Aftermath

Hard to find

one
O'Ruddy's thrived on Friday nights, under the stewardship of Casey Fielder. As the general manager he exercised absolute power here, and he had to wield his power with composure and resolve, or his staff would be lost in the chaos, in the kinetic heat of bodies and track lighting and frying food, in the clamor of conversation and complaint. On this particular Friday, as he watched and controlled the frenzy of the late dinner rush, it seemed to him that O'Ruddy's was thriving as usual, and he approved.

Casey was not above sweating alongside his staff, and throughout the dinner shift he bused as many tables, by his careful reckoning, as Paulo did. Once or twice he threw together some house salads to help out the harried sous-chef, and he ran meals to tables when the servers asked. But mostly his job was to supervise: to judge, to correct, to encourage, and sometimes to condemn. He watched even as he wiped down tables and mopped up spills, even as he talked with customers and restocked the service stand, and tonight he was satisfied with the performance of his employees. The servers--all women, all sporting ponytails and pastel polo shirts, nametags bobbing on their breasts--wove gracefully through the maze of the dining floor, around the sluggish busboy. Casey approved of their pacing and their flirtations, of the way their singular pursuit of tips merged so neatly with the interests of the restaurant. When he crossed the threshold of the kitchen, that fluorescent, intense world, the usual racket struck him: a symphony of clattering plates, spurting water, the sizzling grill, the machine-gun Spanish of the cooks and dishwashers and the Latino radio station they listened to. In the kitchen, the workers moved with the frenetic purpose of ER doctors; sweat shook off the jerky limbs of the head cook like water off a Labrador. They were entirely unmoved by Casey's presence when he came to check on them, adjusting their behavior to his watchfulness not one bit. One of the prep cooks even had a cigarette hanging from his lips, and he did not apologize when Casey scolded him. But Casey granted the kitchen staff some leeway on Friday nights because of their stoic competence, and tonight they were meeting the challenges of the rush.

Casey was meeting the challenges as well, and most important, he exuded a sense of assurance and command. He had somehow kept his clothes pressed and his cowlick mastered, and the sweat stains did not show on his navy blue shirt, although he felt more disheveled than he looked. His feet hurt at the sides, and the grease-and-sweat stink of his undershirt had begun to overcome the Gold Bond powder he'd puffed into his armpits at the beginning of the shift. But no one at O'Ruddy's would ever suspect that the cares of management had worn him down tonight. He mitigated his tiredness with brisk, purposeful movement. He listened to the whining of his staff--When can we switch to the unwrapped straws? Why does Julio put so much goddamn sour cream on everything?--and he corrected their mistakes. Credit cards that had been overcharged, platters that had been ordered twice, a clogged toilet, an absent dishwasher. All the problems were laid at his feet, abandoned there, as if he could turn a magic wand on them and--poof.

There was something in Casey that loved this, or rather something that needed it in an elemental way, the way a plant needs sunlight. Something in him turned crisis into sustenance, made the restaurant--especially on Friday nights--a place where he felt more at home than anywhere else. Sometimes he did feel possessed of secrets and special powers, although it was really nothing more than experience, a personality suited for this kind of work, and the guidance of the manager's handbook, which he consulted several times a day.

Within these walls (where he could be found, on average, seventy-five hours a week), virtually every aspect of Casey's behavior had a foundation in the handbook. The expression on his face, for instance, was specifically calibrated according to the directive on page 18: When interacting with guests about nonpecuniary matters, the manager's expression should be that of a dinner party host who is pleased to see all of his/her friends enjoying themselves. Mindful of this advice, Casey held his eyes open wide against the scowl that often swelled inside. This gave him a look of perpetual expectation, as if he were always waiting for something to pounce on him.

His fidelity to the dress code was absolute, so much so that he found himself wearing his manager's uniform more or less continuously, regardless of the occasion. Page 32: The manager's pants should be black and neatly pressed; the shirt and tie must be stately and of solid colors. After eight years at O'Ruddy's, most of his wardrobe conformed to the dress code. Several months earlier, at the funeral for his Uncle Rich, he had looked down to find that he was not only wearing the requisite manager's outfit but had pinned his manager's nametag to the appropriate part of his shirt (on the left breast, one inch above the top of the pocket), though he wasn't going in to work that day.

Most of the handbook's admonitions had seeped their way into his habits during his tenure at O'Ruddy's. He had mastered the nuances and complexities of the place, and he considered Friday nights to be the reward for this mastery. On these nights he belonged among the happy, satiated crowd and the tip-giddy servers, because of the fact that he made it all happen, he provided for their comfort and fixed their problems. That they took him for granted was no matter, because he knew that without him it would all go away.

It had been his idea to focus their attention on Fridays, for example, by creating Friday prime rib specials and putting coupons in Thursday's Beacon. Though he never spoke of the strategy in a self-congratulatory way, he had come to see it as a marketing plan that was singularly appropriate for this particular township and restaurant. On Saturdays anyone seeking diversion drove the half hour to Scranton, where there was a cineplex and a mall. On Sundays the restaurants of the township were dominated by the senior citizens, enamored of half-sandwich specials and 6 percent tips. The location of the O'Ruddy's, south of Arthur Avenue on the cusp of East Breed's, was inconvenient for the white-collar workers who might have come in for business lunches or after-dinner drinks, and so the weekday receipts largely depended on East Breed's locals: the ironworkers, the unemployed. These people were suspicious of the restaurant--the forced festivity of its decor, the cost of its fried cheese appetizers--and usually favored the Dairy Bar, unless it was someone's birthday. There were lunch shifts, especially in the winter, when the cooks at O'Ruddy's didn't need to filter the oil in the fryer.

But all kinds of people came on Fridays, sometimes in droves, rambunctious from the cessation of work. Birthday celebrants, anxious first-daters, softball teams, lonely drunks eating fried jalape–os at the bar. The bartenders invented flamboyantly colored cocktails for the Friday drinkers, and Casey scheduled only his experienced servers for the dinner shift. On Friday afternoons the cooks would lay great slabs of poultry and beef on the back counter to thaw. The sous-chef would jam the chiller with as many premade house salads as he could fit. The Friday servers showed up early for side work, and the small platoon of pert young women would gossip and smoke as they each rolled fifty sets of silverware. By seven o'clock the hostess would be cautioning new arrivals of a forty-minute wait, and typically they waited. There weren't many restaurants of its kind in Breed's Township, and no one wanted to drive to Scranton on Friday night.

On these evenings O'Ruddy's was expected to total receipts of eight thousand dollars, in the course of serving around three hundred customers, including bar patrons. The restaurant was expected to accomplish this with a staff of six in the kitchen and six on the floor, plus the supervising manager. This, at least, was the benchmark set in previous years, and which had been surpassed every weekend this past fall, a season of bliss. The Breed's Township High football team had gone eight and one, and after each game a throng of giddy spectators trooped over from the nearby stadium to discuss what they had seen over Busch Lights and buffalo wings. The autumn weather had been mild and breezy, so people avoided the stuffy, windowless bars near the township center. O'Ruddy's had often reached the maximum capacity (112 persons, according to a brass plate in the entryway) and in Casey's memory that fiscal season was defined by a conviviality that he had not felt before, that gave him hope. The restaurant had churned out the happy atmosphere of fried food and celebration and alcohol and flirtation, and in the midst of this jovial mass Casey had acknowledged--with his own kind of joy--the real matter, the true success: the Breed's Township O'Ruddy's was flourishing under his command.

But it was January now, and things had changed, in spite of the sense of chaos and gluttony that surrounded him on this night, in spite of the frantic motion and the kitchen noise. Casey finally admitted to himself that the hectic activity of the restaurant belied another slow night. The sound and fury that reminded him of better times, and that had really lasted for only an hour or so, had been the result of a dearth of workers. In a time of hardship, which January was proving to be, Casey would schedule no more staff than was needed. This meant that there had been only four waitresses all night, and one busboy, and by eight o'clock the fifteen-minute wait (even as a half-dozen open tables, littered with used dishes, mocked the hostess) sent the later arrivals scattering to the Dairy Bar. The wait quickly shrank to ten minutes, then five, but by then it was too late, and at eight forty-five the hostess found herself facing a vacant foyer, chewing her thumbnail and wai...