The Queen of Minor Disasters (20 page)

“Home. She’s sick,” my brother
answers.

“What the hell? You’re just
going to walk out on the restaurant?” I say to Lucy.

“She’s sick,” Lorenzo yells at
me. Why is he defending her?

“Well you better go to your
aunt’s then,” I scream at her. “Because I don’t want any of your germs around
my house.”

I walk back into the kitchen
and through the swinging doors to the waiters’ station. “Brittany, I need you
to pick up table thirteen, Ryan you take fourteen. Lucy went home sick.”

“Great,” I hear Ryan mumble.
Even though he’s worked with us for three years, he’s not accommodating and not
that fast. He’s on thin ice as far as I’m concerned. I would give Michelle and
extra table but she already has the biggest section of the night, and I can’t
load her down. Instead, I take tables ten and eleven. Somehow I’ll manage to juggle
the phones, the door, and wait on two tables.

The rest of the night is a
blur, but I survive.

 We all do.

 The restaurant looks like
it’s been through a battle, but when you’re one man down, you don’t worry about
keeping clean. The waiters’ station is strewn with linens falling haphazardly
out of the hamper. The bread bags are spilling crumbs onto the floor, and one
empty coffee pot is burning on its warmer. The dessert area is even worse. The
cakes, which I normally cut for the servers, are either broken or toppling and
there’s chocolate sauce all over the tiles and grout. Espresso grinds spill
from the grinder and all the plates need to be restocked.

I sigh heavily. We’re in for a
long night of cleaning, which is the last thing I want to do after the day I’ve
had.

Now that all the guests are
gone, I have a minute to think. Was I too hard on Lucy? We used to show up hung
over all the time, and we’d always cover for each other. Still, she never left
before, and her walking out tonight was a bleak reminder of her new attitude
this summer. Obviously she doesn’t care as much about our friendship as I
thought she did. Now I’m convinced. She has a boyfriend and she cares about him
more than me.

I scrub the tiles with a hot
wet rag but the chocolate just smears into the grout even deeper, making brown
streaks. I walk to the kitchen to get some soap. Lorenzo’s standing near the
stove, counting the tickets from the night. He looks up at me.

“Why do you always have to be
such a bitch?” he asks.

“What was I supposed to do? Be
happy that a server walked out on the restaurant?”

“She was sick. Do you want her
throwing up in the dining room?”

“She wasn’t sick, Lorenzo.
Don’t be dumb. She was hung over.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yes I do. She doesn’t stay at
our house anymore. She probably has some loser boyfriend and stays with him
every night. I can just see it. She’s probably out drinking until four in the
morning.”

“You don’t know what the hell you’re
talking about,” my brother says and throws his tickets in the trash. Why does
he keep defending her? Doesn’t he see that a
real
friend would never walk out on the business?

“How do you know?” I snap.
“She’s my best friend.”

“Really?” he shouts. “Then why
don’t you act like it? If my best friend treated me the way you treated Lucy
tonight I’d never talk to him again.”

“Yeah, well, I’m sure your
best friend wouldn’t treat you the way Lucy has been treating
me
all summer.” I turn my back to exit,
forgetting about the soap.

“Ok, Stella. You’re always
right,” my brother says as I exit through the swinging door. “No wonder Drew
didn’t want to marry you.”

           
Why am I at fault here? Suddenly, I’m the bad guy?
I
wasn’t the one who drank too much and
then threw up in the kitchen
. I
wasn’t the one who walked out on her friends and their business. No, instead,
I’m
the one who picks up the messes, who
reorganizes, who keeps a smile plastered on her face so the customers don’t
know how hard it is to play hostess, waitress, and manager all at once. Tears
are falling from my eyes in fat wet drops that fall on the tiles I’m trying to
clean. 

Out of the corner of my eye, I
see the flowers sitting on the hostess desk. I walk towards them and sweep my
arm across the table, knocking them off. The glass vase shatters on the floor
and the flowers, once beautiful, look twisted and old among the water and
shards of glass.

Yields 8 large or 20 mini

1 pound jumbo lump crabmeat

2 eggs

1/4 cup mayonnaise

2 tablespoons Old Bay
seasoning

1 tablespoon Dijon Mustard

2 teaspoons Worcestershire
sauce

1/2 teaspoon crushed white
pepper

3/4 cup breadcrumbs

1)
     
In a large bowl, beat together the eggs,
mayonnaise, Old Bay seasoning, Dijon Mustard, Worcestershire sauce, and white
pepper.

2)
     
Gently fold in the crabmeat and breadcrumbs (add the
breadcrumbs 1/4 cup at a time. If it looks too dry, don’t add all of the
breadcrumbs).

3)
     
Shape the mixture into balls.

For fried crab cakes:

1)
     
Roll the crab cakes in breadcrumbs to coat.

2)
     
Heat 4 cups of vegetable oil in a large pot. To
make sure the oil is hot enough, drop a pinch of breadcrumbs into the mix. If
it bubbles up, you’re go to go. If not, wait a few minutes and test again.

3)
     
Gently drop 3 crab cakes into the oil. Fry until
browned on all sides. Lift them out and place on a paper towel lined plate to
absorb excess oil. Repeat until all the crab cakes are fried.

4)
     
These are ideal for sandwiches.

For Baked crab cakes:

1)
     
Let the crab cakes rest in the fridge for at least
30 minutes before cooking.

2)
     
Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

3)
     
In a medium sauté pan heat 1 tablespoon butter and
two tablespoons extra virgin olive oil.

4)
     
Gently sauté the crab cakes until lightly browned
on all sides.

5)
     
Place crab cakes on a baking sheet.

6)
     
Bake for 10-15 minutes, until warmed through.

7)
     
 These are ideal as entrées.

I don’t talk to Lucy for the
next three days. She calls Lorenzo to say that she’s still sick, and he tells
me to schedule another waiter, which I gladly do. Maybe I was wrong about her
being hung-over but what was I supposed to think? She’s been so shady this
whole summer that I could only assume the worst. I’m pretty down about our
fight, but still won’t call her to apologize.

She
should be the one to call
me
,
since she’s been acting weird lately.

Since the fight with Lucy,
everyone has been acting pretty strange. Lorenzo won’t even talk to me, Mario
is quiet, and the other waiters are all looking at me as if I might explode at
any minute. I must’ve shocked them all when I threw my flowers on the floor. I
still don’t know what came over me, but honestly, it felt good.

To make matters worse, Drew
never called and after three days, it’s pretty obvious that he’s not going to.
When I called Gina and told her what I did, she told me I basically ruined all
chances of getting him back according to our plan.

But what the hell does Gina
know anyway? Just because she’s engaged doesn’t make her the freaking Dali Lama
of dating, for God’s sake. There must be something else I can do to get Drew
back.

This whole mess is my dad’s fault.
He pumped me up with his bullshit pep talk about me being like my grandmother.
In truth, I’m nothing like her. If I was, I’d have it all figured out by now.

To avoid reality, I’m here at the
restaurant, throwing myself into this whole baking thing.

 Believe it or not, it is the
highlight of my day. I love the hours between 9:00 a.m. and 11:00 a.m. when I’m
here, in the kitchen making pastries by myself. When I’m engulfed in work, I do
a great job of not thinking about Lucy, or Drew for that matter. As far as I’m
concerned, I don’t ever need to see either one again.

Ok, maybe I do miss Lucy, a
little. But if she doesn’t want to be my friend, then we must not have been so
close to begin with.

And as for Drew, well, I’ll
deal with him later.

Every day as I bake, I listen
to music off my brother’s greasy iPod, which has been in the kitchen since we
opened the doors, with speakers hanging around the kitchen area. You know how
Lorenzo loves his music, and he’s got a great collection on this thing. Today
I’ve chosen Ligabue, Italy’s most beloved Rock and Roll icon.

Or at least, he’s my favorite.

I blast the Italian rock, sure
that none of our deliveries will arrive until at least 11:00. It’s only 9:30 so
I know I have a few hours to myself.

One thing I love doing when
I’m alone is dancing. I’m pretty horrible at it, but that’s the fun of it. It
doesn’t matter if I look crazy when I’m all alone. And thank God I’m alone
today because in my cut off jean shorts, white tank top, and red bandana, I
must look like a cross between Daisy Duke and Axl Rose. My apron, which hangs
past my knees, completes the look with its smeared chocolate stains.

The song “Piccola Stella Senza
Cielo” – “little star without a sky” – comes on and I turn the music up.
Sometimes I feel like this song was written for
me
.  I am exactly that, a little star without a sky,
especially now that I pretty much have no future.

In college, I was an English
major with an Italian minor, which almost ensured that I’d be jobless at
twenty-seven. Plus, the fact that I haven’t done
any
work in my field since graduation five years ago doesn’t
help my case. If I saw my résumé in an inbox, I’d delete it too. So I’m stuck
in the restaurant business, which is, ironically, exactly what I’ve been trying
to escape all my life. The whole reason for
going
to Fordham was so that I wouldn’t end up waiting on tables, yet the minute I
graduated, I went back to work for my parents, donning my famous black apron
and non-slip work shoes.

And now here I am on the other
end of the spectrum, all alone in a kitchen. If you want to know the truth,
this is the real restaurant life. It’s not pretty dresses and smiling guests;
it’s just a girl, a stick of butter, and a cup of flour.

I’ve mastered a few of Chuck’s
cakes, and even invented some of my own, but I just cannot call myself a pastry
chef until I’ve mastered these profiteroles. They’re sort of haunting me. But
I’ll show them who’s boss. I’m all prepped and revved up. And I spent two hours
watching profiterole demos on YouTube last night. That’s right, I’m armed with
knowledge from Julia, Wolfgang, and even Anthony Bourdain (my kitchen crush).

I dice the stick of butter and
add it to a small saucepan. When all the butter melts I add a cup of water and
a cup of flour and stir the hell out of it.