Chapter 1: Sudden Changes

            Duncan stood beyond the faux-brass rail marking the line between him and them, glaring at the numbers along the bottom of his most recently closed-out check. $173.00 sub-total. Ten-dollar tip. $183.00. Extravagant circular signature. $5.00 to Raul and $7.00 to the new bartender (Tyler? Cody? What the fuck was the dude’s name?), plus the eight percent tax. Duncan calculates in silence, outwardly revealing nothing. It had just cost him to wait on those fucking people

            “Hi,” the man in the suit says, lips ranging around clenched teeth in an excruciating smile.  A skeleton wearing Armani Exchange, the man’s head floats above the dark space of his loose-fitting collar. The face gaunt, ashen, his extended hand hovers unsteadily, the held contraction in the bicep faltering, the weight of the sleeve seemingly too much to support for more than a few seconds. Fingers protrude from the cuff, reaching from a sleeve dark as a well, digits extended like the pointing hand of the Ghost of Christmas Future, the knuckles like shards of flesh too sharp to squeeze.

            The suit lowers his arm, his greeting unreciprocated. “Dave.  Dave Johnson. I’m the new assistant marketing manager,” he says. He smiles, skin stretching, the hollows of his eyes darken, his lips from pink to dusty rose.

            “The new what?” Duncan says, turning his ear toward Dave, prompting him to repeat himself. 

Where the fuck is Rob?

Duncan scans the expansive dining room of The House of Rock Stars Cafe. 

“Today’s my first day. I just thought I should…go around...and…” his voice trails off as he looks over his own shoulder trying to track Duncan’s search. 

            Duncan spots the manager. “Rob,” he yells, unheard under the deafening thump of AC/DC’s You Shook Me All Night Long. Duncan brushes clumsily past chairs and around two big-hairs staring in awe at a pink guitar once played by C.C. DeVille of Poison. He skirts a couple wearing XXL replicas of the H-O-R-S-C t-shirt he wears daily (red letters atop shadowy stallion logo), having their picture taken in front of a display-case housing Elvis’s circa 1975 sunglasses and enormous pants. 

Rob stands, plate of fries in his hand, directly in the path of the swinging doors leading to the kitchen, a clear violation of unwritten restaurant law and basic common sense. Food runners exiting the kitchen and bussers entering it swerve around him, narrowly avoiding each other and the burns and scars that occur when a tray of hot food goes airborne.

“Can I talk to you?” Duncan asks.

“Whadaya need?” Rob asks, more interested in the cooling Frankenstein Fries. “Do you know where Stevie B. is? He left these in the kitchen.” Then, angrily back into the kitchen, “Does sixty-four have their fries?” Rob cranes to see that table sixty-four does indeed have their fries.

“Who is that?” Duncan asks, pointing with his thumb in Dave’s direction.

“Who is who?”

Rob follows the invisible line from Duncan’s thumb across the room to Dave’s skeletal face.

            “That’s Dave Johnson. He’s our new...”

            “I don’t understand what he’s doing here.”

            “What’s there for you to understand?”

            “I did everything I was supposed to do. I filled out the applications.” Duncan holds up his index finger. “I gave you my resume.” Another finger. He tries to remember the third thing. “This is bullshit.”

            “If you want to talk about it we can discuss it at a better time. You can make an appointment.”

            Duncan crosses his arms. “No appointment. We discuss this now.” The disappointment of not getting the job, coupled with the method of discovery, engulfs him in embarrassment; a mix of emotions in Duncan dominated by anger. He suffers the familiar pang of increased desire that comes only when he realizes he can’t have something; the longing he didn’t know he’d had for the steady paycheck (even though during busy weeks the servers make more money), the perceived jump in social status from “server” to “manager,” the considerable decrease in face time with the unwashed masses who are The Café’s staple patrons. 

“Now’s not a good time.” Rob pushes the heavy double doors into the kitchen, dumps the fries into a garbage can then hands the plate to a busboy walking past.

            The pulse of the music is replaced by the clatter of dishes and shouts of the expediter; “I need a burger, burnt! Two steaks, bloody. I need (counting to himself as he scans the ticker-like printer spewing orders) one, two, three, (shouting) four fries! Let’s go let’s go!” Three feet into the kitchen Rob stops, Duncan at his heels. The doors swing continuously as waiters and busboys push through. 

“You said this company hires from within. That you preferred it that way.”   

“Duncan, listen. You’re a waiter.” 

             Fucking prick  “Was this guy in the same frat as you?” 

            “It’s been decided,” Rob says. 

Waiters carrying searing plates into the crowded dining room say, “’scuseme” as they pass between Rob and Duncan, pushing the adversaries farther apart. Busboys, not daring to interfere, lug loaded tubs around them, dishes heaped with animal bones, caked with melted cheese products.

            Duncan musters his courage. Raising his voice. “What the fuck does that mean? Is this some sort of caste system?” 

Quit. Just leave. 

            “Cast what?”

            Heads turn in an expanding circle like a shockwave. Customers fascinated by the conflict seek a voyeuristic thrill. Employees require details so they can relate the story, however it unfolds, however they remember it, to the servers on the dinner shift. There are no secrets in a restaurant

“Duncan. Listen.” Rob says, trying to regain his managerial bearing. “You’re one of our better servers. Dave has a degree. In marketing.”

            “So what?” Duncan says, louder than he had expected. “Has he ever worked in a restaurant?  I’ve worked here for over a year.”

            “It’s done,” Rob blasts out, his hands shooting upward. Mouths sit motionless as all eating and talking stops. He combs the hair that had fallen into his eyes with his fingers, up and across his forehead. “If something changes, we’ll see.” 

            “Fuck this,” Duncan says. He smiles at his own bravado, adding up the cash in his pocket ($62.00), the cash he has at home ($227.00) and the money in his checking account, calculating how long it will last.

            “What did you say?”

            “Is English your first language? Fuck. This.” The hiss from the industrial fryer permeates the kitchen as a dozen breaded chicken parts are tossed into boiling oil.

“Fuck this,” he says again, as if to himself. 

            “You’re fired. Get out. And you better not even try to use this place as a ref.…”

            Duncan grabs the swinging doors, standing directly between them, a blatant violation of house rules, arms extended like a defiant Samson about to topple the pillars of the Philistine temple.  The gesture fills him with a liberation that will walk home with him and keep him awake until dawn. Stay with him until noon, when it will finally start to fade. 

            “You’re fired,” Rob says again, almost meekly.

Duncan advances through the dining room, heads turning rapidly from him to Rob disappearing behind the decreasing arc of the closing kitchen doors. Untying the strings around his waist Duncan rips his apron off, whipping it across the room toward the kitchen. It opens mid-flight, flattening out like a blanket, six pens flying out of the pocket in every direction; one hits a customer in the forehead, another lands in a mug of root beer.

            “Congratulations,” Duncan says.  He grabs Dave’s cold palm, Dave’s bony hand like a broken bottle in a sandwich bag, before leaving, aware of everyone staring at his back, judging him positively or negatively based on how they feel about their own jobs, bosses, lives. 

I’ll never see any of these people again.

He passes Liberace’s cape, a bloody rubber chicken in front of an Ozzy poster, and autographed bras worn by The Bangles.

            “Did I do that?” Dave asks the bartender.

            “Yes. And no.”

Customers lean across their tables in a seemingly choreographed instant, shouting over the earsplitting music and the sudden explosion of voices. 

“I don’t know what to say,” Dave says.

            “In that case, my suggestion is be quiet,” the bartender replies as he continues to cut lemons into wheels and limes into wedges.

           

            Duncan doesn’t fall asleep until nine the following night. By noon his elation had begun to fade, the barely perceptible shift in mood starting an avalanche of emotions beginning with doubt and tumbling into near hopelessness.

Midnight. Friday turning into Saturday. Duncan’s phone rings. He reaches for the receiver, his hand hovering. The machine picks up.

            “Hey D. If you’re there pick up. It’s Kim.” 

He‘d debated with himself how long it would be before she called. The best thing about internal debates, he decided during one of his many pot-fueled inner dialogues over the last twelve hours, was that you know you’ll always be at least half right.

            “Are you there?” Her question makes him nervous, as if she knows he’s home.

            “Pick up. Pickuppickuppickup.” 

Did she drive by? Look in his window and see the light from the television? Maybe she’s on her cell phone. He wonders if he’s the only person in Chicago without caller ID, or a cell phone.

“I guess you’re not there. Obviously I heard about what happened yesterday. Fuck that prick. He’s no manager. He used to work at some burger joint. The only reason he has this job is because his cousin works at the corporate office. It was funny, after you left, he had to take three tables…” Duncan grabs the brushed steel pipe he’s had since eighth grade and takes a hit to maintain his rapidly diminishing buzz, the resin burning delicately in his throat.

The answering machine beeps, then silence. 

            Don’t call back.

The phone rings. Separating the blinds with his fingers, he looks into the empty courtyard. 

“Sorry. So they called another server to come in and…”

He takes another hit, her voice lost behind a deep inhalation and the subsequent thick gray smoke.

“…Rob fucked up the orders so bad they had to comp all three. Stevie B. said the look on the idiot’s face was hysterical.” Duncan squeezes his thumb and middle finger into the inside corners of his eyes. “…Rob got his ass chewed out.” She laughs, then silence. “Anyway. You know, just because we don’t work together anymore, that doesn’t mean we can’t, uh, you know, hang out…” He can hear her chewing; the ever-present sugarless bubble gum that makes her breath smell like Pepto Bismol. “…I almost forgot.  I’ve got a friend who used to work at this neighborhood place, Italia. No gift shop. You might wanna call them. My friend said they were looking.”

The machine beeps again and the room is silent. Duncan opens his eyes, the fading ghosts caused by his pressed fingers swirling in small circles, black and white sparks firing at the periphery of his vision, surprised to be the only person in the too-bright room, the thought of another morning-after with her causing his head to throb into the beginning stages of a headache. She’d made him breakfast in bed the one and only time he’d made the mistake of staying the entire night; pancakes, juice, syrup in a ceramic dispenser shaped like a cow, her mouth already working the Pepto gum. He turns off the lamp and the phone rings.

“Sorry. Last time.” Kim lets out a short laugh. “Actually I was thinking about quitting. I hate that fucking place. All those stupid pins. All that happy-happy bullshit. Hey. Billy’s band has a gig this weekend. That could be fun. Also…” her tone suddenly apologetic, “if you haven’t, um, thrown away your pins, c-can I have them?” She stops talking and he can hear regret in her silence.  “Give me a call either way. Bye,” she says, her voice growing faint. “Ummm, bye,” she says again before hanging up.

            Duncan lies across the couch, stretching to his full height, then lets his muscles relax slowly like the settling of a crumpled piece of paper until he’s in a fetal position on his side. His eyes close in stages, intentionally warding off sleep until he succumbs.

            Late Monday morning Duncan walks to the coffee shop on the corner, newspaper in hand, knowing the place will be empty. He doesn’t drink coffee, but he likes the atmosphere, the stack of weeklies, old art magazines and discarded newspapers piled near the counter, the radiator heat, so high during the past winter months they kept the door open, the bench seat along the window where college girls sharing studios in the neighborhood sit cross-legged and pony-tailed every Sunday morning. 

Duncan weaves between the small tables in the thankfully empty café. 

“Hot chocolate?” Amy asks, from behind the counter, recognizing Duncan and his drink.  He smiles politely, not showing his teeth, nodding. “If you wanna sit down I’ll bring it to you.”

“Thanks.” He moves to a table near the windows, pulls the employment section out of the paper and scans the columns, skipping large sections dominated by ACCOUNTANTS, BOOKKEEPING, COLLECTIONS What a shitty job. DATA ENTRY. 

Under the guise of doing errands yesterday he’d walked past the Rock Star Café. The line of people waiting to get in on a Sunday afternoon snaked out the front door, blocked the driveway into the parking lot, and curved around the corner. A stream of cars waited for the valet who told them the lot was full. They protested, some offered bribes

self-important pricks

sitting in their entry-level BMWs, Grand-Whatevers and the occasional Camaro driven by a 22 year-old suburbanite. He wished the place had been closed, dreamt it; boarded windows covered in graffiti, newspapers and plastic bags tumbling by, sun-faded FOR LEASE sign nailed crookedly to the door, all the result of his quitting. Didn’t his leaving force some sort of corporate reevaluation, didn’t his departure, his absence, disrupt anything?

“Here you go.” Amy places the drink on the table, which isn’t much larger than the saucer and mug it supports. Standing over him she asks, “job hunting?”

He nods. “Yeah.”

“It sucks.”

“I quit my job,” he admits. Confession, he’d realized, was his way of drawing her in, if only for a few minutes, especially if it’s only for a few minutes. “I hated that fucking place.” 

            “What are you looking for?”

            Good question. “I’m a waiter.”

“I’m sure you’ll find something,” she says. 

            “Do you wanna…sit down?”

            Amy glances nervously around the still empty café. “Sure.”

            “When I left I kept saying I quit, as if anyone there gives a shit.” 

            She nods, “Mmhmm.”

            “Why are people always doing that?”

“Quitting their jobs?”

“Making declarations.”

She shakes her head. “I don’t know.”

“As if any of it makes a difference. It’s like we’re trying to say something that’ll change the world…profoundly…causing...” the words out before he knows he’s said them, his thought jumbled and incomplete. “Sorry.”

“For what?” 

This is the most they’ve ever said to each other. Duncan wants to keep talking, if for no other reason than she was still listening

“What about this place? You like working here?” 

“It’s fine. The owners are nice…” but as she talks her voice fades to a hum. 

I quit. Get out.  Fuck you. Drop dead. The shouted phrases of past arguments.

Her lips stop moving and he says, “I know what you mean.” 

“Most people don’t even notice,” she says. The door opens and Amy nods toward the counter. He nods knowingly. As the cappuccino maker hisses he folds the paper under his arm and leaves four dollars on the table. Catching her eye as he stands, he waves. She waves back. He leaves before another look can pass between them.

The key enters the lock reluctantly, Duncan jiggling then caressing the finicky tumblers in his apartment door, the apartment on the left when you reach the first landing, the one with only the base of a brass knocker, the hammer having long since disappeared.

His apartment is a small rectangle made up of three smaller squares: the living/dining/bedroom, the kitchen and the bathroom. He’d interpreted the feel of his place as just above the level of White Collar Prison Cell. There was only one door (pilfered EXIT sign taped above it) leading in or out. (This was a violation of Chicago’s fire code and was, technically speaking, an “illegal” apartment.) Granted, he had the key, and ironically, getting in was easier then getting out. But still, only the one door. And only one real window, the one in the great room, as he liked to call it when introducing his apartment to a new guest. The window in the bathroom was bricked up, though they had left the frame, glass and all, on the interior wall. The dim portal in the kitchen was barely bigger than a medicine cabinet, and had been covered in two layers of thick steel mesh, as if to keep out the world’s largest (and disproportionately strong) mosquitoes.

He opens his checkbook for the fourth time in two days, calculating and recalculating. He can pay May rent, due in two weeks, but June will be a problem if he doesn’t get work soon. 

He’d hoped to take a week off to decompress, clean, maybe join a gym. Closing the checkbook he takes two hits off the conveniently located pipe.  “I should clean.”

Pressing play on the remote control he hears nothing, then the muffled sound of a heartbeat eventually joined by the ringing of a cash register and finally the screams leading into the guitar, bass and drums of the opening cut on Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. Duncan spends the next three hours putting all his CDs in the proper cases, stopping frequently to smoke, read liner notes and lyrics, lie back and stare at the ceiling. He places them on the rack in alphabetical order by artist, then chronologically within bands; Dark Side (1973) to the left of The Wall (1979).