Raw Blue (8 page)

This is unbearable. I will him to leave. ‘Yep.’

‘All right then.’ He gathers my broken board up and tucks it under his arm. ‘I’ll see ya later.’ He nods and walks off.

On the way home I try to cry because I think it’ll make me feel better, but I can’t. When I pull up in the lane waiting to turn right at the Garden Street traffic lights, I wind my window up and try screaming instead.

‘Faaaaaaarrrrk! Aaaargh! Faaaaaarrrrrkiiiing faaaaaarrrrk! Aaaaaaarrrrrgh!’

A Toyota Landcruiser pulls up in the lane beside me, a woman pushes a pram past the Laser’s bonnet, crossing the intersection on the walk signal, and I scream so loudly my throat feels ripped and raw, safe in the privacy of my own vehicle.

12

Closer

Kylie and Georgina are out the back having a smoke when I arrive at work fifteen minutes early. They’re sitting on upended milk crates near the rubbish skip, in amongst the stink.

‘Hi, sweetie!’ Kylie chirps.

She shifts as though the milk crate is uncomfortable, taking a drag from her cigarette, and I notice how her hand is like a little claw. Seeing her is like seeing a bad omen. I wish I could make her drink milk, watch her drink it and grow stronger.

‘How are you, sweetie?’ Georgina says.

I don’t know why, but I squat down beside them, suddenly dying to talk to somebody, anybody, just to plug into the world of people somehow. ‘Really bad, hey. I went for a surf today and I hit this guy’s –’

‘Carly’s going to take me surfing,’ Georgina says, putting her hand on Kylie’s thigh.

‘Is she?’

‘Yes. I’m going to use my new board. You know the one I told you about? With the frangipanis?’ Georgina looks at me. ‘When can we go?’

‘Well, I don’t have a board at the moment. That’s what I was going to say. I wrecked this guy’s board and my board. It was so bad. I felt awful.’

They watch me like a pair of owls as if waiting for the rest of the story. Kylie sucks back on her cigarette again and her cheeks hollow.

Georgina pokes Kylie in the side. ‘Are you going to come and try it?’

‘What,
surfing
?’ Kylie frowns. ‘I don’t
know
. I don’t even
like
swimming.’

I stare at Georgina. Can she really imagine Kylie wearing a swimsuit? Does she really think that Kylie’s in any state to paddle around and knock herself up against fibreglass?

‘What time do you start?’ Georgina asks me. Her blue eyes are sparkly and she’s all cute and perky with her short black hair, but she’s not warm at all.

I glance at my watch. ‘Half past.’

Still I stay put and silence falls over the three of us. I guess they’re waiting for me to leave, not used to me being social. But I want them to listen to me. I want them to tell me it’ll be all right. There’s this big hole in me and tonight it seems to be gaping terribly.

Georgina stubs her cigarette out and sighs loudly. ‘Well …’ She stands up and stretches.

‘We’re going
for
a coffee,’ Kylie says scratchily, her voice going up and down. ‘We’re going
to
check out that
new
place at the Wharf.’

I don’t know where she means but I nod as though I do.

‘We’ll
say
goodbye before we go. Georgina
wants
to get changed.’

‘Okay, cool, see you then.’ I make my voice sound chirpy and bright, but on me that sort of voice is as false as a mask. ‘Have fun.’

I step around Georgina and go in through the back door.

Emilio’s in the office, working out the roster.

‘Carly. How are you?’ he asks without expression.

‘Okay.’

I stand there stupidly, time passes, and eventually Emilio looks up at me, his face impatient.

I open my mouth, realise that Emilio won’t want to hear about how bad I feel, and I tell him about Danny instead, how he wants a job, the only catch being that he needs to work the same shift as me so I can give him a lift home.

‘Has he had any experience?’ Emilio’s voice is brusque.

‘No. He’s only fifteen.’

Emilio’s eyebrows twitch slightly. I can see his brain computing the fact that fifteen year olds are cheap.

‘I thought you might need someone extra on the busy nights, you know, just for school holidays. Maybe Fridays and Saturdays. Bussing.’

Emilio says he’ll think about it.

I notice the seven food orders banked up on the docket printer when I’m standing near the pass tying on my apron. I get a fright when I see them – there could be people out the front with long grey beards. The first one’s been there fifteen minutes, which means it came through before the end of Kylie’s shift. For a moment I stand rock still with my arms straight by my sides. This place is relentless; it just keeps rolling on right over the top of you, like a flat tyre, punctured but still turning, food scraps mashed in its tread.

Once, Kylie would never have left the kitchen before I arrived to take over. And she always used to finish any orders that came in towards the end of her shift, it was a point of pride with her.
It means you
get
a head start on the
prep
without having to worry about that stuff. No, I
want
to do it
. Now Kylie leaves things like everybody else does. I don’t mind from the work perspective, Kylie’s worked hard enough for long enough. But from a health perspective it worries me. I’m taking it as a sign that Kylie’s slipping away. She’s coming undone.

I slam things around getting the food orders underway. There are buckets and buckets of unwashed stuff waiting to be put through the washer, piled up precariously on the bench and on the floor.

I get to an order for Thai green chicken curry and a Caesar salad and I find that there’s no Thai curry left in the cool room. For a minute I panic and consider making it up from scratch, but that’s insane thinking. I re-check the docket and see that the order came through twenty minutes ago and there’s no order number (when people order we give them a number to display on their table). I’ve got a cold panic in my stomach. I walk out the front and find Marty out there. He’s finishing a coffee order, staring over the heads of the waiting customers while his hands cup the stainless steel jug under the steamer. Keeping my voice low, I ask him who ordered the Thai.

‘Carly Carl,’ he says, too loudly. ‘How’re ya goin’? Nah, that’s them over there, eh.’

He nods at a well-groomed couple who look like they haven’t talked to each other in years. They will give me a hard time, I know it. I hate telling people that they can’t have what they ordered. I
hate
it.

I’m right. The woman clucks in annoyance and peers at me over the top of her glasses. I hear my voice stumbling when I ask her if she’d like to choose something in place of the curry, complimentary of course. I tell her I’ll organise the refund immediately.

Emilio comes back out the front and works the register, taking orders. I ask him to refund the curry and he says, ‘Why isn’t there any made up?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Because that sort of prep can be done a couple of days in advance, can’t it? Surely?’

It’s going to be a long night.

When I get back in the kitchen the printer runs out of docket paper and emits a high-pitched noise, just in case we hadn’t noticed. I don’t know how to change the roll so I ask Emilio to do it. But he’s snowed under with customers, so we initiate plan B: he writes orders by hand and sticks them up at the pass, looking really pissed off.

An order comes through for eggs hollandaise. I check the date on the bottle of hollandaise sauce on the shelf. It’s been there since Tuesday, two days ago, the last time I made a batch. There isn’t much of it left and I would have thought Stu or Kylie might have made a batch sometime today, but apparently not. I bet it’s crammed full of bacteria, overflowing with 8s. I’m going to have to use it because more orders are coming through. We’re getting slammed. There are around twenty customers lined up out the front and there’s only Marty, Emilio and I to deal with them.

Emilio appears at the window, passing through a muffin on a plate. ‘Can you heat this up for me?’

I take the plate. ‘Where’s Roger?’

‘I’ve cut his hours. He’s doing a shorter shift. He won’t be in until six.’

‘What?’

‘Michael wants me to prune some of the labour costs.’

I tempt myself with the idea of just walking out, taking off my apron and cap, collecting my bag and walking into the back alley where the air stinks of garbage but is a hell of a lot cooler; helping Michael prune labour costs that way.

‘Bye,
sweetie
.’ Kylie and Georgina swan through the kitchen. Kylie’s still in her work clothes, but Georgina’s wearing skinny jeans and a bright yellow singlet. She takes in the chaos of plates and cups around the washer with a disdainful look on her face as though it’s a messy fact completely unrelated to her world.

By the time I deliver the now complimentary order of pasta and a Caesar salad to the couple, they’ve been waiting for forty-five minutes. The woman tells me that it’s not good enough and they won’t be coming here again. She has a quaver in her voice. I tell her that I’m very sorry. She looks me up and down as though I’m an inefficient moron, which I suppose I am.

I’m back inside and Roger’s at work now, churning through the dishes. He doesn’t say hello to me and I don’t say hello to him. Emilio’s head appears at the window.

‘How’re we going on the eggs hollandaise, Carly?’ His voice is funny.

‘Why?’

‘They’re for the team.’

‘Oh shit. Why didn’t you tell me?’

But he’s gone. I check the time on the docket. The order’s been there for twenty minutes. There are two orders still ahead of it but the eggs hollandaise will now jump the queue. They’re for the team: men from the master franchisor’s office. Manly is a flagship operation for New South Wales and they like to inspect it regularly, sometimes bringing potential franchisees with them to show the place off. I met one of them once, Max, a broad-shouldered American with a hard handshake and a smile full of white teeth. He repeated my name like a threat, gripping it with his teeth, and wiped his hand on his pants.

I plate up the eggs hollandaise and run it myself. I can’t give it to Roger – he’s not quite in keeping with the slick Café Parisienne staff member outlined in the franchise manual. The eggs have taken too long. It will not matter to these guys that we are rushed off our feet. The aim of the Café Parisienne operation is to provide consistent service.

There are five of them at the table, all wearing suits. They stop talking when I arrive.

‘Eggs hollandaise?’ I say in a bright voice with a plastic smile. Surely they must see the desperation in my eyes?

A short balding man raises his hand. I slide the eggs in front of him and he gives an appreciative mumble. I can feel sweat squishing under my arms as I hurry back to the kitchen. What if he gets sick from that hollandaise sauce? What if I’ve just committed the first act of franchise murder?

I’m convinced he’ll be vomiting within an hour. I’m going to be in so much trouble. It occurs to me that I should be glad they didn’t order the Thai. I’m so stressed my teeth are grinding into each other and I’ve got pains in my stomach because I need to pee really badly but there just isn’t time.

What sort of life is this, one where you can’t pee when you want to?

Roger shovels what I’m sure is the remainder of the eggs hollandaise into his mouth about forty minutes later. I watch him do it, standing at the end of the pass, gripping onto the stainless steel shelving as though I have sea legs and I can’t trust myself to move. The slamming has stopped, there are no customers waiting out front. I’ve just run the last food order myself. The kitchen looks like it’s been hit by a bomb.

Marty barrels into the kitchen, pulling his cap off – Emilio probably made him put it on when he saw the franchise inspectors arrive. He stops in front of me, standing too close so that my neck is cricked back and I can see how dilated his pupils are. He’s giving off a stale, flat smell. I wonder again if he’s on drugs. There’s something rushed and discordant about him.

‘I got kicked out of my place, eh,’ he says. He stares down at me with eyes that are too bright. ‘Arseholes.’

‘What are you going to do?’

‘Dunno, eh.’

I’m waiting for him to ask if he can crash at my place. Even though I don’t want him to, I’ll say yes, because it seems to me that people always want something from you and I can’t work out how to hold the door shut against that any more.

But he doesn’t. A smile pulls at the corners of his mouth. ‘What are you doin’ tonight, Carls?’

‘What? Why?’

‘Nah, are you going for a drink?’ His voice is too loud.

‘No. I can’t.’ Holding a hand to my head, I scurry past him and around the corner to the cool room. I pull back on the door and walk inside, pushing through a curtain of cold air. It’s loud in there, the fan on top of the freezer door whirring away. I stare at the shelves blankly. I feel like I’m unravelling along the seams.

The door to the cool room opens with a slapping sound. Marty comes in, staring at me like I’m something he wants. I make a noise and back up slightly and he closes his hands around my shoulders. But then he blinks and his face changes. He looks so tired, blanked out, that I forget about what’s going on for a second and instead wonder what happened to Marty to make him like this.

The door opens. ‘Marty?’ Emilio’s voice.

Marty drops his hands.

‘Marty, for shit’s sake, I need you out the front, mate.’

As Marty pushes past him, Emilio stares at me. My arms hang loosely by my sides as though they’ve stopped working.

‘Nothing was happening,’ I say.

He doesn’t answer, just closes the door.

I drive home the Pittwater Road way. My eyes have gone funny and everything’s smudged. Streetlights, traffic lights and the lights of the oncoming cars have a haloed effect. The world’s a blur and it makes it hard to see the white lines, to know where I should be placed.