She waved a hand. "Too nervous about the grand opening. I"m sure I"ll be nibbling all day."
"Are you sure you"re all right?"
It was at least the twelfth time he"d asked her. Annoyance snapped at the back of her neck. "Yes," she growled. "I"m p.i.s.sed off at losing my home and worried about finding a new place on the opening day of ski season and nervous that we"re surely going to attract some reviewers tonight, but I"m fine over the f.u.c.king accident, okay?"
He didn"t wince. "Do you know how many times you"ve said "f.u.c.k" this morning?"
She rolled her eyes, picked up her keys. "I"ll see you later."
He clamped a hand over her wrist. "You can stay here, you know."
Elena bowed her head, suddenly afraid she might cry and he would see it, and she just couldn"t stand that right now. "Thank you, but no." As gently and firmly as she could, she yanked her hand away and headed for the door. Sitting on the top step, pale and thin as smoke, was Isobel, her eyes wide and solemn. Elena ignored her and headed into the cold winter morning. She had work to do, and she"d left her knives at the apartment.
At the condo, there was still a lot of commotion, of course. The car had been hauled out, and a construction crew was stacking and organizing the debris. "I just need to get to my kitchen," she said to a burly man who seemed to be in charge. "I"m a chef, and my knives are in there."
He lifted a finger, signaling her to wait, and listened to a walkie-talkie. "How many?" he barked, his Irish eyes the color of the mountains over cheeks that were red from anger or cold or both. "When did it happen?"
He listened and swore. "Ah, G.o.dd.a.m.n it. Who do these guys think they"re kidding? This whole G.o.dd.a.m.ned county is going to go to h.e.l.l. It"s the first G.o.dd.a.m.ned day of the season!" He acted as if he was going to lob the device toward the ditch, and halted just in time. "Right, Walter. Get back to me when you get the numbers." Shaking his head, he clicked it off and looked at her. "Sorry, sweetheart. What did you say?"
"I live here-lived here. I"m a chef and need to get some things from the kitchen."
"What a deal, huh?" He looked at the yawning hole in the condo. "That was one lucky kid. Let me get somebody to go inside with you." With a burly arm, he gestured at a worker in a hard hat. "Harry!"
Harry loped over. "Take her inside to the kitchen through the back so she can get her stuff. And who do you know who can come to work tomorrow? We got labor troubles."
"I"ll give it some thought."
The back of the condo was fine. Elena pushed open the gate and went in through the patio door. Her knives were in a bundle on the counter, and she picked them up protectively, and quickly filled a small box with a few other things-her stained notebook of recipes, her favorite bowl. Glancing over her shoulder, she didn"t see Harry anywhere, and rushed over to the living room to see if she could grab her grandmother"s geranium. It had lived through a dozen moves, being neglected by Mia and ignored by others, and being smuggled into three countries. Surely a little car wreck couldn"t do any damage. If she had so much as a leaf, she could propagate it.
But it wasn"t there. It had sat in front of the picture window, the window that was now completely gone. The car had pulverized the entire area just inside the condo, and whatever had been left had been dragged out when the tow truck hauled the car out. She looked at the floor carefully. One leaf. Just one.
Nothing. The pot was gone, though she saw shards of the red clay. There was a scattering of dirt. And there-she dove for it. But not even she could pretend this leaf would survive. It had been crushed to nothing.
"Oh, grow up," she said aloud. "Go to work."
"Ma"am?" said Harry from the door. "You ought not to be in there. The structure is unsound."
Elena nodded, and stepped over some shattered wood left from her sideboard. "You"re right. I"m sorry."
As she pulled into the parking lot of the Orange Bear, she took a moment to breathe. She felt hollowed out, as if all of her organs and feelings had been sucked from her body.
But she was absolutely not going to let this freak accident interfere with what was a hugely important day in her life. Pulling on her gloves and twisting a scarf around her throat, she carried the box of kitchen things up to the back door.
Inside the kitchen, things were quiet. Much too quiet. She glanced at the clock, feeling slightly disoriented by a low, constant hum and the lack of music in the kitchen. "h.e.l.lo?" she called, settling the box on the stainless steel table by the door. Unwinding her scarf, she headed into the dining room, wondering if they were all out there. "h.e.l.lo?"
n.o.body. Frowning, she glanced at the clock. It was only nine, but somebody should be here by now. Where were they all?
With a sense of dread, she headed upstairs. "h.e.l.lo?"
A knot of people were gathered around a table in the bar. Alan, the daytime bartender, Peter, Tansy, Patrick, and Ivan. They looked at her with long faces. "Hey, Jefa," Jefa," Ivan said, his palms cupped around his elbows. Ivan said, his palms cupped around his elbows.
Elena touched her belly, feeling the scars and empty spots within her fill with liquid dread. "What"s wrong? Who died?"
"n.o.body died, Chef, but it"s bad," Alan said.
"What is it?"
Ivan said, "The INS staged a raid in Carbondale and rounded up a bunch of people. Some kind of government crackdown, to coincide with the first day of ski season."
Elena thought of the man at the condo, swearing into the phone. "f.u.c.k," she said. "How many did we lose?"
A giant well of silence opened into the room. "How many?" she repeated.
"All of them."
"Not Juan Juan?" She looked at Ivan. "You told me you checked all of their green cards. You personally vouched for Juan."
"Chef, it"s-"
For one long moment, she was stunned. What would they do? "Who staged the raid?"
Ivan shrugged. "The government. They probably timed it this way on purpose."
Elena shook her head, and made a decision. "I don"t know why you"re sitting there. Get your a.s.ses up and let"s get to work. Peter, get your buddies in here-tell them we"ll pay double for the night. Tansy, call anyone you can think of who might be able to do anything for a weekend."
"You"re going to open?" Alan asked.
"We don"t have any choice. We"ve advertised all over town, and pa.s.sed out coupon books, and the radio ads are probably running right now." Acid burbled in her stomach. She tried not to imagine her entire career going up in flames. Pulling her hair into a thick band, she c.o.c.ked her thumb in the direction of the kitchen. "Get on it, guys. You"ve got a lot of prep to get done. Tansy, I need you in the main kitchen-listen to what they tell you."
In her cigarette-ruined voice, Tansy said, "I gotta call home and make sure somebody can watch my granddaughter, but I"m sure my sister will do it."
Ivan said, "Do you want to simplify the menu a little, maybe? Cut some things ahead of time that might slow us down too much?"
She nodded. "Do it. Figure out the most time-consuming items and we"ll tell the servers to emphasize tamales. We should have enough tamales for anything."
The cooks headed into the kitchen. "Alan," she said, "cut the seating by 20 percent at a time. Marta, you"re going to have to prepare for the overload in the bar. Any suggestions on making the wait more appealing? Free drinks, appetizers?"
"Sangria and Mexican coffee? They can have the regular free, and pay one dollar for rum."
"Give the laced away free, too." Elena pursed her lips. "What if we do a bunch of corn fritters in baskets, too? With roasted red pepper jelly and the Pancho Villa honey."
"Yeah, yeah," Marta said. "Cool. I"ll get on it."
Elena took a breath. "Is there anything else that could get in our way before the end of the night?"
"We"re short on those little silver bowls. If the dishwasher gets behind, it could be an issue."
"Who can do dishes up here?"
"We"ll figure it out." Patrick gestured toward the clock. "You can get to the kitchen."
She met his eyes. "Showtime."
He smiled, very faintly, and bowed. "At your service, madam."
In her office, she sat for a moment at the desk, for one second allowing a sense of disaster to wash over her. She thought of Juan, locked up or in some truck going back to Mexico, and the two dishwashers, and the women and children who would go back with all of the construction workers, and all the money that would go into the pockets of the coyotes who were getting rich on the backs of human dreams and corresponding misery.
It made her furious. The heat of it sucked her throat dry.
Ivan came to the door, knocking with the back of his knuckles, even though the door was open. "You all right, boss?"
She shook her head. "No. But we"ll make it work anyway. Do we have any way to get in touch with Juan, once he gets to his hometown? Does anybody know where he"s from?"
"I"ll find out. He"s a good man." Ivan"s hooded lids fell over the brilliance of his eyes, and Elena waited. "Chef, I"m sorry. We"ll make it work, you know."
"You promised," she said. "You checked every one of them."
"And I did. I swear to G.o.d." He held up a hand, palm out. "It"s not that hard to fake papers with a social security number, you know? They all had good papers."
Elena sighed. "You"re right. It"s not your fault." She shook her head. "How the h.e.l.l are we going to replace Juan?"
He combed his fingers through the neat beard on his chin. Shook his head. "We won"t."
"I have to call Julian, then I"ll be in the kitchen."
The rush started at six, and by six-thirty the bar was full. They"d prepared as much as they could ahead of time, cutting extra buckets of meat, doubling the prep on soup. Ivan fried twenty-four dozen tiny corn fritters, and Tansy proved herself worth her weight in gold by making dozens of corn and flour tortillas and preparing chiles for the tasting plates; she had fresh churros and giant pans of pomegranate baklava ready to go. Peter and the boys cut extra buckets of everything they could think of-lettuce and tomatoes and onions. Upon hearing about the raid, Portia volunteered to come in and woman the dish machines. Elena was stunned and delighted-another fourteen-year-old couldn"t have worked there but dispensation was made for the children of owners. Peter, smitten on sight, proved an able, if sporadic a.s.sistant.
At first, it seemed to be working all right. Between Elena, Ivan, and Peter, they ran the line pretty well. Tansy worked prep, soups, and desserts.
Elena had always loved the rush of managing a busy line, the shouts, the clatter of dishes and platters and lids on pots and the sizzle of meat and the swoosh of the dish machine in the background. The music was loud and fast, an eclectic mix of Spanish guitar and Rolling Stones tossed with Devo and a strong helping of pop favs from the eighties-Cyndi Lauper and Madonna. Elena and Ivan danced the line, plating and wiping and tossing in a tango of cooking.
The dishwashing was a critical problem. On a busy night, there were usually at least two boys on dish and one runner, and one inexperienced fourteen-year-old wasn"t enough, even though she worked like a demon. Tansy and Peter and the boys all worked on it, and one of the bussers dove in every half hour or so, but the dishes were piling up.
"Running low on saucers!" a server cried, and Portia dutifully ran a rack of saucers and plates. "Need forks ASAP," said another, bringing in a huge load of dirty dishes. By seven, Portia was flushed and sweaty and frustrated, but to her credit, she never complained.
Everyone else was b.a.l.l.s to the wall, too. So to speak.
The first mini-disaster was running out of cherry mojo for the duck tamales, which were proving to be a huge, huge hit with this crowd.
"How did that happen?" Ivan roared, looking around for a victim. Peter ducked away, as if he were going to be hit, and Ivan glared at him. "Dude, what are you doing? I"ve never f.u.c.king hit hit you! Just go get some cherries." you! Just go get some cherries."
"I looked. We"re out."
"Send Julian out for cherries," Elena barked, slamming together an order for seven. "Subst.i.tute the roasted red pepper jam and move on."
"We"re running low."
"It"ll work until the cherries are finished."
As the hours ground on, however, the cooks and the servers and the support staff lost the push of adrenaline and started to wear down. The dish situation grew worse and worse, with servers slamming into the kitchen every ten seconds to call for flatware or gla.s.ses or dishes. The cooks ran out of platters at one point and three orders were late going out because of it. Elena pulled Peter and Tansy off the line and asked for Alan to pull a busser to help, too. But that only lasted a little while. They couldn"t afford to be without line cooks either.
On a bad shift, disaster accrued drop by drop, like holes in a levee that widened a crack bit by bit by bit until, all at once, the wall gave way and water came rushing through. That night, the lack of dishwashers dripped into lack of dishes dripped into server annoyance and delays on the line; delays on the line made the chefs irritable and start to rush things that shouldn"t be rushed, leading to a plate that was unservable, which led to more delay, which led to customers walking out.
Under the force of the tension of the day, Elena"s body was tight to begin with, and as the evening wore on, her right hip started screaming, the pain beginning to creep upward, through her spine and ribs to her neck and shoulders, downward to her knee and ankle. She popped six Advils and drank a ton of water.
The servers gritted their teeth and tried to make the front of the house work. They pitched in with dishes and brought Portia virgin pina coladas and cherry c.o.kes and told her she was doing a great job. Julian pitched in, too, mainly by just being present, talking to customers, signing autographs, trying to smooth the waters. He bought drinks and greeted people and made his rounds. He brought a tray full of beers and sodas back at one point; another time, ice cream from around the corner.
The crew just worked unceasingly, calling out orders, filling plates, arranging food. They ran out of stuffed zucchini blossoms, and then the corn fritters. They made do with other things.
By nine, they were all exhausted. "What"s it like out there?" Elena asked a server. "Winding down any?"
He shook his head. "Still stacked up to the ceiling."
"Anybody that you recognized as a reviewer?"
"I wouldn"t know," he said. "Lot of celebrities, though. And CEO types with their very young wives. They"re all just charmed by Mr. Liswood."
"Good." Elena took a breath and whirled around to plate another order.
Tansy and Ivan started tussling and Elena said, "Tansy, go smoke. Ivan, you next. Make it fast."
Finally, at eleven-thirty, the last of the customers had been served, coddled, and escorted out. Wearily, the kitchen crew mopped up the mess, cleared the counters. A deep silence lay beneath music and the swishing dishwasher and the banging of pots, a silence of exhaustion and review, as they replayed in their minds the running out of dishes and food, the nightmarish backup on the line, the frustration of the servers and the angry complaints of the customers. Through her own exhaustion, Elena saw the gray faces of her staff, and went about filling platters with leftover roasted onion tart and taquitos and the last strips of roasted, shredded beef with Tansy"s good handmade tortillas. On another tray, she arranged churros and sopapillas and baklava.
"Come on, gang," she said, only then realizing she was hoa.r.s.e enough she could barely get the words out, "let"s take a break. You"ve earned it."
"We have a lot to do still," Peter said, gesturing toward the mountain of dishes, the unswept floor.
She nodded. "We have to finish, but first a break."
Ivan shouldered a platter, and Elena carried one, too, despite the thudding tense pain in her back. She was limping enough that even she noticed it, and was too tired to care. "Come on, Portia," she called to the girl, still buried in unG.o.dly piles of dishes and silver and pans and utensils.
Gratefully, Portia came out from behind the machine. "I am so tired," she said.
Elena hugged her with one arm. "I"m so proud of you, girl. You"re my hero."