Black Holes and Revelations

When I walk in, the shop is silent.  I put my purse down in the back, my breakfast and lunch in the cooler; grab an apron, and take my knife kit to the cutting board.  I think about calling out to Tommy, but then think better of it.  He’s probably in his office, enjoying the lull.  I won’t bother him.  In fact, the quiet is nice.  He most certainly heard me come in—the guy has ears like a cat.

            There was no car parked out back, so I assume that Grace dropped him off and then went to run her errands, which happens often.  I do my usual routine:  put away the clean(ish) dry dishes from the previous day; wash any dirty ones waiting in the sink; dump the cold water from the rag buckets and replace it with warm water, soap, and bleach.  Both boards are a little dirty, and all the knives are as well, so I give them all a good scrubbing. 

I check the case; it looks pretty full.  The filets in there look like shit, so I can’t do any of those yet.  If I put any of mine in there, the old ones won’t get bought, and they need to get sold first since they’ve been sitting there since yesterday.  Pretty sure I still need to cut some for gift boxes though, let me check. . . . In the freezer I quickly find the box of individually wrapped six-ounce filets that I started and filled last week.  I needed 72.  I cut 72.  The box now has 24.  So that’s what I get started on.

There are some tenderloins already trimmed in the cooler; I’ll save those for when we get busy, or if someone asks for a filet with no bacon. 

Soon, Kyle and John walk in.

“Just you today,” Kyle states rather than asks.

I cock my head to the side, indicating my confusion.

“Tommy’s in a black hole; he hasn’t been here all week.”

That’s why it’s so quiet.

It’s funny how they gave him off last Saturday specifically so that they could try and prevent him from going into a black hole during the holidays this year.  I remember thinking that giving him a day off would only delay the inevitable.  

“Giving Tommy the day off” means bringing him into the shop at like 6am and letting him dick around until 9am, then taking him back home.  Just long enough for him to fill a few orders and get some cash.

Last week I just couldn’t find any good tenderloins.  The guys had a large order to smoke, so I just kept tossing the messed up ones in a lug for them, thinking, That’s another ten minutes of my life I’ll never get back.  We smoke the ugly ones; once cooked, their imperfections are easier to forgive.  When they’re raw and unseasoned, the flaws make them look undesirable. 

When I say flaws, I’m talking about things like:  being heavily marbled on the inside, making the meat tough (tenderloin is supposed to be very lean and evenly red throughout); being colored more of a deep purple than red (sometimes exposing them to oxygen for a while will cause them to turn a little more red, but you still can’t set them next to another tenderloin because they will still appear darker); having so much gunk on the underside that I wind up trimming them super thin; some come out floppy and slimy and are difficult to work with (usually those are older ones); some have bruising from death trauma, and I have to cut a big chunk of it out, and then it doesn’t look smooth and consistent . . . you get the idea.

I trimmed several junky ones before I started finding ones nice enough to use for raw orders.  A customer comes in early for one that we haven’t filled yet, and Tommy grabs two of the nice ones that I just finished, takes them over to the wrapping station, seasons them, walks back over to me and laughs. 

“I just seasoned those two tenderloin.” 

“Are they not supposed to be?” I ask.

“Nope.  I’ll just grab two more out of the lug in the cooler.”
            “Those are the shitty ones for the smoker.”

But of course, he’s not listening to me. 

He comes out of the cooler with two more fresh tenderloin and takes them over to the wrapping station, picks up the seasoning . . . and walks back over to me again.

“I almost seasoned them again.”

“Just stay away from the seasoning, Tommy.”

“More like stay away from the drugs.  Hoo!”

The more I think about it, really the only point in having him here at all is to take credit for all the work everyone else does.  With Leroy the Tornado here, Tommy doesn’t have to do anything.  Kyle does all the leg work during the week. 

Tommy even told them—the young guys—“I’ll never get fired from here.” 

I mean, yes his name is on the building, but he’s employed by people who’ve been enabling him for years. 

He also told the guys that he leaves meat on the table intentionally, so that if Grace walks by he can walk over to it, sigh real loud, and start to pretend to cut.  As soon as Grace is gone, he puts the knife down and goes back to not working.

*                      *                      *

Nicole took an order for “2 tenderloins.”  We had to wait for her to arrive so that we could ask her how big these “2 tenderloins” are supposed to be.  She said, “Oh you know, regular size.  Four to five pounds.”

That is not “regular size.”  That’s a huge tenderloin.  Big ones can be six pounds before you start trimming, and usually there’s more than a pound of gunk that needs to come off. 

So I cut, tie, and wrap up 2 big ass tenderloins. 

The customer arrives and says they wanted two cooked tenderloins. 

We don’t keep smoked tenderloin on hand anymore; we only do it for orders.  It takes a little under two hours to smoke. 

We are so fucked.

And here comes Kyle to the rescue; luckily we cooked today’s orders twice, so we have plenty of extra smoked tenderloin!  John cooked them yesterday, then Kyle came in and did them this morning.  Way to fuck up, guys!

What a circus.

Also, Nicole is back!  And single again. 

And telling every customer all about it.

She opens with, “I was dating this guy; he broke my arm,” so people immediately think that he was beating her.  Then she tells the full story, and makes it seem like she was only staying with him until she was healthy, because it was his fault she got hurt, so he should be responsible for healing her.  So really, she was just using him this whole time.

. . . right.

Her latest thing is that her car dealer tried to scam her by telling her a bunch of stuff was wrong with her car and she needed to give them a bunch of money to fix it.  This story she also relays to everyone who walks through the door. 

It occurs to me . . . that maybe Nicole wouldn’t get scammed so much . . . if she didn’t tell everyone how easily she gets scammed all the time. 

*                      *                      *

            Speaking of scams. . . .

Luke Johnson has been dropping by quite frequently. 

Apparently, he stopped by just yesterday.

Grace says, “What?”

“Oh yeah, Luke was just here yesterday!  He took some money out of the register and left.” 

The way Oliver says it, so sweet and innocent, it doesn’t even sound like he’s trying to get Luke in trouble; he’s just making conversation. 

Luke Johnson is gainfully employed, mind you, at some cushy desk job.  It’s not like he’s barely scraping by doing manual labor for minimum wage. 

I feel really bad for Kyle and John, who had to just stand there and watch Luke practically take food out of their mouths.  I mean, these guys used to be friends, and now Luke barely says hi to them when he comes to the shop.  And it’s not like they can tell him no; his family owns the place.

Grace has called Luke Johnson in today for a stern conversation. 

Based on historical evidence . . . I can guess how effectual Grace’s “stern conversations” are, so I’m assuming Luke Johnson’s “visits” won’t be stopping any time soon. 

*                      *                      *

Back in November, they told me that Cory is supposed to be coming back this season.

“How’d he sweet talk his way back in?” I inquire of Tommy, glancing at him out of the corners of my eyes to gauge his reaction. 

Nonplussed, he responds, “Oh, he just came by and said hi.  You know he got fired from the barbecue joint.” 

“I know.  Not surprising; they’d been jerking his chain for years.”  I read on Facebook that they parted ways for “personal reasons,” but I knew there was more to the story than that.

Tommy looks surprised to hear me say such a thing.

“They’d been promising him his own restaurant in Chicago for years, knowing damn well they were never gonna let him go.  They were just using him for his recipes.”  It happens all the time in the restaurant industry.  I had a friend whose employers fired him and then sent the cops to his house trying to get him to hand over his recipes to them.  He stood his ground and did not relinquish his intellectual property. 

I ran into Cory a few months back; his new gig is a pizza joint in The Grove.  (For those not familiar with St. Louis geography:  The Grove is the “gay” neighborhood.)  The storefront wasn’t open yet, but they were vending at a kind of outdoor festival thing.  He saved me the last two pieces of pizza they had before they completely sold out, and insisted on me not paying for it.  It was good pizza—St. Louis-style thin crust, sausage and onion, but the sausage was like a square patty covering the whole piece.  So I guess that’s what he was working on last year when he was using the shop’s facilities for experimentation. 

“But I just mean,” I continue, still eyeing Tommy cautiously, “after that whole, ‘Give me half the register’ thing . . . I’m surprised Grace is letting him come back.”  Maybe she has a short memory.  Remember that time I quit? 

“What?” Tommy asks.

 “Last year.  When they asked him to come help?  He said the only way he’d come back was if they gave him half the register every night.”  Tommy’s the one who told me this . . . right?  (Wrong; Tommy was in a black hole at the time, which is why we needed Cory to come back.  Nicole is the one who told me about this.  Tommy didn’t forget, they just never told him.) 

“Hey Grace, did you hear that?  Cory wants half the register!” 

“Not now . . . this was last year!” I call after him, but he’s gone.

And so is Cory; it’s now a week from Christmas and I have yet to see him.

*                      *                      *

The phone rings and I answer it.

“Hi Grace!” a man’s voice responds to mine.

“Grace went home for the day; how can I help you?”

“Is Tommy there?” 

“Tommy’s vacationing in Malibu; how can I help you?” I repeat in a stern yet upbeat tone, the implication being that I won’t be asking a third time.

“Oh . . . I’ll just call back during the week.”

“Okay, it was great talking to you!”

Because apparently Tommy and Grace are the only ones who can write down a fucking order?  Fuck you for wasting my time, asshole.

And that’s my new game:  whenever Tommy’s not around, I tell customers that he’s vacationing someplace different every week.  I know it’s lame, I just want one time to see Tommy’s face when someone asks him how Martha’s Vineyard was. 

*                      *                      *

I’m not the only one who likes to joke around at the shop.  Apparently Grace and Tommy have their own kind of inside joke as well, Kyle tells me. 

“Every single day, Grace will find some excuse to walk up behind Tommy, and like, graze his butt with her hand, and she’ll go, ‘Oh I’m so sorry Tommy, me too, me too.’” 

This is a pun on the #metoo movement of women who have come forward to publicly discuss being sexually harassed or assaulted.  I’m sure that the literal millions of victims of sexual assault would be so thrilled to learn that Grace and Tommy have made a joke out of it. 

*                      *                      *

I drop by the shop on a Wednesday to grab some andouille for a fancy cocktail party Frank’s friends are throwing Friday night.  I am not surprised to see Tommy there, having emerged from his black hole, as he always does once he runs out of money.  He assured me that he would be there the following Saturday and “be in charge.” 

Saturday morning comes and Tommy is indeed at the shop.

He leaves before 10:30am.