Last Night at the Lobster (13 page)

That can wait. First he needs to clean the bathrooms— not in case someone comes, but because he can’t stand a job left undone. He could delegate it and no one would complain (not to his face), but right now Manny needs something to concentrate on, and he’s always loved the perfection of a clean mirror, the visible progress of mopping.

When he finishes, it’s twenty past ten. The night’s almost over. Only a fool would expect someone to show up now, and he doesn’t want to keep his people a minute longer than he absolutely has to. Technically they’ll still be open till eleven. One by one, he’s given up whatever goals he’d hoped to achieve today, so even though the decision’s obvious, he has to tell himself he’s not really quitting.

He asks Jacquie and Roz to come into the kitchen with him so they can all hear it at the same time.

“That’s it,” he announces. “Let’s shut it down.”

END OF DAY

Everything gets tossed. The skewers, the fries, the rice— anything they stockpiled. The coleslaw goes, and the baked potatoes, all the cauliflower, tray on tray of biscuits. Normally they’d save the chowder and gumbo. With oven mitts he delivers the pots to Leron, who dumps them steaming into the gurgling InSinkErator. The waste, Manny thinks, imagining how many people a soup kitchen downtown could feed with this. Any vegetables they cut. Any sauces they prepared today. He rolls the garbage can over to the reach-in and clears the shelves. The garnishes at the hot plate in their little chafing dishes—the lemon slices and chopped parsley and Parmesan cheese and sour cream.

“Chuck it in a bucket,” Ty says, handing Rich a saucepan of herb butter.

“What have you done with Ty?” Manny asks, mock-horrified, because usually by this time of night he’s enjoying his chef’s privilege of sitting on his stool and watching the others clean up.

“I’m like Troy Brown—I’m all about the team.”

“So I guess that makes me Bill Belichick.”

“No, you Romeo Crennel,” Ty says, which gets a laugh, because he’s fat.

“Who they playin’ tomorrow?” Rich asks.

It’s just grab-ass chatter, a way to keep things moving, but Manny can’t help but remember all the playoff games and Super Bowls they rented a big-screen TV for, the thousand-dollar pools they taped up behind the bar (against company policy, and nervous-making for him). When the Patriots won that first time, on the final play, he and Eddie hugged so hard he almost chipped a tooth.

Ty has the kitchen under control, so he goes out front and deals with the bar. There’s no need to restock, yet his eyes are automatically drawn to any bottles that are low, his mind making a list he immediately wipes clean. He locks the coolers and the bar back. The liquor stays, but any open mixers like the grapefruit juice go straight down the drain. He pitches the olives and cocktail onions, the lemon and lime wedges, the orange and pineapple slices, the maraschino cherries and strawberries. The plate of margarita salt crusted in circles—gone. He runs a pitcher each of frozen margaritas and Bahama Mamas before draining the machines, figuring someone might like one while they watch the Powerball drawing. While he’s thinking of it, he switches both TVs to Channel 6.

In the dining room, Jacquie and Roz are using carts to clear the tables, stacking appetizer dishes and collecting bundles of silverware and the tea lights and the damned stand-up drink-and-dessert menus he could never keep clean—tearing down this morning’s setup in reverse. Manny can’t imagine corporate would try to recycle the salt and pepper, but he’ll let the bean counters deal with that. The same for the Lobster swizzle sticks and coasters and napkins, though they’re probably unsanitary.

With a pang, he realizes he could have saved the chowder and gumbo (or at least the chowder) and given it away to any customers who show up tomorrow, along with the gift certificates.

“Hey,” Roz hollers from halfway across the dining room, pointing to the ceiling, “can I turn the muzak off? I swear, if I hear ‘This One’s for the Girls’ one more time, I’m seriously gonna kill somebody.”

“Go ahead,” Manny says. “I mean go ahead and turn it off.” So now there’s just the TVs, the back half of the ten o’clock news nattering as he wipes down the cutting boards and rinses the little sink.

The bathrooms are clean, and he takes care of the worst of the foyer and the hall carpet with the push sweeper. He can vacuum the dining room in the morning—but see, he’s thinking like it’s any other night. There’s no point vacuuming, or even sweeping up, because they’re going to tear the place apart. Just as there’s probably no point worrying about his inventory. He’s already been demoted.

The coatrack’s empty, and the host stand’s squared away, the staff schedule for tomorrow blank. As a tribute, he leaves today’s specials on the chalkboard. He boxes the mismatched ornaments in their nests of brittle tissue paper and unplugs the string of lights, coiling it around his elbow like a roadie. The tinsel he pitches.

“Hey,” Jacquie says, “what are the lobsters supposed to look at now?”

“Each other,” Manny says, and a shock of truth shoots through him, afraid she might think he’s talking about them.

And it
is
strange to be taking the decorations down when Christmas is just five days away. It doesn’t feel like Christmas, even with the snow, and Deena’s gift in his pocket.
He
doesn’t feel like Christmas. He thinks of Bill Murray in
Scrooged,
how everything works out for him in the end, everyone from the TV station singing in front of the cameras, the chick from
Indiana Jones
kissing him, and Manny can’t deny he’d like that. If one of the Powerball numbers hits, that’s the only way it could happen, that last second miracle. Or maybe it already has. Maybe it was just everyone showing up, and everyone still being here. It’s possible that he’s missing the whole thing.

He scans the foyer for more decorations, but there’s only the marlin. What the hell are they going to do with it? What the hell would he do with it?

The lobsters aren’t a mystery. They’ll go to some other Lobster somewhere. They cost too much to chuck.

The bulbs and lights won’t go anywhere though. He doesn’t know who bought them, or when, but they don’t belong to Darden Restaurants, Incorporated, any more than he does, and instead of stuffing them back in the storage closet, he flaps open a to-go bag and gently fits them inside, then sets the bag on the floor in the back hall directly under his jacket, as if daring anyone to call him a thief.

Jacquie and Roz are done in the dining room and head to the kitchen to take care of the coffee station. With the front buttoned up, Manny gets his End of Day running, and while it compiles, cleans out the cash drawer and prints the servers’ reports from the bar’s POS. He reconciles the piles of cash with their receipts, and while they had a terrible day (not worth stealing, he thinks), he’s pleased to find they’re off by less than two dollars. He counts the money three times before filling out a deposit slip and fitting it all in the pleather envelope, zipping it closed and locking it, then tucking it in the safe.

In back, the dishwasher’s quiet. Rich is rolling away hot racks of water goblets, the casters leaving wet tracks. Leron is bagging the garbage, while in the big sink, steaming water drums into a mop bucket. Part of it’s that they’re closing early, but it seems to Manny that they’re moving faster than they have all day.

“Okay,” he says, to get their attention. “I need you guys to finish up, because in fourteen minutes”—he holds up the ticket—“we’re all winning the Powerball. The only catch is that we have to share it with Eddie.”

“Good luck,” Roz says.

“The drawing’s at exactly 10:59, in the bar. Drinks are on me.”

“I can’t believe you,” Jacquie says, inspecting the ticket as if he got ripped off. “Why don’t you just give us all a dollar?”

“Come on,” Manny says, “you never know.”

“I know you just threw away five dollars,” she says, and now he really wants them to win—not the grand prize, just something.

Leron’s bucket is almost full, and Manny wants to take a last look at the box behind the dumpster, so he volunteers to take out the garbage. The bag’s extra heavy from all the food, the neck stretching as he duckwalks across the lot, afraid it will break on him. He opens the side door with a clang and muscles it up and in like a medicine ball, then stands there in the shadows, breathing hard, his hands cramped. The cold feels good. Against the fence, his footprints are the last ones— the box hasn’t been touched. He flattens it and angles the cardboard through the side door, swings closed the chainlink gates, blocking them on the rebound, and locks the lock. Dom worked for him a long time, and while he understands he’s not the only bartender who ever stole liquor, that’s one letter of recommendation Manny wishes he could have back.

Leron never asked for one, and he’s still here, mopping with Rich as the radio plays Jay-Z’s “Hard Knock Life.” With the dishwasher and the grill off, it seems too loud, but Manny doesn’t say anything. He sneaks through the stockroom so he doesn’t step on the wet floor. He pokes his head out the far end, checking the coffee station, then retrieves the three bottles, screening them with his body as he ducks into the back hall, and immediately bags them so no one will get the wrong idea. On the little ledge by the time clock he transfers the numbers from the Powerball ticket onto five Post-it notes, writing a name on each, all of them at random except one: He makes sure Jacquie’s is Jacquie’s.

According to the clock, they’re seven minutes away from being rich.

“Just wet-mop it,” he tells the guys, prompting an exaggerated double take. “And come out front when you’re done. I’ve got a surprise for you.”

Jacquie and Roz and Ty are already camped on stools, sipping frozen drinks and watching the UConn highlights. Manny slides behind the bar like he’s going to serve them and sees that Jacquie has her diamond in.

“Whatcha got there?” Ty asks.

When he sets the bag down, the bottles clink. “Christmas bonus.”

“Who for?”

“Who works the hardest around here?”

“You shouldn’t have,” Roz says, reaching.

“Sorry,” Manny says, fending her off, “you got your bonus in your hand.”

On the news they’re showing one last look at the weather. The snow’s supposed to stop before morning— perfect timing.

It’s 10:55, then 10:56 as the anchors banter.

It’s 10:57 when Leron and Rich saunter out of the break room. They look strange without their aprons, as if they’ve wandered in off the street. Manny presents them with their choice of the three bottles, setting them on the bar like prizes at a carnival. Leron laughs—“All right”—and shakes his head like it’s a bad joke.

“I’m not going to tell you where I got them from. Let’s just say the next time you see Dom you should thank him.”

Leron lets Rich go first. He chooses the tequila. Leron picks the gin.

“Any takers?” he asks, showing the Hennessy to everyone. Finally Ty claims it.

“So,” Manny says, “who’s ready to win three hundred million dollars?”

“Gimme a minute,” Roz says.

He makes a ceremony of dealing out the Post-its. The news is finally over, no credits, just the Fox copyright. Manny turns around to face the TV, thinking it doesn’t have to be much, just a hundred bucks, or thirty-five, or five. Just a win to let them end the night right.

A middle-aged woman comes on, shilling for a local mattress store.

“Useless,” Ty says.

Followed by a long commercial for a wireless carrier.

“This is stupid,” Jacquie says. “You know what the odds are?”

“Thirty-six to one,” Manny says. “Not the big prize, but to win anything.”

They’re going to love the new side dishes at Boston Market, the TV promises.

“Just show the fucking number,” Ty says, as the cheap graphics for the drawing wash over the screen.

“It’s the one and only Powerball,” the announcer touts, “now bigger and better than ever! Hi everybody, Mike Pace here. That’s right: three hundred and twenty-five million dollars is our jackpot tonight, that’s the estimate, and more ways to win big with Powerball, including a chance to win a
billion
dollars with PowerPlay. Tonight’s multiplier is two, number two will be the multiplier tonight—”

Already the balls are cycling like clothes in a dryer, colliding, bouncing, dropping into a narrow plexiglass chute. The first one’s going to be a 13.

“Crap,” Rich says.

“That’s just one,” Manny says. “You don’t have to get them all.”

“Do you have to get them in order?” Roz asks.

“They put them in order from smallest to biggest,” Manny says.

“So, no,” Jacquie says.

“Check those tickets carefully,” the announcer says. “There’s 19, followed by 50—”

None of them have 50, Manny thinks, annoyed because they’re going too fast. And forget 23.

“—and the last white ball is 41. Here we go, over three hundred million on the line, and the powerball is 13, 13 is—”

And like that it’s over, and the guy is signing off, jabbering as fast as he did at the beginning.

“Well I got shut out,” Roz says.

“I got a 19,” Rich says.

“Damn,” Ty says, crumpling his Post-it.

“How ’bout you?” Manny asks Jacquie. “Anything on yours?”

“No.”

Leron just flicks his, sending it twirling down the bar.

“Hey,” Manny says, “we tried. Hope Eddie had better luck than we did.”

“Couldn’a done worse,” Ty says.

“Hey,” Roz says, “at least you got some booze out of the deal.”

Manny turns the TVs off, not to break things up, but that’s what happens.

“I’ll take care of the drinks,” he says, only Roz already has a tray, and he needs to turn off the sign by the highway, since it’s past eleven.

While everyone else punches out, he closes back-to-front, by his checklist. For safety reasons, managers can’t leave out the back, or alone. The kitchen floor is still drying, so he tries to step lightly, turning off the dishwasher and the radio, making sure the back door’s closed. From habit he sniffs for gas as he passes the grill, quickly double-checks the reach-in and walk-in, then grabs the bag with the Christmas decorations and his lighthouse glass.