Read Online Warm Wuinter's Garden by Neil Hetzner - Free Book Online Page B

leaving the staff restroom, Peter
looked down at his shoes. They were as mindlessly speckled with
drips and drabs as a Pollock canvas. Except for the slight noise of
Raoul shuffling dollars and counting coins for the afternoon
deposit and the croupy whir of the walk-in refrigerator, the
Retreat was quiet. He thought that the peace at the end of a shift
from the clanging of spoons and spatulas against sauce pans, the
incensed sputtering of the espresso machine, the cooks screaming
“Pick up” or “Eight-six the amandine”, the unending rings and
chimes as busboys sorted silver hot from the dishwasher was as
satisfying as the noises themselves had once been.
    Since his first days of restaurant work,
Peter had believed that the only people who could survive in the
business were those who had the business in their blood. A love of
money, even if the love were as deep as Silas Marner’s, was not
enough to keep one going. There had to be a love for the craziness,
the crises, the constant hysteria, the chance to create, the
opportunity to serve. Restaurant work was a calling, like for the
priesthood. Noble work for true believers. For nearly twenty years
Peter had had no doubt that the business was in his blood. Lately,
he had begun to have some doubts.
    Partly, it was his feet. Partly, it was Gaby
leaving him. Partly, it was the moribund Massachusetts’ economy.
Partly, it was seeing or hearing of customers and former employees
sickening and dying from AIDS. Partly it was never having enough
time with his sons. Partly it was the loneliness. Partly it was the
isolation of Provincetown from the rest of the world, an isolation
which had made it a magnet for gay men for decades, but not for
much else.
    Working seventy hour weeks in a resort town
filled with gay men and women, on the very tip of a narrow spit of
land extending miles from the edge of a continent, was not a recipe
likely to remove his loneliness, an overwhelming loneliness.
    “Honey, the count’s in. Another Black Monday.
Who’s going to the bank? You, or the ever-faithful moi?”
    “I’ll do it. You can take off.”
    “Don’t tempt me, Petey Sweetie. Do you think
we’ll have a waitron left by the weekend? Thank God, I guess, that
we’ve been so slow. Tom and that horrendous Marcie are down the
road. That busboy, the one with Jean Tierney’s eyes, the dog, I’ll
bet my virginity he won’t be back. I saw him hand in hand with his
latest summer fling and it looked like love was going to win out
over a fifteen percent split of the tips. My God, what will we do
if we get good weather this weekend?”
    “I guess we’ll muddle through. It happens
every year. We’ve always lost staff right before Labor Day. The
kids want a little time to play before the semester starts.”
    “How stoic. You hide in the kitchen under
that enchanting toque while I’m left out here, lying like Nixon,
that all will be well with their cioppino. One night, I know some
right wing Catholic homophobic dad, some Mafia or Massachusetts
merchant prince, is going to flip. A bad clam, a forgotten veal
marsala, a late dessert, and Raoul, he who loves all men a little
and too many too well, is going to be eviscerated by one of those
appallingly ugly steak knives that you insisted on buying. Who will
mourn le pauvre Raoul’s passing? Maman, of course. You, peut-etre.
Jean Tierney, non. So sad. Cut down in the prime of my somewhat
extended youth. Ooo-laa.”
    “We’ll get through it. We always do. I’m
thinking about offering a bonus for everyone who stays through
Monday. But, if I do and the weather is bad, that could cost
us.”
    “You’re going to be here?”
    “Yes.”
    “What about Rhode Island? What about
tradition? What about family? What about taking the boys to
grandmere and pere?”
    “Actually, I was hoping you might do
that.”
    “Mon Dieu, petit, are you crazy? Why?”
    “I asked Gaby. She can’t.”
    “Bitch.”
    “Bob, don’t do that. If I want the boys at