Cold Coffee

(continued)

By Elizabeth Gromley

Carol Wright and her eleven co-workers showed up, pleased with their long table reserved next to the fire. They were from a family counseling and adoption center in Austin, Texas. They wanted lobster, but most of them had no idea how to eat one. Lloyd and I assured them that we would help. With parties of six or more, we added an eighteen percent gratuity. It's a number that grows with the size of the bill, guaranteed in our pockets come time to pay. After twelve people ordered drinks, appetizers and lobster, the most expensive thing on the menu, Lloyd and I were looking at a tip of over a hundred and fifty dollars. And we were kind to them. We passed out the steaming red lobsters in plastic buckets and gave them lessons, breaking open the claws and fissuring apart the stubborn knuckles. We used large rocks and metal crackers to show them where to tear the cartilage and split apart the tail. They oohed and ahhed at the chunks of succulence they'd been looking so forward to consuming. I even told them how to tell the difference between a male and a female, from the size and shape of two appendages at the base of the tail. "And the girls have bigger butts," I said, and they laughed. We left them then, giddy and busy, their fingers glistening from drawn butter and French-fry grease, their smiles tightly conscious of the corn between their teeth.

Paul had just said goodbye to Norman and Laura as I returned to the bar. I knew what was coming; it was the perfect time for it. All of our tables were eating or paying. Paul's bar was emptying out. We'd reached the point in the night when we were waiting for everyone to leave, before we could break down and begin the side work.

"Cold coffee?" Paul asked me, though it was a rhetorical question. He pulled the icy green bottle from the cooler. "Go get Lloyd."

Lloyd and I watched like dogs as Paul poured three big shots of cold Jagermeister into glass mugs. We called it "cold coffee" for its dark hue and to throw off potential tattletales sitting at the bar. We raised the drinks, saluting a night of unexpected profit. It was wonderful, the chilled licorice alcohol that warmed my body and made my teeth tingle. Already I could feel my blood vessels dilating, and I hadn't yet brought the mugs back to the dishwasher. There's a viscosity to Jaigermeister, a thickness that is not merely digested. It spreads down my digestive tract like pillow lava, navigating the interstitial bloodstream to the nerves that recognize its properties and act accordingly. We did another shot, and I felt fluid, alive and happy. It was that familiar ardency associated with cash, booze and the approaching end of a shift.

Lloyd and I bussed and dropped checks. We poured coffees, real ones, to some social workers stalling the walk to the hotel. We called cabs for others ready to go. As Carol Wright and her group got up, we thanked them for coming in. Carol slipped me two more twenties and wished me goodnight. Lloyd wiped down the tables and chairs as I swept chunks of shells off the floor. After the kitchen officially closed at nine, we dumped the soups and erased the specials board. Somber Juan the dishwasher had piles of buckets, plates, bowls and silverware ahead of him. His sink was beside the kitchen garbage can that was overflowing with dismembered lobsters from Carol's party. After the last guest left, Lloyd and I put up the chairs, and we were done.

"Good night, huh?" Paul asked, after he took our cash-outs. I had just divided our money. After tipping out Paul, Lloyd and I were making off with two-hundred-and-sixty-five dollars each.

"Thank God for social workers," I said, sipping a Guinness at the bar. We heard footsteps coming down the hallway from the deck. I assumed it was Lloyd returning from getting stoned in his car. It was what he did after every shift. But Paul and I both stiffened when owner George emerged.

"Hi, George!" I greeted him.

"Hey George! What's up?"

We smiled broadly and pretended like we were thrilled to have him, but it was apparent that it would not matter tonight. One could Eddie Haskell the man to death; most of the time he was simply too far gone to notice or care. His latest stint in rehab had only been a couple of months earlier, at some exclusive clinic outside of Phoenix, Arizona, and I hadn't seen him with a drink since then. But Lloyd was still selling him pills, pot and, occasionally, cocaine. "He can never fire me," Lloyd would say. "I've seen too much."

George fluttered his bloodshot eyes. He would not look directly at either one of us. He focused instead on the wood-burning stove, smoldering still, an orange glow across the room. On his good days, he probed us deeply about the clientele. He wanted to know where they were from, what they were doing in our restaurant, what they ordered and how they tipped. He loved details, from the practical to the bizarre to the insignificant. I would tell him maybe how the special trout was getting raves, that a police officer stopped in to use the restroom that afternoon, or that I made my rent, seven-hundred-and-thirty-dollars, over the course of a busy weekend. One could sense his pride on these good days, in his own investment and in a loyal staff collectively able to support themselves on tips from the money that the place generated. He liked hearing when we did well, and that night Paul and I tried to appeal to this side of him.

"And Linda called in the three of us, and we thought it was gonna be dead," Paul
said.

"Yeah, it was anything but." I relayed incidents from the night, that it was good, that we made money in spite of the weather, that we made people happy, but he was so stoned. "I didn't realize it," I said, "but they don't have haddock on the West Coa-"

"Why is the fire still burning?" George cut me off. He was looking at us now, his narrow, glassy eyes jumping from my face to Paul's. He was pissed off and we didn't say anything. He shook his head and walked to the stove, where he opened the iron door to find one large piece of wood, grey with ash, engulfed in a low flame. He picked up the metal fireplace tongs next to the woodpile and pulled out the log, carrying it across the restaurant towards us. The air in the place seemed to stoke it a bit; the fire grew and blew backwards. Smoke billowed in George's face. He squinted and coughed, craning his neck to the side so he could find his way between the tables. In his state I was afraid he was going to trip or knock over one of the chairs we'd just put up. But he moved past me and around the bar to the lobsters. In front of dumbfounded Paul and me, George dipped the flaming wood into the pound-and-a-half tank. There was hissing, and a dark plume rose from the water before he lifted it out. He then made his way to the front door, pushing it open with his shoulder and leaving, the extinguished black log dripping in his wake. He was taking it with him.

George had gone in the opposite direction of his condominium. Paul and I gave each other one {begin ital.}what the fuck?{end ital.} glance before sneaking to the side window. We got there in time to see him raising the tongs over the side of the metal rail at the beginning of the bridge and dropping the wood into the black ocean below. It was low tide and it fell thirty feet before splashing next to the dock and disappearing. George seemed satisfied with that. He began walking back toward the restaurant.

"Give this to Lloyd for me," I said, tossing his wad of cash on the table between us. I grabbed my bag on the way out, zipping up my coat while jogging down the hallway to the deck where I took the far exit by the bar. Buzzed, I slowed down when I saw the black ice on the sidewalk. I was nowhere near close enough to be illuminated by Lloyd's headlights in the parking lot, still, bright and shining through the cold.