Chapter 33 Taylor
Taylor
Taylor is nervous when she reports to the Knox that Monday for her first day of work, and this intensifies when Rose leads her to an upstairs office and presents her with an extensive confidentiality agreement she is required to sign.
It’s a thick mass of papers, emitting an off-gas of Xerox.
Still warm to the touch, the pages so fine she has to wet her fingers to separate them.
“We all sign our lives away here,” Eduardo, the kind-faced Colombian, jokes. He’s a waiter, along with Jerry, a short, muscled man. They stand at the doorway of the office, where Taylor sits with the document Rose has left her to review.
“So you had to do this, too?” she asks.
“We are still signing,” Eduardo says. His accent is strong. “When they make updates, we have to sign the new one. It says the same thing, more or less: Don’t talk to anyone about anything having to do with the Knox.”
“Do ya have yer own place?” Jerry cuts in to ask. His face is beefy, and the narrowing of his eyes makes them look like they’re about to be folded into his skin. Taylor wonders what he did before coming here—was he a wrestler? An MMA fighter?
“You mean, like, my own apartment?”
Jerry nods.
“Yeah, I do. Why?”
“So yer not coming next door?”
“What’s next door?”
“The quarters.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t know what you mean.”
Eduardo jabs Jerry. “Give her a chance to settle in. And no, she’s not.” Then he says to her, “Some of us live next door. Jerry, me, and—”
“That’s it,” Jerry interrupts, frowning at Eduardo.
“Anyway,” Eduardo continues, “the Knox owns that building, too. It used to be the old servants’ quarters, and, well, I guess it still is.” He chuckles. “If you live there, they cut you a pretty good deal. But it sounds like you already have your own place.”
“Yeah, I do. In the South End.” She wishes she hadn’t been so quick to say she did.
To not only work on this fancy street, but live on it, too?
That would be nothing short of amazing. But judging from Jerry’s territorial glare, perhaps it’s better to keep her distance.
She is the new girl, after all. Besides, she’d miss Sam if she moved—wouldn’t she?
“How’d ya hear about the Knox?” Jerry asks.
This one is persistent. “My landlord, actually.” Then she adds, because she knows he wants the name, and she doesn’t see any reason not to share it: “Anna Varga.”
Jerry shrugs, like the name means nothing. “Who interviewed ya?”
“Um, Peter. Peter Wales.”
“And ya walked through the box? In the hall?”
Taylor starts to shake her head but then remembers the sticky pad. “Maybe?” she offers.
“Did they get your footprint?”
“Yeah. I guess so.”
“Jerry,” Eduardo now says, putting his hand on Jerry’s shoulder. “Let’s give Taylor here some time. It’s only her first day. We don’t want to scare her away.”
Taylor assumes she’ll be orienting to Canton’s, the restaurant upstairs, where members apparently dine most weekdays for lunch, but she assumes wrong.
Instead, Rose directs her that first morning to the adjacent wine cellar to unpack boxes and take inventory.
Taylor doesn’t want to do this; from there she can’t get a good view inside Canton’s, where the action will be—all the members.
Perhaps handsome Peter Wales, who interviewed her.
But she immediately pastes a bright smile on her face.
“No problem,” she says.
Rose’s lip twitches. Taylor can tell that Rose is trying to make out what she thinks of her.
Good luck with that; she’s not quite sure what to make of herself.
It felt weird this morning to put on regular clothes instead of scrubs to go to work.
Like she was donning a life suit that didn’t belong to her—at least, not yet.
Taylor starts unpacking the wine boxes. At least the wine cellar is not claustrophobic; it’s one of those modern ones, with glass doors, and it’s on the second floor, not in some basement. It could be worse.
She wonders what’s on the upper floors and if she’ll eventually get to see them.
At one point Liam the bartender wanders in.
“There’s a lot you don’t know about here, Taylor,” he says, standing too close.
Inspecting a bottle of Barolo, he whistles, but she sincerely doubts he is quite the wine connoisseur he’s pretending to be.
The Knox must count dedicated sommeliers among its staff, right?
“This place has all kinds of nooks and crannies…and secrets,” Liam continues.
“There’s a hidden library behind a faux door…
and maybe some important scrolls scattered throughout the building, but you didn’t hear that from me. ”
When Taylor ignores him, he leaves. She supposes some might find him attractive, and who knows, maybe she would, too, if she were lonely enough. She decides that’s how she’ll know she’s hit rock bottom: if she starts pining for Liam.
Another time, Eduardo enters, carrying a plate of steaming chicken piccata and jasmine rice.
“I hope you’re not a vegetarian,” Eduardo says, holding out the plate. He’s a little taller than she is, probably five feet six inches, and wears his dark hair slicked down with gel, almost like a swim cap, over his olive scalp.
“Nope, definitely not. Thanks.” She takes a bite. “Wow, this is good.”
“Don’t be surprised. You’ll learn everything here at the Knox is top-notch.
It’s why they don’t have you waiting tables yet.
They don’t like mistakes. They don’t like to make mistakes.
The members here are very important people.
They watch you a bit, and when they think you’re ready, they’ll let you know.
At least, that is what they did with Tara. ”
“Tara?”
“Jerry’s sister. That is who you replaced.”
“Oh. What happened to her?”
“She quit.” He pauses, and adds, “It’s probably best if you don’t bring up Tara around Jerry…. He’s protective of her.”
Taylor shrugs. “Okay, fine by me. So when do you think they’ll deem me ‘ready’ to start waiting tables?”
“Could be next week, could be next month.”
“So I’ll just be doing stuff like this?” she asks, gesturing around.
“Yeah. It’s not bad, though, right? Good job, good pay? Health insurance from day one.”
“They haven’t told me the pay yet,” she admits. She’s relieved to hear she’ll have health insurance immediately. That should somewhat appease Aunt Gigi; Taylor’s already bracing for her aunt’s reaction when she finds out her niece has taken up waitressing over a return to nursing.
Eduardo gives a half smile. “You’ll be happy with it. But let me ask you, why would you accept a job if you don’t know the pay?”
“I, uh, I didn’t know the exact amount, but they gave me an idea.” She wonders if you can tell so many lies that they start to become your truth.
Eduardo nods thoughtfully. “Must be the week. It’s an off week, you see. The senior members are at the Mansion for their annual retreat.”
“The Mansion?” The retreat? she also wants to ask but doesn’t.
“It’s the country club for the Knox. It’s in Beverly, the north shore.”
“I didn’t realize there was another place.”
“They go every year before the initiation.” He sees her frown, and explains, “The initiation happens after the retreat. During the retreat, they decide the new members they are tapping. If they are tapping new members. Some years there are no new members, and some years, there are many.”
“When is the initiation?”
“It will be soon after they return. Might even be the following week. They will tell us.”
“Is that here, or at the Mansion?”
“At the Knox, always.” He pauses, and adds, “It’s an interesting time to start work here. There’s a lot to learn. I have been here for many years and am still learning. There’s also…a new person in charge. Best advice I can give you is keep your— What is the saying? Keep your face down?”
“Keep your nose down?”
“Yes! Keep your nose down and do your job.”
“Okay,” Taylor says, rather reluctantly, swallowing all the questions she has. How many members are there? What is this place really about? Are there rituals? Will they somehow know if she talks to Sam about things? Does she even want to talk to Sam about things?
And then there are the questions she should be asking herself: What exactly is she doing here? What are her goals? To make money, rub elbows with the wealthy? Find out more about what happened to Vivian? Hopefully stumble across her mom’s footprints?
Taylor feels a sudden silly determination to leave a mark here; to become a part of the place, to be distinct and necessary and special; not simply another Tara filtering in and out of the Knox’s doors.
She continues her wine inventory, escaping at one point to use the bathroom, which is located at the end of the hall.
She takes her time walking past the restaurant’s wide, open double doors.
Liam is pouring a glass of wine behind the backlit bar as classical music softly plays overhead.
Could this be where the photo of Taylor’s mom at the bar was taken?
Her eyes sweep the room. Well-dressed men and women sit at crisp, white-linen tables.
The women all sport perfect blowouts, their manicured hands aglitter in diamonds.
Funny enough, the women’s designer handbags rest upon their own designated seats as if they, too, are dining.
While Taylor’s not sure if her mom’s photo was snapped here, she decides that Vivian very well could have been a member.
How could she not have been, looking the way she did?
And with that cache of designer handbags?
Taylor can just picture Vivian perched at one of those tables, eating a salad alongside a Chanel purse.
Later that night, Taylor googles some of the wines whose names she remembers. There’s a $330 Gaja Barbaresco, and a limited-edition pinot noir that costs ten times that. Whoa. At her dad’s restaurant, she used to consider the $11 flagship margarita pricey.