three VINCENT part 3
The furnace kicked on with a hushed thump and my unoccupied mind began to replay highlights from the day’s events.
This is what I could remember:
I waited until the restaurant closed to return my PapaTaco uniform, walking the block and scouting for Kyle’s car in case he’d stuck around to cover my shift like a fast-casual franchise martyr. I wasn’t going to roll in there as the defective tire that went flat and allow Johnny Lunchmeat to portray himself as a full-size spare. My shaky self-esteem couldn’t take another hit like that. Not while I was still trying to figure out how to sell this fiasco to Margaret.
All day I’d struggled to craft a narrative that acknowledged the facts while minimizing my fault. But I had brought us to days like this many times before. She knew every card in my deck and I’d run out of fresh ways to play them. The only approach left untested was pure honesty. Confessing to Margaret that she had fallen in love with an intractable double-wide fuckup.
I saw Jenny alone behind the bar, head down over a tangle of receipts and register tape. When I rattled the locked front door she jerked her head up, squinted until she found a ghost image of me on the sidewalk waving at her through a forest of upturned chair legs reflected gray in the black glass.
I detected the odor of tequila and fury when Jenny met me at the kitchen door. Her face was flushed with fire, skin toad-moist and shiny with sweat.
I handed in my uniform.
The apron’s a little damp.
She snatched the folded shirt and apron, flung them onto a supply shelf crowded with overflowing bus tubs and trays that never made it to the dishroom.
I don’t give a shit.
Jenny’s eyes quivered with alarming energy, like those dashboard lights that let you know something is already seriously wrong with your car’s engine.
Kyle, she said, is a goddamn monster.
Asshole, she hissed. Sent another deep breath through her system and said:
He is a fucking asshole.
She rubbed her face, stripped the gauze from her neck and let her tattoo removal site breathe, a raging red earthworm wound that spelled JOKER in cursive letters. The raised capital J looped from her clavicle to her earlobe. Jenny was halfway through a pint glass of what appeared to be crushed ice and tequila. She tilted her head back. Gritted her teeth and gasped.
Her voice strangled:
Want one?
I wanted four, in fact.
Yes, please.
A strong hand fell on the back of my neck and Jenny steered me toward the wreckage of the bar, pulled out a stool as if seating a guest. Loose receipts fluttered and spun in her jet wash as she loped behind the counter and fulfilled the optimistic potential of her half-full glass by topping it off with more Cuervo.
Here.
She slid my worn manila tip envelope over a sticky grit of margarita salt on the bar. Banged down a pint glass and some ice. Slopped it damn near full of Cuervo and pushed it toward me with the knuckles of one tight fist.
Jenny raised her glass, locked eyes with me and nodded before dragging down a mouthful.
I made an inch disappear, came up for air. Growled like I’d been kicked in the ribs when I asked:
What happened?
So. I clock in to open with you, and of course you’re not here. There’s no music and all the tables are pushed back so at first I’m thinkin’ someone broke in right? Then I see this little circle of chairs and Kyle’s just sittin’ waitin’.
Jenny tipped her glass at an aggressive angle now, nearly down to the halfway mark again. She dug a lime from the garnish caddy, popped it into her mouth and shuddered, spit the stripped rind over my shoulder into the dining room.
Motherfucker tells me Come have a seat Jenny, and we wait and then Rick shows, he’s always on time right? Mostly? So Rick sits down. Then Megan and Jazmine, Kyle tells them to clock in and come join us but he’s not sayin’ shit-else, he’s just starin’ at his fuckin’ phone. The second it hits ten-thirty Kyle gets up and locks the fuckin’ door. We’re fuckin’ locked in now okay and he takes the timecards of anybody who hasn’t showed up and writes NO CALL NO SHOW TERMINATED on them. Then he sits down, tells us all this crazy shit like The Chinese, they believe a character in crisis is also an opportunity and we’re all like, What the fuck?
I was confused but didn’t dare interrupt Jenny. She had a limited window of time before Jose Cuervo overran her perimeter completely. The picture she was painting had started with the bold cold clarity of Rothko. Now she was working in the scribbled but oddly organized detail of Basquiat. I did not want to be in the room when her expressionism devolved to the point of Pollock so I nodded through the fuzzy parts, encouraged her to continue.
Kyle’s clipboard, he’s printed up this whole read-and-sign thing, it’s like three pages and we all had to read it and sign it.
What did it say?
It was all like, Professional Expectations. Consequences. And then the kitchen door, someone’s knockin’. And the house phone starts ringing and Jazmine gets up to answer it and Kyle’s like No, let it go to voicemail and he keeps talking right? And then we see Ramon is right there at the front door fuckin’ lookin’ at us, he can see us and we can see him right? And he’s got his cell phone, he’s the one calling the house line. We can actually hear him shouting outside but Kyle doesn’t look up, he just keeps talking and we’re all lookin’ at each other like, What the fuck?
Oh no. Not Ramon.
Oh yeah, he fuckin’ fired Ramon and Dennis today over the phone. Dennis and Ramon.
She held up their felt-fuzzy tip envelopes. A white PapaTaco envelope poked from the end of each one.
So that was Kyle’s meeting and now you see? You see this fuckin’ place? I had no coverage for breaks and everyone’s busing their own. Nobody’s on the dish pit and I’m seatin’ guests, I’m takin’ orders and workin’ the fuckin’ bar, Megan’s all alone on the outdoor seating, Jazmine’s got the floor and I’m on the register plus I’m takin’ phone orders and baggin’ to-gos. Rick’s by himself in the kitchen and this customer totally screamed, the guy fuckin’ screamed at Jazmine so she’s crying and Kyle? Sits in his fuckin’ office on speakerphone all day. Yeah. Fuckin’ bitch left at three.
Jenny slumped against the stainless steel slop trough running under the taps behind her. Straightened up and pawed for a straw, drank the last of her drink.
She closed her eyes, aimed her chin at the ceiling. Turned her head slowly from side to side like she was smelling something warm and wonderful and I heard her breathe sharply.
I can’t. Vincent I can’t.
The Cuervo bottle was empty. She reached across the bar with both hands, baby-grasping for my drink.
The nature of Jenny’s physical movements, even her facial expressions normally reminded me of something made of iron, bolted together at right angles and powered by steam. Now her laser-scorched hands were incapable of coordination and her stubby fingers with bitten nails became graceful and gentle, fumbling for my glass with mesmerizing motions like tentacles on an anemone.
Kyle 2.0 had broken Jenny proper.
©2017 J.R. Schaefers — all rights reserved.