The girl caught Kim staring at her. She interrupted her cow-like gum-chewing long enough to stick out her tongue. Kim pushed off the wall and went into the men’s room to splash water on his face and wash his hands.
The level of activity in the kitchen and service area of the Onion Ring was commensurate with the number of customers in the restaurant proper. It was controlled pandemonium. Roger Polo, the manager who regularly worked a double shift on Fridays and Saturdays, the Onion Ring’s two busiest days, was a nervous man in his late thirties who drove himself and his staff hard.
When the restaurant was as busy as it was while Kim and Becky awaited their order, Roger worked the line. He was the one who gave the burger and fries order to the short-order chef, Paul; or the soup and salad orders to the steam-table and salad-bar worker, Julia; or the drink orders to Claudia. All the restocking and the routine, ongoing cleanup was done by the “gofer,” Skip.
“Number twenty-seven coming up,” Roger barked. “I want a soup and salad.”
“Soup and salad,” Julia echoed.
“Iced tea and vanilla shake,” Roger called out.
“Coming up,” Claudia said.
“Regular burger and medium fries,” Roger ordered.
“Got it.” Paul said.
Paul was considerably older than Roger. His face was leathered and deeply creased; he looked more like a farmer than a cook. He had spent twenty years as a short-order chef on an oil rig in the Gulf. On his right forearm was a tattoo of a gusher with the word: Eureka!
Paul stood at the grill built into a central island behind the row of cash registers. At any given time, he had a number of hamburger patties on the cooktop; each one was in response to an order. He organized the cooking by rotation so that all the burgers got the same amount of grill time. In response to the most recent wave of orders, Paul turned around and opened the chest-high refrigerator directly behind him.
“Skip!” Paul yelled when he realized the patty box was empty. “Get me a box of burgers from the walk-in.”
Skip put his mop aside. “Coming up!”
The walk-in freezer was at the very back of the kitchen, next to the walk-in refrigerator and across from the storeroom. Skip, who’d only been working at the Onion Ring for a week, had found that a significant portion of his job was to carry various supplies from storage to the preparation area.
He opened the heavy freezer door and stepped within. The door was mounted with a heavy spring and closed behind him. The interior was about ten feet by twenty feet and illuminated by a single light bulb in a wire cage. The walls were surfaced in a metallic material that looked like aluminum foil. The floor was a wooden grate.
The space was almost full of cardboard containers except for a central aisle. To the left were the large cartons full of frozen hamburger patties. To the right were the boxes of frozen french fries, fish fillets, and chicken chunks.
Skip flapped his arms against the subzero chill. His breath came in frosted clouds. Wishing to get back to the warmth of the kitchen, he scraped away the frost from the label of the first carton to his left to make sure it was ground meat. It read: MERCER MEATS. REG. 0.1 LB HAMBURGER PATTIES, EXTRA LEAN. LOT 6 BATCH 9-14. PRODUCTION: JAN 12; USE BY APR. 12.
Reassured, Skip tore open the carton and lifted out one of the inner boxes that contained fifteen dozen patties. He carried them back to the refrigerator behind Paul and put them in.
“You’re back in business,” Skip said.
Paul didn’t respond. He was too busy setting up the cooked burgers, while his mind kept a running account of the new orders Roger had given him. As soon as he could, he turned to the refrigerator, opened the patty box and extracted the number of burgers he needed. But as he was about to close the door, his eye caught the label.
“Skip!” Paul yelled. “Get your ass back here!”
“What’s wrong?” Skip questioned. He’d not left the area, but had bent down to change the trash bag under the central island’s rubbish disposal opening.