"I don"t want you to make me laugh, John. I want you to cook burgers. And it"s "Mr. Le Renges" to you."
He took me through to the kitchen, which was tiled in dark brown ceramic with stainless-steel counters. Two gawky young kids were using microwave ovens to thaw out frozen hamburger patties and frozen bacon and frozen fried chicken and frozen French fries. "This is Chip and this is Denzil."
"How"s it going, Chip? Denzil?"
Chip and Denzil stared at me numbly and mumbled ""kay I guess."
"And this is Let.i.tia." A frowning dark-haired girl was painstakingly tearing up iceberg lettuce as if it were as difficult as lacemaking.
"Let.i.tia"s one of our challenged crew members," said Mr. Le Renges, resting one of his hairy tarantula hands on her shoulder. "The state of Maine gives us special tax relief to employ the challenged, but even if they didn"t I"d still want to have her here. That"s the kind of guy I am, John. I"ve been called to do more than feed people. I"ve been called to enrich their lives."
Let.i.tia looked up at me with unfocused aquamarine eyes. She was pretty but she had the expression of a smalltown beauty queen who has just been hit on the head by half a brick. Some instinct told me that Tony Le Renges wasn"t only using her as an iceberg lettuce tearer.
"We take pride in the supreme quality of our food," he said. Without any apparent sense of irony he opened a huge freezer at the back of the kitchen and showed me the frozen steaks and the frost-covered envelopes of pre-cooked chili, ready for boiling in the bag. He showed me the freeze-dried vegetables and the frozen corn bread and the dehydrated lobster chowder (just add hot water). And this was in Maine, where you can practically find fresh lobsters waltzing down the street.
None of this made me weak with shock. Even the best restaurants use a considerable proportion of pre-cooked and pre-packaged food, and fast food outlets like McDonald"s and Burger King use nothing else. Even their scrambled eggs come dried and pre-scrambled in a packet.
What impressed me was how Mr. Le Renges could sell this ordinary, industrialized stuff as "wholesome, hearty food, lovingly cooked in our own kitchens by people who really care" when most of it was grudgingly thrown together in giant factories by minimum-wage shift-workers who didn"t give a rat"s a.s.s.
Mr. Le Renges must have had an inkling about the way my mind was working.
"You know what our secret is?" he asked me.
"If I"m going to come and cook here, Mr. Le Renges, I think it might be a good idea if you told me."
"We have the best-tasting burgers anywhere, that"s our secret. McDonald"s and Burger King don"t even come close. Once you"ve tasted one of our burgers, you won"t want anything else. Here-Kevin-pa.s.s me a burger so that John here try it."
"That"s okay," I told him. "I"ll take your word for it. I had a sandwich already."
"No, John, if you"re going to work here, I insist."
"Listen, Mr. Le Renges, I"m a professional food hygienist. I know what goes into burgers and that"s why I never eat them. Never."
"What are you suggesting?"
"I"m not suggesting anything. It"s just that I know for a fact that a proportion of undesirable material makes its way into ground beef and I don"t particularly want to eat it."
"Undesirable material? What do you mean?"
"Well, waste products, if you want me to be blunt about it. Cattle are slaughtered and disemboweled so fast that it makes it inevitable that a certain amount of excrement contaminates the meat."
"Listen, John, how do you think I compete with McDonald"s and Burger King? I make my customers feel as if they"re a cut above people who eat at the big fast-food chains. I make them feel as if they"re discerning diners."
"But you"re serving up pretty much the same type of food."
"Of course we are. That"s what our customers are used to, that"s what they like. But we make it just a little more expensive, and we serve it up like it"s something really special. We give them a proper restaurant experience, that"s why they come here for birthdays and special occasions."
"But that must whack up your overheads."
"What we lose on overheads we gain by sourcing our own foodstuffs."
"You mean you can buy this stuff cheaper than McDonald"s? How do you do that? You don"t have a millionth of their buying power."
"We use farmers" and stockbreeders" co-operatives. Little guys, that the big fast-food chains don"t want to do business with. That"s why our burgers taste better, and that"s why they don"t contain anything that you wouldn"t want to eat."
Kevin came over from the grill with a well-charred burger patty on a plate. His spots were glowing angrily from the heat. Mr. Le Renges handed me a fork and said, "There ... try it."
I cut a small piece off and peered at it suspiciously. "No s.h.i.t?" I asked him.
"Nothing but one thousand percent protein, I promise you."
I dry-swallowed, and then I put the morsel in my mouth. I chewed it slowly, trying not to think about the manure-splattered ramps of the slaughterhouses that I had visited around Baton Rouge. Mr. Le Renges watched me with those glittering blowfly eyes of his and that didn"t make it any more appetizing, either.
But, surprisingly, the burger actually tasted pretty good. It was tender, with just the right amount of crunchiness on the outside, and it was well-seasoned with onion and salt and pepper and the tiniest touch of chili, and there was another flavor, too, that really lifted it.
"c.u.min?" I asked Mr. Le Renges.
"Aha. That would be telling. But you like it, don"t you?"
I cut off another piece. "Okay, I have to confess that I do."
Mr. Le Renges whacked me on the back so that I almost choked. "You see, John? Now you know what I was talking about when I told you that I was called to enrich people"s lives. I keep small farmers in business, and at the same time I give the people of Calais a very important community venue with the best food that I can economically serve up. Well, not only Calais. I have Tony"s Gourmet Burgers in Old Town and Millinocket and Waterville and I"ve just opened a new flagship restaurant in St. Stephen, over the river in Canada."
"Well, congratulations," I coughed. "When do you want me to start?"
I dreamed that I was sitting by the window of Rocco"s restaurant on Drusilla Lane in Baton Rouge, eating a spicy catfish poboy with a cheese fry basket and a side of brown gravy. I had just ordered my bread pudding when the phone rang and the receptionist told me in a clogged-up voice that it was 5:15 in the morning.
"Why are you telling me this?" I asked her.
"You asked for an alarm call, sir. Five fifteen, and it"s five-fifteen."
I heaved myself up in bed. Outside my window it was still totally dark. It was then that I remembered that I was now the chef de pet.i.t dejeuner at Tony"s, and I was supposed to be over on North Street at 6 a.m. sharp to open up the premises and start getting the bacon griddled and the eggs shirred and the coffee percolating.
I stared at myself in the mirror. "Why did you do this to yourself?" I asked me.
"Because you"re a nitpicking perfectionist who couldn"t turn a blind eye to three mouse droppings at the Cajun Queen Restaurant, that"s why. And they probably weren"t even mouse droppings at all. Just capers."
"Capers schmapers."
It was so cold outside that the deserted sidewalks shone like hammered gla.s.s. I walked to North Street where Chip had just opened up the restaurant.
"Morning, Chip."
"Yeah." He showed me how to switch off the alarm and switch on the lights. Then we went through to the kitchen and he showed me how to heat up the griddle and take out the frozen bacon and the frozen burgers and mix up the "fresh squeezed" orange juice (just add water).
We had only been there ten minutes when a young mousy-haired girl with a pale face and dark circles under her eyes came through the door. "Hi," she said. "I"m Anita. You must be John."
"Hi, Anita," I said, wiping my fingers on my green ap.r.o.n and shaking hands. "How about a cup of coffee before the hordes descend on us?"
"Okay, then," she blinked. From the expression on her face I think she must have thought I said "wh.o.r.es."
But they were hordes all right, and once they started coming through that door they didn"t stop. By a quarter after seven every booth and every table was crowded with businessmen and postal workers and truckers and even the sandy-haired cop who had first flagged me down as I walked into town. I couldn"t believe that these people got up so early. Not only that, they were all so cheerful, too, like they couldn"t wait to start another day"s drudgery. It was all, "Good morning, Sam! And how are you on this cold and frosty morning!" "Good morning, Mrs. Trent! See you wrapped up warm and toasty!" "Hi, Rick! Great day for the race-the human race!" I mean, please.
They not only looked hearty and talked hearty, they ate hearty, too. For two hours solid I was sizzling bacon and flipping burgers and frying eggs and browning corned-beef hash. Anita was dashing from table to table with juice and coffee and double orders of toast, and it wasn"t until 8:00 that a sa.s.sy black girl called Oona came in to help her.
Gradually, however, the restaurant began to empty out, with more back-whacking and more cheery goodbyes, until we were left with n.o.body but two FedEx drivers and an old woman who looked as if she was going to take the next six months to chew her way through two slices of Canadian bacon.
It was then that one of the FedEx drivers put his hand over his mouth and spat into it. He frowned down at what he had found in his burger and showed it to his friend. Then he got up from the table and came over to the grill, his hand cupped over his mouth.
"Broken my darn tooth," he said. "How d"you do that?" I asked him.
"Bit into my burger and there was this in it."
He held up a small black object between his finger and thumb.
I took it from him and turned it this way and that. There was no doubt about it, it was a bullet, slightly flattened by impact.
"I"m real sorry," I said. "Look, this is my first day here. All I can do is report it to the management and you can have your breakfast on us."
"I"m going to have to see a darn dentist," he complained. "I can"t abide the darn dentist. And what if I"d swallowed it? I could of got lead poisoning."
"I"m sorry. I"ll show it to the owner just as soon as he gets here."
"This"ll cost plenty, I bet you. Do you want to take a look?" Before I could stop him he stretched open his mouth and showed me a chipped front incisor and a mouthful of mushed-up hamburger.
Mr. Le Renges came in at 11:00 a.m. Outside it was starting to get windy and his hair had flapped over to one side like a crow"s wing. Before I could collar him he dived straight into his office and closed the door, presumably to spend some time rearranging his wayward locks. He came out five minutes later, briskly chafing his hands together like a man eager to get down to business.
"Well, John, how did it go?"
"Pretty good, Mr. Le Renges. Place was packed out."
"Always is. People know a good deal when they see one."
"Only one problem. A guy found this in his burger."
I handed him the bullet. He inspected it closely, and then he shook his head.
"That didn"t come from one of our burgers, John."
"I saw him spit it out myself. He broke one of his front teeth."
"Oldest trick in the book. Guy needs dental work, he comes into a restaurant and pretends he broke his tooth on something he ate. Gets the restaurant to stump up for his dentist"s bill."
"Well, it didn"t look that way to me."
"That"s because you"re not as well-versed in the wiles of dishonest customers as I am. You didn"t apologize, I hope?"
"I didn"t charge him for his breakfast."
"You shouldn"t have done that, John. That"s practically an admission of liability. Well, let"s hope the b.a.s.t.a.r.d doesn"t try to take it any further."
"Aren"t you going to inform the health and safety people?"
"Of course not."
"What about your suppliers?"
"You know as well as I do that all ground beef is magnetically screened for metal particles."
"Sure. But this is a bullet and it"s made of lead and lead isn"t magnetic."
"They don"t shoot cows, John."
"Of course not. But anything could have happened. Maybe some kid took a potshot at it when it was standing in a field, and the bullet was lodged in its muscle."
"John, every one of our burgers is very carefully sourced from people who are really evangelical when it comes to quality meat. There is no way that this bullet came from one of our burgers, and I hope you"re prepared to back me up and say that there was absolutely no sign of any bullet in that customer"s patty when you grilled it."
"I didn"t actually see it, no. But-"
Mr. Le Renges dropped the bullet into his wastebasket. "Attaboy, John. You"ll be back here bright and early tomorrow morning, then?"
"Early, yes. Bright? Well, maybe."
All right, you can call me a hairsplitting go-by-the-book bureaucrat, but the way I see it any job has to be done properly or else it"s not worth getting out of bed in the morning to do it, especially if you have to get out of bed at 5:15. I walked back to the Calais Motor Inn looking for a bite of lunch, and I ordered a fried chicken salad with iceberg lettuce, tomato, bacon bits, cheddar and mozzarella and home-made croutons, with onion strings and fried pickles on the side. But as comforting as all of this was, I couldn"t stop thinking about that bullet and wondering where it had come from. I could understand why Mr. Le Renges didn"t want to report it to the health and safety inspectors, but why didn"t he want to have a hard word with his own supplier?
Velma came up with another beer. "You"re looking serious today, John. I thought you had to be happy by law."
"Got something on my mind, Velma, that"s all."
She sat down beside me. "How did the job go?"
"It"s an existence. I grill, therefore I am. But something happened today ... I don"t know. It"s made me feel kind of uncomfortable."
"What do you mean, John?"
"It"s like having my shorts twisted only it"s inside my head. I keep trying to tug it this way and that way and it still feels not quite right."
"Go on."
I told her about the bullet and the way in which Mr. Le Renges had insisted that he wasn"t going to report it.
"Well, that happens. You do get customers who bring in a dead fly and hide it in their salad so they won"t have to pay."