Shem Creek (30 page)

I came into work in the morning, said hello to everyone and began what had become my morning routine. First thing, I checked the restaurant’s e-mail. There was something from Lindsey for me.
Hi, Mom! I’m fine! Did you kill Gracie yet? Ha ha! Love you, L.
I sent her one back.
Dear Lindsey, Love you! Love your e-mail! Gracie’s not dead, but I plan to kill her soon. Call her and tell her to watch herself! Miss you madly! Mom.

E-mail? I loved it.

I started downloading yet another version of some bookkeeping software and decided to get something to drink from the kitchen while the download continued. It occurred to me that if I received a dollar for every minute I waited for something to download or for every minute I waited on a telephone for a human voice, I would be a very wealthy woman. It also occurred to me that if I would stop searching for the latest version of this and that, I might actually get my work done in half the time.

Louise and Duane were together at the back door, checking the amount of the produce delivery against the invoice. It may have been Labor Day, but that didn’t mean it was a holiday for us. Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Day were it. There were stacked crates of lettuce, onions, carrots, celery, string beans and herbs all over the porch in the delivery area. Once they had counted them and signed off on them with the trucker, they began bringing them indoors and opening them to check the contents.

Louise and Duane never argued over the quality of food—it was perfect or back it went. I had come to understand that despite their bickering, their shared view on quality was why Louise tolerated Duane’s other eccentricities and why Duane tolerated Louise’s meddling. Louise understood that Duane ran a kitchen so clean that a doctor could perform emergency surgery there without prior notice. And Duane knew that on his days off Louise would leave it even cleaner. They may have had disparate personalities but their souls were grown from the same seed.

The slightest question over the smell of a fish or the blemish of a vegetable would provoke a great discussion between them and remind them they were comrades in the war against mediocrity. Louise needled Duane without mercy but she would be the first person to say that he was a talented chef of very high standards. And, he might say she was like gnats at sunset, but she was the only person whose opinion he sought in all matters pertaining to the kitchen.

“They call this beat-up thing a Vidalia?” Louise said, holding an onion with a large soft spot in front of his face to inspect. “I wouldn’t feed this to the rats!”

“Oh, Lord!” Duane said. “You’re right. That won’t do.” He began digging through the onion crate.

“Morning, all!” I said. “Is Brad in yet? Y’all have a good weekend?”

“Hey! Morning! Some weekend! One day!” Louise said. “Ain’t seen hide nor hair of him so far.”

I poured myself a glass of iced tea. Although it was not yet ten o’clock, it was very warm. It was the kind of day you prayed the air-conditioning system would behave itself.

“About half of these onions are rotted!” Duane said. “But that was some wedding this weekend, huh?”

“Forgive me,” I said, “I know that bride was a little bit tacky but didn’t you love her?”

“Oh my, yes! Here,” Louise said, and handed me the produce invoice. “She was tacky as white shoes after Labor Day, but she loves that old man so much, well, it just did my heart good to see all that happiness.”

“What happened to that crackpot, Jason Miller?”

“Who knows? I heard they gave him a ticket and released him,” Duane said. “Yes, there’s nothing like a wedding. It’s just such a hopeful thing to do, you know? And, they loved the
cioppino
.” Duane waved his arms in the air like a rave as he over-enunciated the
p
’s
.

“Yes, they did,” Louise said, with a chuckle. “It’s a good thing you made plenty! Doo-wayne? You are so crazy. Do you know that?”

In Louise’s secret language that meant that
she
was crazy about
him
.

“Y’all need a hand?” I asked.

“No, thanks,” Duane said, “but I do need the number of the produce guy from Wentworth Farms. They must’ve left their onions in the sun too long. And Vidalias rot faster than you can whistle Dixie.”

“I’ll get it for you in a flash,” I said and went through the swinging doors.

There, at the reception area, wearing a celery-green T-shirt and matching Capri pants, stood Amy. Her princess slides were the same color, but the toes had pale pink leather flowers. Needless to say, her toenails were painted the exact same shade, like a teacup poodle from Marilyn Monroe’s era. There was something sickening about the grooming politics of that time.

“I thought you were going back to Atlanta,” I said.

The tone of my voice said it all. It took two seconds for the lit fuse to reach the cherry bomb, but when it did, she had a retort at the ready.

“And, I thought
you
worked in the office,” she said, “and, I don’t suppose you would tell me anyway if Brad was here.”

“I work all over this restaurant and, no, Brad’s not here.”

“Well, is Louise here?”

“Sure! You just stay right there and I’ll go get her!”

That was perfect. Louise would nip a chunk out of her carcass before she knew what hit her. I swung open the door to the kitchen. Louise was standing next to the island, holding a head of romaine lettuce, pulling back the leaves.

“Filthy!” she said. “So nasty you gonna have to throw away more than you can use! Looks like they froze it.”

“Hey, Louise!” I said.

“You got that number?” Duane said.

“No, but there’s a number in the dining room,” I said. “Amy’s here and she wants to talk to
you,
Louise.”

You could’ve heard a leaf of parsley drop in the following moments.

“What’s she want with me?”

“I think she thinks I’m unreliable in the message department.”

“I’m coming too,” Duane said, “I always miss
everything!
”

“You just stay put!” Louise said.

Louise’s face took on the glaze of a partner in crime and together we went out to the dining room to ruin Amy’s day.

“I’m Louise,” she said. “What can I do for you?”

“I’m Amy. . . .”

Louise drew herself up to her full height and her face turned to stone; her jaw in particular was a wedge of granite.

“Um-hmm,” she said slowly, “I’m well aware of that.”

Not one to be summarily dismissed, Amy put her hand on her hip and glared at Louise, drawing her line in the linoleum. Louise, at the same time, gave Amy the head-totoe traveling hairy eyeball. Amy was messing with the wrong person.

“Look, I just want to leave Brad a message,” she said and turned to me. “Don’t you have something else to
do
?”

Louise and I exchanged looks of surprise.

“No, I don’t guess I do,” I said and raised two of my fingers to my lips in mock embarrassment.

“No, I guess she doesn’t,” Louise said, and did the same thing.

Amy took the one-two punch and didn’t even bat an eye.

“Oh, fine,” she said. She opened her purse and pulled out a business card and a pen and wrote something on the back. She handed it to Louise. “Please tell Brad that this is the address and phone number of the house where I’ll be for the next thirty days. I’m staying with my old roommate. Please ask him to call me, okay?”

She sashayed out the front door and Louise took a seat at the bar.

“Come here,” she said to me. “You got an ashtray back there, Mr. O’Malley?”

O’Malley gave a low long wolf whistle and put the ashtray in front of Louise.

“You taking up cigarettes?” he said.

“Yeah, that’s right. I’m gonna smoke something but it ain’t tobacco. Matches?”

“She’s at 1212 Thompson Avenue on Sullivan’s Island,” Louise said, “isn’t that nice?”

I climbed on the bar stool next to her. I knew exactly what Louise was up to. She tore the card into four pieces. One by one, she lit each square, dropped it in the ashtray and watched it burn.

“I don’t
like
that woman,” Louise said. “I just don’t
like
her.”

“Me either. Not one bit. But did we think Brad could get rid of her that easily? He told us she was going back to Atlanta.”

“How old are you? Men lie,” Louise said. “You should know that by now.”

“Well, Brad doesn’t own Charleston County. Maybe she decided to hang around and work on him.”

“Yeah, that’s just what he needs is a little redheaded Jezebel to work on him.”

We both sighed hard enough to rattle the hanging racks of O’Malley’s wine glasses.

“Can I get you ladies something?” O’Malley said. “Serious times call for serious solutions.”

“No, thanks,” I said. “Just get rid of the evidence. We don’t want anyone to find out we were burning garbage. I gotta get a phone number for Duane.”

Louise followed me to my office. I wrote the number of Wentworth Farms down on a piece of paper.

“I’ll give it to him,” she said.

“Thanks.”

“So, that was Amy.”

“Yeah. That was Amy.”

Our eyes met, we pursed our lips and shook our heads in mutual disgust.

“She’s a little too bold for me,” Louise said.

“Honey, she ain’t nothing. Just another amoral, over-groomed, self-absorbed numb nut from a TV reality show starring sex addicts.”

“Um-hmm. That just about covers it. I’m going back to work.”

I worked through the bills and just before we opened for lunch, Louise and I hosted a little “Come to Jesus” meeting with the four waiters who had bailed out on us for the rock festival. Sullen and generally uninterested, they sat before us at a table in the corner of the dining room.

“Here’s the deal,” I said, “you ladies and gentlemen can be replaced in a heartbeat. If you do this again, you’re gonna get replaced.”

“No, Linda, you’re being too soft on them,” Louise said. “Look, I remember what it was like to be your age. If I wanted somebody to hire me and they said
okay
and gave me a chance, showing up and doing what I was supposed to do was the bare minimum. I was also expected to act like I
enjoyed
the job and
appreciated
the job and wanted to
keep
the job! You folks don’t seem to abide by that concept. You don’t just show up when you feel like it and go off to a concert when we have a wedding going on.”

I looked across the faces, which didn’t seem penitent in the least. Two of them were chewing gum, one was staring out the window and the other was listening so intently it made me nervous. Cokehead? (And I don’t mean the carbonated variety.) Louise sighed and looked at me for help.

“Listen up, okay? It’s not
fair
to the other people who work here for you just to bail out on them. We find ourselves short of hands, the customers don’t get the service they deserve and then they go someplace else next time they go out to dinner. Your choices jeopardize our business and the livelihoods of all the other employees. I mean, look, y’all might be going to college and still getting some help from your parents. We’re not. This is it for us.”

The Zone Man, Mike Evans, spoke up. “Uh, we know you’re right and I guess we just didn’t think about it from that point of view. I think I can speak for all of us that it won’t happen again.”

I didn’t have faith in him for a single minute. Besides, who had elected him spokesman?

“Okay. If you want time off, just ask for it. You know? Then at least we have a chance to find someone to fill in for you.”

“Okay,” Louise said, “nuff said. Let’s get to work.”

The lunch hour came and went and there was a slight but persistent wafting of sour discontent surrounding the waiters. At one point when I was bartending with O’Malley, I said, “So what do you think? Think the Brat Pack will shape up after the little therapy session Louise and I gave them?”

“Nope,” he said, “I wouldn’t waste my breath on them.”

“Really? Not even the Zone Man?”

“Except him. He’s cool. I’d probably try to keep him but I would dump the rest of them. They don’t get it.”

Around three o’clock, Brad moseyed in with Bogart and stopped at the front desk, where I was going over the dinner reservations with Connie, the hostess.

“Hi! Do I have any messages?”

“Is this your dog?” Connie said. “What’s his name?”

No, I thought, that is a kidnapped dog, you moron. Call the authorities.
I said nothing.

“Bogart,” he said. “I’m taking him to the vet for a checkup. Messages?”

“Oh! Sorry! Yep, here they are. Theo called once, Robert called and said he and Susan are coming for dinner and someone named Amy called four times.”

“Only four?” I said.

“Oh, swell,” he said, “she didn’t leave.”

His chin was tucked because he was reading the messages, but even from where I stood on the side of him I could see delight sneaking across his face. He could say whatever he wanted but I knew that, on some level, he enjoyed the attention Amy gave him.

“So, where have you been?” I said.

“Can I use your office for a minute?”

“Sure,” I said and followed him there. Bogart settled himself next to the wall as though he’d been in the office all his life.

“Well, as incredible as this may seem, I was out kayaking with my son.”

“No kidding! How was it?”

“Incredible. Just incredible. Right over there on the other side of the bridge, right past Shem Creek Bar and Grill, is this place called Coastal Expeditions. I’d seen it but I never looked into it for some reason. Too busy, I guess. Alex found it on a place mat at Billy’s Back Home Restaurant, where I took him for breakfast this morning. One of those little ads?”

“Right, right. So?”

“So, he said, can we go check it out and I said sure, why not? We went over there and hired two guides and went all over the other side of Shem Creek, out in the harbor and out to Crab Bank Island, which is this truly amazing bird sanctuary. It was beautiful!”