The Lost Recipe for Happiness (28 page)

Inside the kitchen, things were quiet. Much too quiet. She glanced at the clock, feeling slightly disoriented by a low, constant hum and the lack of music in the kitchen. “Hello?” she called, settling the box on the stainless steel table by the door. Unwinding her scarf, she headed into the dining room, wondering if they were all out there. “Hello?”

Nobody. Frowning, she glanced at the clock. It was only nine, but somebody should be here by now. Where were they all?

With a sense of dread, she headed upstairs. “Hello?”

A knot of people were gathered around a table in the bar. Alan, the daytime bartender, Peter, Tansy, Patrick, and Ivan. They looked at her with long faces. “Hey,
Jefa,”
Ivan said, his palms cupped around his elbows.

Elena touched her belly, feeling the scars and empty spots within her fill with liquid dread. “What’s wrong? Who died?”

“Nobody died, Chef, but it’s bad,” Alan said.

“What is it?”

Ivan said, “The INS staged a raid in Carbondale and rounded up a bunch of people. Some kind of government crackdown, to coincide with the first day of ski season.”

Elena thought of the man at the condo, swearing into the phone. “Fuck,” she said. “How many did we lose?”

A giant well of silence opened into the room. “How many?” she repeated.

“All of them.”

“Not
Juan
?” She looked at Ivan. “You told me you checked all of their green cards. You personally vouched for Juan.”

“Chef, it’s—”

For one long moment, she was stunned. What would they do? “Who staged the raid?”

Ivan shrugged. “The government. They probably timed it this way on purpose.”

Elena shook her head, and made a decision. “I don’t know why you’re sitting there. Get your asses up and let’s get to work. Peter, get your buddies in here—tell them we’ll pay double for the night. Tansy, call anyone you can think of who might be able to do anything for a weekend.”

“You’re going to open?” Alan asked.

“We don’t have any choice. We’ve advertised all over town, and passed out coupon books, and the radio ads are probably running right now.” Acid burbled in her stomach. She tried not to imagine her entire career going up in flames. Pulling her hair into a thick band, she cocked her thumb in the direction of the kitchen. “Get on it, guys. You’ve got a lot of prep to get done. Tansy, I need you in the main kitchen—listen to what they tell you.”

In her cigarette-ruined voice, Tansy said, “I gotta call home and make sure somebody can watch my granddaughter, but I’m sure my sister will do it.”

Ivan said, “Do you want to simplify the menu a little, maybe? Cut some things ahead of time that might slow us down too much?”

She nodded. “Do it. Figure out the most time-consuming items and we’ll tell the servers to emphasize tamales. We should have enough tamales for anything.”

The cooks headed into the kitchen. “Alan,” she said, “cut the seating by 20 percent at a time. Marta, you’re going to have to prepare for the overload in the bar. Any suggestions on making the wait more appealing? Free drinks, appetizers?”

“Sangria and Mexican coffee? They can have the regular free, and pay one dollar for rum.”

“Give the laced away free, too.” Elena pursed her lips. “What if we do a bunch of corn fritters in baskets, too? With roasted red pepper jelly and the Pancho Villa honey.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Marta said. “Cool. I’ll get on it.”

Elena took a breath. “Is there anything else that could get in our way before the end of the night?”

“We’re short on those little silver bowls. If the dishwasher gets behind, it could be an issue.”

“Who can do dishes up here?”

“We’ll figure it out.” Patrick gestured toward the clock. “You can get to the kitchen.”

She met his eyes. “Showtime.”

He smiled, very faintly, and bowed. “At your service, madam.”

In her office, she sat for a moment at the desk, for one second allowing a sense of disaster to wash over her. She thought of Juan, locked up or in some truck going back to Mexico, and the two dishwashers, and the women and children who would go back with all of the construction workers, and all the money that would go into the pockets of the coyotes who were getting rich on the backs of human dreams and corresponding misery.

It made her furious. The heat of it sucked her throat dry.

Ivan came to the door, knocking with the back of his knuckles, even though the door was open. “You all right, boss?”

She shook her head. “No. But we’ll make it work anyway. Do we have any way to get in touch with Juan, once he gets to his hometown? Does anybody know where he’s from?”

“I’ll find out. He’s a good man.” Ivan’s hooded lids fell over the brilliance of his eyes, and Elena waited. “Chef, I’m sorry. We’ll make it work, you know.”

“You promised,” she said. “You checked every one of them.”

“And I did. I swear to God.” He held up a hand, palm out. “It’s not that hard to fake papers with a social security number, you know? They all had good papers.”

Elena sighed. “You’re right. It’s not your fault.” She shook her head. “How the hell are we going to replace Juan?”

He combed his fingers through the neat beard on his chin. Shook his head. “We won’t.”

“I have to call Julian, then I’ll be in the kitchen.”

The rush started at six, and by six-thirty the bar was full. They’d prepared as much as they could ahead of time, cutting extra buckets of meat, doubling the prep on soup. Ivan fried twenty-four dozen tiny corn fritters, and Tansy proved herself worth her weight in gold by making dozens of corn and flour tortillas and preparing chiles for the tasting plates; she had fresh churros and giant pans of pomegranate baklava ready to go. Peter and the boys cut extra buckets of everything they could think of—lettuce and tomatoes and onions. Upon hearing about the raid, Portia volunteered to come in and woman the dish machines. Elena was stunned and delighted—another fourteen-year-old couldn’t have worked there but dispensation was made for the children of owners. Peter, smitten on sight, proved an able, if sporadic assistant.

At first, it seemed to be working all right. Between Elena, Ivan, and Peter, they ran the line pretty well. Tansy worked prep, soups, and desserts.

Elena had always loved the rush of managing a busy line, the shouts, the clatter of dishes and platters and lids on pots and the sizzle of meat and the swoosh of the dish machine in the background. The music was loud and fast, an eclectic mix of Spanish guitar and Rolling Stones tossed with Devo and a strong helping of pop favs from the eighties—Cyndi Lauper and Madonna. Elena and Ivan danced the line, plating and wiping and tossing in a tango of cooking.

The dishwashing was a critical problem. On a busy night, there were usually at least two boys on dish and one runner, and one inexperienced fourteen-year-old wasn’t enough, even though she worked like a demon. Tansy and Peter and the boys all worked on it, and one of the bussers dove in every half hour or so, but the dishes were piling up.

“Running low on saucers!” a server cried, and Portia dutifully ran a rack of saucers and plates. “Need forks ASAP,” said another, bringing in a huge load of dirty dishes. By seven, Portia was flushed and sweaty and frustrated, but to her credit, she never complained.

Everyone else was balls to the wall, too. So to speak.

The first mini-disaster was running out of cherry mojo for the duck tamales, which were proving to be a huge, huge hit with this crowd.

“How did that happen?” Ivan roared, looking around for a victim. Peter ducked away, as if he were going to be hit, and Ivan glared at him. “Dude, what are you doing? I’ve never fucking
hit
you! Just go get some cherries.”

“I looked. We’re out.”

“Send Julian out for cherries,” Elena barked, slamming together an order for seven. “Substitute the roasted red pepper jam and move on.”

“We’re running low.”

“It’ll work until the cherries are finished.”

As the hours ground on, however, the cooks and the servers and the support staff lost the push of adrenaline and started to wear down. The dish situation grew worse and worse, with servers slamming into the kitchen every ten seconds to call for flatware or glasses or dishes. The cooks ran out of platters at one point and three orders were late going out because of it. Elena pulled Peter and Tansy off the line and asked for Alan to pull a busser to help, too. But that only lasted a little while. They couldn’t afford to be without line cooks either.

On a bad shift, disaster accrued drop by drop, like holes in a levee that widened a crack bit by bit by bit until, all at once, the wall gave way and water came rushing through. That night, the lack of dishwashers dripped into lack of dishes dripped into server annoyance and delays on the line; delays on the line made the chefs irritable and start to rush things that shouldn’t be rushed, leading to a plate that was unservable, which led to more delay, which led to customers walking out.

Under the force of the tension of the day, Elena’s body was tight to begin with, and as the evening wore on, her right hip started screaming, the pain beginning to creep upward, through her spine and ribs to her neck and shoulders, downward to her knee and ankle. She popped six Advils and drank a ton of water.

The servers gritted their teeth and tried to make the front of the house work. They pitched in with dishes and brought Portia virgin piña coladas and cherry Cokes and told her she was doing a great job. Julian pitched in, too, mainly by just being present, talking to customers, signing autographs, trying to smooth the waters. He bought drinks and greeted people and made his rounds. He brought a tray full of beers and sodas back at one point; another time, ice cream from around the corner.

The crew just worked unceasingly, calling out orders, filling plates, arranging food. They ran out of stuffed zucchini blossoms, and then the corn fritters. They made do with other things.

By nine, they were all exhausted. “What’s it like out there?” Elena asked a server. “Winding down any?”

He shook his head. “Still stacked up to the ceiling.”

“Anybody that you recognized as a reviewer?”

“I wouldn’t know,” he said. “Lot of celebrities, though. And CEO types with their very young wives. They’re all just charmed by Mr. Liswood.”

“Good.” Elena took a breath and whirled around to plate another order.

Tansy and Ivan started tussling and Elena said, “Tansy, go smoke. Ivan, you next. Make it fast.”

Finally, at eleven-thirty, the last of the customers had been served, coddled, and escorted out. Wearily, the kitchen crew mopped up the mess, cleared the counters. A deep silence lay beneath music and the swishing dishwasher and the banging of pots, a silence of exhaustion and review, as they replayed in their minds the running out of dishes and food, the nightmarish backup on the line, the frustration of the servers and the angry complaints of the customers. Through her own exhaustion, Elena saw the gray faces of her staff, and went about filling platters with leftover roasted onion tart and taquitos and the last strips of roasted, shredded beef with Tansy’s good handmade tortillas. On another tray, she arranged churros and sopapillas and baklava.

“Come on, gang,” she said, only then realizing she was hoarse enough she could barely get the words out, “let’s take a break. You’ve earned it.”

“We have a lot to do still,” Peter said, gesturing toward the mountain of dishes, the unswept floor.

She nodded. “We have to finish, but first a break.”

Ivan shouldered a platter, and Elena carried one, too, despite the thudding tense pain in her back. She was limping enough that even she noticed it, and was too tired to care. “Come on, Portia,” she called to the girl, still buried in ungodly piles of dishes and silver and pans and utensils.

Gratefully, Portia came out from behind the machine. “I am so tired,” she said.

Elena hugged her with one arm. “I’m so proud of you, girl. You’re my hero.”

Portia smiled wanly.

“Let’s go upstairs,” Elena said to the others, and they trooped through the upstairs kitchen and into the bar area. The music played and the servers and bartenders scurried around, stripping tables, cleaning coffeepots. “Marta, bring us some beer, will you?” she called, setting her platter on the table. “And some things to eat with.”

They all collapsed around the long table, Tansy and Ivan, Peter next to Portia, the two boys, and the busser who had got stuck in the kitchen. Elena just avoided groaning, but her entire body cried out in relief when she took the weight off her spine. For a moment, the absence of pain was almost like a pain of its own, and she wanted to weep, but didn’t dare. Marta brought over a tray full of bottled beer, and a couple of margaritas, one for Tansy, one for Elena. Elena lifted her drink, saying
“Salud!”

Julian emerged from the front somewhere. “Good work,” he said, carrying a piece of paper. “You managed to get out one hundred seventy-three covers tonight.”

Peter whistled.

Ivan, arched around his food as protectively as a dog defending his dish, growled, “How many comps?”

“Not that many,” Julian said, waving a hand.

Elena’s gut dropped. “How many?”

He met her eyes. “Twenty-six.”

A bomb of silence dropped on the table. “Fifteen percent,” Ivan said, shaking his head grimly. “In-fucking-credible.” Violently, he stood up and knocked his chair back and carried his plate into the kitchen.

Elena glared after him, but then looked at the rest of the table. She raised her glass again. “Considering six people did the work of eleven with a full house, that’s not too bad, huh?”

Their faces eased as they toasted her.

The phone rang and Marta called Julian. He hurried over to the bar.

“I’m proud of you guys,” Elena said. “Cheers to Tansy, who proved herself tonight!”

Tansy gave her torn, ragged chuckle. “Thank you, thank you.”

“And cheers to Portia, too! Did she do a great job?”

“I think we should hire her,” Peter suggested.

“Thanks but no thanks,” Portia said. “I wouldn’t mind learning to cook a little, but that dishwashing is for the birds.”