Late one evening during a surprise push that peaked just as one of the owner’s invite-only, prix-fixe dinners in the banquet room was dying down, Danny was opening a plastic sack of fresh spring mix when he discovered a praying mantis tucked silently among the leaves.

            “What’s this motherfucker doing in here?” he asked, peering skeptically into the bag.

            “What is it?” Abuse asked over sizzling pans.

            “Fucking bug-eyed bitch is what it is,” Danny said.

            “What?” Chef Jessup asked from the hot side cooler. “Boof isn’t working tonight.”

            “Oooh,” Abuse said. “Uncalled for.”

            “This ain’t Boof,” Danny said. “I know that jangly nerd from a mile away. This is a praying mantis in here with the greens.” He palmed the insect out with a gloved hand and placed it into a large ramekin and offered it to the chef.

            “No way,” Jessup said, taking the ramekin.

            “Somebody just about got sued,” Danny said, chuckling as he snapped off his gloves and tossed them into the trash can.

            “It’s just free protein,” Jessup observed.

            Abuse leaned back from the filets he was searing. “Cool,” he said. “Is it alive?”

            “Looks like he’s been through a lot,” Chef Jessup said, “but he’s still alive for sure.” Indeed, the praying mantis looked especially traumatized, only venturing to peek out with its bulbous eyes from over the lip of the dish.

            “It looks like a leaf,” Danny said, fingering around in the bag of arugula. He shook his head and dumped the greens into the trash can.

            “Why’d you toss that?” Jessup asked.

            Danny eyed him. “There was a fucking praying mantis in there.”

            “Next time,” Jessup said, “we don’t toss a three-pound bag of greens just because there’s a bug in it. Lettuce is grown in the ground, and it probably gets bugs on it. That’s why it’s triple-rinsed. Next time, we just rinse it again. Brian’s been on my ass about kitchen shrink.”

            “I’m not rinsing greens,” Danny said. “We get it pre-rinsed. Why should I have to rinse it?”

            “Because there was a bug in it,” Jessup said.

            Danny looked over at the wall for a moment. “You think that praying mantis got rinsed, too?”

            Jessup shrugged. “Yeah,” he said, “probably. Probably the cleanest praying mantis around.” He was already over at the dish station, showing the discovery to Jux.

            “Poor guy,” Jux said.

            When Jessup turned around, he saw that Tati and Packie had just entered the kitchen from the front, neglecting to call corner as they did. Jessup stashed the mantis behind a dirty saucepan and went over to them. Their eyes were both somewhat bloodshot and their skin glimmered in the cool neon ceiling lights with a patina of moisture.

            “So,” Jessup began with a hint of drawl, rubbing his hands together, “what do we think about the plantain-apricot mousse?”

            Packie, always keen on imagining himself as the restaurant’s manager even though he was most certainly not, shrugged noncommittally.

            “It overpowered me,” Tati said officially. “When I think of plantains, I think very little.”

            Everyone in the kitchen nodded in agreement until the owner found his tipsy path back out into the front of the house.

            “You all heard what I heard,” Abuse asked, “right?”

            “His comment was accurate,” the chef said, “as long as you take out that part about plantains.”

            Then Tati stumbled back into the kitchen and made as if to speak and then started examining the cleanliness of the stacked plates on the top shelf of the island.

            All activities in the kitchen—cleaning up after a fifty-seat dinner of four courses, preparing a few munchies for the next day, and popping late-night snacks into the oven—were again placed on hold contingent upon the drunk owner’s finally getting the fuck out of there for good and letting people do their jobs and enjoy the few palpable perks that the job entailed, including the preparation of exorbitant staff meals.

            “You need something, chief?” Danny asked.

            Tati blinked at him a few times and then cleared his throat. “This is my restaurant,” he said.

            “Oh yeah, for sure,” Danny said as he plated a salmon arugula salad with crispy serrano. “I’m just saying, you know, if you’re looking for something, let me know, cause I know where shit is.”

            Tati frowned at him. “Actually,” he said, “I have a question.”

            Abuse sighed as he drizzled beurre blanc onto a fresh plate.

            “Who made the Californias?” Tati asked.

            Chef Jessup, grinning, looked around the kitchen and then at the owner. “We all kind of chipped in to put those together.”

            “See,” Tati said, “they just weren’t really very authentic. They tasted good, don’t, urp, get me wrong, topped with avocados was a nice touch, and the Fresno chile oil, liked it. It just didn’t really look like the state of California.”

            “So, yeah, we were talking about this fifty states, fifty pizzas idea,” Chef Jessup said.

            “Flatbreads,” Tati corrected.

            Abuse’s tongs clicked loudly against the surface of a pan searing filet.

            “Right,” Jessup said.

            Tati was glaring at him. “What about it?”

            “We can totally do state-inspired ingredients,” Jessup said. “That’s easy. Maybe even a good idea? But, you know, making the pizzas in the shape of the states is, you know…”

            Tati stared at him. “I don’t know.”

            “It doesn’t work,” Abuse blurted. He stripped off his service gloves, tossed them into the can, and took another couple of gloves from the box. “Pizza dough is stretchy. We’re not going to be sculpting—”

            “They’re flatbreads,” Tati insisted.

            “They’re pizzas,” Abuse said, “and they’re going to be round.”

            “Our regular flatbreads aren’t round,” Tati said. “They’re ovals.”

            “I mean round edges,” Abuse said. He looked up at the ceiling and went back to the sauté.

            “If you can’t figure out how to twist the dough to make the shape, urp, exact,” Tati said, “try to get it close. Our customers, erp, have espectations.”

            “Got it, Chief,” Danny said. He pointed over at the door to the bar.

            “What?” Tati asked, squinting in that direction. “What’s over here?”

            Abuse crossed the kitchen without making a big deal of it and headed straight to Jux and nudged him. Jux hung a dripping frying pan on a hook above the middle sink and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand.

            “Come on, dude,” Abuse said. “We got to take care of some grease.”

            Jux nodded blankly and followed Abuse out of the kitchen and through the storage room to the dock.

           “Had to fucking get out of there,” Abuse muttered as he approached the dumpsters.

            Jux scrunched his brows. “Yeah,” he said, “what’s up with his passionate distaste for plantains?”

            Abuse rolled his eyes and shrugged. “What’s up with anything he does?”

            They stared at the big plastic trash bin next to the dumpster. A week before, the grease trap had overflowed. According to those who had been working that evening, it had been a disgusting mess, with thick brown goop bubbling up from the little hatches in the floor of the kitchen. Apparently it had happened far before the scheduled day on which a team of waste-disposal experts were to arrive and suck out all of the putrid oil and animal fat out of the underground vat and haul it away. Because of the significant cost associated with an emergency cleanup, even though the owner hosted 70-plus dollar-per-plate dinners that sometimes involved upwards of forty guests, he’d vetoed the idea of calling the professionals and simply told the chef to “take care of it.” Tati said he neither knew nor cared how they’d get the toxic sludge to disappear, but everyone seemed to assume that he knew exactly how it would be done and didn’t have the balls to make the executive decision. This discussion had happened in the kitchen in real time as Renzo, the dishwasher on duty that night, opened up the grease trap and scooped out bucketful after bucketful of the rotting waste, depositing it all in a big round plastic trash can that was placed on a cart and subsequently rolled outside to the dock, out of sight next to the dumpster behind a broken chair. Renzo had covered the can with a lid and taped a note to the side that read in blocky tagger script: “rĀd10 ac71v3 wĀst3.” This was what Abuse and Jux were looking at now.

            Abuse slapped a pair of plastic gloves into Jux’s hand. “You’ll want these.”

They set about shielding their hands from spillage, obviously worried that the small gloves would not really be of any use if the crap actually sloshed up at them.

            “All right,” Abuse said, sighing and placing his gloved hands on his hips as he looked at the fifty-gallon drum. “Let’s do this.”

            “Do what?” Jux asked.

            “Obliterate this shit,” Abuse said. “Walk it across the lot to its grave.”

            Jux looked down his pointy nose at Abuse. “Wait, seriously?”

            Abuse nodded in disgust.

            “I can’t believe this,” Jux said. “That fucking guy is an elected politician.” He paused. “Well, to put it that way, I guess this shouldn’t surprise me.”

            “His term limit is coming up, dude,” Abuse explained. “He can’t run for reelection.” He shrugged again. “For the record, I hate it, too.” He scooted the chair out of the way. “It was nice of them to put it on the roller, at least.” He began maneuvering it away from the wall.

            It was near midnight, so the loading area was dark except for a sliver of light coming from the storage room door. Abuse removed the lid for a moment. They couldn’t see what was in the can, but by its bulk they guessed it to be more than half full of poisonous goo. “We have to do this really carefully,” Abuse said, putting the lid back in place. “It’s got to go down that slope. Once we’re in the parking lot it should be pretty easy.”

            “Slow and steady,” Jux said in agreement.

            “And then when we go up the dirt over there,” Abuse continued. “Same thing. Slow and steady, indeed.”

            They positioned themselves on either side of the can and eased it down the shallow ramp and through the gate. The biohazardous sludge sloshed noisily around as they guided the can to a stop in the parking lot. Jux apparently couldn’t help himself, so he took the opportunity to open up one side of the lid and lean in for a whiff. He immediately felt queasy.

            “Don’t smell it,” Abuse said.

            “It’s so tempting to just stick my face in there,” Jux responded.

            Once they had made it across the parking lot, they steadied the can and took another moment to examine the material in the in the light of a streetlamp. It was various in texture, in some places frothy and whitish and in others dark brown and oily.

            “Okay,” Abuse said, glancing about the lot. On one side was the five-story Amoebius PhLoft building, at the base of which sat the posh wine and cheese restaurant. The other side was bordered by a vacant patch of land that was fenced off and obscured by a canvas-like material.

Jux pointed to the far corner of the lot by the fence. “Over there somewhere?”

            Abuse nodded. “There are some bushes and… fuck I hate this shit,” he said. “Did I tell you that I almost walked out the other day?”

            Jux nodded. “That wasn’t about this, though, right?”

            “It was because Brian was drunk and high, talking about how he was going to make the kitchen more efficient by having us all wear tracking buttons,” Abuse said.

            Jux moaned. “I didn’t hear about that.”

            “Now he claims he didn’t even propose it,” Abuse said as he repositioned the massive can of sludge. “Fucker is a liar, if you haven’t already figured that out.”

            They rolled the bulky can up onto a gravelly berm, outside of the glare of the lamps, under the cover of night, scanning about like thieves.

            “This is some shady shit,” Jux muttered as he shouldered in.

            “Fucking criminal,” Abuse said, leaning down to remove a stone that was impeding the progress of the circular cart upon which the big vat of shit was positioned. Eventually they got it up onto the rise.

            “See that right there?” Abuse asked. “That’s the storm drain.”

            “We’re dumping this in a storm drain?” Jux cried.

            “We never did this,” Abuse said. “Not before, and not now. Definitely not now.”

            Jux was wincing at the dark orifice in the ground. “Does this, like, connect to the sewer or…”

            Abuse glanced about a bit. “I think it’s a storm drain.”

            Jux eyed him. “Probably all ends up in the water anyway, right?”

            Abuse shrugged. “Maybe it’s separate pipes.”

            “What do you mean ‘separate pipes?’” Jux cried.

            Abuse motioned at the ground. “Separate pipes,” he said. “If it’s a storm drain, it’s not going right into sewer. Is it?”

            Jux inhaled slowly and looked around. “Fucking plumbing,” he muttered.

            Abuse sighed and nodded his head in agreement.

            “Does that make it better?” Jux asked, face tilted down but nonetheless looking up across the lights of the downtown skyline against the darkness.

            Abuse tilted his head. “You mean shitting it down this hole?”

            “You fucking know that’s what I mean,” Jux said.

            “Tati’s pipes don’t handle this kind of grease,” Abuse said. “No restaurant’s pipes do. That’s why they call in waste removal services. It doesn’t matter where this shit goes—into the sewer, over a cement waterfall onto a drainage ditch along the highway, straight into the fryers over there at Pasta Works—wherever it goes, it wasn’t supposed to go there, because it was supposed to be taken out by a licensed waste removal service. And that’s not what this is.” He stomped a heel against the dusty berm.

            “That bastard should have to do this himself,” Jux said. “Fucking asshole. This goes against everything I believe in.”

            “I’m telling you,” Abuse said, “I won’t care if you walk the fuck out of there whenever you want. I’m totally going to support any decision you make along those lines.”

            “If this happens again,” Jux said, “I will not only quit on the spot, but I will report this fucking restaurant to the muthafukkin E-P-A.”

            “Fucking-A, dude,” Abuse said. “For what it’s worth, nobody knows we’re the ones taking care of the problem right now.”

            Jux stared at him in the darkness. “What?” he whispered. “Seriously?”

            “This can’t sit at the dock forever,” Abuse said. He then tilted his head. “Well, it could…”

            “Can’t we just roll it back down, then?” Jux asked.

            Abuse looked over at the swamp of oblivion that was the storm drain. “We could,” he admitted, “put it back right where it was. But that wouldn’t change anything. Almo will probably end up having to do it in the morning.”

            Jux sighed and looked back down at the dark recession, where something metallic seemed to be glinting from one of the parking lot lamps. “I don’t think I’m prepared to call the EPA right now.”

            “I didn’t mention it before,” Abuse said, “but it would be the city hotline, not the EPA. That you would call.”

            “Okay, I get it,” Jux said, staring into the darkness. “I guess I just don’t want to involve the authorities.”

            Abuse sighed and glanced at the drum of fatty refuse. “I know what you mean.”

            “If it gets out that I had anything to do with a slop dump like this,” Jux whispered with a glance around at the dark alleys, “it’ll kill my cred in academia.”

            Abuse chuckled. “I hate macadamia nuts,” he said. He briefly pantomimed vomiting.

            “Fuck me,” Jux said, again looking down into the oblivious, shimmering drain aperture. “Let’s just do it, then. What do we do?”

            “I think that when we tip this thing we have to immediately get out of the way,” Abuse said. “Don’t, you know, try to pour it. Let’s just tip the thing into the ditch and jump back.”

            Jux nodded and scratched his forehead.

            “Then we get down there for the can,” Abuse continued. “Dump what’s left and bring it back. You ready?”

            “Will it be able to hear?” Jux asked, fingertips searching the rim of the container.

            Abuse, also finding a grip on the lid of the container, glanced furiously at him. “It?” he asked. “What’s ‘It?’”

            Jux was hyperventilating. “The…” he managed. “The…”

            Then Jux initiated the toppling. He shot a couple of back-and-forth looks between Abuse and the can and the maw of the drain and then tugged at his side of the can until with the agitation of the liquid Abuse knew that he had to either commit or default, and, in defaulting, there would possibly be a spillage and then there might not be any going back at all so Abuse helped with the push and they heaved the heavy can over.

            The rollers immediately shot out from underneath and they hopped out of the way as the can capsized, spilling its rotten guts into the ditch to sluice along with moldering branches and clusters of gravel down into the recession of the storm drain’s grate. After a moment of gushing spew, they leaned in and upended the can, emptying it as much as they could.

            The deed was done. They set the empty container back on the cart and wheeled it back across the lot, happy that, at least, they hadn’t gotten their hands dirty.

            They rolled the container back where they’d found it by the dumpster, peeled off their gloves, and lit up smokes. They talked about other things—plans for after work, the ins and outs of the kitchen, the owner’s bullshit. They didn’t talk about what they’d done.

            After they’d tossed their flaming butts at the ashtray in the corner, they went back into the kitchen to wash their hands and get back to work. Tati and Packie had just left, and everyone was bitching about how they were assholes.

            “Guy owns a gourmet restaurant,” Jessup said. “You’d think he’d have a decent palate.”

            “I got some clippers at home,” Danny said. “You think I’d get in trouble if I brought them in and shaved off Packie’s dick hair?”

            “That might have a lot to do whether you mean the hair on his dick or the dick hair on his head,” the chef posited.

            Danny shrugged and then held the ramekin up. “So what should we do with our little friend?”

            “Say hello to my little friend,” the chef said as he performed an impressive toss of sautéing scallops in a pan.

            Abuse dried his hands with six paper towels. “Let’s put him out front in one of the planters.” Then he yanked several more from the dispenser and waited to offer them as Jux washed his hands. “Pretend like everything is okay. Natural environment and all that.”

            “That’s a good idea,” Chef Jessup said, dishing the scallops out onto little plates.

            “Oh,” Danny said eagerly, “I think I figured out how to make the California pizzas come out so that they don’t just look like big-ass limp dicks.”

            “That’s not interesting to me,” Abuse said. He took the ramekin and escorted the praying mantis through the busy dining area and walked out onto the front patio, where a few small trees in earthen planters lined the outside seating area. Abuse gently scooped the ailing insect out of the tiny bowl and placed it at the base of a tree.

            “Home sweet home,” Abuse cooed. “Don’t you go and die now, little fucker.”

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