Bread and Butter (20 page)

H
ARRY HAD NEVER REALIZED
that it would feel so much like pretending
. T
he friends-and-family night had felt like a huge, unending dinner party he hadn’t adequately prepared for, but he felt that his lapses in it would be forgiven. But the next night, when he unlocked the doors at five p.m., turned on the sign, and went to his place behind the long zinc bar, he’d understood that now his folly was going to be absolutely clear to everyone
. T
hat the building and cooking and planning and borrowing had been unnoticed in the public sphere, just a fantasy he’d enjoyed all by himself, as a distraction from the things he should have been doing instead—finishing his doctorate, maybe, or learning to farm, or working an office job, as Britt had for years
. A
t least you always knew what your paycheck would be.

Next to him, Jenelle had jittered about, repositioning dishes and knives, glancing around at the servers clustered by the zinc bar, at Britt standing behind the maître d’ stand and reading a menu. Her mise en place was all set up; her pans were gleaming and clean; her knives were so sharp they severed the flesh of an onion or a chicken as softly and cleanly as a wish. She kept touching the flat of a blade as if to reassure herself.

Harry had regretted being out in the dining room right then. It might have been better to be hidden away in the kitchen, where the staff would at least be divided and could not all keep one nervous eye on him as the clock began to move forward and the door stayed closed and untouched. He was about to say something to Jenelle, just because she was closest to him and because he was sure she knew that he was terrified—something to dismiss that impression of him and yet elicit a reflexive reassurance. But then he saw that Jenelle was cutting an onion with such a slow, petrified motion, her eyes trained so fiercely on the moving blade, that he knew she must be realizing what a gamble it had been to leave the Breakfast Bar for this place. She was seeing the unpaid rent and the unemployment he must have set her up for.

Harry took a breath. He was the leader. It was his job to reassure her, not vice versa. “Hey,” he said. “You want to try out pig’s ear salad at staff meal tomorrow?”

She grinned. “Josh will faint,” she said. Her shoulders lowered a quarter inch. “Let’s do it.”

They never did do the pig’s ears—that evening the first wave of customers distracted him from ordering them, and the next night made him forget entirely. Harry soon moved on to exhaustion mingled with incredulity over the fact that this was what his life would look like for the foreseeable future.

It had hit him on a Friday morning at the end of April, as he sat at the bar with a pot of coffee and the previous night’s receipts and the week’s orders. There had been surprisingly few customer complaints. That might seem good, but it could be bad too, if people just didn’t bother complaining because they knew they’d never come back. He poured another cup of coffee and pondered his failing Korean rice stick. He should be thinking of something to replace it, but he seemed unable to imagine any food that wasn’t right in front of him.

Britt had had to be at Winesap the night before, so Harry had opened, cooked, and closed. He’d gotten home at two, slept for four hours, and then returned to work. Now he had a dull headache that would have gone away if he’d been able to sleep a few more hours, and his body felt limp and heavy.

Of all the things he’d done, none had been both so tenuous and so complex to undo as this. He didn’t
want
to undo it. But it was hitting him that he had met a goal in opening the place and that the comfort of that next concrete goal was lost.

No one else was in yet. He turned on his laptop and visited some food blogs and industry sites, on the off chance he’d be inspired, but he got distracted almost instantly, so in another tab he opened a travel magazine. Singapore had a lot to offer. Plenty of street food, endless inspiration. Apparently the beaches in Croatia were stunning. He checked to see if flying out of Philadelphia would get him anywhere close.

The day before, Harry had discovered a few decent hotels in the Zamalek neighborhood of Cairo. Recently he had also, entirely by accident, memorized a list of autumn food festivals in Italy. He had his eye on the one celebrating the hazelnut. And even though he could not actually go—would not even think of going—imagining these escapes was so freeing that he couldn’t stop, either.

Harry’s great fear was that after everything, he might not be cut out for this. He had worried over the location, the staff, the reviews, the financing, the local economy. It had never occurred to him that he might find the relentlessness of the restaurant so overwhelming, as if it were a hungry baby that never got past the demanding newborn phase, or that owning the place would be different from being its most dedicated employee.

If they could make it to a year, their chances were good. Leo had been saying it since Harry was still in high school, and he was right. Most restaurants had a couple of months to find their way, but within weeks it was clear whose menu was generic or bizarre or poorly conceived, who couldn’t keep a staff, who couldn’t cook consistently, who had assumed that some magical presence would prevent them from doing this if they were unqualified. In just the time Harry had been working on Stray, he’d seen three new places open and close: a pan-Asian noodle house, an upscale diner, and a pasta place
. T
he Texas barbecue joint was next. Everyone knew it. It had been six months and they couldn’t get a brisket right—really, they had no business staying open.

Around ten a.m., Harry perceived a brown jacket two feet away and jumped, his body flooding with electricity. Hector had materialized at the end of the bar. “Jesus, Hector! Don’t do that,” he cried. “Whistle or something.”

“Sorry,” said Hector. He poured himself a cup of coffee and settled his baseball cap over his cropped black hair. Now he would stand, saying nothing and drinking his coffee, for five minutes. He never sat down. Then he would square his shoulders and disappear into the kitchen, commencing the sounds of whirring blenders and the occasional gasps from a nitrogen tank. Later that afternoon he would reappear and place a dessert before Harry and Britt, if Britt was here. Yesterday it had been a single chocolate orb that shattered with the tap of a knife, revealing shards of crystallized whiteness. “Chocolate-menthol geode,” Hector had said, and watched them piercingly as they ate, the chocolate melting on their tongues while the menthol rose in vapors straight toward the tops of their skulls.

Jenelle appeared soon after Hector had disappeared into the kitchen, bringing with her a faint whiff of cigarette smoke, and began cleaning her station. Periodically she took a bite from a turkey sandwich she’d brought with her. Harry couldn’t stand to look at it, the cold slick meat, the pockets of gristle and mayonnaise.

He joined Jenelle behind the bar and started in on his own station, both to avoid looking at the turkey and to prevent her from cleaning his station too. He didn’t want her thinking she got treated like a lackey.

“Any word?” Jenelle asked.

“Not yet,” said Harry. “It’ll happen pretty soon. I’m surprised they haven’t done it yet, but at least they’re not rushing in here to review us before we have time to settle in.”

“Maybe they’ve already been coming for a while and just haven’t written about it yet,” said Jenelle.

Harry froze. “Maybe,” he said. He shook it off. “Probably. I don’t know. I doubt a local paper can afford more than a couple of visits anyway.”

Jenelle took a bite of her sandwich. “You want me to bring you one?” she said, chewing.

“No, thanks,” Harry said. “I’m not hungry.”

“I can always make another stop,” she said. “I could bring you a burger.”

“Nah,” he said.

“The point,” Jenelle went on, scrubbing at the flat top, “is that you don’t really eat, ever. You never even join us for staff dinner. And you’re pretty skinny.”

“There’s always too much to do. And I had a bagel today,” Harry said. “With peanut butter.” He was making this up; he had no idea what he’d eaten, and it was unlikely it had been anything more than coffee. It was true that he wasn’t hungry lately, and that when he finally got hungry he was too busy to eat. But he assumed that would pass. “I’ll eat when our review’s in.”

“Okay,” Jenelle said dubiously. “Except what if it’s not good?”

Harry looked at her. “Do you think it won’t be?”

“I think we rock. But I’m not a reviewer.”

Harry had been hoping that he was the only one worrying about this; it made him more anxious than ever to hear that Jenelle thought there was something to worry about too. “You know what? Even if it’s not great, we learn from it,” Harry said. “That’s my motto
. W
e can’t see everything objectively.” He was trying for a boss’s Zen-like calm, but he could hear that he was speaking a little quickly. Nevertheless, his voice only got faster the more he tried to slow it down. “How
could
we be objective? We come in here and we just swim for our lives. I don’t see anything objectively anymore. I’m looking forward to the review
. T
here’s no way we do everything perfectly
. T
here’s probably a hundred things I should see but I just can’t, because I’m too close to it
. A
thousand. I look for it all, but I can’t tell anymore
. W
e may as well find out what we need to do. May as well fix it. May as well get the truth.”

“Is there that much we need to work on?” Jenelle said.

“I don’t know!” he said. He smacked the flat top with his palm. “That’s the fucking point!”

From behind them they heard,
“Harry.”
Britt was at the host’s stand, a pile of menus in one hand and an expression on his face like the one he’d have if he’d found his brother watching porn in the dining room
. A
menu slipped out of his grip and drifted toward the floor without his noticing.

Harry looked over at Jenelle, who looked stricken. He shook out his stinging hand and said, “I’m sorry,” to Jenelle. “I’m just saying I’ll feel better when I get the feedback.”

“Can we talk?” Britt said.

“Absolutely,” Harry replied. He went back to scrubbing. “As soon as I’m done here, okay?”

“I’d prefer now,” Britt said, but Harry knew his brother would tell him to calm down and not to swear at the staff, and he knew Britt was right, and he didn’t want to take even more time to go over Britt’s inevitable rightness. There was too much to do. There always was.

“Soon as I’m done,” he promised, trying to sound confident, and he counted on Britt to be too worried about demonstrating cohesion in front of Jenelle to push it, and he was right. Britt left the room, giving him a dark look as he did.

Jenelle went back to work, scouring so hard her cheeks trembled. Every few minutes she cast a searching glance at him, which Harry ignored.

They were getting the pattern of the days: a weekday might be thirty guests, but when it rained it might be five. One wonderful Saturday had been close to seventy
. T
hey needed more—he needed at least thirty on weeknights and seventy-five on weekends—but they weren’t ready to handle that yet
. T
he servers were still getting comfortable with their systems; the cooks were still getting their rhythms down. Some nights they all hit it, just for a while. He could feel the energy humming through the place when it happened
. A
ll the ragged edges and darting eyes disappeared.

But other nights were just a farce. Earlier that week a server had dropped a full tray in the dining room, Harry had accidentally sent out a nearly raw duck breast, and Jenelle had forgotten the aromatics in the fried seafood, so it just looked like a platter at Long John Silver’s
. A
server hadn’t shown up and so food had sat too long, melting or cooling or separating, until Britt had to comp a small fortune in dishes and drinks. Even then the energy in the room remained grim. It had been the kind of night you gave up on salvaging and just hoped would end.

At least the numbers had begun to creep up, and though Harry had planned for this trickling start, he still visualized their funds as a deep and mostly empty bowl
. A
t all times, sometimes peripherally and sometimes in the foremost space in his mind, he was aware of the bowl’s inexorable depletion and its minuscule replenishment.

How had he never before fully grasped that the only way a restaurant got money was through selling food? You knew, but you didn’t
know
, and seen in this light—in the light of his loans and paychecks and purveyors—he thought the menu was ludicrously, criminally underpriced.

Once he was cooking, his fatigue disappeared. It would drop back over him the moment the pace slowed, however, just as Britt would reappear so they could discuss Harry’s latest screwup. But until then Harry could cook, and he could forget his constant hunger and the preoccupation that led him to forget to eat in the first place. He forgot the shifty-looking kids who depressed him by being across the street each afternoon, drinking generic soda and tugging at their piercings. He even came close to forgetting his loan payments. He just cooked. He eyed the golden crust of Jenelle’s fried shellfish, he brushed the duck breast with mustard, he scattered herbs and olives.

The music was loud tonight, some weird jaunty mix of fiddle and drums, but the waitstaff was nodding along to it, and that pallid, pierced, and languid crew could be trusted in matters of taste, so Harry decided to like it too. He was just deciding that the fiddle worked for him in a June Carter kind of way when Britt appeared behind the line, where he never ventured, looking grim. “Well, first crisis,” he said.

A few minutes earlier, Britt said, Juan, the dishwasher, had poked his head out the kitchen door and caught Britt’s eye, his white apron appearing and disappearing in an instant. The kitchen staff were not to be on the floor during service, but there was Juan’s face, his dark eyes round with alarm, for just a flash.