Last Night at the Lobster Read online

  for my brother John and

  everyone who works the shifts nobody wants

  All the vatos and their abuelitas

  All the vatos carrying a lunch pail

  All the vatos looking at her photo

  All the vatos sure that no one sees them

  All the vatos never in a poem

  —Luis Alberto Urrea

  Darden Restaurants, Inc., raised its outlook and expects full year 2005 diluted net earnings per share growth in the range of 22% to 27%….

  —MSN.com

  Contents

  Hours of Operation

  Which Nobody Can Deny

  The Most Wonderful Time

  Please Wait to be Seated

  End of Day

  Acknowledgments

  Praise for Last Night at the Lobster

  Also by Stewart O’Nan

  Copyright

  HOURS OF OPERATION

  Mall traffic on a gray winter’s day, stalled. Midmorning and the streetlights are still on, weakly. Scattered flakes drift down like ash, but for now the roads are dry. It’s the holidays—a garbage truck stopped at the light has a big wreath wired to its grille, complete with a red velvet bow. The turning lane waits for the green arrow above to blink on, and a line of salted cars takes a left into the mall entrance, splitting as they sniff for parking spots.

  One goes on alone across the far vastness of the lot, where a bulldozed mound of old snow towers like a dirty iceberg. A white shitbox of a Buick, the kind a grandmother might leave behind, the driver’s-side door missing a strip of molding. The Regal keeps to the designated lane along the edge, stopping at the stop sign, though there’s nothing out here but empty spaces, and off in a distant corner, as if anchoring the lot, the Regal’s destination, a dark stick-framed box with its own segregated parking and unlit sign facing the highway—a Red Lobster.

  The Regal signals for no one’s benefit and slips into the lot like an oceanliner finally reaching harbor, glides by the handicapped spots straddling the front walk, braking before it turns and disappears behind the building, only to emerge a few long seconds later on the other side, way down at the very end, pulling in beside a fenced dumpster as if the driver’s trying to hide.

  For a minute it sits with the ignition off, snow sifting down on the roof and back window, the heated glass seeming to absorb each crystal as it hits. Inside, framed by the bucket seats, a gold-fringed Puerto Rican flag dangles from the rearview mirror. The driver bends to a flame, then nods back astronautlike against the headrest and exhales. Again, and then once more, as the smoke lingers in a cloud over the backseat.

  The man flicks his eyes to the rearview mirror, paranoid. It’s too early and he’s too old to be getting stoned—easily thirty-five, double-chinned, his skin cocoa, a wiry goatee and sideburns—or maybe it’s his tie that makes him look strange as he guides the lighter down to the steel bowl. He could be a broker, or a floor associate from Circuit City taking his coffee break, except the nametag peeking from beneath his unzipped leather jacket features a garnished lobster above his name: MANNY. In his lap, tethered to one belt loop, rests a bristling key ring heavy as a padlock.

  More than anyone else, Manny DeLeon belongs here. As general manager it’s his responsibility to open, a task he’s come to enjoy. While Red Lobster doesn’t license franchises, over the years he’s come to consider this one his—or did until he received the letter from headquarters. He expected they’d be closed for renovations like the one in Newington, the dark lacquered booths and mock shoreline decor replaced by open floor space and soft aqua pastels, the Coastal Home look promised on the company website. With their half-timbered ceilings and dinged-up fiberglass marlin and shellacked driftwood signs for the restrooms, they were way overdue. Instead, headquarters regretted to inform him, a company study had determined that the New Britain location wasn’t meeting expectations and, effective December 20th, would be closing permanently.

  Two months ago Manny had forty-four people working for him, twenty of them full-time. To night when he locks the doors, all but five will lose their jobs, and one of those five—unfairly, he thinks, since he was their leader—will be himself. Monday the survivors will start at the Olive Garden in Bristol, another fifteen minutes’ commute, but better than what’s waiting for Jacquie and the rest of them. He’s spent the last few weeks polishing letters of recommendation, trying to come up with nice things to say—not hard in some cases, nearly impossible in others.

  He could still take Jacquie if she came to him and asked. Not really, but it’s a lie he wants to believe, so he repeats it to himself. Maybe it was true a couple of months ago, but not now. Jacquie said herself it was better this way, and, practically, at least, he agreed. After to night he won’t ever see her again. It should be a relief. An ending. Then why does he picture himself begging her at closing to go with him, or does he just need her forgiveness?

  He exhales a last time and taps the spent bowl into the ashtray, stows the pipe in the console at his elbow, cracks the window an inch, flips open his cigarettes and lights one, blowing out a curling smoke screen over the dope. He closes his eyes as if he might sleep, then pushes back the cuff of his jacket to check his watch. “All right,” he mutters, as if someone’s bugging him, then slowly opens the door and rocks himself out, the cigarette clenched in his teeth. Though there’s no one around, he’s careful to lock the car.

  There’s no wind, just some overlapping road noise from beyond the neat picket of pine trees, flakes falling softly on the cracked asphalt. As he walks across the lot, a crow takes off from the loading dock like an omen. He stops in midstep and watches it glide for the pines, then keeps going, palming the keys, sorting through them deliberately, the cigarette sticking from a corner of his mouth like a movie wiseguy. When he finds the one he needs, he takes a last hit before ditching the butt in a tall black plastic ashtray shaped like a butter churn beside the back door (noting on the ground several butts from last night he’ll have to police later).

  Inside it’s dark as a mine. He props the door open with a rubber stop, then chops on the lights and waits as the panels hopscotch across the kitchen ceiling. The brushed steel tables shine like mirrors. The brick-colored tile is spotless, mopped by Eddie and Leron last night before closing. Eddie’s coming to the Olive Garden; at least Manny’s able to take the little guy with him. Leron can always find another job—and Leron drinks, Leron has car problems, while the Easy Street van drops Eddie off and picks him up right on time, rain or shine. And while Manny would never admit this, since they’re friends, Eddie, being eager to please, is that much easier to boss around.

  Walking along the line, he passes his hand like a magician over the Frialators and the grill to make sure they’re off. The ice machine’s on and full—good. He crosses to the time clock and punches in before he hangs up his jacket, checks to make sure the safe is secure, then pushes through the swinging door to the dining room.

  It’s dusk in here, rays of soft light sneaking around the blinds, picking out a glossy tabletop, a brass rail, the sails of a model schooner. By the main wait station, a point-of-sale screen glows, a square of royal blue. He hesitates at the switches, appreciating the dimness. Bottles glint in tiers from the bar back, and from the front of the house comes the filter’s hum and water-torture dribble of the live tank. If he never opens, he thinks, they can never close. It’s a kid’s wish. What ever happens today, tomorrow the place will be a locked box like the Perkins up the road (and he’ll still have to show up in uniform for a few hours and hand out gift cards to the disappointed lunch crowd, as if this was his fault). For the last two months he’s been carefully managing down his inventory, so they’re low on everything fresh. Corpor
ate will inventory what they can use and send it to Newington—the spoils of war. The rest, like the glass-eyed marlin, they’ll have hauled away. Probably gut the place, leave it to the mice and silverfish he’s fought to a draw for so long.

  Why not just burn it to the ground? Whoever comes in is just going to want to build new anyway.

  He pops on the lights for the main room and then the bar. Outside, the paper’s waiting on the walk, the news already old. He fetches it and spreads it flat on the host stand for Kendra, slipping the rubber band onto his wrist like a trendy sport bracelet—a habit from childhood, early mornings delivering the Herald with his father and then later by himself. The whole place may be disposable, and everyone in it, but you can always find a use for a rubber band.

  He leaves the blinds down and retreats to the kitchen, stoking the big coffee urn, the spluttering heart of the house, and listens to it gurgle as he dials the safe’s combination. The fake-leather envelope’s centered with the zipper facing away from him, and locked, just the way he left it last night. From habit he checks both ways over his shoulders before picking out the key. He’s never been tempted, but today the money no longer seems his. Even if no one could blame him, he can’t see himself jumping in the Regal and aiming it for Bridgeport and Deena’s. And anyway, it’s supposed to snow, a nor’easter swirling in off the ocean, three to six inches by midnight. He pictures himself stuck on 95 with all the trucks, the state trooper with his baton of a flashlight peering in his window and saying his name. It’s just green ink on paper, and not worth a man’s honor, his abuelita would say, but, never having had money, he can’t help but think that’s what this whole deal is about.

  The thing is, there was no warning. Their receipts were okay, not great but better than last year—and this was with all that construction on 9 during the summer. They hadn’t even gotten their fall numbers. The last thing he’d received from headquarters was Ty’s ten-year pin, then BOOM, like an old building being imploded, all of it falling at once like it was made of sand.

  He counts the bills twice, then locks the envelope and the safe again and fills the cash drawer of the POS behind the bar, snapping the spring-loaded holders down like mousetraps. When he’s done he washes his hands, scrubbing between his fingers and singing “Happy Birthday” in his head like a surgeon. Ever since a salmonella outbreak in Tennessee, headquarters has been pushing food-safety awareness, and as with every corporate decree, Manny’s done his best to lead by example. He’s whitewashed graffiti and pushed the heart-healthy menu and taught his crew that every little bite counts, trying to produce a magical dining experience for his customers. He’s done everything they asked, yet there must have been something more, something he missed.

  Using the new hand held sensor, he checks the temperature in the reachin and the walk-in and the freezer, saving the numbers in the arcade-gunlike device as he goes, a night watchman making the rounds with his time key. He runs down the preshift checklist, ticking off his chores in order, getting the soups going in the double Hobart. The snow will help sell the chowder to all the mall-crawlers, the gumbo not so much. It’s going to be psycho out there.

  There are exactly four shopping days till Christmas, and he still has no idea what to get Deena. Not something for the baby; they’ll have to buy that stuff anyway. She’s already warned him she wants something romantic, like the necklace he bought Jacquie for their six-month anniversary, except that’s too expensive, especially with his future so uncertain. Lately she’s been hinting that they should get married—not just for the baby, but for them. When she starts in on it, Manny just shuts down, he’s not sure why.

  The question hounds him through the stockroom and back around to the front. The live tank is festooned with a single merrily blinking string of colored lights, some mangy gold tinsel and a misfit assortment of ornaments that have survived a dozen off-seasons at the top of the storage closet. He’s skimming the surface, watching the logy veterans mounded in the corners and thinking of earrings, when the Easy Street van flits by in slices between the blinds. The driver’s a good ten minutes early—probably worried about the snow. Manny leaves the dripping net balanced on the filter and heads for the back so Eddie won’t stand there knocking on the door frame the way they’ve taught him at the group home.

  Manny strides to the far end of the bar, dips his hip at the corner, then squares, stutter-steps and shoulders through the swinging door. It should be no surprise that his body has memorized the geometry of the Lobster, but today everything seems alien and remarkable, precious, being almost lost.

  He reaches the loading dock, and there’s Eddie coming down the van’s steps one at a time like a child, his head bent as if one ear is glued to his shoulder. His eyes bulge, magnified by thick Medicare glasses, and he wears a permanent grimace as if every movement is an effort. Because of the way his knees developed, Eddie needs two canes to walk. As he heads for the dock, his legs buckle with every step, making him lurch wildly as if he might fall, his canes busy outriggers, saving him again and again. Not that Manny notes this anymore, it’s just Eddie walking. Every couple years Manny has to write an evaluation for the foundation, and each time he writes, “Eddie is the best worker I have.” And while that may be sentimental, and in some ways untrue (he considers Roz the star of the floor and Ty the anchor in the kitchen), it’s no coincidence that today Eddie is the only person from lunch shift to punch in on time.

  “Big Papi,” Eddie says.

  “El Guapo.”

  “Know how much it is now? I heard it on the radio.”

  “How much?”

  “Two hundred million.”

  Manny whistles. “How many tickets you got?”

  “I got five already. I’m gonna buy five more if I’m allowed.” Behind him, the driver waves, and Manny waves back, freeing him of this responsibility. “How many do you have?”

  “Bruh, I don’t have money for presents.”

  “Maybe you could buy me some later.”

  “Maybe.”

  Eddie hangs one cane over an arm and grips the rail of the stairs. Manny knows to let him do it himself, and then when he’s made the top, shakes his hand—a formality that has nothing to do with this being the last day, except Manny can’t help but realize this is the last time they’ll go through this ritual. How many others, he wonders. Is it going to be like this all day?

  Inside he sets Eddie to work on dusting the front—the blinds and then the woodwork—while he changes the oil in the Frialators and gets them heating. Last day or not, he has to stick to the checklist, and lugs a heavy bucket of dark, stinking sludge outside and across the lot to the grease-only dumpster. A sparrow in a bare tree watches him pour it in, riding a branch as it bobs in the wind. The cold makes him realize he’s no longer stoned, that that private part of the day is over, one more last thing.

  As he’s coming back, thinking of a cigarette, Ty cuts him off with his decked-out Supra, honking, then jerking forward so Manny can’t get by. Manny holds up the dripping bucket, threatening to tip it over the long hood, and Ty whips into the spot beside the Regal.

  Ty’s styling in a black leather jacket like Manny’s, but the real deal, not from Men’s Ware house, the shoulders and waist tailored, trim. With his pencil mustache and close-cropped goatee, he looks like Mekhi Phifer on ER, the same sly smile.

  “Say, chief,” he says, peeling off a driving glove to give Manny a soul grip. “What the fuck are we doing here? We’re just going to have to close early. It’s supposed to snow like two feet.”

  “Three to six inches.”

  “They said twelve to eighteen five seconds ago,” he says, pointing at his car.

  “Yeah, when’s the last time they were right?”

  The clouds are right down on the mall and the wind is picking up. Why should he care if they close early? He doesn’t know, but the idea is disappointing. He already feels strange about walking away from the place, as if there’s something he needs to prove here, some job lef
t undone. At the Olive Garden he’s starting at assistant manager, and while he knows they couldn’t just give him his own place, and the pay’s the same, he sees it as a demotion. Deena’s happy that he’ll be cutting back on his hours. He should be too.

  “I still can’t believe this shit,” Ty says. “This is the kind of shit the navy used to pull on us. I can’t believe I gotta put up with it in real life.”

  “You don’t have to,” Manny says.

  “I do if I want to keep eating.”

  Ty’s run the kitchen since Manny was a green trainee. He came straight from the submarine service, and on the line he projects that buttoned-down, no-slack attitude, keeping things moving and chewing out anyone who falls behind. Of all of them, Ty probably has the best shot at finding a comparable job, but Manny felt he needed to be loyal to him, meaning he was letting go of Derek, who usually handled lunch shift, and Rafael, who sometimes covered weekends. They both understood, they said, and, though it went unsaid, they expected him to understand why they stopped coming in after that. Ty says he doesn’t mind the fourteen-hour days as long as he gets paid, but with first the seaters, then the servers and finally the back of the house deserting in bunches, the last few weeks have been hectic, and Ty’s been coming in later and later. In a way, they’ll both be glad when today’s over.

  “Who’ve I got on line?” Ty asks. “And don’t say Frito.”

  “B-Mac, Warren and Rich. And Fredo.”

  Ty turns around and heads for his car.

  “Where you going?” Manny calls.

  “Home. I can’t run the line with three people.”

  “Five. And I’ll be helping out.”

  “We can’t do Saturday dinner with four people.”

  “Five—and I thought we’d be closed by then.”

  “You better hope so, cause I swear I’ll kill Frito if I have to correct his shit all night.”

  “You won’t,” Manny promises, but just to reel him in. Everything today is going to be a test of loyalty (he’s heard of headquarters sending spies to check on inventory, especially the lobsters and liquor), and he needs Ty. He’ll do what ever he has to to get them through this and to the Olive Garden.