Last Night at the Lobster (11 page)

Turning in to the hall, he comes across a scarf left on top of the coatrack—black, knitted and soft, with a tag from Nordstrom’s (not a bad gift, he thinks). Probably belongs to someone from the retirement party. In back they have a box that serves as a lost & found. Manny parades the scarf by Roz and Jacquie before adding it to the two Totes umbrellas and the sweat-stained Yankee cap and dirty plastic rattle, even though tomorrow they’ll probably chuck the whole thing.

Above the box his tie hangs over the rod, still damp but close enough to dry that he takes it to the bathroom and holds it under the blower for a couple of cycles, then puts it on hot, fixing the length in the mirror. In the massive handicapped stall he flips it over his shoulder before he sits, then waits, staring at the black-and-white tiles between his feet, the rare red one tossed in as an accent. He’s linking them together like a word search, his thighs going numb, when the bathroom door thumps and then squeaks open, letting in a gush of Celine Dion.

“Hey boss,” Roz calls.

“Yeah?”

“Get off the pot. We got customers.”

Pulling the cheap toilet paper gently so it won’t rip, his first thought is a daydream so stale he automatically fast-forwards through it. The car creeping across the lot is full of robbers or terrorists taking advantage of the bad weather to lay siege to the place. They take everyone else hostage while Manny hides in the men’s room, ultimately sneaking out and saving the Lobster by his guts and wits like Bruce Willis in
Die Hard
.

In reality, the customers are a frail old couple who have no business being out in this weather. The woman totters up the walk, the husband leading to one side like an orderly, both hands clamped around her arm to steady her, and still she lurches and wobbles as if she’ll topple over. Manny goes out in the cold and holds the door for them, and has to restrain himself from doing more. He thinks they’re just leaning into the wind, but as they pass he sees they’re both hunched, the woman slope-shouldered, the man actually hunchbacked, his shoulders up around his ears.

Inside, the man helps the woman off with her coat and nearly pulls her over backwards. Manny sticks close, ready to catch them—a different kind of hero.

“You folks traveling?” he asks, slipping two dinner menus from the holder on the side of the host stand as if it’s natural for the restaurant to be completely deserted.

“I guess you could call it that,” the man says loudly, as if still in the storm. “We were s’posed to be home by now.”

“It’s bad out,” Manny agrees, and leads them into the dining room, giving them a window booth with a view of their car, a new Lincoln. As he leans in to set their menus down, he catches a piercing loop of feedback like the wow of a distant late-night radio station and realizes it’s coming from the man’s hearing aid. In the lamplight, the man’s hands are swollen, a black and gold Masonic ring cutting into one finger. The woman puts her whole face into the menu, tilting one eye close to the print. On her wrists she has grape-colored bruises and blotchy, paper-thin skin like his abuelita that last year, and reflexively Manny wonders what the man will do when she’s gone.

“What’s the soup?” the man asks.

Manny adjusts his own volume. “New England clam chowder and Bayou seafood gumbo.”

“I mean the soup of the day.”

“We don’t have a specialty soup today, I’m afraid.”

“Huh,” the man says, as if he’s been cheated.

“What?” the woman says.

“There’s no soup of the day.”

“Well that’s a pity, isn’t it?”

Manny assures them a server will be out with some hot Cheddar Bay biscuits for them in just a minute.

Technically it’s Roz’s section, but they flipped a coin and Jacquie lost.

“I figure she’d want to take one last one for old time’s sake. Plus she can use the money more than I can.”

“Yeah, thanks,” Jacquie says. “He looks like a big tipper.”

It may not be a big table for Jacquie, but Manny has to squash the urge to hover and retreats to the kitchen, where Ty is still bent over the
Old Car Trader,
admiring Corvettes.

“Check this out,” Ty says, pointing to a Stingray convertible from the midsixties that costs almost double what the bank wanted for his grandmother’s house.

“We’ve got cottonheads.”

“I heard.”

Jacquie swings in. “Two broiled flounder, one baked, one rice.”

“That was fast,” Manny says.

“They’re hungry. It’s almost their bedtime.”

“No flounder,” Ty says, tipping the page.

“Haddock?” Jacquie circles, stopping at the coffee urn.

“Tilapia.”

“You’re going to make me sell them tilapia.”

“Can’t sell what you ain’t got.”

“You need drinks?” Manny asks.

“Got ’em.” And she’s gone.

Manny wants to follow and apologize, table touch with the old folks to let them know they’re not always this poorly stocked, as if he wants their return business. He has to content himself with getting their salads, choosing the best two, tossing out a white spine of lettuce. He microwaves an extra set of biscuits, just in case.

When Jacquie returns, everyone waits for her order. She crosses all the way to the hot plate.

“So?” Ty has to ask.

“So tilapia.”

“Thass my girl.”

The line kicks into gear, Rich and Leron taking their stations. With such a small order, they’ve got it covered, and rather than watch them, Manny rolls around front and mans the host stand as if he’s expecting the usual dinner rush. Outside, the snow falls steadily, endlessly. The couple hunch over their salads, the woman losing a few pieces of lettuce off her fork, gathering them back to her plate with her hand. Jacquie has just delivered their second set of biscuits when the lights dim and blink, making everyone, including Manny, look up.

Kool & the Gang stop celebrating in midchorus. The lamps and overheads flicker, and the string around the live tank, the shaded tube on the host stand. All of them go dark at once, then pop on, surging even brighter, to fade again, swelling, cycling as if trying to find the right balance, a tease, finally dying and staying off, leaving only the candles mirrored in the windows and a strange quiet.

“It’s all right,” Manny broadcasts, just as the emergency lighting clicks on—a battery-powered box on the far wall that throws more shadow than light.

He goes over and reassures the couple that this is merely temporary, not a problem at all. And it shouldn’t be: The grill should still work, and the furnace, and the water. He jokes that with the snow and the power failure, they’re having some kind of adventure.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t see a thing,” the woman says, setting down her fork and leaning back as if she’s quitting.

“Hold on,” Manny says like he has an idea, and with Jacquie moves candles from the neighboring tables until their faces glow.

“Very romantic,” Jacquie shills, though from Manny’s vantage point, recalling the last time he saw her skin softened by this rich light, she doesn’t have to.

The man breaks a biscuit in half and butters it. The woman bends and picks up her fork again.

In the kitchen Roz is setting out candles while Ty plates the tilapia. He shoos Leron and Rich; it’s easier to do all the garnishing himself. Manny’s glad to see he’s serious, lining up his three best lemon slices like a stoplight down the center of the fillet, plucking a stray grain of rice from the rim. This could be the last meal they serve, and like everything today, he wants it to be perfect.

He hangs back as Jacquie takes the tray out. It’s only seven twenty but with the darkness it feels later. Any other night Manny would be calculating his pars for tomorrowand placing his produce order. Instead, he leans out the back door and smokes, looking up at the blackness over the trees behind the dumpster, where there should be the glow of their neon sign by the highway. No one can see them, so no one knows they’re open. There’s no better argument for closing, and nothing Manny can do but hope power comes back on soon. For now he just flicks his filter into the snow and shuts the door.

He crunches a mint before his table touch, pinching the tips of his collar to make sure they’re buttoned—silly, since the couple probably couldn’t see them even if the lights were on.

“Don’t worry, you look great,” Roz says, not pausing her game of solitaire.

After the break room, lit by a single candle, the dining room seems bright—and warm, the flames producing the illusion of heat. Manny glides by their booth as if he’s on his way somewhere else and finds them tearing into their tilapia like it was flounder.

“How is everything tonight?”

“Good,” the man says.

The woman just nods, chewing.

Manny wants more—wants them to say this is the best meal they’ve ever eaten, and the most memorable; wants the man to shake his hand and tell him he’s done a great job under tough circumstances—but that’s all they’re going to give him.

“Anything else I can get for you folks? More coffee?”

“No thanks.”

“Okay,” Manny says. “Enjoy your dinner.”

They’re eating, so he should be satisfied. Any other day that would be enough. It’s unfair of him to expect everyone to feel what he’s feeling, whether it’s justified or not.

Sixty-three guests, that makes. Any normal Saturday the restaurant would be packed by now, the overflow waiting with pagers, clogging the bar and the foyer, sucking down beers and Lobsteritas, Manny running around trying to help everybody at once. With nothing to do, he doesn’t know how to kill the time, and ends up bugging Roz for a while and then spying on the old couple, watching them finish, then clearing for Jacquie. He thinks he’s inordinately proud that they both cleaned their plates.

The machine is down, so Leron does the dishes by hand in the big sink, Rich drying for him. Manny doesn’t bug them about the minimum rinse temperature; whoever gets the dishes will just have to run them again anyway.

The old folks don’t want dessert, no surprise. Without a POS to process the check, Jacquie has to write up a paper ticket. Manny totals it, digging a calculator out of the host stand drawer to do the tax, and then the man hands Jacquie his American Express.

It’s up to Manny to ask if he has cash.

“I’ve got some,” the man says, “but I’d rather hang on to it. We’ve still got to get to Springfield.”

The charitable solution here is to take down the man’s credit card number and have him sign the bill, then trace over his signature when they get power back. It’s simple to do, but the day’s been so crazy that it seems pointlessly complicated to Manny, especially when they’re the only customers, and more out of impatience than anything else, he makes a command decision. It may look bad on the End of Day, especially after the numbers they’ve put up, and him comping dinner for the staff, but it seems only fitting that their last meal should be on the house.

After a brief show of protest from the husband, the offer produces the gush and the handshake Manny wanted from his table touch.

“I’ll tell you,” the man says, counting out a generous tip for Jacquie, “that is the best thing that’s happened to us all day, and it’s been a long one.”

“Now I wish I’d ordered dessert,” the woman says.

Manny can’t let them navigate the sloppy walk in the dark by themselves, and enlists Jacquie’s help. He’s not sure driving’s such a good idea, but the man’s determined, saying they’ve made it this far. It’s only another forty or so miles. The road’s open, it’s just slow going.

Outside, the mall has vanished, the only lights those of passing cars on the highway. The plows are out, but still Manny’s glad they’ve got the Lincoln with its massive hood. He and Jacquie help them in, then stand there in the headlights, waving them away like relatives. Manny thinks they’ll turn the wrong way at the light, but no, they make the right toward 9.

He finds Jacquie looking at him. “What are you doing?”

“What do you mean?” he asks.

“You’ve been acting weird all day.”

“It’s been a weird day.”

“I mean around me. One minute you want me to come to the Olive Garden with you, then you don’t say five words to me the rest of the day. Are you mad at me or something? Because I didn’t do anything. Didn’t we say this was the best thing? For me
and
for you. For everybody. Right?”

He’s aware, more than ever, of the Zales box in his pocket. He could go down on one knee in the snow and give her Deena’s earrings and it wouldn’t change a thing, so why is he tempted? Because he doesn’t know what to say. Easier to make a big gesture, even if it’s not the right one, than to explain himself.

“Not everybody,” he says.

She slaps him backhand in the chest, and not playfully. “You promised you wouldn’t do this, so don’t, okay?”

“I just don’t know what I’m going to do, you know.”

“You’ll do what everyone does.”

“What’s that?”

“You’ll have your baby and get married and buy a house somewhere.”

“I don’t know about that.”

“That’s what you’re going to do, and you’ll be happy, mowing your lawn every weekend, making sure everything’s perfect. I know you, Manny. That’s what you want.”

“We could have done that.” It’s unfair of him. This isn’t how he wants to say good-bye.

Jacquie just shakes her head, and he feels foolish for ever hoping she’d want to be with him—as if he was too stupid all along to see what was obvious to everyone else from the beginning.

“Come on,” she says, trying to soothe him. “Remember that time we went to the park and went wading in the creek and saw those fish?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s what I wanted. And we were lucky. We had that.”

“I still want that.”

“You think I don’t? I’d love to have that again with you, Manny, but it’s not possible. And we both know it’s not right.”