The shop gets in legs of lamb around
Easter—it’s the only time they have enough demand to justify carrying it. They have frozen ground lamb year-round, but
fresh cuts aren’t really flying off the shelves in Brentwood; you have to
frequent the more ethnic areas of the city if you’re looking for lamb stew meat
in the middle of July.
“What’re you doing here?” Tommy
asks.
“She’s here to see me,” Cory
answers. He’s mostly right. I need jerky for a birthday party I’m
attending tonight, and purposely waited all week till I knew Cory would be
working so I could say hi.
He’s
boning out a leg of lamb. He separates the
femur bone from the pelvis, and holds out what is left of the pelvis. “You want this?”
“Is
that even a question?? I course I want it!”
Luke
Johnson is hovering behind Cory. He
pokes his head around, scrunches his nose up in distaste and asks, “What’re you
gonna do with that?”
“Throw
it in a crock pot with some delicious sauce and cook it low and slow till the
meat falls off the bone.” Duh college
boy. Your parents own a meat shop and
you don’t know what to do with a random hunk of bone-in meat?
Cory
points at me with his knife and says, “Yes.” And that small amount of approval means more
to me than he knows. I wrap the lamb in
plastic wrap and white butcher paper to take home.
Miles
walks by with a try of wings, hot out of the smoker, “Hi Natalie!”
“My name is not Natalie.”
“My name is not Natalie.”
“Oh,
I’m thinking of that famous soccer player, Natalie Something. . . .”
“Never
heard of her.” But nice recovery!
I
go in back to say hi to Burt and he is none too pleased to see me. He barely looks up from his phone.
“Oh
it’s you. One of you came in the other day.”
“Who?”
“A
foodie. A guy studying at L’École. Well, not him—his parents. They said he wants to know more about meat
cutting and would like to come in some time.
I told them that I already have a person like that here, who comes in ‘some times.’”
“Yeah
sorry about that . . . it’s been a busy month.
My folks are moving and my mom forgot what day Easter was, and that’s
the day they’re moving.” Which means I
don’t get to learn how to bone lamb legs.
Blaaargh oh damnit.
A
week later Burt is in the hospital for his foot, again. Third time in a month. I’m not entirely certain what’s wrong with it—if
it has something to do with his diabetes—but he wears an orthopedic boot a lot
(which I’m very familiar with due to my frequent sports injuries), because he
can never stay off of it long enough to let it heal.
That
Saturday is slow. I’m sort of hung over;
I went from wearing a patchwork hippie skirt at a photography/poetry exhibit to
being a mermaid last night (it was a “no humans allowed” party), so I spend
most of the morning gorging on smoked beef tenderloin samples. Cory’s phone is beeping and ringing
constantly.
A
brilliant thought strikes me. “Hey
Cory,” I wave him over conspiratorially so Tommy can’t hear us. “I went to a party last night and left my
cooler in my car because I didn’t feel like carrying it upstairs at one o’clock
this morning. So if you get thirsty we
can sneak out back. . . .”
“Ha! Excellent.”
Instead
we clock out at 2pm and go to a bar.
Tommy gives us his blessing; he’s been annoyed with all the extra help
anyways. Whenever Cory or I start
helping a customer, he cuts us off and takes over.
“I
can handle it,” he assures us. “Remember
that one day when I worked by myself all day, blindfolded, with my hand tied
behind my back? Well it was my right
hand, not my left hand, obviously.”
(He’s left-handed.)
“Sure
thing, Tommy. Call if you need
anything!”
And
so, after a few Civil Life milk stouts on The Crow’s Nest patio, we agree to
return to our respective homes, shower, nap, change, and meet back up at Nick’s
Pub for the big viewing party of Cory’s debut on national television. (I told
you that guy was going places.) The
Destination America channel is airing the episode of “Barbecue Pitmasters” that
Cory and his boss flew to Florida to film a few months ago.
Tonight
is also a friend’s fortieth birthday, and she has chosen pirates for the theme
of her party. Since I don’t feel like
changing clothes in my car for the second night in a row, I simply wear my
pirate costume to the pub.
Why
am I dressed like a pirate? Why aren’t you dressed like a pirate? That is the real question. Stop staring
at me.
Cory
is surrounded by people, drink in hand, by the time I get there.
“Did
you get a nap?” he asks.
I
did not. I decided to clean my house
instead.
“Yeah
me neither; I went to another bar instead.”
My
eyes snap to his shoes, to see if he’s still in the meat gear he wore all day
(those shoes are disgusting). He’s in dress shoes.
“You
did get a shower first though,
right?”
“Oh
yeah. And five shots. Hey come meet Rachel; hey Rachel! This is my apprentice!”
A
long-haired girl wearing sweatpants at the bar turns around and shakes my hand,
then points from me to him, him to me, me to him, asking a question with her
eyes.
“No
we don’t do the sex,” I announce, before she can get any ideas.
Cory
laughs.
“No
butt stuff.”
Cory
laughs harder.
“You
know, Burt thinks I’m his apprentice, too.
And so does Tommy.”
He
scoffs, “When’s the last time Tommy taught you anything?”
“Uhmm
. . . never.”
“I
thought so. When we did rib roasts at
Christmas, that was one of the best times I ever had.”
“Me
too! That was so much fun.”
He
turns to Rachel, “So we’re working late, after the shop’s closed, and I go out
to my car and get blazed—”
“You
fucking asshole! You have got to be
kidding me; while I was lugging those huge slabs of meat out of the cooler you
were getting stoned?!” Son of a—
“Ha! Yeah.”
Rachel
finds this exchange very funny.
Still,
no lie, learning how to bone and tie beef rib roasts was one of the best times
I’ve had at the shop. It was the
Saturday before Christmas, and after 8 hours of helping trim 150 pounds of
tenderloin for the smoker, when Grace stuffed a wad of bills in one of my pockets,
I was too exhausted to argue.
As
I untie my apron, Cory tells Grace, “I’ve still got a couple hours in me; I’m
gonna get started on rib roasts for tomorrow.”
He looks at me, “You wanna learn how to do rib roasts?”
“Of course I do.” And I re-tie my apron.
The
rib roast is the rib-eye primal from the middle section of the cow. It has seven bones (ribs 6-12), and weighs
anywhere from 14-20 pounds.
There
are several boxes of these in the cooler—stacked higher than my head—so I can’t
reach the tops to cut them open. Cory is
able to carry an entire box on his own.
I try to lift one and quickly realize that is just not going to happen
for me. I have to open the box and carry
them individually, and believe me, they are not
light.
Cory plays some reggae on his phone, which he
tosses in a plastic bucket to amplify the sound. And we set to work.
Boning out a rib roast is a simple
matter of separating the ribs from the meat, and then re-tying everything
together. That way when it cooks, you
get the full flavor of a bone-in roast, but you don’t have to deal with cutting
around the bones once the meat is plated.
Grace is hanging around, watching
me. “The way you handle that huge knife
makes me think, hell! We don’t even need
Tommy, we’ve got you!”
Yep, but as long as Tommy’s family
name is above the door, he’s not going anywhere. And as long as I have a full-time job with
great pay and unparalleled benefits, I’m not going anywhere, either.
Four hours after close, we are
finally done. Grace stuffs a wad of
bills into my pocket for the second time that day. I make a feeble protest, but ultimately accept
the money. Twelve hours on my feet,
doing physical work . . . I am bone-weary and dead tired.
My phone beeps.
It’s my friend Ally: “Going for a pint at Civil Life if you’re
interested.”
Sigh. You know what? “Let me go home and wash the meat off of
myself; meet you there in about an hour.”
I’ve earned this beer.
And it tastes exquisite.
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