Affidavit
Jux sucked at the straw of his Styrofoam service cup of energy juice as he settled into the passenger seat of Chef Junior’s extended-cab utility pickup. The interior smelled like treated leather and burned-out canisters of low-grade chafing fuel.
“The bank’s just up on 8th Avenue,” Chef Junior said as he scooted into the driver’s seat and secured the door. A cream folder containing several sheets of paper went up onto the dashboard with a thuck.
“Fucking Tati,” Jux grumbled.
“Won’t take long,” Junior assured him. He fired up the engine and the truck squealed erratically out of the parking lot onto Main.
Jux watched the front of the restaurant and the nearby light rail stop fade into the distance. “But I don’t want to sign for this.”
“Bro,” Chef Junior said as he maneuvered the pickup around a slow sedan, “you wouldn’t be along if you weren’t prepared to sign for Tati. Right?”
“I’m not signing for Tati,” Jux said.
“Tati is literally the only person you’d be signing it for,” Chef Junior said.
Jux scratched a thumbnail into a little face on the surface of the Styrofoam cup. Nothing fancy; just two vertical lines for eyes and a thin inverse parabola underneath for the smile. “Tati and his fucking mindgames,” he muttered.
“Come on,” Junior said. “You’re the one who volunteered.”
“He asked if I was working the day Danny left, and then, when I told him that I was, he asked me to go with you to the bank to verify something,” Jux said. “I just thought it was going to be some on-the-clock time outside of the restaurant, you know, with a little stop at Filiberto’s maybe on the agenda for the way back. That kind of thing. Now I find out its, what?”
Junior maneuvered the truck down a one-way side street before mounting the freeway. “What?”
“That’s what I’m asking,” Jux said. “I don’t understand why Tati can’t just sign it himself. I mean, is it legal for me to sign for him? I’m not supposed to sign his actual name, am I?”
Junior took his attention from the rear-view mirror to roll his eyes. “You’re not signing his name, Professor,” he said. “You’re signing your name.”
Jux fingernailed a thin little U into the Styrofoam under the left side of the mouth groove. “Good,” he said. “What even is it?”
“This,” Junior said as he directed the truck over the curb into a strip-mall parking lot, “is a bank.”
“I mean this fucking document,” Jux said.
“It’s an affidavit that says you witnessed Danny walk out of the restaurant that day,” Junior explained.
Jux’s eyes widened. “Wait,” he said. “I’m the only one signing?”
Junior slid the folder off the dash and got out of the truck. “Juniper said she wouldn’t sign.” He shut the driver door.
Jux unbuckled his belt and hopped out. When he got around to the tailgate, he thumbed in the general direction of the restaurant. “Juniper,” he asked, “won’t sign this?”
Junior shook his head. “She says she wouldn’t ever sign something for Tati.”
Jux sighed. “Goddamn.”
“Just you and her in there when he walked out,” Junior noted.
“She,” Jux said.
Chef Junior shot a confused look over at the tire of a nearby car. He let out a little chuckle. “I don’t get it.”
“Well, wouldn’t it be ‘she?’” Jux asked. “Like ‘You and she were in there?’ What is that… it’s a pronoun thing, isn’t it?”
“You tell me,” Junior cried. “You’re the English professor. Are we not talking about grammar here?”
Jux waved a hand in the air. “Pft, grammar,” he said. “Grammar is for prescriptivist fascists.”
Junior held up the folder. “Brian is a liberal,” he reminded Jux.
“Neoliberal,” Jux said. “Pro-business, fiscal small government patriot, ex-Republican who switched parties because of the district he was in and because he was sick of his colleagues harassing him because he’s gay. Oh God, why does it have to be so complicated?”
“What, life?” asked Junior.
Jux made a sour face. “Not life,” he said, glancing over at a Burger King sign shimmering in the light of the setting sun near the intersection. “Just, you know, being involved in this restaurant.”
“Being involved?” asked Junior.
“You know,” Jux said with a flick of a hand at the purpling sky almost opposite the sunset, “more than just occasionally hanging around the bar and maybe get a little freebie from Kieran while I waited to pick up Abuse after his shift so we could go to Gloomy’s or something. I always used to think this place was some pretentious wannabe owned by a rich asshole who was just too restless outside of his businesses that run themselves and never thought of the restaurant as anything more than a way he could eat food and drink wine.” Jux shook his head.
Junior nodded. “Doesn’t that sound accurate to you?”
“Maybe,” Jux allowed. “I just feel like, I don’t know, like as soon as I started actually working at Tati’s, everything in my life has been more complicated. Don’t get me wrong; I’ve had shitty jobs, and even the ones that paid well enough to get me some extra stuffing here and there weren’t as, like, fun and interesting as this one. I’m learning a lot here. But there’s also this fucking shroud that’s descended. Over everything. It’s mostly translucent, but it’s there. Fishnet shit.”
Junior’s nose was turned up as if at a scent. “Fishnet?”
“Agh, not fishnet!” Jux cried. “Too complicated!”
Junior was scanning the parking lot. The parked vehicles and cement curbs seemed to be in suspension, but there was a woman and man crossing the intersection over there so time wasn’t actually stopped. “You were talking about a shroud over reality,” Junior said as he turned back to Jux. “A shroud over reality that you just said—you just said—‘descends’ over you when you start working at Tati’s.”
“So?” Jux asked.
“Is this shroud something that you think everyone experiences when they start working at Tati’s?” the chef asked.
Jux shrugged.
“And that’s because you’re new to this industry,” Junior explained. “That shit you described, accurately, more or less, hate to admit, yes, that isn’t Tati’s. Not in particular. That’s the nature of the industry. It’s basically a retard spectrum, if you’ll permit my politically-incorrect, uh…”
“Metaphor?” Jux offered. “Analogy? Is that where this is going?”
Junior snapped his fingers into a point at Jux. “Metaphor,” he said, nodding. “I don’t know if it’s a metaphor or not, so I’m going to defer to you on this one.”
Jux hung his head. “I can’t determine if it’s just a metaphor or some kind of more complicated conceptual relationship, you know, bordering on analogy,” he said, “unless you keep going with it. And, if you keep going with it, I’m going to have to address the connotative implications of the usage according to the logic of your analogy—”
Junior jiggled the folder. “The bank is closing in fifteen minutes,” he said. “Let’s be ‘those assholes’ as far away from closing time as possible.”
“But I don’t even know what actually happened with Danny,” Jux protested.
The patches of concrete leading up to the bank’s entrance were speckled with large curves of river rocks and the rakes on the surface of the binding cement were worn down from years of trodding soles.
“Danny quit without notice,” Junior snapped as he shifted his bulk into a passing jab of the elbow with a purposeful miss. “He says Tati fired him, Tati says he quit before he was fired.” He shook his head and paused before the bank’s entrance.
Jux was examining a cluster of crumpled, weathered, discarded plastic bottles that had collected at the base of a succulent planted along the walkway in one of the open squares of arid dirt accoutred by phallic drip nozzles erected through the ground from the sprinkler system.
“But then he quit,” Junior said after a quick glance back at the lot. “He didn’t finish his shift.”
Jux clapped his forehead. “I just saw him all pissed off,” he said. “He said he quit and then said he was coming back next Friday to pick up his last paycheck. Why are we going to a bank?”
“Because this is where the notary is,” Junior said, jiggling the cream folder containing the papers of the affidavit.
“Is this about benefits?” Jux asked, cringing out at the row of vehicles stationed in the lot. “This is probably about benefits or some stupid shit like that.”
Junior motioned at the rail handles of the doors of the bank. “You waited until we’re right fucking here to ask me this?”
Jux stared at chef.
Junior was gripping the folder across his palm as he pressed it into his forehead and stared bravely out above the eaves of the surrounding strip malls.
Jux looked away.
“Danny,” Chef Junior articulated as he stripped the affidavit folder from his sweaty brow, “wants to sue for unlawful termination. Not just extension of benefits for six months, but six weeks of pay.” He gently flapped the folder in the breeze to dry it in the sun.
Jux frowned. “Is that how it works?”
Junior tilted his head to enhance his look at the folder he was waving around in the warm air. “This’ll be dry in two minutes.”
“Not the folder,” Jux said. “If you get fired for no reason as a part-time employee, you can get that kind of space?”
Junior shook his head. “You mean,” he suggested, “space up from the working class?”
Jux inhaled deeply. “Just because I talk about socialist stuff sometimes doesn’t mean I’m always keen on examining the various devious ways people are purported to have been mooching off of a system that essentially exploits them for their labor. That’s the time of one’s life.”
Junior leaned over and looked down his nose at the sun-warmed skillet of folder. “This bad boy is done,” he said, flicking something from the cover. “All I know is that if Danny manages to get this to court, he’s going to be immediately rejected.”
Jux was rubbing his forehead. “So,” he began, “did he do it or not?”
“Who?” whispered Junior.
“Danny,” Jux said. “Did he do it?”
Junior stared at him. “Do what?”
Jux casually swept his fingertips back against the folder in the chef’s grip. “It,” Jux insisted. “Whatever that thing is I’m supposed to sign. ‘Affidavit.’”
Junior looked down for a moment at the discolored amoebas of moisture on the surface of the folder. “I think,” he said, “it’s just basically that Danny is trying some shit to get money he knows he doesn’t deserve, since he literally walked out of the job, and he also knows he can’t and won’t get anyway.”
Jux was shaking his head. “Yeah,” he said, raising a pleading palm, “but why wouldn’t he be able to get his compensation?”
Junior threw up his hands. “Of course Tati isn’t going to want to pay that,” he cried. “Why do you think he commanded me to drag you out here for this? If we don’t get this statement signed, he’ll be all over my ass for the rest of time. It doesn’t—”
“Statement?” Jux whispered. “What statement?”
Junior held up the folder. “This one,” he said. “The affidavit.”
“What the fuck is an ‘affidavit?’” Jux cried. Crying a lot, but it was fake and he quickly sucked it all back up and looked with disgust out at the clogged intersection sweltering with the radiation of two hundred commuter vehicles humming away in idle.
“So?” Junior asked. “Can we just go in there now?”
Gloomy’s
“Why is it that working for this fucking guy ends up getting me to compromise on my principles?” Jux pondered over a tall gin and tonic as soon as he and Abuse and Ogre and Luna had settled around a refuse-laden circular high-top on the patio.
“Brian?” Luna chuckled through the lighting of a cigarette with her eyes at Abuse. “Principles?”
Ogre grinned over his own unlit cigarette. “Yeah,” he fielded. “What ‘principles’ are we talking about here, exactly?”
“That again,” Jux muttered.
“It’s you who’s been giving all the talk about principles, like other people don’t have principles, and no matter what anyone says, you just shut them down,” Ogre said. He shook his head and lit the cigarette. He leaned back to exhale a column of smoke into the stratosphere of the patio.
Abuse, who had paused his search for something on his phone’s screen to look over, said, “Getting into it pretty quick there, aren’t we?”
Ogre rolled the butt of the smoldering cigarette between his fingers.
“Ok, in this case,” Jux said, getting up from the tall stool and clapping his drink, straw fingerbended down, “I mean, the guy’s some dipshit with means and ambition. The only working he does is occasionally calling people to harass them—”
“Not his employees, though,” Luna interrupted with a quick tap of her cigarette against a relatively un-buttful curve of one of the table’s ashtrays. “He doesn’t call them himself. Ever. Unless it’s Kieran, maybe.”
“Packie,” Jux offered.
Abuse was swiping away at the screen of his phone. “Not Packie.”
“Not unless it’s an emergency or something,” Luna chuckled. Her hand vibrated before them in the light of the patio flood. “Someone tuck me in.”
Ogre slapped the table. “See?” he cried. “Here we go again.”
“All right, but fuck Packie,” Jux said. “You know what? I think actually no, not ‘fuck Packie,’ or, at least, ‘fuck Packie’ only in that it is relevant to that fucking darkness.”
“Just what the hell does that mean?” Ogre asked.
“Junior’s right,” Abuse said with chagrin as he appeared to locate something on his phone and show it to Luna.
“That one,” Luna said.
Abuse did a little dance at the smile and immediately went back to fingering the phone.
Jux was staring at him. “Right about what?”
“You always feel some extra dark shit in the hospitality industry,” Abuse said as he unzipped his backpack. He fished out a log of a speaker along with a couple of cables.
“What are you doing?” Jux asked.
“I,” Abuse said, “am going to turn this dive bar patio into a fucking mosh pit. First, however, I think you need to come clean. Did you sign it or not?”
Conundrum
DID JUX SIGN IT?
NO (deeply-ever-deepening shroud; +1 Chef Cred, +2 Maverick, -1 Autodidact)— I didn’t even walk in there because I’m resisting Tati’s sphere of influence from now on.
NO (deeply-ever-deepening shroud; +2 Maverick, +1 Autodidact)—I walked in, took a look at the lobby, and walked right the fuck out because I’m resisting Tati’s sphere of influence from now on.
NO (deepening shroud)—I was going to, but the bank’s notary was already gone for the day.
NO (ever-deepening shroud)—I had a borderline panic attack at the counter and they kicked us out.
NO (deepening shroud; +1 Chef Cred)—I had a borderline panic attack at the counter but Junior shut the whole thing down and got me out of there.
NO (deepening shroud; +2 Chef Cred)—I had a borderline panic attack at the counter and Junior waited until I was crying before shuffling me out the door.
YES (deepening shroud, +1 Chef Cred, -1 Back Bone)—I signed it. I told Junior, “There’s something I can’t fight about Tati’s sphere of influence, and I think it has something to do with the restaurant.”
YES (deepening shroud, +1 Chef Cred, -1 Back Bone)—I signed it. I told Junior, “There’s something I can’t fight about Tati’s sphere of influence, and I think it has something to do with his litigious nature. I am not fucking with that.”
YES (no shroud effect change; -1 Chef Cred, +1 Maverick, -2 Back Bone)—I signed it because it was a pretty fucking simple statement to confirm. I did watch Danny walk out.
YES (no shroud effect change; -1 Maverick, -1 Back Bone, +1 Chef Cred, +1 Tool)—I did sign it, yes. Chef asked me to, well, he didn’t explicitly ask, but he was asking and I complied. Why not.
YES (dissipating shroud; +2 Maverick, -1 Future, -1 Head Level, +1 Chef Cred, +15 Legacy)—I scribbled something, but only after giving the teller dude a long, meaningful stare that ended with him finalizing the notary transaction in some kind of “off the books” kind of thing that will have no legal bearing at all in the end.
YES (perfect shroud initiated; +3 Maverick, -2 Head Level, -2 Future, +1 Chef Cred, -1 Knife Handling, -1 Lizardoes, +2 Amoebius PhLoft, +15 Legacy)—I signed Brian Tati’s name after telling the teller that Brian Tati was me and that he should fucking know that and that I am a respected member of the community and built all this shit you see around you right straight up from the waterless fucking ground.
What the Sommelier Says…
“You have met Brian, right? He’s a sweet and compassionate guy sometimes, but, let’s be honest, he’s really just mostly selfish and self-conscious, which makes him come off as an asshole, be an asshole, all that. Typical stuff. Where Brian’s different is in the way his brand still manages to entice people.”
-Kieran
Tati's Wine and Spirits 