance because he was apparently chopping those carrots in a way synchronized with the music and Teatree felt a brief desire to leave him to the magic. But Teatree couldn’t help himself, and there wasn’t time for delay.

            “Jux,” Teatree whispered.

            Jux looked up. “Sup, Tea?”

            “Packie’s back,” Teatree said, “and he’s acting weird.”

            Jux stopped the chopping and looked down at the cutting board for a moment before picking up a sixth and using the dull edge of the knife to slide the chopped carrots into clear-plastic container. “I don’t like that guy,” he finally announced.

            “I don’t like him, either,” Teatree protested. “I’m just warning you. He’s back, and he’s acting weird. Remember when he was going to that x-ray technician academy online?”

            Jux grunted.

            “It’s kind of like that,” Teatree said, “but worse.”

            Jux looked up at the classroom clock on the wall above the dish station rack and then looked back at Teatree. “Can you keep him out of here for like forty minutes?” he asked. “I’m working on five different things right now and I don’t want to see his fucking dangle-dick of a haircut if I don’t have to.”

            “That’s part of the weirdness,” Teatree explained. “His hair seems… smaller than usual. Definitely not as dick-like.”

            “Good for him,” Jux said.

            Teatree nodded.

            “I mean, he’s got no reason to come back here, right?” Jux continued.

            “No reason,” Teatree agreed. He bounced his eyebrows. “What are you making?”

            Jux sighed and snapped his gloves off into the trash. “Prep stuff, Tea.”

            “What’s that there?” Teatree asked, pointing to a big clear-plastic tub on the prep table that contained a whitish gooey slop.

            Jux eyed him suspiciously. “You know very well what that is,” he said. “Look, you keep that mook out of my face for forty minutes and I will deliver to you a mac bowl like you never knew was possible.”

            “Is it going to have filet in it?” Teatree asked.

            Jux blinked at him. “What do you think?”

            Teatree screwed his lips into a disappointed pout. “It’s going to be good, though, right?”

            “Of course it’s going to be good,” Jux said as he poured heavy cream into a cold pan from a plastic bottle upon which a grotesquely anthropomorphized cow had been printed to smile stupidly. He sighed in disgust at the illustration and then looked back over at Teatree. “Just keep him out until everyone else gets here.”

            Teatree smiled excitedly and cast a last glance at the tub of pungent cheesy slop before leaving the kitchen. The bar was serendipitously vacant when he got through the six or so meters of walkway connecting it with the kitchen and he exhaled with gratitude at its vacancy. He approached the set of bottles he’d been working to consolidate and sighed and then looked around the dining area for Packie. For a brief moment, a rush of warm unease filled the place in his stomach where he hoped later to store the contents of Jux’s mac bowl, filet or not. He went immediately back to the short angled hall and looked into the kitchen. Jux was still alone, working on something at the cold side cutting board. Teatree exhaled and turned and went back out into the dining area to hunt for Packie, keeping an eye at the bar as much as he could to make sure that Packie didn’t manage to slip past him when he wasn’t looking. This was far from the first time he’d been asked by someone in the back of the house to keep Packie out of the kitchen, and his record of success fell considerably short of perfect because, as everybody knew, Packie was a truck. When Packie was hauling along in some direction, he was hurtling hard and the course wasn’t going to change if someone tried to get in front of him. Despite this, Teatree was willing to try, since, you know, the promise of mac. Standing in front of the door wasn’t going to work, anyway. The better strategies always involved distraction, specifically a distraction not too clearly contrived. It was a difficult game, and the stakes were relatively high; should Teatree fail and not get the delicious savory carb-heavy reward, he’d have to wait until after the dinner service for some food, and that would make the next several hours considerably more difficult than he wanted them to be.

            Since he didn’t see Packie in the dining area, he checked the server station. Crystal was there, still rolling dinner sets.

            “Have you seen Packie?” Teatree asked.

            “Have I seen him?” Crystal responded. She put a rolled set of flatware onto the pyramid in progress. “I’ve seen someone that looks like him, but I can’t say whether or not it’s him.”

            “Isn’t it weird?” Teatree asked.

            “It’s like when he was going to that online x-ray tech school,” Crystal said.

            Teatree’s eyes lit up. “That’s exactly what I was saying to Jux,” he cried. “This is weirder, though. He could barely talk earlier.”

            “I like that part better,” Crystal said.

“Where is he?” Teatree asked.

            “Setting up the patio tables, if you can believe it,” Crystal said.

            “The patio tables?” Teatree cried, rising up onto his toes to look past the cabinets and out at the front windows.

            Crystal tilted her head. “He said it needed to be done.”

            “He never does that,” Teatree said. “He always gets someone else to do it while he farts around on the bar computer.”

            “That’s what I told him,” Crystal said, “more or less, but he insisted that it was the most time-consuming task on the opening duties sheet and therefore should be taken care of without delay.”

            “He didn’t say it like that, did he?” asked Teatree.

            “Of course not,” Crystal said, “though, when he does talk, he seems suddenly able to complete sentences in ways I’m not comfortable with. He also said he’d bring the heaters around from the dock.”

            “What?” Teatree cried.

            Crystal nodded.

            “I’m going to see what he’s up to,” Teatree said, peering searchingly through the north windows to the lot.

            “Have fun,” Crystal said, folding a fork and a knife into a napkin for the fifty-seventh time.

            Seconds later, Teatree emerged onto the patio to find Packie carefully adjusting the positioning of one of the heavy metal tables. A gentle breeze was agitating the thin foliage of the mesquites lining the sidewalk and the bells of the light rail dinged somewhere in the distance to the north. Whenever Packie adjusted the table, however, there was the terrible scratching screech of the metal feet dragging against the concrete.

            “Got to get it right,” Teatree commented.

            “We’re not ADA compliant,” Packie said as he considered the spaces between the tables.

            “Adey-what?” asked Teatree.

            “The Americans with Disabilities Act,” Packie said, scraping one of the tables a few inches. “Effective as of 1995. If we can’t get a wheelchair through here, we’re subject to lawsuit.”

            Teatree looked strangely at the tables and nodded. “So,” he asked, “how long do you think it’s going to take?”

            “Not long,” Packie said. “I estimate that in a few minutes I’ll have worked out all of the possible options that include these tables. I think that we need to start considering the likelihood that we’ll have to take one of the tables out. Maybe move it into the banquet room.”

            Teatree recoiled momentarily at the suggestion and then chewed his lip. “You’re going to move the table out, then, right?”

            “Yes, if need be,” Packie said. He pointed toward the entrance. “I’ll take it around the side and find a place for it at the dock. I’m going back there anyway for the propane space heaters.”

            Teatree grinned and nodded. “Just don’t bother the kitchen right now,” he said. “There’s focused work going on back there.”

            Packie looked at him strangely. “I don’t have any reason to bother the kitchen with it,” he said. “The back gate is open, and of course the heaters have to be rolled along the sidewalk at the parking lot.”

            “Okay,” Teatree said, nodding. Then he went back into the dining area and found Crystal setting up the tables. “Hey, Crystal,” he whispered.

            “Yes?” she asked mysteriously without looking up from her placement of empty clean glasses on the tables.

            “I think he’s gone crazy,” Teatree said. “Were you here the other night?”

            Crystal paused with an empty wine glass in a hand and looked at him. “When he went AWOL?” she asked. “When I was right here picking up after his trainwreck? He spent half the night on some mystery table and then disappeared. We had to take over the rest of his tables.”

            “That’s what I heard,” Teatree said, staring across the dining area cool and dim in the cold light of the winter afternoon. “I don’t think I know how to deal with this,” he muttered. “It’s too weird, man.”

            “You’ll find a way,” Crystal said.

            Teatree didn’t linger. He crossed to the bar and looked at the bottles and then, suddenly conscious of his heart rate, he scratched his neatly-cropped beard and went over to the restroom hall, where he produced a little orange plastic bottle from a pocket. After a quick expert opening and shake, a little oblong pill fell onto his palm and he popped it into his mouth and closed up and then disappeared the bottle. “Medicine doesn’t need to be prescribed,” he quietly assured himself before heading back to the bar to finish his task with the bottles while keeping an eye through the windows on Packie adjusting things on the patio.

II

            In the kitchen, solo prep time had gone so well for Jux that he’d changed the music to Aphex Twin in preparation for the arrival of Chef Junior, Abuse, and Arturo. Cooling on the speed rack were sheets containing his work: crispy pancetta, browned cubes of butternut squash, flourless chocolate cake, two hotel pans of pumpkin bread pudding, and a sheet of individually wrapped portions of fresh rising pizza dough. The tub of mac and cheese still sat on the prep table, now fully mixed and cooling in a large hotel pan of ice. He’d already stocked the coolers with expertly wrapped and labeled thirds of piggy empanadas and cheese-stuffed phyllo satchels and hockeypucklike risotto cakes. A tall container of ceviche was now waiting for service. Jux was nodding along with the Aphex Twin snare rushes, ensuring not to give himself whiplash, as he approached the second-to-last of his self-scheduled solo-prep tasks: a massive steel stock pot of boiled potatoes. After poking the edge of a tong into one of the pliant spuds, he shifted it off the burner and went over to the dishpit. Hanging there were pans and tongs and he went straight for the big cone strain and unhooked it and turned to the cold side sink and hooked the clip of the strain on the side of the sink to fix it into place. It didn’t look sturdy, and it wasn’t, but he and many others had executed the same task without trouble, so he left it there and then got a couple of rags and hefted the potato-filled stock pot from the ranges and lugged it steaming over to the cold sink. The weight wasn’t the thing; the problem was getting the stock pot positioned properly. He’d done it before, and he figured he could do it again. He set the big pot against the workstation and tipped it so that the water began to pour from it into the sink through the carefully-positioned strainer. Everything was natural and normal until something about the way the potatoes were settling in the pot amid the vacating hot water caused a tumble and a splash and he felt the wet heat on his shirt and pulled back, exclaiming, “Fucking shit!”

            Seconds later, when Jux was shaking his head and repositioning the pot, Packie entered the kitchen from the back storage door.

            “Are you okay?” Packie asked, rushing past the island to help.

            “I’ve got it now,” Jux said with a shake of the head as he started to tip the pot once again.

            “Let me help,” Packie insisted, reaching out to secure the strainer that already contained several of the ovoid boiled potatoes.

            Jux pursed his lips and focus on the pouring. It was easier now, and Jux was immediately occupied by the idea that there was a necessary analysis: Was it easier because the pot was already more empty and the lumpy potatoes already more or less settled, or was Packie actually helping? If Packie was helping, was he capable of helping for helping’s sake or was he working at some game? Was allowing Packie to help him a violation of his principles? Should he have acted differently, maybe refused the help and gone through on his own? What would it matter if Packie had helped? He frowned at this quick series of conundrums and finished the pour and then, seeing that Packie had the big strain held solid, walked over to the dishpit and slid the stock pot up onto the counter. He looked over at Packie, who was apparently close in his appreciation of the task.

            “Do you have a container in mind?” Packie asked.

            “Yeah,” Jux said with a stare. He pulled a large metal mixing bowl from the shelf above the station and passed Packie to put it on the cutting board. “In here.”

            Packie pulled up the strain, jerking it twice to rid it of excess water, and then dumped the potatoes into the bowl. He looked Jux in the eyes. “Anything else?”

            Jux shook his head and then motioned at the dishpit. “Just to clean it.”

            Packie nodded and walked over and put soapy sponge to the strain for a few seconds, covering the surface completely, before giving it a rinse from the dangling spout and then dipping it in the sanitizer and hanging it up. He wiped his hands on his pants and looked back at Jux.

            “Yeah,” Jux told him, “that’s about how it’s done.”

            Packie grinned and rapped his knuckles against one of the poles keeping up the shelves. “Where do you think I started in this business?”

            “Doesn’t your family own like six restaurants?” Jux asked.

            Packie nodded, still smiling. “And I was helping with the dishes at twelve,” he said, walking over and closing the face of the towel dispenser with a click.

            “Uh, excuse me,” Jux said.

            Packie looked over at him curiously. “Yes?”

            “We leave it open because the sensor doesn’t work,” Jux said. “You know that.”

            “Oh,” Packie said, turning to stare at the dispenser. He then moved a hand across the sensor and a sufficient length of towel pumped right out.

            Jux puffed his cheeks and then let the air flap his lips. “Okay.”

“What’s the soup tonight?” Packie asked as he wiped his hands. “I’ll promptly update the board and then get back to moving the heaters.”

            Jux stared strangely at him. “You’re offering to update the board,” he asked, “rather than bitching about how the board isn’t updated?”

            Packie frowned briefly and looked over at the whiteboard by the hall exit to the bar, upon which the previous night’s specials were still scrawled in flecks of black dry-erase ink alongside a prep list with most of the items crossed out. He looked back at Jux. “Do you mind?”

            “By all means,” Jux said. “Basque garlic soup with quail egg tapa.”

            Packie tossed the paper towel into the bin, took up a marker, and wrote out the soup. “That sounds good,” he said. “What’s a quail egg tapa?”

            Jux inhaled, exhaled, and then said, “Sunny-side up quail egg on a slice of toast,” he said. “It’ll be like a little boat on the soup.”

Packie was staring at the floor as if visualizing a maritime adventure.

“As long as you, you know,” Jux continued, “get it to the table before it sinks.”

Packie smiled so broadly that it could have, potentially, knocked the knife rack off the wall. “Are we going to get a tasting?”

            “Yes,” Jux said, rolling his eyes. “You’ll have to wait, though. Junior’s going to have to give it the okay.”

            “You made it?” Packie asked. “Did you learn that recipe in Madrid?”

            Jux stared at him. “No.”

            “I still think it’s rad that you lived there,” Packie said.

Jux stared at him. “I heard about the recipe on public radio.”

            Packie shrugged. “Sounds good,” he said, crossing the kitchen and exiting through the back storage room.

            Jux watched the space near the ice machine for a moment and then began tonging the steaming potatoes back into the stock pot, where a small bit of starchy water still lingered at the bottom.

            Teatree entered, eyes wide and hands out. “I am so sorry.”

            Jux plopped a few more potatoes back into the pot. “Fucking weird, man.”

            “I know, I’m sorry,” Teatree said. “I hope this doesn’t change the little yummy you were thinking about whippin—”

            “It’s fine,” Jux said. “You’ll get your mac. Bring me a slice or two of special cheeses you want me to add.”

            “Ten-four,” Teatree said, saluting and going back to the bar.

III

            Jux was processing a wet slop of potatoes through a ricer into a wide stainless steel mixing bowl when Chef Junior and Arturo emerged from the back room. Abuse arrived moments later and joined the queue behind Arturo as Junior scrubbed his hands at the rinsing sink.

            “What the fuck is that?” Junior asked as he looked over at the bowl Jux was working at the prep table.

            “Mashed potatoes,” Jux said.

            Junior frowned. “Did you add water or something?”

            “Yeah, no,” Jux sputtered. “Yeah, they’re a little moist. But, no, I just added milk.”

            “Looks like you didn’t strain them well,” Junior diagnosed.

            “I mean,” Jux said as he squeezed more strings of sloppy potato mash through the rounds of the ricer, “we strained them.”

            “And you don’t need to use that thing for mash,” Junior added with a nod at the bulky steel tool, which was like a garlic press but several times larger. “You’re not making gnocchi. Was there water from the boil in the bowl?”

            Jux shrugged helplessly.

            “Dude,” Abuse said, shaking his head. “In my family, you get the belt if you fuck up the mashed potatoes. That or everlasting shame.”

            “Are there any more?” Junior asked as he dried his hands and moved aside so that Arturo could begin washing up.

            “Mashed potatoes?” Jux asked, staring down at the bowl of watery off-white sludge.

            Junior leaned around Jux and looked down at the potato boxes. “I’ll fix them with another batch,” he said. “Can’t have too many mashed potatoes.”

            “Sorry,” Jux apologized. “I got distracted because Packie’s been acting like a nice person all afternoon.”

            “Not possible, dude,” Abuse said as he finally had a chance to wash his hands.

            “I’m serious,” Jux said. “It’s fucking bizarre. He’s helping. He even told me that it was ‘rad’ that I lived in Spain.”

            “You were distracted because he was being nice?” Junior asked.

            Jux nodded eagerly. “I told you,” he said. “It’s bizarre.”

            “He must have really enjoyed his day off after disappearing the other night,” Junior said.

            “I don’t like it,” Abuse said.

            “You haven’t even seen him yet,” Junior cried.

            “I don’t like it, either,” Jux said. “It’s uncanny. Something isn’t right.”

            Abuse squinted at him. “What about his voice?”

            Jux was still motioning vaguely about when Teatree entered the kitchen from the bar.

            “Heya,” he announced, delivering sweaty dilated-pupil looks at everyone.

            “Popping the old bennies today, I see,” Abuse said.

            Teatree shook his head. “No idea what you’re talking about,” he said. He looked at Jux. “That mac coming soon?”

            “Working on it,” Jux said.

            “Hey, Teatree,” Junior said. “What’s up with Packie?”

            Teatree stifled a laugh. “I don’t know.”

            Junior stared at him.

            “Okay,” Teatree said. He shrugged. “Apparently he went off with a swinger couple the other night, and now he’s acting strange. Different, let’s say.”

            “Swinger couple?” Abuse asked curiously. “How does that work, exactly?”

            “I don’t know,” Teatree said, “but he’s been—”

            “I’m primarily interested in knowing how the couple deals with it,” Abuse said, “and how they recruited him for their pleasure.”

            Junior banged the butt of a chef’s knife against the hot side cutting board. “Focus,” he commanded. “Teatree, what did Packie do, exactly?”

            Teatree was grinning painfully. “I don’t know for sure.”

            Junior looked around at those in the kitchen. “I don’t think it matters one bit whether he balled or got balled by a couple of patrons,” he said, “but we do need to know if this is going to make service more complicated in some way.”

            “That’s the thing,” Jux said. “He actually helped me earlier, and, when he was done, he offered to help more and about something else. It’s like he’s a totally different person.”

            “He’s been pretty nice, too,” Teatree managed through his teeth-grinding.

            “You,” Junior said, “should focus on keeping your shit together.”

            “I agree,” Teatree said, leaving the kitchen.

            Junior looked at the kitchen staff. Arturo, Jux, and Abuse were all contemplating things, nodding slowly.

            “It’s probably not aliens,” Jux eventually blurted.

            “Aliens,” Junior echoed.

            Abuse chuckled. “Jux was probably the biggest X-Files fan of all time back in high school.”

            Jux held up a hand.

            “My cousin in Fresno got abducted by aliens,” Arturo offered, delivering grave stares at them all. “He can’t even take a piss now.”

            Jux was shaking his head. “Untoward experiments,” he suggested.

            “Naw,” Arturo said. “They said it’s just urinary retention. I think it was like prostatic hyperplasia or some shit.”

            Abuse emitted an exhale similar to what you’d imagine those faces on old maps are doing. “Damn.”

            “Yeah, he’s good, though,” Arturo said. “He never said anything about experiments. They just took him to Jupiter and showed him how to get through the atmosphere and get to the diamonds without getting all fucked up.”

            Jux was staring at him. “Are you serious?”

            “Hell yeah,” Arturo said. “He’s crazy as shit, but that’s what he says. Everyone asks if they probed his ass or something, but he didn’t have any type of experiment shit done to him.”

            Jux and Abuse shared a thoughtful look.

            “Hold on,” Junior said as he surveyed them. “Are we saying Packie’s acting like this either because he got laid with a swinger couple or he was abducted by aliens and replaced with an android version of him that isn’t a complete dickwad?”

            Jux rolled his eyes. “Nobody suggested it was an android,” he said. “Could just be like multiple dimensions shit.”

            Abuse gripped his forehead. “This again.”

            “Again?” Jux wondered aloud.

            “Lizardoes?” Abuse asked.

            Jux inhaled slowly and glanced at the ice machine. “I mean,” he said, “there’s no proof of their existence, but how can you furnish proof of the existence of something that literally exists across dimensions in ways—”

            “I’m going to stop you right there,” Junior announced. “Whether or not Packie learned some life lessons in the process of being ball-gagged by some hipster couple or he got transported to outer fucking space and the dimension aliens sent back a nicer replica of him doesn’t concern us. Maybe we’ll figure out what’s up when I tell him we’re slim on bread for his bread plates. Because there are only two baguettes up front, and that might not cut it for service tonight.”

            Everyone nodded in agreement.

            “Speaking of bread,” Jux eventually said, “after the potatoes there was just one more thing on the prep list—”

            “I’ll do the crostinis,” Abuse said.

            “Thanks,” said Jux.

            “I think your work here is done,” Junior told him. “Good job on the spread.”

            Jux tilted his head and went out to the bar to clock out.

            Junior looked over at Abuse. “You don’t really think he’s going to stick around here much longer, do you?”

            Abuse winced and shook his head. “No, probably not,” he admitted.

            “He just can’t take it,” Junior said. “I don’t blame him. You have to be a special brand of masochist to actually want to keep at this industry. It’s ass-kicking, and unsettling things happen all the time. He doesn’t want this.”

            Abuse waved a hand before the sensor of the paper towel dispenser several times, yielding nothing, so he took the plastic key from its perch on the wire storage rack above and unlocked the lid of the dispenser and placed the key and the slack of its string tether back up onto the shelf. The paper towel roll inside the dispenser bulged like the wheel of a steamroller and the lid hung down like a gobsmacked jaw. Abuse unrolled a long shaft of paper towel and tore it with a violent crossward tug. “Tati’s not going to be here tonight, so whatever.”

            “That’s right,” Chef Junior replied as he overlooked the hot-side setup. “It’s just us and either Packie or Teatree, whoever wins that battle of who’s in charge.”

IV

            Sunday night in winter at the restaurant was cozy and intimate and generally dead, but it was not uncommon for a sufficient push around 7:30 to keep the kitchen humming near peak activity for an hour or more before winding down for a timely close at ten. This night, however, there was no significant push and, by 8:30, the back of the house was already talking about closing duties and the front of the house was running at low energy and high efficiency, tending to a small cluster of two- to three-tops lingering for more wine and cheese on the patio and a couple of couples giggling at the bar.

            Chef Junior looked out at the restaurant and then turned and reentered the kitchen. “What do you say?” he suddenly called out. “Teatree or Packie?”

            Abuse was scribbling description and date on the label of a sixth-pan. “Teatree,” he said. “Still Teatree. Packie’s a wild card now, but we know we can work Teatree. He’s just irritable because apparently Jux promised him some mac and cheese concoction but didn’t follow through.”

            Junior nodded. “Give Teatree mac,” he said, “and he does your bidding.”

            Abuse capped the sharpie and clipped it to his lapel and proceeded to flip the sixth into sheaves of plastic wrap, compact. “If done correctly,” he said, “yes.”

            “I’ll have to make it nice, then,” Junior said. “No filet, of course, but maybe some toasted fennel and blue cheese or something.”

            A ticket buzzed its print up from the machine and Chef Junior gave it a glance and then separated the plies and stuck them up into the clip strips over the hot and cold lines. “Poached pear and a pork tenderloin special,” he called. He shook his head and reached down to open the cooler at the base of the hot side to collect a sixth of mac and a sixth of congealed hot grits. “Our boy Packie’s already doing everything I ask tonight,” he added.

            Abuse slid the plastic-wrapped container into the cooler. “Liquidating old specials isn’t going to keep this place from going under.”

            Junior glared at him. “Really?” he asked. “You think I don’t know that?”

            Abuse collected a couple of wrapped ninth containers from the long cold-side cutting board and replaced them to the cooler.

            “I’m here because I like it,” Chef Junior said, punctuating his oath with a snort that quickly transitioned into a snuffle.

            Abuse’s eyes were wide, as if someone were showing him a VHS copy of Howard the Duck 2.

            “I like torture,” Chef Junior said, nodding with eyes averted. Then he began to grin and he turned to Arturo. “Do you like to be tortured, Arturo?”

            Arturo shrugged over the dishpit. “Naw,” he said. “I’m just doing this to put food on the table until I can start working for my cousin.”

            Chef Junior held up a forefinger. “That’s meaningful,” he said, warming up a pan of mac and cheese while shocking diced shallots along with sliced fennel and mushrooms in another pan. In yet another small pan, he had a cream reduction going on, into which he presently hacked out from the container an angular clod of cold hot grits.

            Arturo hung two pairs of tongs onto the rack and pivoted back across the three sinks to the dishpit counter, which was only sparsely occupied by a few soiled plates and requisite cutlery. “It is what it is, bro,” he said as he unfurled the dishwasher and began unloading plates. “But it’s not torture.”

            Abuse scowled at him.

            “Keep looking at me like that and I’m about to a fist through your face,” Arturo warned.

            “Are you saying I’m not being tortured with all of this?” Abuse asked. “Because, if I’m not, then where the fuck do I get the actual torture?”

            Arturo cocked an eyebrow. “You’re fucking crazy, bro,” he said. “Torture’s not something to laugh at. They put your nuts on a hot wire and make you think you’re drowning and shit. That’s fucked up. This is just cooking food and washing dishes.”

            Packie had walked in. He smiled pausingly at the kitchen staff. “Torture?” he cried softly.

            Chef Junior slid a cache of steaming macaroni and cheese mixed with crispy crescents of fennel and mushroom into the window. “This is for Teatree.”

            Packie stared down at the savory dish for a moment. “Staff meal,” he said, ecstatic and confused.

            “Tell him if you want,” Junior said.

            Packie looked again at the dish and then strode gracefully out of the kitchen and into the bar.

            Abuse slid another plastic-wrapped steel container into the cooler. “I don’t like it,” he said. “It’s fucking weird.”

            “Usually he’d be giving us the order for his own meal, am I right?” Junior said.

            “If this is a true evolution,” Abuse said, “then we must learn to accept it.”

            Junior steamingly deposited the pans into the soaking sink while Arturo ducked away from the steam they produced.

            Packie reemerged from the bar.

            “We’re not ready for you, yet,” Abuse told him.

            Packie beamed at them. “Need a hand with anything?”

            Junior frowned as he crossed the line back to sauté, passing Abuse and muttering “firing” along the way.

            Abuse looked over at Packie. “You just wait,” Abuse told him, “until we call you. It’s that simple. It’s always that simple. And then you come and get the food.”

            Packie stared at him. “Of course,” he said reasonably. “I don’t want to be in the way.”

            Abuse gave him a short incline of the head and then looked over at Chef Junior, who was stifling a laugh with a forearm over the sizzling pans. “Are you going to encourage this?” Abuse asked the chef.

            Junior flipped a folded towel over his shoulder and shimmied a couple of pans. “I want Packie to tell us why he boosted night before last,” the chef said.

            “Me?” Packie asked innocently. “I went off with a swinger couple. They were looking for an extra rod, and I provided it.”

            Junior stared at him. “So you just completely abandon the restaurant to go play the fiddles?” he asked. “No concern about the other tables under your jurisdiction?”

            Packie smiled at him. “I’ve learned my lesson,” he said, eyes glistening under a vacancy of pompadour. “Do you know about ‘check engine’ lights? How to make them go away?”

            “This again?” Junior complained.

            “It’s fascinating, actually,” Packie told them. “They disconnect the battery and then, before reconnecting it, discharge some of the energy residual in the car’s wiring, pumping the horn or moving windows up and down, that kind of thing. Then, they reconnect the battery and the ‘check engine’ light is gone. Isn’t that amazing?”

            Chef Junior nested a knuckle of short ribs into a warm bed of herb risotto while Abuse sculpted an arugula salad with poached pears and goat cheese.

            “You probably need to get your car serviced, bro,” Arturo said from the dishpit.

            “Oh,” Packie said, dumb-faced, “I’m sorry. I probably wasn’t clear. It’s not my car.”

            Arturo shrugged. “Whatever, bro,” he said. “I’m just saying it’s like gaming the system. You can’t keep doing that without consequence, not unless you really come up.”

            Packie stared at him, his modestly-combed hair barely affected by the high pressure release from the ceiling’s HVAC vent. “That sounds wise.”

            Arturo shrugged. “Sometimes it’s good to listen,” he said, leaning a dripping pan across the drying rack.

            Packie held up his hands. “Indeed.”

            Junior was still staring at Packie. “You’re full of shit.”

            Packie’s eyes widened. “Me?” he asked, pointing a finger at his own chest.

            “I remember very clearly that the table you were dicking around with on First Friday was a three-top,” Junior said. “They each needed their own bread plate.”

            Packie looked blankly at him. “What?”

            “Are you going to come clean,” Junior pressed, “or are we going to have to beat it out of you?”

            “What?” Packie echoed.

            “I’m asking,” Junior stressed, “whether or not you are going to just let us all get through this the easy way and tell us the truth. Is that what you’re going to do? Are you going to be a good Packie?”

            Packie just kept staring at him.

            “Well?” Junior roared, holding up a pair of tongs.

            At that moment, Danny lumbered into the kitchen with a folded black and white checkered bandana tied across his forehead. “Well,” he announced, “I’m about to break this bitch down.”

            Packie stared wildly at him. Junior and Arturo and Abuse were all staring, too, but theirs was more obviously just confused.

            “What are you doing here?” Abuse asked as he arranged pans in the cooler for the lunch setup.

            Danny glanced about uneasily. “We doing this deep clean, ain’t we?”

            Junior shook his head. “No deep clean, my friend,” he said. “Why do you think we’re doing that?”

            The dopey, innocent look that Danny typically brandished was completely vacant from his face and replaced by cheeks flushed red and eyes intense. In one swift move, he slipped the bandana off his head and slapped it violently down to snap at the surface of the prep station.

            Packie flinched.

            “Motherfucker,” Danny grunted.

            “Wait,” Junior said. “Are you serious?”

            “You think I’m going to come down here on my night off just to prank some fools?” Danny cried. “I could be back home with my lady, bro.” He slapped the bandana several more times against the edge of the station.

            “Lady bro,” Abuse muttered with a chuckle.          

            One of Danny’s nostrils flared. “That’s not funny,” he said. “That’s homophobic.”

            “Stop,” Junior called. “Seriously, though. What gave you the idea that we were doing a deep clean?”

            Danny was shaking his head and looking around and his eyes landed on Packie, who was still staring horribly at him. “Get your ape-cock face out of my way, bitch,” he said. “It was probably this ape-cock-faced motherfucker right here who said it.”

            “Me?” Packie moaned. “I never said that.”

            “You’re blaming Packie?” Junior asked.

            “I blame all you motherfuckers,” Danny hollered. He slapped the bandana twice more against the steel of the prep table and then whipped it back and forth in Packie’s face before swinging around and stomping out through the back room to the parking lot.

            “I like your little neckerchief dance,” Abuse yelled after him.

            “Why is he blaming us?” Packie asked.

            An engine revved and then there was a short burst of squealing tires that suspended with a great crash.

            Abuse and Junior nearly collided as they scrambled through the back room and out onto the loading dock to get a view of the parking lot bright in the headlights of Danny’s navy sedan, which was propped at the rear axle on the concrete barrier with its spacious rear end jammed into the buckled chain-link fencing. Danny was out of the car, strobing the headlights with his pacing body as he stomped the asphalt and yelled: “You motherfuckers in this place, who fuck with my head! It’s this fucking place! My lady just got these big-ass new candles, I mean like this, like some big old titties, and she was going to light them and we was going to chill out, bro! Chill out, bro! But it’s this place. It’s this place.”

            In the darkness of the dock, Arturo leaned forward between Junior and Abuse. “He lost it,” Arturo whispered.

            Packie sidled up to the trio and gazed out like a benevolent sentry at Danny abusing the parking lot. “An accident,” he whispered cautiously.

            “Must have thought it was in drive when he punched it,” Junior said.

            Packie’s eyes widened. “He’s stuck on the wheel stop.”

            “Looks like it,” Junior agreed.

            Abuse lit a cigarette as if he were just digging into a bucket of popcorn.

            Packie suddenly rushed out into the lot. “I’ll get a rock,” he said loudly. “Two rocks.”

            Danny’s oath-ridden monologue ceased and he careened around and glared as Packie crossed to the deserty patch of palo verde lining the edge of the lot. He tried a couple of rocks but quickly tossed them back to the dirt. Eventually he found two fat water-tumbled ovoids of ancient masonry that were apparently of appropriate shape and size and walked over to Danny’s car and wedged the stones into the gaps between the rubber of the tires and the base of the concrete wheel stop. Then he walked around the front of the car, Danny following with his eyes all the while. When Packie neared the driver door, which was hanging open, he pointed inside.

            “You mind?” Packie asked.

            Danny scratched his chin. “What the fuck you want, bitch?”

            “I’ll have it over in one second,” Packie assured him. “Nice and smooth.”

            Danny waved a reluctant, bitter assent. He placed his hands on his hips and sighed.

            Packie hopped in and, not quite shutting the door but merely holding it close to being shut, slipped the car into drive and tapped the accelerator just enough for the rear wheels to clamber up onto and then over the concrete barrier. The landing was smooth and silent and Packie put it into park and hopped out.

            Danny squinted in the headlights. “What the fuck, man?”

            Packie looked at him. “What?” he asked, holding out a palm to display the vehicle.

            “How the fuck do you know how to do that,” Danny asked, “and it’s my fucking car?”

            Packie smiled. “Nice, man,” he said, nodding slowly and examining the dark sheen of the navy coat at night. “Ninety-one Jag. Ninety-two?”

            Danny frowned at him. “Ninety-one.”

            “Nice,” Packie repeated, nodding again at the car.

            Danny was again staring at him, eyes deep and face tilted slightly up. “Were you just in my fucking car?”

            Packie looked at him for a moment and then looked back at the wheel stop and the mangled fencing for a moment before looking back at Danny. “It’s not in there anymore,” he said. “I asked, too.”

            Danny shooed him away. “Get the fuck off, bro,” he said, dangling his fingers before him.

            Packie scooted a few steps back and then slowly made his way across the harsh headlights to the dock while Danny mounted his vintage chariot and slammed the door and rummaged around before producing a cigarette and lighting it.

            “See you Tuesday!” called Junior.

            The cigarette dangled from Danny’s lips in the cab while he stared through the windshield. Then he lowered the passenger window and leaned over and asked, “What?”

            “I said see you Tuesday,” Junior said.

            Danny stared at him for a moment, still leaning to see through the passenger window, and then thrust out a hand with an extended middle finger before leaning back into the driver’s seat. Then he put the car into drive and then back into park and then back into drive and then back into park. Packie had just cleared the lot when Danny accelerated out of the spot and cruised down past the restaurant and out into the one-way street without stopping to look for traffic.

            Abuse flicked a cigarette toward the ten-can of butts in the corner, missing, and its cherry shattered bits of smoldering ash over the grimy treated concrete of the dock. “Fuck it,” he proclaimed.

            Packie stamped out some of the red bits with the heel of a service clog. “Those Jags are all rear-wheel drive,” he said. Then he crossed the dock past the dumpsters and disappeared into the restaurant.

            There was stillness for a moment, interrupted only by the gentle sound of a desert breeze wafting through the palo verde.

            “I really don’t like that,” Abuse finally said.

            Junior shrugged. “It’s weird,” he admitted. “But, if having a threesome with some winos is what it takes to get him acting like a decent fellow human, then let’s support it.”

            “I’m still not convinced on the ‘fellow human’ part,” Abuse said, “before or after whatever happened to him.”

---

---

---

---