“Tell them first thing you can,” I interrupt. “You’re hired.”
My partner turns to me, stepping a little to the side to block the kid from seeing the alarmed expression he shoots me. Then he spins around quickly, all professional smiles, and tells the interviewee, “Would you mind giving us a minute?”
The kid shrugs, confused and daunted, then turns to walk out of the almost-finished kitchen and into the behind-schedule seating area. As soon as he pushes through the nylon curtain we’re using for a door, Tony shoots me that alarmed expression again.
“Willow, what are you doing?” he hisses.
“I like him.”
“Are you serious? He’s a high school drop-out who’s been working the fryer at McDonald’s for a year.”
“That shows he’s got dedication and a great work ethic! Besides, we’ve only got two weeks til the opening. And he can cook,” I say calmly, pushing the exquisitely fluffed, perfectly prepared omelet toward Tony, as a reminder.
He sighs and looks to the heavens.
“So he can cook an omelet. Who cares? My sister can make omelets—but those and Hot Pockets are about the extent of her culinary ability.”
“She can’t make one like this,” I say, chewing on a piece and savoring the perfect texture. “Trust me. You hire a kid like that, pay him a decent wage, cultivate his skills, and he’ll break his back for you. Have a little faith.”
Tony’s answer is drowned out by the loud sound of clattering coming from the front. He settles for giving a shake of the head and going to see what the commotion is. Struggling through the door is a tiny Asian girl with turquoise blue streaks in her hair carrying half a dozen flat packages more than half her height in length, their weight and size too much for her to navigate through the mass of furniture parts and boxes.
“Tacoma?” Tony says, rushing to her aid.
“Yep, that’s me,” she beams happily.
“Ok great, welcome, let’s get these things unwrapped so I can check them—then we’ll put them in the back until they’re ready to go up. You,” Tony says, pointing to the nervous teenager still standing like a frightened rabbit in all the chaos, “what’s your name again?”
“Shane.”
“Shane—give me a hand with these paintings, will you?”
“Did I get the job?”
Tony sighs a little, glancing at me, then waves his hand in an exasperated manner.
“Sure, but only after you help with these packages.”
It was Tony’s idea to use the restaurant as a kind of art space, putting a different local artist’s work up on the walls each month. He sold the idea to the artists by telling them restaurant customers were a ‘captive audience,’ not the kind of exhibition-goers who walk straight to the most colorful piece in the gallery and ignore the rest. The local artists would get to showcase their available-for-sale work to the hundreds (Tony’s estimate) of diners a month, while we would get free, always of-the-minute art for our restaurant. It was a win-win, as Tony loves to say.
We spend about an hour sorting through the paintings, beautiful mixed media portraits of women textured with 3D materials like metal and fabric, then hash out some of the details of the job with Shane, telling him to turn up on Sunday to start running through the recipes with the other hires. Once that’s done, Tony consults the to-do list on his phone as we sit up on the only finished table and take a brief, rare break to work through some fresh iced teas.
“Oh,” he says, noticing something, “I forgot to tell you. We have three critics—potentially—coming to the opening. Two are maybes, one definite—but the definite is from the Los Angeles Times.”
I cough down my soda to look at Tony as if he’s insane—which he patently is.
“The Times is gonna be here? On opening night?”
Tony nods happily.
“Shouldn’t we wait until the restaurant finds its, you know, ‘groove,’ before we start asking for the big guns to come in and criticize us?”
“Come on! It’s going to be an event! We’re going to explode on this city with our opening! God…I feel like I’ve been engaging in foreplay for months and I just wanna…” Tony shakes and grunts in a way that I’m pretty sure is similar to his sex face, “already.”
“Sure…” I say, brushing plaster from my paint-specked boyfriend jeans, “and it will be an event. For family, friends, people who are interested. But it’s not like we have to prove ourselves completely in one night.”
“Oh, honey,” Tony says, with a convincing sense of pity, “I’m sorry. I keep forgetting you’re from Idaho. See, you don’t get second chances here—and you sure as shit don’t get to prove yourself over the long run. The opening night is box office time. That’s when you make your money, and your reputation.”
“You’re thinking of the movies.”
“This is L.A. Everything is the movies.”
A truck pulling up and honking its horn outside signals the end of our break. I hop off the table while Tony glances at his phone again.
“Can you handle this?” he says. “I’ve got to go file that form for the Department of Public Health.”
“Sure. I’ll catch you later.”
When I go outside, two men have already descended from the truck, one of them slamming open the rear door and unloading boxes while the other plucks a pen from behind his ear and starts studying a folded bunch of papers in his hand. He’s a short guy in his forties, skin leathery from working in the truck, his eyes small and dark. He barely looks up as I approach.
“One box sea bream, one box red snapper, one squid, one mussels, one crab,” he says.
“These should have come earlier this morning,” I say, confused. “I was told before nine-thirty—the latest.”
The guy looks up at me for the first time. He checks his watch.
“What is it? Ten twenty…eight? Less than an hour out. I’m sorry.”
I frown at him but he’s already turned his attention back to his order list.
“An hour late is an hour late,” I say. “You ever wait an hour to eat at a restaurant?”
He looks up again, and upon seeing that I won’t let it go he softens a little, smiling.
“I’m sorry. Fishing season’s full swing right now, you know? We had a hell of a lot of deliveries to make, and a little trouble with the boxing. I figured since,” he waves his pencil at the covered glass behind me, “you guys weren’t even open yet that you could take the hit. Won’t happen again, I promise.”
“You know, the next couple of deliveries I have from you guys are the ones we need for the opening. If those are even five minutes after nine-thirty then it’s going to—”
“Relax,” the guy says, chuckling with a fatherly ease. “I understand. What do you think I’m gonna do? Screw over a relationship with a new customer? If I did that I wouldn’t be in business as long as I have been.”
I relax a little, realizing that my shoulders have been hunched with tension all this time.