Followed by Fireby J. Alan Brown |
Table of Contents Part 1 appears in this issue. |
| part 2 of 3 |
“You folks ready?” Roy Brown, sole owner and proprietor of Roy’s Steakhouse, approached the four of them with menus in his hands and a smile on his red face. He wore the bolo tie and boots that seemed so appropriate, but Rick admired his lean frame given that he worked with food all day. Roy gave Eric and Rick a firm handshake before he led the two couples away from the bar, past the kitchen, and toward their table, already gleaming with dual white tablecloths and soft candles.
That was another thing Rick liked so well about Roy’s — the personal touch. Roy seated patrons himself, as if he had invited them into his own home. He strongly doubted that the CEO of Outback Steakhouse would ever shake his hand, or any customer’s hand. Rick’s good humor swelled inside him as he let the others pass before him. He snatched one more quick glance into the kitchen doorway and down into that inferno of meat and heat.
* * *
Becky Patterson had been waiting tables for Roy for three years, and in all that time she had never had such a lousy night.
Bad enough her car had puked what looked like a gallon of oil in her apartment parking lot. Somehow the old ’91 Hyundai had sensed that she was late for work and had picked that very evening to run a high-grade fever of the crankcase. Reluctantly, Becky asked her unemployed neighbor into giving her a ride to the restaurant. He was a fortyish divorcee who drove a new Dodge Ram pickup. Not bad for someone who seems perpetually out of work, she thought. Welfare can be your friend. But as he drove her to Roy’s she glanced at his face and didn’t like the smirk she saw there. She suspected that while he may have been twice her age, he was expecting something in return for the ride, and he wouldn’t mind getting it at two a.m. when Becky got back from work.
Having arrived fifteen minutes late, and suffering the genuine concern of Roy, which made her feel worse, two of her first tables had entirely stiffed her of her tip, and another couple had been even worse. The two men left her a quarter tip — twenty-five cents — along with a note suggesting that she could be a bit more... “peppy.”
I’ll peppy you, you ignorant pricks, she thought as she smiled and helped them shrug on their expensive trench coats.
The party of five she had just finished waiting on hadn’t been sweetness and light, either. The silver-haired woman had sent back her steak three times — first, not done enough; second, too cold; third, too dry. Roy had shrugged and sent her a fresh cut of meat, but for some reason the fault lay entirely with Becky, according to the old bat’s frosty stares. The grandkid in the high chair was oh, so special, too, dropping spoons like pennies down a wishing well. Naturally, the tip came to eight dollars and eight cents — precisely ten percent of the bill, and Becky supposed Grandpa thought he was being more than generous given the “uneven” services rendered.
She sighed and flexed her toes inside her shoes — it was only eight-thirty and for some reason her feet were already threatening revolt. Hopefully the night would improve. In fact, the next group looked nice enough. Becky was in the kitchen preparing a couple of salads. Rico and Luis were behind her slapping steaks on and off the grill like mad conductors. Becky glanced into the waiting area slash bar at the two couples about to be seated in her section. Roy was just leading them in like a mother hen and her chicks. By the cut of their clothes, the couples weren’t moneyed, but at least college graduates raised by middle-class parents who taught their kids how to calculate fifteen percent. They’ll want separate checks, she mentally ticked off of a list. Two ice-teas, maybe two beers, no appetizer, chocolatey desert with four spoons.
Just as the auburn-haired woman passed in front of the kitchen and into the dining room, a sequence of strange events occurred almost simultaneously.
— Becky had just finished filling two chilled platters with lettuce mix when she reached for the bottle of Italian dressing.
— Behind her, Luis had removed a strip from the grill and stepped to his left to slide it on a plate, exposing the fiery maw of the covered oven.
— Becky’s hand slipped on the oily bottle of dressing and knocked it forward, threatening to dump the dressing into the croutons. She yanked the bottle backward, but overreacted, splashing nearly a cup of dressing over her left shoulder.
— The salad oil arced behind her in a neat spray, landing directly onto the steak that just emerged from the oven, dousing it completely.
— Bright flames broke out of the gas grills underneath the dripping steak like a wild mustang bursting out of a fiery barn.
Becky shrieked when she felt the intense heat of the wall of flame on her face. Her voice sounded like razor blades scraped across cold glass. Grease fires were not unusual, but this one was out of control!
She heard a harsh clang. Luis had dropped his metal spatula to the tile floor. His right arm was bathed in fire. His eyes were round orbs and his breath hitched painfully. Becky pried her white knuckles off the dressing bottle and nearly dropped it setting it down. She lunged for the fire extinquisher mounted on the wall.
Luis waved his arm uselessly, then reason seemed to take hold again. He smothered his burning arm in the tail of his apron. The fire from the conveyor belt still raged. It burned and groped and clawed at whatever it could find. Luis backed away quickly, and she managed to free the fire extinquisher from its stand. Her face tingled with heat, and she pointed the extinquisher at the fire...
Then it was out, as quickly as it had started.
Becky slowly set the extinguisher back in its place. She willed her hands to stop shaking, and her heart thudded in her chest. Luis gingerly inspected his arm, the skin red and shiny, the stiff curls crackling and falling off to the floor. Rico’s mouth was set in an O, the pair of raw steaks in his hand forgotten.
Roy hustled into the kitchen as fast as decorum would allow. “What the hell is going on?” he growled in a low voice.
“Nada, Boss,” said Luis, still fingering his arm. “Just a grease fire, s’all.”
“Is anybody hurt? Becky, are you all right?”
She couldn’t find the moisture to swallow, so she simply nodded, her eyes still very round.
“Rico, what’s the matter with you. You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Wake up, man! We’ve had grease fires before. Luis, you take care of that arm with the first aid kit. Becky, you’ve got tables. Come on, people, let’s remember where we’re at. Rico, until he gets back, get these steaks off of...” The words died bonelessly on his lips. He was staring at a piece of meat on the conveyor belt, the one that had started the fire. What was supposed to be a twenty-one ounce T-bone steak, medium-rare, was now a fifteen-ounce piece of char. It could play the starring role in a barbecue briquette commercial.
Roy picked up a metal spatula and slid the black lump of coal off the grill, then dumped into a forty-gallon trash can beside Becky. “Rico, first get another T-bone on the grill.” Then, with a strange look Roy stepped out of the kitchen. Luis followed him.
Rico still hadn’t moved from his spot, even though another steak had about sixty seconds before slowly being conveyed onto the floor. He crossed himself, waving the raw meat in front of him as if trying to stir a pack of wild dogs to bloodlust. Then he looked at Becky with wide eyes.
“That fire,” he croaked. “It looked like it wanted somebody.”
Becky tore her gaze away from his sickly pale face, scooped up the salads into her arms, and bolted out of the kitchen.
* * *
By the time the waitress had cleared the table of dirty dishes, Rick had an empty feeling in his chest that not even a filet, potato, and honey-glazed pumpernickel bread could fill.
The conversation had centered on one particular feature film: The Wonderful World of Thomlinson. Random topics about sports and politics tried to get some screen time, but eventually they were all inundated by the record-breaking ticket sales of this season’s blockbuster.
“And we’re going to spend Christmas in Paris this year!” said Shelley with a little girl’s enthusiasm.
“Really?” said Melody, just as enthusiastic, as if she were going as well, and would now have a friend to shop with.
“Eric surprised me with the plane tickets for our anniversary last month.” Eric gave an “ain’t-I-a-stinker” grin at Rick, and he smirked back.
The Burnsides and the Thomlinsons became friends nine years earlier, when they were next-door neighbors in their new Rockwall subdivision. After the obligatory feeling-each-other-out that neighbors do over lawnmowers and gardening implements, they learned that their wedding dates fell within a month of each other. At that something seemed to click, and the couples were spending two to three nights a week with each other. Cowboy’s games on the big-screen, Day-After-Christmas shopping sprees, late-night Canasta tourneys. Even the idea of Matthew hadn’t been conceived yet, and the two childless couples lived the active life that dual incomes could provide.
“So how’s Matthew?” asked Shelley. “Is he in second grade now?”
“Yeah,” said Rick. “He’s good.”
“Although I wonder sometimes,” said Melody, and she shook her head a little. “He’s starting to cop an attitude over little things, and it’s driving me crazy!”
Eric and Shelley shook their heads, mimicking Melody’s gesture as if in perfect sympathy. Like you would know, Rick thought.
Life had been coasting along fairly well for Rick and Melody back then. Not idyllic, but not struggling either. Rick had gotten a promotion at the insurance firm where he worked as an auditor, and every Christmas came with a four-figure bonus check. Then, one dark evening as they lay in bed after making love, Melody hugged her knees to her chest and announced that she wanted a baby and that was all there was to it.
“Just like that?” Rick had asked. “What happened to paying off the house first, like we talked about?”
Melody shrugged. “I can’t explain it. I want to have a baby and I don’t want to wait until I’m in my mid-thirties to start. What if we can’t do it then?”
Rick had settled in with the idea of putting off kids for another decade. Live fast and free while you’re young and healthy, pay off debt, get it all out of your system. Then, when the children arrive, you’ll be better prepared for come-what-may. In fact, late at night after a couple of beers, Rick could picture himself not having kids at all, and the thought did not exactly terrify him. He could adjust, he supposed.
But Melody had stubbornly insisted. Some internal switch inside the female body had clicked, only this one was labeled “Mother,” and she turned from a young successful woman with freedom and a phobia of episiotomies to someone who wanted to go through twelve hours of hard labor and an aching back. Might as well try to explain why women go to the public bathrooms in groups.
Less than a year later, Matthew was born. Rick and/or Melody apparently were very fertile, for after their first month of “officially trying” the stick turned blue. After five weeks of changing diapers, nursing, and bathing a wiggly, blond-haired infant, Melody made another announcement.
“I want to quit work and stay at home with Matthew.”
At that moment, Rick felt a gorilla plod across the room on his knuckles and settle himself on Rick’s back, promptly falling asleep. Melody resigned her Admin Assistant’s position and in truth, did seem very happy to be a stay-at-home mom. But Rick’s income was not enough to cover the expenses. Within a year he had gotten a part-time job selling shoes in the mall on nights and weekends. He occasionally nodded off while driving home late at night. And after seven years, somehow his income was still not enough to keep up. Vacations became fewer and less extravagant. Used cars were purchased and financed, rather than new ones. Rooms in the house went undecorated.
And dinners out to my favorite restaurant are fewer and fewer.
Even worse than the sixty-hour weeks and the occasional, “which utility bills get paid this month?” lottery, Eric and Shelley had drifted off in another direction, buoyed along by rising incomes and no progeny. They had confided that they had tried to get pregnant, but after a year, they gave up and “resigned” themselves to being a childless couple. “Relieved” seemed more likely.
As time went by, the two couples saw less and less of each other. Like two lines beginning at the same point, but differing by only a degree, over time they grew wide apart.
“You guys should come over tomorrow,” said Eric. “I’ll take you out on the lake in our boat. It’s supposed to be seventy degrees tomorrow. Still too cold for swimming, but we can go fishing. Matthew will love it!”
Rick sighed. “That sounds like fun, but I’ve got to work at the shoe store tomorrow. But Melody, you could take Matthew if you wanted.”
Melody gave him that look again, the one that said that if Rick were suddenly widowed, Child Protection Services would find Matthew starved to death in his own room a week later because his father completely forgot to feed him. “We can’t, honey. Matthew’s got a soccer game tomorrow at ten, and Thomas Stensor’s birthday party is at two o’clock. I told you that, remember?”
“Oh yeah. I remember now,” he lied. As far as he was concerned, he had never heard of the party until that minute.
“Well, maybe next time, then,” said Shelley, and she and her husband held the correct sympathetic smile. Poor Burnsides, their perfect smiles said. Soooo busy and soooo poor. Ain’t that a shame?
“Well,” said Melody, “we’ve got to get Matthew from the sitter.” And so began the final act of the evening, that of paying the bill and saying how much fun they all had and how they won’t wait another year to get together again. Within five minutes, they all stood and made their way, single file to the front door, past the lobby festooned with white Christmas lights, through the doorway leading toward the lobby and bar, and past the kitchen with it’s conveyor belt through Hell. The four of them would never eat at Roy’s again.
Copyright © 2005 by J. Alan Brown
