Dusty knows it's going to be a bad day when he gets in. It's not the hangdog expressions on the bartender, hungover from the night before, or Lead's expression as they avoid eye contact - or even the server he'd broken up with - ("it's not you, it's me" and some fucking awful personal hygiene) - glaring at him in between setting up tables.
No. It's the fact that the fry station being given a wide berth, and is grumbling something that could be German but is probably just the agonies of whatever damned thing the restaurant is built on top of.
An old dishwasher'd made the joke about it being an Indian burial ground, and the GM'd snapped "everywhere is our burial ground", and that'd touched off an argument in the kitchen - and their dishwasher vanishing.
Speaking of which, the curse has struck again- and there's no one in that corner anymore, where Sarah'd been the night before. Dishes lean precariously over a dry, shining steel basin. The dishwasher is sneeringly half-open. It's not so obviously cursed as the fryer, but goddamn if something isn't wrong with that thing.
"Dish pit, Dusty." Lead tells him, and he groans, low and tired. "I don't want to hear it," she says. "You know we've got that stage coming in."
"Fucking, fine. If Nance stabs me, though, it's your fault."
"If Nance stabs you, maybe you should have been nicer," she snaps, and it's like the curse of the pit is on him already.
"Scheisse," the fryer snarls. "Scheisse!"
"Suzy, get some sage into that thing, we need it for the special." lead yells back into the kitchen. A suggestion of what she can do with the fryer comes back.
Dusty slouches back to the dish pit and stares into the mirror-shine surface of the thing. There's even fresh gloves, all ready for him.
"Fuck," he mutters. Pulls the gloves on. "God damn..."
Three hours later the fryer has stopped cursing the back of house, to say nothing of the fried chicken. Dusty's a lean mean dish-scrubbing machine - once he got into the groove, everything just flies. He's feeling better about some things.
He's got most of the sheet pans back in a nice row, there's just... three more plates to go, and he's fine. Everything's just fine.
"Hey man. Hey!"
Color bleeds back into the world, and he looks up, realizes he's muttering at the plates. Just like old Rob, he of the wrong joke at the wrong time. "Yeah man?"
"You, uh. You okay?"
Shit, it's the stage. Dusty looks over. Lead's busy at the pass, the other stations are head down. The line is churning along like a well-oiled machine, give or take the usual weirdness of the kitchen. "Yeah," Dusty mumbles. "Yeah I'm fine, do something for you?"
"Yeah, uh, I ran out of prep." The stage shifts from foot to foot. "Lead said to ask if you need anything."
This guy's gonna fuck up his system, just as it's under control. This fucking newbie, stammering and staring. Dusty feels his face curl into something sour. Anger flushes his face. Who does this asshole think he is.
"Dusty!" Suzy's voice snaps out from her station just before he can do or say something he'll regret. Dusty becomes aware that he's brandishing the scrub brush like a machete at the stage. "Smoke break."
He drops the brush in the sink. "Fine." Passing the stage, bumping his shoulder hard, he says "Do the fucking dishes."
It takes two cigarettes to stop seeing the sink, and Dusty's hands are still shaking. Suzy finishes hers: keeps trying to say something. Stops. Mutters something, heads back inside. Finally, he can't delay it anymore: steps back in.
Stage is head down over the dishes. He looks left, he looks right. Lead catches his eye. "Get on pasta, Dusty, you're off dishes for now."
Finally. He gives one more look over at the stage: makes himself move over to the pasta station to back Agate up.
Agate's slow as hell, and Dusty's usually faster, but he's slow tonight. The burner's at least steady: even if the thing that's always eating every half pasta order straight out of the boiling water when eyes are taken off it is hungry tonight. Still, with the two of them, whatever damned thing with too many tails and heads doesn't have hardly a chance to make off with the tagliatelle.
In the corner, the stage leans in over the sink, hissing and muttering to himself. Dusty tries to ignore it.
The fryer is talking to itself again. It sounds like Spanish this time. Suzy's got the touch: she's on it with oregano, and it mostly quiets down to the usual hissing. Fat? Discontent? Who cares. The chicken that comes out of it is flawless, for all that there's oregano burning in the oil.
They don't talk much when service is over and the kitchen scrubbed down, but they cluster around the table with the fernet bottle for most of them: some soda and lime for the GM, who assuredly doesn't drink. They keep glancing back at the kitchen: the only station still busy is the dish pit as the stage just keeps going like a machine.
"We made good money," the GM tells them, and he's right: they're packed every night. "We just need to keep it up. You see the tip amounts from the last checks?"
"And then we'll move," Suzy says. They all look away from her, away from the dishwasher, anywhere else.
Moving the restaurant would be like any of them quitting. It's just too good: too good. Too busy. And the tips are practically criminal.
In the kitchen, the fryer has given up any language whatsoever, and there's screeching and metal on metal sounds, the acrid smell of something awful from the pasta burners that sure as hell didn't come out of the walk-in.
Dusty drinks his fernet and tries not to think about it.
At least the pay is good.
Libera te Tutemet ex Inferis: The 2023 Halloween Horrorquest!