Just One Day

my body, not my clocks. The disapproval intensifies. It wafts through the house like a radiation cloud. Nowhere is safe to hide.

I have to get a job. Not just to earn the money but to get out of this house. Escaping to Melanie’s isn’t an option. Number one, we’re not speaking, and number two, she’s at a music program in Maine for the first half of summer—this according to my dad.

“You just gotta keep trying,?? Dee advises when I call him for job advice from our landline. As part of my punishment, my cell phone has been turned off, and the family Internet password protected, so I have to ask them to log me onto the web or else go to the library. “Drop your resume at every business in town, not just the ones saying they’re hiring, ’cause usually places that are desperate enough to hire someone like you don’t have time to advertise.”

“Thanks a lot.”

“You want a job? Swallow your pride. And drop off a resume everywhere.”

“Even the car wash?” I joke.

“Yeah. Even the car wash.” Dee isn’t kidding. “And ask to speak to the manager of the car wash and treat him like the King of All Car Washes.”

I imagine myself scrubbing hubcaps. But then I think of Dee, working in a pillow factory this summer or hosing off dishes in the dining hall. He does what he has to do. So the next day, I print out fifty new resumes and just go door to door, from bookstore to sewing shop to grocery store, CPA firm to the liquor store to, yes, the car wash. I don’t just drop my resume. I ask to speak to managers. Sometimes the managers come out. They ask me about my experience. They ask me how long I want to be employed for. I listen to my own answers: No real job experience to speak of. Two months. I get why nobody’s hiring me.

I’m almost out of resumes when I pass by Cafe Finlay. It’s a small restaurant on the edge of town, all done up in 1950s decor, with black-and-white-checked floors and a mishmash of Formica tables. Every other time I’ve gone past, it seemed to be closed.

But today music is blasting from inside so loud the windows are vibrating. I push the door, and it nudges open. I shout “hello.” No one replies. The chairs are all stacked up on the tables. There’s a pile of fresh linens on one of the booths. Yesterday’s specials are scrawled on a chalkboard on the wall. Things like halibut with an orange tequila jalapeno beurre blanc with kiwi fruit. Mom calls the food here “eclectic,” her code for weird, which is why we’ve never eaten here. I don’t know anyone who eats here.

“You here with the bread?”

I spin around. There’s a woman, Amazon tall and just as broad, with wild red hair poking out from under a blue bandanna.

“No,” I say.

“Motherfucker!” She shakes her head. “What do you want?” I hold out a resume. She waves it away. “Ever work in a kitchen?” I shake my head.

“Sorry. No,” she says.

She looks at the Marilyn Monroe wall clock. “I’m going to kill you, Jonas!” She shakes her fist at the door.

I turn to leave, but then I stop. “What’s the bread order?” I ask. “I’ll run and get it for you.”

She glances at the clock again and sighs dramatically. “Grimaldi’s. I need eighteen French baguettes, six loaves of the Harvest. And a couple of day-old brioche. You got that?”

“I think so.”

“Think so’s not gonna butter the bread, honey.”

“Eighteen baguettes. Six loaves of Harvest and a couple of day-old brioche.”

“Make sure it’s stale brioche. Can’t make bread pudding with fresh bread. And ask for Jonas. Tell him it’s for Babs and tell him he can throw in the brioche for free and knock twenty percent off the rest because his damn delivery guy was a no-show again. Also, make sure I don’t get any sourdough. I hate that shit.”

She grabs a wad of cash from the vintage register. I take it from her and sprint to the bakery as fast as I can, get Jonas, bark the order, and run back with it, which is harder than it sounds, carrying thirty loaves of bread.

I pant as Babs looks over the bread order. “You know how to wash dishes?”

I nod. That much I can do.

She shakes her head in resignation. “Go to the back and ask Nathaniel to introduce you to Hobart.”

“Hobart?”

“Yep. You two’ll be getting intimate.”

Hobart turns out to be the name of the industrial dish washer, and once the restaurant opens, I spend hours with it, rinsing dishes with a giant hose, loading them in Hobart, unloading them while they’re still scalding hot and repeating the whole enterprise. By some miracle, I manage to stay on top of the never-ending flow of dishes and not drop anything or burn my fingers too badly. When there’s a lull, Babs orders me to cut bread or whip cream by hand (she insists it tastes better that way) or mop the floor or find the tenderloins from one of the walk-in coolers. I spend the night in an adrenaline panic, thinking I’m about to screw up.

Nathaniel, the prep cook, helps me as much as he can, telling me where things are, helping me scrub saute pans when I get too slammed. “Just wait till the weekend,” he warns.

“I thought no one ever ate here.” I put my hand over my mouth, instinctually knowing Babs would be mad to hear that.

But Nathaniel just laughs. “Are you kidding? Babs is worshipped by the Philadelphia foodies. They make the trek out here just for her. She’d make way more money if she moved to Philly, but she says her dogs would hate it in the city. And by dogs, I think she means us.”

When the last of the diners leave, the kitchen staff and the waiters seem to all exhale at once. Someone blasts some old Rolling Stones. A bunch of tables are pushed together and everyone sits down. It’s well past midnight, and I have a long walk home. I start to pack up my things, but Nathaniel motions for me to join them. I sit at the table, feeling shy even though I’ve been bumping hips with these people all night.

“You want a beer?” he asks. “We have to pay for them, but only cost.”

“Or you can have some of the reject wine the distributors bring by,” a waitress named Gillian says.

“I’ll take some wine.”

“It looks like someone died on you,” says one of the waiters. I look down. My nice skirt and top—my good job- hunting outfit—are covered in sauces that look vaguely like bodily fluids.

“I feel like I’m the one who died,” I say. I don’t think I’ve ever been this tired. My muscles ache. My hands are red from the near-scalding water. And my feet? Don’t get me started.

Gillian laughs. “Spoken like a true kitchen slave.”

Babs appears with the big bowls of steaming pasta and small chunks of leftover fish and steak. My stomach lets out a gurgle. The platters get passed around. I don’t know if her cooking is “eclectic,” but the food is amazing, the orange tequila jalapeno sauce is only faintly orange, and it’s smoky rather than spicy. I clear my plate, and then sop up any remaining sauce with a hunk of Jonas’s not-sourdough bread.

“So?” Babs asks me when I’ve finished.

All eyes turn to me. “It’s the second best meal I’ve ever had,” I say. Which is the truth.

Everyone else oohs, like I’ve just insulted Babs. But she just smirks. “I’ll bet your first best was with a lover,” she says, and I go as red as her hair.

Babs instructs me to return the next day at five, and the routine starts all over again. I work harder than I ever have, eat an amazing meal, and pour myself into bed. I have no idea if I’m filling in for someone or maybe being auditioned. Babs screams at me constantly, for using soap on her cast-iron saute pan or not getting the lipstick off the coffee cups before they go into Hobart or making the whipped cream too stiff or not stiff enough or not adding the exact right amount of vanilla extract. But by the fourth night, I’m learning not to take it so personally.

On the fifth night, before the dinner rush, Babs calls me to the back near the walk-in refrigerator. She’s sucking on a bottle of vodka, which is what she does before the rush begins. Her lipstick leaves smudges on the rim. For a second, I think this is it, that she’s going to fire me. But instead she hands me a sheaf of documents.