One weekday afternoon when the lunch crew was in the process of switching out the stations for evening service, Almo “disappeared” again. Concepción was wrapping up the rest of the containers on the cold side and Renzo was spraying water down along the sides of the right sink when Abuse arrived and greeted them. Concepción smiled and Renzo saluted Abuse with two fingers. Then Abuse looked at the sauté side and sighed.
“Where is he?” Abuse asked.
Concepción smiled at him and looked over at the entrance to the front.
Abuse nodded and grunted and walked to the prep table to hook his phone up to the stereo. While he was deciding on an appropriate selection of tracks with which to begin his shift, there was a single, powerful, deep thump from the other side of the wall that rattled the knife rack mounted on the paneling. Abuse looked up at the ceiling and then back at Concepción, who was smiling and looking down at her work. Abuse then looked at Renzo, who nodded.
“Deuce,” Renzo said.
Abuse sighed again and took one of the clipboards from the rack next to the stereo. “I’m going to call in the order,” he said. “Anything else I need to add to this?”
Concepción shook her head.
Abuse went out into the storage room, where he rummaged around in his bag until he found his pack of cigarettes. Then he went out back to call the order in to the distributer. A few minutes later, when he reentered the kitchen, Almo was washing his hands in the sink by the front entrance.
“I trust everything landed where it was intended,” Abuse said.
Almo looked at him strangely. “What are you talking about?”
Abuse thumbed at the wall. “We heard a pretty loud thump a few minutes ago,” he said, “from the other side of this wall.”
“That wasn’t me,” Almo protested, drying his hands with paper towels. “I went out front to call my uncle.”
“Yes,” Abuse said, nodding as he started washing his own hands. “That’s not an expression I’ve heard used.”
Renzo was beaming as he rubbed a dirty spot off of a plate before sliding it up onto the rack with the other clean ones.
Almo smiled and shook a finger first at Abuse and then at Renzo. “Don’t you team up on me, now,” he said. “I swear, I was out front on the phone. I didn’t take no shit. Oh, no.”
“You know, it’s okay to take a shit,” Abuse reassured him. “In fact, not shitting is pretty bad for you.”
Almo was grinning. “I told you I didn’t take no shit.”
“All right,” Abuse said. “Anything I need to know?”
“Drain’s backing up again,” Renzo said with a nod down at the floor sink below the dishpit.
Abuse sighed. “Goddamn it.”
“Tree roots,” Almo said.
Abuse held out a hand. “Stop,” he said. “I haven’t got time for this mickeymouse bullshit. I need to know what the line looks like. We eighty-six on anything?” He opened the cooler beneath the hot side and started digging around while Almo lurked near the corkboard, pretending to study the schedule. Then Abuse pulled a vat of pink liquid out of the cooler and set it on the cutting board and turned to Almo. “Almo,” he asked, “what is this?”
Almo glanced distractedly at him. “Huh?” he asked. “What? Oh, that? I was just looking to see when I work next.”
“You work the same schedule every week,” Abuse said. “Why is there a tub of pink juice in the fridge?”
Concepción was smiling as she minced garlic at the cold side.
Almo looked woundedly at Abuse. “Why do you automatically think I know?”
“Because you ran the hot side this morning,” Abuse said, “and whenever there’s random shit in the cooler, you had something to do with it.”
“Agua de sandia,” Concepción offered. “Watermelon drink.”
Abuse nodded. “Thank you, Concy,” he said. Then he looked back at Almo.
“What?” Almo cried. “We got to stay hydrated.”
Abuse tapped the side of the plastic container. “Take it away,” he said. “I won’t be running service back here tonight with that taking up all the space in there.”
“I didn’t make it,” Almo protested.
“Right,” Abuse said as he studied the various steel ninth pans arranged in the open cooler next to the cutting board, “just like you didn’t take a shit.”
“He made it,” Concepción said.
“I know,” Abuse said. “Of course he did.”
“I didn’t take no shit, either,” Almo continued. “This is the kind of shit you and Brian, and Packie, and Kieran, all of them, are trying to pull on me. Those watermelons were going bad anyway. No way they would last until Saturday.”
Abuse plucked one of the ninth pans from the rack, tore off the plastic service wrap, and gave it a sniff before wincing and dumping the contents in the can next to the island. “You know, I’m curious,” he said. “Why is it that people are flushing that toilet twenty or thirty times a day, sometimes more, and the only time the fucking wall shakes is when you flush it? Are your dumps that massive?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, man,” Almo claimed.
Abuse shook his head.
“Four times,” Concepción added with a sidelong smile at Abuse. “This morning.”
“Four times?” cried Abuse with a stare at Almo, who was looking with terror at Concepción.
“Five,” Renzo added, “if you count that last one.”
“Christ on a crutch,” muttered Abuse. “Is this watermelon beverage a laxative?”
Almo waggled a finger at him. “Oh, no,” he said. “That’s just an old wives’ tale.”
“Who else drinks it?” asked Abuse.
“Just Almo,” Renzo said as he scrubbed at a batch of ramekins.
“That’s not true,” Almo said. “Teatree had some. I didn’t have none of it.”
“He was drinking it all morning,” Concepción said. “Teatree didn’t like it.”
Abuse shot Almo a look of admonishment.
Almo scratched his chin. “Nobody believes me.”
“It’s because you’re obviously lying, and about dumb stuff,” Abuse said. “I don’t care if you want to make watermelon agua fresca up in here, but it can’t take up space in my cooler when I’m taking over the line. That’s all. You don’t have to be defensive.”
“I do because you’re attacking me,” Almo said.
Abuse clutched his forehead. “For what it’s worth,” he said, “it looks to me like you did a great job setting up for dinner, so thank you.”
Almo shrugged and turned back to the corkboard to pretend to study the schedule.
“But can you please get this tub out of here?” Abuse asked.
“Sure thing,” Almo said. He picked up the bulky tub and walked over to the dishpit, but Renzo promptly shook his head and directed Almo to the floor sink in the back room near the mops. Moments later, there was the sound of cascading liquid and then Almo returned and placed the container on the dish station. “Look, I got to go call my kids,” he announced.
They all looked at him as he left the kitchen by way of the bar exit.
“Deuce number six,” Renzo predicted.
Sure enough, about four minutes later, there sounded another massive thump that shook the wall adjacent to the prep table.
“Goddamn,” Abuse muttered.
“Called it,” Renzo said as he swabbed the plastic container with a soapy sponge.
“That you did, sir,” Abuse admitted. “That you did.”
Renzo tilted his head. “He’s going to have come up with something else, now.”
A whisper of greens against the side of a mixing bowl accompanied Concepción’s preparation of a salad.
Abuse sighed and closed his eyes.
“I hope Tati doesn’t fuck him over,” Renzo said.
The wall boomed again. Another flush.
Abuse threw up his hands. “Everything is meaningless,” he announced.
What the Sommelier Says…
“We had to shut down the restrooms for three weeks a few years ago because we had a short-term chef who died in one of the stalls. No joke. That’s why he was short-term: he died in the restroom. They said it was a heart attack, but I’m not so sure, because he had been experimenting with espresso tarts long before he came here, I heard. It was terrible. For weeks, people were pissing out their wine in the alley, and some of them didn’t follow instructions and ended up wandering in the park over the tunnel and never came back. Didn’t even close up their tabs.”
-Kieran
Tati's Wine and Spirits 