Chapter Eighteen
Lemon Cake
There had already been several screwups that day.
The delivery had forgotten the potatoes, and something had leaked in the freezer—Trenton wasn’t sure what—but it had gotten everywhere, and he didn’t have the time to clean it up.
The weekend girl—the high schooler who waited tables—had canceled for an exam, and the other girl was out sick, making him the only one in the restaurant, and it was a Saturday, their busiest day of the week.
It wasn’t the first time it had happened, the lack of staff already becoming more usual than unusual.
Even the regulars were used to it, knowing to come by the kitchen for their dishes that Trenton stacked on the trolley near the entrance.
But there was one table already setting itself up to be a problem.
Loud, crowded, and already drunk, the group of college kids was his least favorite type of customer.
All boys as well, because why not make it worse?
He could hear the rowdiness even over the fryer, scaring off any customers looking in through the glass—and irritating the others already inside.
It was bad. The worst day in a while. But an angel appeared.
“Ho, Trent.”
It was Hilary, the handsome nurse who’d been frequenting the restaurant for the last year or so. The man did shift work, so his hours were scattered, but he showed up to eat at the end of every shift—and sometimes on days off too.
“What are you doing here? You should be sleeping.” But Trenton was too relieved to put any real sternness into his voice, the feeling of that arrival like watching the sun break through the clouds of a storm bank.
Hilary was already tying on an apron like he’d been doing it all his life. “This is where you teach me all that shorthand diner talk, right? Like in the movies.”
Trenton managed a kind of strangled laugh. Hilary was about the only one who could make him laugh anymore. He finished plating the pasta and handed it off. “This and the two on the cart go to the assholes at table three—the one by the window.”
“Strategically placed to ruin your business.”
The man often seemed able to read his mind that way. “It isn’t my business.”
“It should be for all the crap you get for it,” Hilary said as he finished loading up the tray. “Pace yourself before you pass out. You’ll drown in bad Yelp reviews once my cooking starts poisoning people.”
Trenton found he was smiling a little as he sliced mushrooms. Hilary was always like that, showing up when he was needed most and setting everything right.
Trenton had been trying to work up the courage to ask whether the man would like to meet up sometime outside of the restaurant.
Every morning, he promised himself he’d at least try to ask, and every time Hilary ended up leaving while the words died in his throat.
The most embarrassing part was knowing cowardice persisted even when Hilary wouldn’t refuse him.
The man was nice that way, with an easygoing energy that could relax even an awkward idiot like himself.
But whenever he began thinking maybe they might really become friends, he remembered all the thousand reasons why it would never work between them.
Better to leave it alone, he knew. If he screwed it up, Hilary would stop coming to the restaurant, and then he’d really have no option but to throw himself off a cliff.
Such lovely thoughts were interrupted when Hilary returned to the kitchen, coming straight for the cart. “That woman with the purple hair is here. Doris, I think? She says she wants the usual, and that you should give me a raise.”
The laugh came out properly this time, so Hilary had gotten it out of him after all. “I’ll pass the message along to Archie.”
“Archie can fuck himself. It’s either from you, or I walk.”
It was that kind of talk that gave Trenton hope for their relationship, though maybe that was what everyone thought. Hilary was so good at this kind of banter; he could make anyone feel like they had a chance.
“I can take a look at our staffing budget. What kind of numbers were you thinking?”
“How about you get me a drink once we close today, and we’ll call it even?”
There. It had come. The opportunity he’d been hoping for. Hilary, ready to give him exactly what he wanted without forcing him to ask for it.
“Oh, and the table by the bathroom wants apple pie,” Hilary added. “With extra whipped cream.”
Trenton felt dazed, dizzy with unearned success. “Yeah, alright.”
It was Hilary’s turn to laugh. “Goose. You don’t serve apple pie.”
Right. That was right. They didn’t have any kind of pie. Hilary had only been joking, teasing him for being so out of it.
“Maybe crack the door open,” the man suggested. “Don’t let your brain overheat.”
Trenton didn’t think cracking the door would help, but he did as suggested, cold air rushing in through the gap.
It was winter again—a dangerous season for him.
Sometimes it was alright, but often he sunk into a depression so dark he inevitably lost whatever job he’d managed to grab onto that year.
Seasonal affective disorder, his therapist back at the center called it.
He returned to the stove. Doris always had the French onion soup and lemon cake—a strange combination, but he’d definitely served weirder. He was putting the soup on the cart when he heard the glass shatter.
He was out before he thought to move, ladle still in hand.
It was the drunk idiots, of course. Trenton hadn’t served them any wine, but they must have brought something from home because they were definitely sloppier than they’d been before.
Hilary pushed against his chest, broom in hand. “I’ve got it.”
“I’ll throw them out. They can’t just—”
“They’ll refuse to pay if you do. Don’t worry. I’ll have them out in ten minutes. Less than ten minutes. Trust me.”
“It’s not you I don’t trust.” And he did trust Hilary. From nearly the first moment they’d met, he’d felt he could put himself in the man’s hands, unable to describe just how at ease Hilary made him feel. “I think they want trouble. I’ll call the police, so stay away from them.”
It was something Archie was sure to loathe. The man was fidgety around cops. Well, Trenton couldn’t blame him. His own past didn’t bode well with the law.
“Don’t,” Hilary said. “That’ll only make a bigger mess, and who knows how long it’ll take the cops to show. They’re wrapping up now and will be gone soon, I promise.”
So Trenton let himself be pushed back into the kitchen, but not willingly. He’d finish the Bolognese, and if they weren’t out by then it was cops o’clock, no matter what Hilary said.
But he didn’t finish the Bolognese. He was still plating the lemon cake with the little drizzle of raspberry sauce when he heard the brash laughter that set his hackles rising.
This time he traded the ladle for the meat tenderizer.
Though only to scare them, he reminded himself.
He wasn’t going to do anything except make them leave.
But when he got to the dining area, he froze.
The most obnoxious one—the self-styled leader of the band of idiots—had his hand in Hilary’s apron. “I’m saying we want to see the dessert menu.”
It was all Trenton needed to hear. “There’s no dessert.” His own voice sounded strange, almost hollow, as if the room had shrunk down.
The leader turned his way, hand still in the apron. “Oh yeah? So why’d he hand one of those little menus to those old fucks over there?”
The man jerked his head toward the central table where the Densins were looking mighty nervous.
Well, Orville was looking nervous. Debra looked ready to show the young rascals a piece of her mind.
Trenton found himself shifting, settling into a stance he had no right to take.
His memories of the dojo were vague and mixed up, like everything else from his youth was, but his body remembered better than his mind did.
“I should have been clearer,” he reiterated. “There’s no dessert for you. Take your hands off my friend.”
“You’ve angered the fatty,” said another. Probably the Vice-idiot or whatever they called their second in command. “See his chins jiggling?”
The placating smile Hilary had been wearing vanished. In that same instant, the man wrenched at the wrist holding him, forcing it to release. “You’d better leave.”
But a second arm came up around that waist. Some third idiot with an undisclosed place in the hierarchy. Maybe there wasn’t one. Just a loose conglomeration of underdeveloped losers united under the banner of assholery. “What happened to the smile? Is it Lardass? Should we send him away?”
“I get it,” said the leader. “He puts me off my appetite too.”
It was like Trenton’s eyes were glued to that arm. Why was it there? Why would some bastard with an elevated blood alcohol level and philistine taste have his stupid mitts on someone like Hilary?
“I said get your hands—” and his voice dipped, going deep as he stepped into the man’s blind spot and pushed the head of the meat tenderizer into the idiot’s back. “Off my friend.”
Almost he didn’t want them to listen. Almost he was hoping to have a reason.
Though it was dawning on him that guys like this didn’t need one.
Or rather, that guys like this had so many already you didn’t need to add another.
But the guy paused. Something in Trenton’s voice, maybe, or on his face warned the guy’s last functioning brain cells not to make a big deal over some stupid dessert menu.
The arm slackened. Not properly—not releasing him—but enough that Hilary could jerk himself free.
The leader looked him over, eyes flickering over the meat tenderizer. “You really do put a man off his meal. I think you’re in the wrong business.”
Trenton unclenched his teeth only enough to spit out the one word. “Leave.”