Burn, Baby, Burn by Michael Seale (Chapter 18)

 Chapter 18

Customers are Kings

Just before service, two men in dark suits knocked on the front door to the restaurant, the one on the left pushed his police badge on to the glass. Yves walked over and unlocked the door. 

“Hey, can I help you?” he asked.

“Yeah, I’m detective Swanson and this is my partner detective Peterson. We wanted to ask everyone some questions.”

Bill walked up behind Yves as he eyed the cops suspiciously. “I’m the owner of the restaurant, can I help you?” 

“Yeah, like I said, we need to ask a few questions about the disappearance of Calista Pieli, otherwise known as Callie from the Black Cat. We understand that you and your team are regulars there.”

“Yeah, we all hang out there after work, like most other restaurant people.” 

“We know. We have been to a few other establishments already. It’s just a few routine questions.”

“Sure, just make it quick, I need to get back into the kitchen. Did something happen?”

“Right now she is considered a missing person, but perhaps there is more.” 

They sat at the four top next close to the front door. Everyone strained to listen to the questions. The work in the kitchen and the service more or less came to a halt. The staff was hanging on to every word said. Bill answered the questions with a somewhat even level of courtesy; he couldn’t stand the police being a drug addict and one time thief. 

Detective Peterson wondered around the restaurant, showing a recent photo of Callie asking all of us if we had known her. Of course all of us had, we all frequented the Black Cat. He walked into the kitchen and found me. 

“Do you remember seeing Callie at the Cat?”

“Of course, we had a fling. She’s missing?” I asked.

“We think so. No one has heard from her in some time.” 

I rubbed my head. Thoughts raced. First Naomi and now Callie.

"What do you mean, by fling?" he asked.

"A one-night stand or two nights if you want to be technical, I think, I mean the second time I know that I left with her but I'm not sure what happened after that."

The cop stared at me, waiting for more information. He raised his bushy eyebrows. I was getting nervous, but I didn't know why.

"Look, I was drunk, really drunk. I remember we were out back together, we kissed and after that it is pretty much a blur."

“Do you remember which night this was?”

I blew air out of my lips and shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t know,” I said. 

“You don’t remember when you might or might not have gone home with woman you had, had a sexual relationship with?”

“Like I said, I was really drunk. I had gone out back for some fresh air and saw her there. We kissed, after that I draw a blank.”

“Do you often black out when drinking?”

“If I’m doing it right,” I joked. 

He did not look amused. The officer stared at me with disbelief in his eyes. He waited for me to say something. When I didn’t, he spoke.

"Okay, you didn't see her after that night?"

"No, we all go to the Cat after work a lot. I asked about her once, but the new girl, Sam, said she hadn't been in lately. That's it."

Peterson had jotted down notes as I talked. 

“We are going to need to ask you a few more questions. Would you have a problem with that?”

“No, I have nothing to hide. Callie’s great, we had a lot of fun together. Nothing serious. But I’ll do anything I can to help.”

He handed me his card and told me to call him if I thought of anything else. He asked me where he could contact me if he had questions. I gave him the number for the restaurant. They left soon after that. The kitchen was relatively quiet until dinner service.

***

I unplugged my phone from the wall as soon as I had walked into my apartment. Hoping that after such a crazy day I won’t be haunted by a night of phantom ringing. The restaurant was busier than usual; we busted our asses in the kitchen. It seemed like everyone wanted something special or wanted to substitute this for that. Bill doesn’t do substitutions. He says it’s an insult on our art. Now I don’t think of cooking as an art form. Yes, I know that it can be beautiful and skillful, but I think of it more as a craft. Something that you make that is there to use, it’s needed, but that doesn’t mean that it is any less beautiful. 

Anyway, like I said, Bill doesn’t like substitutions, so after the fourth table had decided that they wanted garlic mashed potatoes with the scallops, Bill was about to lose his shit. Then a guest did something even worse, which caused Bill to actually go to this table and rip this guy a new asshole in front of the entire restaurant. 

The kitchen was slamming; I mean balls to the wall, slammed. We couldn’t cook fast enough. Of course, this was a later reservation and the people that were sitting at his table first hadn’t left yet. As usual when this happens we sat him and his date at the bar and offered them a drink, but of course, his first question was are these free. Right then Kimber knew how the table was going to go. After about a fifteen-minute wait, they got their table. No big deal right. Wrong.

First, he ordered tap water for them both and then they wanted to share an appetizer. No big thing, that happens a lot, we can accommodate that. The problem was they wanted it on two plates. Kimber told them that the kitchen doesn’t like to do that. But the dude told her he didn’t care what the kitchen says, he is the customer, so he is the king. She smiled and walked away, secretly wishing a plague upon him. She told Tom what the king of the restaurant had said. He rolled his eyes and plated up the dish on two separate plates. It looked tiny. What happens next, the man thought that it was a rip off as well. He claimed that we deliberately cheated him. We did not. That’s why we don’t split the plate. 

Mr. Customer is King ordered his and his date’s main course. She would have the beef tenderloin well done, no blood, with mashed potatoes without garlic and he would have the scallops, but could he have the garlic mash instead of the risotto. Kimber pointed out that it’s printed on the menu we don’t do substitutions. He huffed and puffed and rolled his eyes, finally asking to speak to the cook, not the chef, the cook. I realize a title is not that important, but we all work long and hard to become a chef, it is a right that you earned. We are all chefs. 

Kimber said she would see if the chef had time and turned to walk away. The king slapped her on the butt and told her to hurry. She turned and stared at him in disbelief. He waved her away with his hand. Kimber walked into the kitchen fuming. I know that she was mad at me the day before, but now I think if she could have she would have beat the shit out of this guy. 

She told Bill what he had done and what he had said. Bill saw red. Now this is not the man that you want to piss off. He is six foot eight inches tall and solidly built. 

He went to the table with Kimber. The dude starts right into Bill before he can even say a word. 

“Do you know who I am? I am a lawyer, and I demand that I you treat me with respect. The customer is always right, and I want to have what I ordered. I do not care what the cook thinks in the kitchen. I want what I ordered.”

“I don’t give a fuck who the hell you think that you are. You are not worth rat shit here. This is my restaurant. I don’t care what the fuck you ordered. Don’t you ever touch one of my employees again.” He had bent down and was nose to nose with this dude. 

The entire restaurant was watching. His date looked scared and disgusted at the same time. 

“I don’t know what you are talking about. All I did was bump her a little bit and tell her to hurry up.”

Kimber jumped in, “You slapped me on the ass.”

Bill hadn’t moved he was still nose to nose with the guy not giving him an inch of space. 

“I want you to apologize to her. Then you can apologize to my guests here, then your date, because you two won’t be eating anything else here.”

He stammered. “We, we are hungry.”

“I don’t give a fuck.” He yelled and slammed his fist on the table, knocking over the tap water.

The man almost screamed. His date was trying her best to get away from the table slowly. 

“Now.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Fuck you.” Kimber said and walked away.

Bill told the man to leave. He didn’t have to pay for anything that he and his guest should just leave. The woman didn’t say a word until they were outside, then she yelled at him. 

The entire restaurant watched the scene play out. She was pushing him away and yelling at him. We could make out that he said he was sorry about twenty times. She walked away without out him, he just stood there in front of the restaurant. She drove off, flipping him the bird.

Bill waved to the dude standing alone outside the restaurant; Bill let out a shrill of laughter and bought a round of drinks for the entire restaurant.

Thankfully, I could go some time after that.

***

My apartment was empty. I was alone. It wasn’t much, a one bedroom, one bath apartment, just next to run down. On a chef’s salary, you can’t expect too much. But this is where I call home. 

I had a sofa, a small table and TV/VCR set up. A decent size video cassette collection going on; I hadn’t jumped onto the DVD bandwagon just yet; I had invested too much money on my tapes. If I was home and not falling down drunk, I was usually watching a movie. I put in Tombstone, a great western, Kurt Russell, Val Kilmer, the guy from the Terminator and Sam Elliot. I guess I’ve seen it a hundred times. 

I’ll be your huckleberry, my favorite line of the entire movie. Now I didn’t know what it meant for a long time, but eventually I came to understand that it meant: I’m the man for the job. 

So, I suppose that’s me. I’m the huckleberry, you name the place and time and I’ll get the job done. Or at least that’s what I used to think. Now I’m hoping I’m not insane. 

I heard the ringing throughout the entire dinner service; I had the feeling that smoke was clouding around me and lungs screamed for oxygen. But nothing had happened. No hallucinations. No homeless looking old men that looked like me. No visions of burnt bodies or beatings or blood. No fires. 

My sofa was comfy except for the left side the cushion was flat and spring stuck in your ass if you sat there too long. I was finally relaxing. Doc and Wyatt argued. Big nose Kate sat by and watched her man slowly kill himself and Johnny Ringo was a daisy. The world around me seemed to fade away, whether from the alcohol or from insanity it slipped past.

My eyes closed as the ringing started, faintly. Reality slipped. 

It was a complete darkness, black as if light had never existed. This is the darkness that makes children cry for their parents at night. I had no control over myself. I couldn’t move, but I could hear voices talking. They sounded so close, but I couldn’t see anyone. 

They spoke in hushed voices as if they didn’t want to wake someone up. They argued. I could tell that one was older and the other voice sounded very much like me. I wish I had understood the context of what they meant. Since I couldn’t see, I only understood the words.

“You don’t have to do this.” The older voice spoke.

“You know that I do, this is the way it has to be.” My other voice responded.

“You are better than this, please.”

“Why are you here? You know that I will soon control the other. Then I will control you as well. You are only a distraction now.”

There was no answer; the void I was in was suffocating with its expanse. The sheer volume of silence and emptiness is overwhelming. I sat unmoving in for what seemed like hours with nothing. Then it started the laughing. The other voice that sounded like me was laughing, but it isn’t me I had to tell myself. If I didn’t it would drive me mad. The laugh penetrated the dark cage that surrounded me. I couldn’t shut it out; it drilled itself into my brain.

I screamed. I screamed from panic, from rage, from hate. I screamed until my voice was hoarse. And then I cried like I did as a small boy when I was afraid. Afraid of what was to come. It was like I was seven again and my father was drunk. It terrified me.

When he was drunk, I was the target. Not my little brother and definitely not my sister, the sister that could do no wrong. He would drink by himself on the back porch, looking out at a lawn that needed to be mowed. Then something would happen as if it bit him. He would jump up and start yelling for me. 

I had to go to him, even though I knew what was coming. The one time that I didn’t, was the worse. He had sat me at his feet and flicked his cigarettes at me for what seemed like hours. He burned me with his wood, stick, strike anywhere matches and would spit at me if I cried. So, I learned to take my beatin’ as he called it or get burnt.

It was because I was worthless, he would tell me. Or it was because I was no good. Or it was because he wanted to. That was the worse. Then he would quote Bible verses at me. Not trying to teach me, but more to tell himself it was ok. 

Knowing that your own father just wanted to beat you was almost too much for me. And beat me, he would. Never on the face, on face someone would know and we could not have that. Not when tomorrow was Sunday, and he had to work as a deacon in the church. 

Sunday morning and he would be sober, if not hungover, but he would dress in his churchgoing clothes. We would all put on our Sunday best. That’s how it was and off to Bible school as one big happy fuckin’ family. Finding about all the ways Jesus loves us and all the other hypocritical bullshit. How could he be a pillar of our church on Sunday and beat his first-born son senseless on Saturday? Sometimes I could barely sit in the pews, my ass hurt so badly.

And now I am here, trapped in this dark abyss, screaming as loud as I can in hopes to drown out the insane laughing. My fear is overwhelming, all-encompassing, and my cries have all but dried. Darkness encompasses my thoughts; I’m drowning in my fear, unable to gulp down any air. My lungs ache, my chest is heavy. Finally, my breath hitches and the lifesaving gulp of oxygen fills my lungs and I laugh. I laugh like the other; the laugh is maniacal, and it’s unnerving. I am lost in a vortex of all-consuming fear. 

The thought of the first time my father burned me with his cigarette, how afraid it made me. But with the time, it became nothing. Just as this will, I know with time it would be nothing, a mere painful act that I must live with, just as I had with the beatings. 

My laughter stopped. I yelled into the darkness. 

“If you want me, I’ll be your huckleberry.”

The blackness shattered.