Last Night at the Lobster (10 page)

Peeling back the tarp, he’s almost hoping the gas tank’s dry. The snowblower’s old, the faded red of farm machinery, dirty bicycle grips with twin hand clutches for forward and reverse and blade speed, as well as a separate throttle and choke. Tiny cotton balls of spider’s eggs dot the webs around the plug wires. He can’t remember the last time he used it—March, April, back when he and Jacquie were together and the days were a blur—or putting it away, but he must have. Even then, in that careless (and, he’d thought, endless) trance, he wouldn’t have left it empty. He unscrews the metal cap and tips his head to one side until light glints in the still liquid the color of ginger ale. Impossible to tell how deep or shallow. Half full, maybe. Enough.

He backs it out. The dusty tires are soft.

“You can do it!” Ty says, in a hearty Rob Schneider.

“I-I-I—I will try, Coach,” Manny answers, and thinks at least they’re making fun of him to his face.

There’s no reason not to wear the jacket now (he checks on his tie, still damp), yet he hesitates before drawing it on, then idiotically zips up the front. Like a mother, Roz offers him her gloves—too small; he doesn’t want to stretch them out. Jacquie watches him use his ass to back through the swinging door, and while it makes no sense, he wonders, half hoping it’s true, if she could possibly be jealous, or hurt. He’s not going to apologize for a phone call, or for Deena. He and Jacquie haven’t talked about the baby beyond a strained congratulations, as if it’s none of her business, and maybe it isn’t, not now.

Outside, the walk is a trough between foot-high banks, the only trace of footprints his own—surprising, way more duck-footed than he’d believe, making him immediately straighten his toes. The neon above the front door tints everything a heat-lamp pink, including the chipped instruction decal between the choke and the throttle. After all these years he should know the starting sequence by heart, but even before he finishes reading the six steps, his brain rejects them as a whole. Simpler to turn the crank that positions the chute that throws the snow, curved like a periscope.

There’s no point in stalling. Even if he doesn’t believe the instructions, no one’s going to come rescue him.

Patiently, precisely, he follows the steps, daring them to work.

Set transmission level to engage. Turn fuel knob to on. Pull choke out. Set throttle to fast (the running rabbit symbol). Pull starter cord. Push choke in.

His first try, he never gets to ‘push choke in.’ The starter cord is balky, having sat curled tight for eight months. He yanks the plastic handle, feeling the muscles in his shoulder pull away from the bones, until the rotor inside finally turns, a tinny spinning that rattles and slows, stops without ignition.

His third try is better, the rotor jangling, but nowhere close to turning over. Again, and nothing. Again.

“Don’t fucking do this,” he says, and rechecks the settings: engage, on, choke out, rabbit. “Right.”

He squeezes the handle tight, takes a deep breath and hauls back hard. The rotor whizzes, the motor catches, just a cough, and dies. He does it again and nothing happens.

“What the fuck.”

He looks up past the haze of lights to the sky for patience but finds only clouds, more snow dropping straight as rain.

“Come on.”

Again. Again. Again. Again.

His patience is finished. Now it’s simply him setting his feet, leaning back and tugging the fucking cord over and over. It’s freezing but he’s beginning to sweat, beads catching in his eyebrows, and by the time the engine putts and pops to life, sputtering blue smoke that floats away over the drifted benches, his chin is wet, and the back of his neck, and he’s panting out hot clouds of his own.

He remembers to push the choke in, and it stops.

“Fuckin’ piece of shit.”

The next time, he gets it. He flicks sweat from his forehead and waves the flaps of his jacket, letting the engine run until it’s steady before squeezing the clutch that sets the blades spinning.

He guides the machine up and down the main walk, plodding along behind like he’s mowing a lawn, using the crank to turn the chute at the end so it doesn’t vomit the chopped snow back on a clean spot. Now that it’s actually working, he’s amazed how big of a difference it makes, eating down to the bare concrete. If it doesn’t snow any harder than it is, and he gets some ice melter down, one pass could do it. The lot’s not perfect, but with the walk clear, he can make a better case for staying open. Okay, so he must be officially desperate, he thinks, for the snowblower to be his friend.

He does the wing toward the mall first, afraid he’ll run out of gas. He can’t remember the last time it was serviced, but the engine is racketing, and he wonders—as he wonders about the marlin, and the live lobsters— where it will end up. After his abuelita died, he had to clear out the house, and since he knew he was moving to an apartment, he sold her clattering old Lawnboy at a weekend-long yard sale. It’s in some Salvadoran family’s garage, waiting for spring, or so he hopes, and not cannibalized for parts.

Following along, blinking and sniffling, shuffling to keep up, he thinks that may have been why he fell for Jacquie. Losing his grandmother and the only home he’d known, he needed something to cling to. But then, why not Deena? Why not Deena now?

That’s the question he can’t answer, just as he can’t say exactly what he feels for her, or what future they may have together, and he thinks with a sudden weariness that he doesn’t love her enough, and probably never will, and that later they’ll both have to pay for this fault of his, more than he and Jacquie already have.

It’s too easy to think outside, by himself, and he wishes he had his iPod, Café Tacuba grooving (but even they might lead him in the wrong direction today, the wrong car, the wrong room, the wrong bed).

Dom’s gone, just Roz’s CRV stranded out there by itself, drifted to the hubs. The gas is going to last, except he’s cold now, finishing the far wing (where no one will ever set foot, he thinks), and hungry from skipping lunch, a headache tightening his sinuses. Still, he wants to do a good job and doesn’t cheat, edging the curb perfectly. He’s not coming out here again unless he absolutely has to.

Spreading the ice melter, he notices his right arm is shaking. His fingers are numb and then tingly, cramped from fighting the vibration. Inside, putting the snowblower away, the cover keeps slipping out of his grip, and even after he rubs and flexes them, his hands feel weak.

The kitchen is quiet besides the radio. Ty and Rich and Leron are arranging their chafing dishes by the hot plate as if to show him they’re all done.

“Lemme have the usual,” he orders.

Ty’s surprised, it’s so late, but for just a second, and does an about-face.

“What’s the vegetable?”

“Cauliflower.”

“That was lunch.”

“Okay—albino broccoli.”

“Make that no vegetable.”

Manny goes to the bar and pours himself a Diet Coke with lemon, then has to pick it up with both hands. The UConn game is over and the new game is close to halftime. On the other TV, the Weather Channel is showing exactly what it showed three hours ago, and he reaches up and changes to Channel 30, right down the road from them, and gets the national news, video of shoppers milling around malls—the usual story about retailers counting on the Christmas season, as if the economy is solely dependent on the holidays. The other local channels tell him nothing, so he settles for ESPN with the sound turned down and stands there sipping. The teams mean nothing to him, and by the first commercial he’s paying more attention to the liquor bottles tiered three deep across the mirror, worried that his inventory won’t match. Even wholesale, a fifth of Chivas costs a lot, and while the amount won’t be held against his check, if he wants his own place again, Manny needs to show headquarters he can manage his resources. After the Lobster’s performance, he can’t afford much spillage.

He keys on the top shelf of scotches, the colors designed to draw the eye like fine wood. The Chivas is almost full, but he doesn’t remember the Crown Royal being so low, and he’d swear he just replaced that Dewar’s, down to a couple fingers. Yes, this morning, because Dom was late. Before he can investigate, Roz calls from the break room that his dinner’s ready.

He can’t quite rid himself of the suspicion as he eats, pulling a stool up to the far end of the table, way down by the Frialators (he has to get his own napkin and silverware, and from habit sets himself a place). The fear, of course, isn’t that Dom’s pouring himself drinks but stealing whole bottles—open, for his own consumption, or sealed, for resale. A few years ago they had a problem with a summer replacement hiding wine in empty boxes behind the dumpster. Manny has no reason to think Dom has been anything but solid, but strange things happen when people know it’s the last day, as if the rules have been suspended.

He frowns over Ty’s scampi, plated as if for a critic, the headless necks of the shrimp pointed toward the center of the dish, bodies arranged in a symmetric swirl, tails overlapped around the edge counterclockwise, parsley flakes for garnish. It’s the chain’s most popular dish, simple, and horribly boring for any real chef. Ty’s been making it for Manny nearly ten years, and tonight it’s as fine as ever, the garlic biting through the buttery richness, a breathless hint of white wine to finish. The pilaf is fluffed and light, not wet and heavy as he’s had at other Lobsters. It’s not Ty’s fault they’re closing—but Ty knows this; Ty would never doubt himself. And it’s not their last scampi either: It’s on the Olive Garden’s permanent menu.

Ty’s farther up the table on his own stool, chewing a toothpick and leafing through an old
Old Car Trader
.

“Chieftain,” Manny says to get his attention, then waggles his hand palm down to show it’s only so-so, earning him a quick finger.

The deejays change at six, the new guy making a big deal of how long it took him to drive in, telling everyone to avoid the roads if they don’t absolutely have to be out, advice Manny silently rejects. This is the beginning of the Lobster’s volume hours. Now he wonders if their numbers were hurt not only by the construction on 9 but all the snow last winter. He tells himself he’s giving up the guest count (sixty-one, pathetic for a Saturday, honestly not worth opening for).

In the corner by the dishwasher, Rich and Leron are playing a form of horse with the dead biscuits from lunch, using the garbage can as a basket. When Manny’s finished, Rich comes over and takes his plate, sliding it expertly down the counter to Leron, who blasts it with the sprayer and racks it so they can get back to their game.

Roz and Jacquie have settled into the break room— Roz smoking, using her coffee saucer as an ashtray. She’s complaining about her middle daughter bringing her boyfriend home for Christmas. This is the daughter in Florida who got in a bad car accident, stopped drinking and found religion. The boyfriend’s part of the church and twenty years older. “I don’t know,” Roz says, “he’s nice, but he’s nice
all the time
. It’s kinda creepy.”

“That is kinda weird,” Manny says.

“You don’t know,” Jacquie says. “Maybe she needs that right now.”

“Well, I don’t,” Roz says. “It’s my vacation too. I don’t need Jesus ruining it for me. How ’bout you, you going anywhere?”

“I might go down to the city for a couple days. Depends on what I get.”

Manny can counter with Bridgeport, but doesn’t, imaginingJacquie at Rockefeller Center (not Rodney, just Jacquie), watching the skaters circle under that funky gold statue of the guy lying on his side and the big tree with the GE building behind it, where they make
Saturday Night Live
. His abuelita took him once when he was little; he still remembers the flags and the glass elevator that went down into the ground. He wanted to skate, but the line was too long, and he didn’t know how anyway.

“Hey,” Roz asks him, “you making the lunch schedule next month?”

“No one’s talked to me about it, so I’m going to say no.”

“So where all are you looking?” Roz asks Jacquie.

He’d meant to just breeze through, and now, standing there while they’re sitting, he feels like an intruder on their conversation. No one’s manning the host stand, and he uses it as an excuse, ducking through the swinging door into the empty dining room, where the candles waver on the tables and Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell are harmonizing—“Ain’t nothing like the real thing, baby.” The lights blink around the live tank, the tinsel and the marlin’s belly echoing their colors. Outside, the walk is still pretty bare, just a downy layer he can see through, and while the odds are against it, Manny takes some minor satisfaction in knowing that they’re ready if somebody comes.

No one does, giving him time to miss Eddie (he still has his Powerball tickets—or ticket) and to fret over whether Dom snuck anything out while he was in the mall. He paces the main room and back into the foyer, glancing out at the parking lot, rehearsing what he might say to Jacquie if he gets the chance to be alone with her. Every pair of headlights could be Rodney, come to take her away forever, unless he does something, but what can he do or say that he hasn’t tried already?

The worst thing is that at heart he knows she’s right, that what he wanted was childish and impossible, and that he was lucky just to have her for even a little while. He’s never seen himself as the kind of person who’d throw away everything for an entirely new life, and that’s what both of them would have had to do. Jacquie understood that—from the beginning, it seems, so that throughout their time together she had to remind him this was just temporary, even when she wanted to believe in it herself. For once in his life he was the dreamer, forcing her to be the responsible one, and naturally she resented it, attacking him when they should have been happiest, confusing him, making him think their problems were all his fault when he was willing to give up anything to be with her. Now he realizes how crazy that sounds—and how cruel, with the baby on the way and Deena relying on him—but he’d really believed it then, and would have gone through with it if Jacquie hadn’t thought it all out for both of them. And while she was right—is right— sometimes he wishes she hadn’t. Sometimes, selfishly, he wishes she was so lost in him she wouldn’t have been able to save them from doing something stupid.