Beaten, Seared, and Sauced (28 page)

The evening was busy, but not so busy I ever felt the weeds growing
up around my ankles. Busy enough for someone working the station for the first time to need to push themselves a little faster than they normally operated. The area around the fryer looked bollixed up: small pools of spilled batter, drifts of flour, a scattering of rings that had lost their coating or tanned too much. Ty and Chris came by a few times to tell me to get the area tight. But service went smoothly; Ty never asked for anything to be refired, he had no complaints, and didn’t have to wait very long between when the order was called and when the rings went out. At the end of night, he took me aside and, for the first and only time, gave me a compliment. “You did a really nice job tonight,” he said. He clapped my shoulder. “Keep it up.”

I kept it up. At least, for the most part. One night, I made my onion ring batter too thin, and the rings emerged from the oil denuded of coating, greasy and shriveled. Ty kept asking me to refire them and soon enough, I was way behind. I got sloppy behind the pressure, and the station disintegrated into chaos and litter.

But I kept it up.

One afternoon, the cooks pulled all the vessels out of the ice bath, added more ice, and topped it off with water. Someone was leaving Tabla to go work elsewhere, and he was being dunked into the ice bath on his last day. When the departing cook was coming back into the kitchen after family meal, the rest of them pounced. Two people had him by each arm; two had one leg. The other leg flailed as they carried him through the kitchen, knocking a pan onto the floor, kicking utensils across the top of a workstation. They got him to the ice bath and heaved him in. He rose up shrieking, streaming with frigid water, pink skin showing through his soaked white jacket. Everyone laughed and he started laughing too, and someone dunked a bain-marie into the bath, filled it with more water, and upended it over his head.

Ty and I stood a few feet off, just on the periphery of a puddle of water and ice. Ty asked if I’d ever seen that done before and I told him I hadn’t.

“It’s a tradition,” he said. “And it’s a sign of respect. They do this to you when you leave if they respect you.”

A
UGUST FADED TO
S
EPTEMBER
, and the nights began turning cooler. My stint at Tabla was winding down. My samosas were still terrible, but I had a solid handle on the amuse-bouche station and had the Bread Bar prep down to second nature.

On an early September afternoon, Dwayne was standing next to me while I trimmed tendons from pieces of chicken, trying to explain why football was worth watching. “It’s about the strategy,” he said. “Every player has a function, every player has a purpose and it’s a matter of—”

“Jonathan,” Cardoz said, stopping as he passed by. “I’d like to see you in my office.” He turned and walked from the kitchen, pausing at one of the steam kettles to check the progress of a saag paneer sauce I had going.

“Go ahead,” Dwayne said. “I’ll cover this.”

I pulled the latex gloves off my hands and tossed them in the garbage, untied my apron, and tucked it onto a shelf underneath the work area. I had no idea what he wanted, but figured maybe this was about training someone to take over my spot when I left. I walked up to Cardoz where he stood at the kettle.

“Okay, come on,” he said, leading me out of the kitchen and signaling Ty as we walked. Ty followed behind.

Cardoz opened his office door and sat down, motioning for me to take the seat across from him. Ty took the seat nearest the door. His eyes seemed to run over the spines of the cookbooks lining Cardoz’s wall.

“I had something I wanted to say,” Cardoz began. “I think it’s time for you to consider other career options, because this one is obviously not working out for you.”

I looked over at Ty, but he didn’t meet my gaze. He stared at his hands. I looked back to Cardoz. His face was neutral and he held eye contact with me.

I felt dazed.

“Wow,” I said. I started picking at the cuticle on my index finger. I didn’t look up. I began to experience a sense of foundering, of sinking and shrinking and cracking apart. My stomach began to bleed out small, burning nauseas, and I could perceive my pulse quickening. Cardoz was still looking directly at me. “Wow,” I said again. “I guess there’s no sugarcoating anything for me today.” I laughed a little and looked at my feet. My eyes had a sensation of swelling in their sockets. I could hear the whirring of the fan on the computer and the chair creak as Cardoz repositioned. I looked up and he was still staring. I held my hands out, palms up, and shrugged. I put my hands in my lap and looked back at him, waiting for him to continue. I hoped my eyes weren’t reddening.

“There are a lot of people with less ability than you who are able to pick things up a lot faster. You just aren’t getting it.”

I reflected on the work I’d done recently, banging out the Bread Bar cooking, working the bouche station. Cardoz kept talking, but the words never reached my ears. For two minutes, I sat watching the screen saver on his computer cycle through its geometric permutations. And I noticed that there was a photo right above Cardoz’s head of him and Martha Stewart.

I came back to the moment as he was saying, “I’m not firing you. But right here, right now, if I don’t see more effort on your part … so that’s it, plain and simple.” He paused. “Do you have any questions?”

“No, I don’t.”

“You understand why I’m telling you what I’m telling you?”

I smiled. It was completely fake. “Sure.”

“No, I need you to tell me you understand.”

I looked again at Ty, who looked at me for the first time but then turned his head away.

“Yeah, I understand. Thank you for your honesty.” I stood up. “Okay. I better get back to the chicken.”

I got back to my station and it was clean. Akhil walked by and said, “Dwayne put the chicken into the walk-in for you.”

I went back to the walk-in and stood leaning against the wall with my head down. I ran through all the progress I’d made, all the days cooking as fast and as hard as I could, the nights at the fryer. At that moment, that precise second, I gave up.

Other than for professional reasons, I didn’t speak to Ty or Cardoz for weeks, and when I did, it was strictly kitchen business. I kept my head down, shift after shift, face angled into the steam of the kettles and skillet, or focused entirely on my cutting board, trying to work as hermetically as I could.

I confided in Dwayne. As he was taking an inventory in the Bread Bar’s walk-in one evening after service I finally told him about the meeting with Ty and Cardoz. I’d held off for a few weeks because I had difficulty getting my mind to process it. He leaned back against the wall, the two of us standing in the deep chill under a few bare bulbs, and he just shook his head. “I’m guessing that’s their interpretation of a motivational speech,” he said.

“Am I that incompetent? You can tell me. Seriously.”

“No. No, you are not incompetent. Do I wish you were just a little bit faster? Sure. You’re new to this, though. I’ve watched you since you came here. You didn’t know what the hell you were doing. Scrambling around, one hand not knowing what the other was doing. It took you ninety hours to get that list done. But here you are. You’ve made huge, huge steps. You’re on your way.

“You’re not ever going to get positive reinforcement here. You’re as good as your last service. Doesn’t matter what came before. They’re not ever going to tell you you’ve done a good job. It’s always going to be, ‘what have you done for me lately?’ But on your last day, which is coming up, they’re going to take you aside and tell you what a great job you did. Watch. And, by the way, you might want to start bringing in a few changes of underwear to keep around. It really sucks to come out of that ice bath and not have anything to change into. They’ll probably do a couple test runs on you, too. Be forewarned.”

Nelly and I had arranged for someone to sublet our apartment so
we could save some money on rent for a couple of months. The subletter would be moving in a couple days after my externship at Tabla concluded. One night, I sat in the window with a beer and was going over the calendar, trying to figure out when we could get a cleaner in for a few hours to give the apartment floors and walls a good scrub. The CIA’s externship program requires the externship to last 126 days. I was scheduled to do my last day at Tabla on October 10. I counted backward. October 10 meant I would have worked 127 days at the restaurant.
No, uh-uh
, I thought.
They cannot have one more day from me than I need to give them
.

Ty and Cardoz were on a business trip during my last week. They’d be returning two days before I left. Chris was in charge of scheduling. I told him that I needed to make a change to the staff calendar, that Friday the ninth, not Saturday the tenth, would have to be my last day. It took some cajoling, but he finally agreed and made the switch. Someone else had asked if he could pick up a few more hours, so Chris gave him my Saturday slot. In my gut, I knew this was a shit thing to do, with both Ty and Cardoz away, but it was hard to shake how angry, how bereft, I felt after Cardoz’s talk.

During that week, whenever Dwayne mentioned I had just four then three then two days left, I’d break out in an ecstatic, spastic dance, something akin to the way Deadheads danced, but as if they were cranked to the gills on meth.

Ty and Cardoz were back toward the end of the day on Thursday, jet-lagged and wired from traveling.

I was cleaning my tools at the end of my shift, and wiping down my station, when Ty bobbed up behind me. He got right up close, causing me to take an involuntary step backward, but I was up against the worktable and there was nowhere to go. Ty was pissed.

“What’s this nonsense about you leaving tomorrow? You’re scheduled to be here through Saturday, and we have an event Saturday afternoon.”

“Stan’s taking over.” I paused. “I’m sure he’ll do a better job.”

“Why are you leaving early?”

“We have a subletter coming. I have to make sure they get in. I’ve got to make Friday the last day.”

Ty made a gesture that signified
I’m done listening to your bullshit
and walked away. I could almost feel the anger streaming off him. I finished cleaning up, waited until Ty was away from the pass and kitchen door, and left quietly for the night.

I woke up ecstatic on my final day. Even my dreams during the night had been easy. I drank coffee and sang to myself. I packed three extra T-shirts and three pairs of boxers, because I had no idea how many times I’d be dunked. The plan was, Nelly would have already arrived from Saugerties and handed off the keys to the subletter by the time work was over. All my things were packed. I’d leave Tabla at around 6:00, be home by 6:30, and we’d drive back upstate, arriving around 8:30. We’d head out for a celebratory liberation dinner. I selected music for the ride up.

I left the house at 9:30 and got to Tabla at a few minutes after ten. I entered the old MetLife building, said hello to the same security guard I’d seen every morning since June, and wished him good luck. I climbed the stairs, changed into my uniform, and strolled into the kitchen.

Ross stopped cutting herbs when I walked in. “I hope you enjoy frigid, ball-shattering cold water baths,” he said. “What
I
think needs to happen is that we test out the ice bath with a few different levels of ice. So prepare yourself. I’m envisioning, I don’t know, at least two dunks in the bath. Oh, by the way—you’ll never know when it’s coming.” I made my way through the kitchen. Woodrow, Sam, everyone kept up a constant warning of how cold the water was going to be. I was actually looking forward to it.

I got to my station and looked at the prep list. It was a simple day: kalonji, lamb stew, and a bunch of busywork.

Thank you, Dwayne
, I said to myself. The butcher wasn’t done with the lamb so I set about the grunt work. I peeled some papaya, put it on the slicer, and julienned it. I made green sauce for the halibut seviche. I prepped the kalonji, and got it going in the steam kettle. It was about
11:30. I wiped down my cutting board, swabbed the worktable, and Dwayne arrived.

“This guy,” he said, extending his hand. “This fucking guy. Last day. I didn’t give you much to do because I figured you’d want to get out of here right before family meal. Plus, you’ll need to change your clothes several times today.”

I was opening bags of chickpeas and soaking them for the next day’s prep when Ty arrived. He moved through the kitchen saying hello to everyone, but walked past me without a word.

The butcher told me the lamb was ready. I put the meat in a large mixing bowl, seasoned it heavily with salt, and plunged my hand in to mix it up. I cranked the tilt skillet to high and gathered garlic, ginger, pepper, cloves, and cardamom, making a paste with the garlic, ginger, and some water. I opened the dairy refrigerator and pulled out six quarts of yogurt, poured it into a bowl, and whipped it until it was smooth. I went to the bathroom. I bullshitted with Akhil and Woodrow. I went downstairs to the Bread Bar and hung out for a minute with Dwayne, who was checking the status for the lunch service.