Losing Joe's Place

  The insurance adjustor arrived, and was so happy not to have to deal with Plotnick that we settled on the spot. As part of the big cover-up, the Police Department was paying in full, so all we had to do was clean, fix, and replace, and have the bills sent to the insurance company.

  “It’s a pleasure working with you guys!” exclaimed the adjustor in a surprised, pleased tone. “Mr. Plotnick is lucky to have you to look after his interests.”

  “Now, we don’t want him informed about this,” said Ferguson. “His health is very delicate.”

  “Hey,” said the man, “no crying, no screaming, no begging, no groveling — I’ll do anything you say.”

  “Okay,” said the Peach as the adjustor drove off. “I guess now we go buy Plotnick his stuff back.”

  “Not exactly,” I said. I can’t describe the expression I was pretty sure I was wearing. Suffice it to say I was very, very excited about the rest of the summer.

  “What do you mean, not exactly?” asked Don suspiciously. “Get that look off your face, Jason. You’re making me nervous.”

  My leer must have deepened, because now they were both scared.

  “Remember,” warned Ferguson, “this is Plotnick’s money. If you do something screwy with it, he’ll track you to the end of the universe with bloodhounds!”

  I laughed. “Trust me.”

  From The Toronto Star, Thursday, August 16, 1990:

  I bombed out in plastics, I was useless at finding a job. All I had was my A in home ec, and now I was going to take my one talent and run with it.

  The deli was dotted with tiny tables with checkered cloths, and seated well over a hundred now that all the booths were gone. So were the salamis and all of the old decorations, especially the hubcap playpen and Plotnick’s monthly extermination certificate. Everything was painted white, and from the ceiling hung dozens of lush green plants. On the walls were framed posters of any European city whose consulate was giving them out for free.

  The menu, written in fluorescent chalk on a large black slate over the counter, was much more limited than the Olympiad’s had been. The Chocolate Memory had turned into about forty desserts, depending on what combination of ice cream, biscuit, fruit, and topping was used. For instance, with vanilla ice cream and cherries, it was Chocolate Memory Jubilee; with chocolate ice cream and crushed chocolate cookies and fudge sauce, it was Chocolate Memory Mississippi Mud Pie. And so on, right up to Chocolate Memory Rootbeer Racinette, which had everything, and would rival the Moontrix Mountain, the drink that had brought Jessica into all our lives.

  We also served a few store-bought pastries and muffins, on the off-chance that someone didn’t like Chocolate Memory. For dinner, we had deli sandwiches, period. It was the only thing Plotnick had really done well. And as a tribute to our injured landlord, I raised the prices of everything. Naturally people would expect to pay more in such a snazzy dessert spot. Your basic Chocolate Memory started at $3.50; the Rootbeer Racinette version was over seven bucks.

  The former deli lay in readiness for tomorrow night’s big opening, but there were still a few finishing touches to be put on the bathroom of apartment 2C. So I left Rootbeer in charge, and went to visit Plotnick at the hospital. My motive was not exactly social and compassionate. I wanted to make sure that our landlord’s daily paper didn’t include the ad for the opening of Chocolate Memories. All summer I’d never seen Plotnick so much as glancing at a newspaper, but I couldn’t be too careful. Now, with nothing to do all day, he might have taken an interest in current events.

  The nurse hadn’t brought in his Toronto Star yet, so it was just sitting outside the door. I slipped out the Entertainment section and tossed it down the laundry chute. Then I put on my most cheerful face, and brought him the rest of his paper.

  He took one look at me and screamed, “What are you doing here, Mr. Cardone? Who’s minding the restaurant?”

  “I closed up for an hour so I could come and visit you.”

  “Fine! You visited me! Go back! There could be a thousand-dollar catering job banging on my door right now!”

  “Don’t worry,” I assured him. “I told Rootbeer to keep an eye on the place.”

  I didn’t know the word “Oy” could have eighteen syllables.

  “I brought you your paper,” I said, placing it on the table beside him.

  He glanced at it. “It’s short one section. Those crooks.”

  I stared at him. “You read it?”

  “Of course not!” he snapped. “I should waste my time reading a newspaper put out by crooks? Get out of here, Mr. Cardone! My business is going down the drain!”

  I headed for the door, then paused. “Have any of the other tenants been in to visit you?”

  Plotnick looked haughty. “My relationship with them is strictly business.”

  Translation: He was rotten to them, so they hated him just like we did. Good. That meant there was no danger of any of our neighbors telling Plotnick what was going on at 1 Pitt Street.

  * * *

  Opening night. I shouldn’t have been nervous. My Chocolate Memory fans showed up in force, and only the Ugly Man missed the old menu. I guess it’s hard to be nostalgic about all that grease. The place was never actually jam-packed, but it was probably the same number of people that had made the deli look like a sardine can last week. And I’m pretty sure I made more money than Plotnick had ever seen in an evening at the Olympiad. The customers seemed happy, which was the whole point.

  Since it didn’t count as a repair, I had taken out the newspaper ad with my own cash, and one night’s tips had almost made up for it. I was still in the hole for my outfit — black pants, white shirt, black bow tie — but with luck, tomorrow would more than pay that off. I think I looked pretty sharp, and God’s Grandmother said I was “all the crack,” whatever that meant. Of course, none of my customers could know that I was much more than a mere waiter — that I was the mastermind behind Chocolate Memories. With a little bit of help from the D-Lishus Corporation.

  The one thing I had looked forward to with dread was that first phone call from Plotnick on opening night. I’d already fielded one call from him in the morning, and had acted like it was business as usual at the Olympiad. I’d even pretended to be ringing up a check, because I knew the sound of the cash register was soothing to him. But now, would he be able to tell, with all his finely honed senses, that his restaurant was gone, and mine had risen from its ashes?

  “I hear music, Mr. Cardone.”

  “The radio,” I said. “Do you also hear a lot of people chewing?”

  “It’s that miserable rock and roll. It makes me crazy.”

  “Does it make you crazy that we’re still crowded at nine o’clock?”

  “I keep an open mind. Your houseguests, Mr. Peach and Mr. Champion, came to see me tonight. I’d forgotten how annoying they are. Funny how an old man doesn’t remember.”

  I glanced at the blender through the kitchen door. A fresh batch of cake mix was ready. “I’ve got to go, Mr. Plotnick. It’s very busy here.”

  “Go. Go in good health. Make money. You’re a good boy.”

  That’s twice I was a good boy. I said a prayer for the success of Chocolate Memories.

  * * *

  Business continued to be steady, and by early next week I was totally exhausted. There was no way I could continue to be cook, dessert chef, waiter, cashier, and maintenance man for a going concern like Chocolate Memories. Plotnick was making more than enough money to spring for another staff member, especially since I was working for nothing more than tips and glory.

  The Help Wanted sign spent about forty-five minutes in our window before I had to interview my first applicant. Guess who?

  “I love what you’ve done with the place,” Jessica raved. “Do you know that whole neighborhoods have been known to turn on one or two little renovations like this?”

  “Do you have any restaurant experience?” I asked, figuring I’d go through the motions before telling he
r to take a hike.

  “Not really. But I learn fast, and I really need this job. To be honest with you, I’m bored now that Ferguson and Don won’t go out with me anymore.”

  I stared. “They dumped you?” How could I have missed this development? Although, come to think of it, I hadn’t heard them fighting lately.

  “No, but they insist I have to choose between them, and I don’t like to be ordered around.”

  Well, what do you know? While I’d been busy hawking cake mix, Ferguson and Don had developed pride. Now Her Royal Majesty, Jessica Lincoln, would have to have her boyfriends one at a time for a while, until she could find another pair of patsies.

  “I don’t think you’d like it here,” I said hopefully. “You see, there’s work —”

  She hung her head. “I know. You kind of did my home ec for me. And you were fabulous, Jason.”

  “The pay’s pretty lousy,” I persisted, “but the tips are okay. The hours are hard, and there are no breaks …” And we flog you every night, and if you drop a glass, we feed you to the alligators in the basement. Please go away.

  “I think I’d be a really good waitress,” she went on, “because I work so well with people. Come on, Jason — please!” She gave me a lethal dose of lost puppy eyes.

  So I took her out and got her a uniform just like mine, only with a skirt instead of pants, and so ended my stint as the best-looking waiter at Chocolate Memories.

  “Traitor!” was Don’s opinion. Even the Peach looked a little disapproving. “She’s supposed to be sitting at home, agonizing over her decision. Now you’ve got her slinging cake mix, having a great time, and she’ll never get around to us.”

  “The summer’s almost over, you know,” Ferguson added resentfully.

  But — surprise, surprise — she was a pretty good waitress, efficient, friendly, and hardworking. Between us we ran the place like clockwork. There was that one anxious moment when I came out of the kitchen to find Jessica picking up the phone, but I managed to grab it from her just in time. Plotnick should never hear a female voice answering his telephone: “Chocolate Memories.”

  “I get it,” she smiled knowingly. “You want it to be a big surprise.”

  “Something like that,” I replied. It was very important that, when Plotnick found out what I had done, he should be face to face with the happy reality of a successful restaurant and a full cash register. We were already responsible for his back injury; I didn’t want anything to do with his cardiac arrest.

  Business was good, but I knew it would take a special break to bump it up to the next level. Things were going as well as they could with word of mouth, my main form of advertising. Suddenly I found myself kind of disappointed by our current status. I spent my time at the blender contemplating Chocolate Memories’ next quantum leap. Naturally the best thing would be a media blitz, but we couldn’t afford that. Actually we could, but if Plotnick ever found out, I’d be mulched.

  Jessica didn’t understand my blue mood. “How much better could it be, Jason? Do you know how many places open up and never get near this successful?”

  “I want people lined up down the block. I want it to be like Gourmet Week. What’s so great about that guy Hamish?” Oh, no! Before, I was starting to think like my mother, and that was bad enough. Now I was thinking like — Plotnick!

  Then, out of nowhere, came our big chance. The Toronto Star called and told us that, on Friday, they’d be sending a restaurant critic to review Chocolate Memories. We wouldn’t know who or when, just that he’d be coming on Friday.

  I freaked. Jessica and I washed every square inch of the restaurant. I had our shirts bleached and starched. I even replaced the plants that weren’t doing well.

  She was confident “Relax, Jason. The place is great. We’ll do fine.”

  “I don’t know,” I muttered. “It’s okay, but there’s got to be that one little something extra we can add that’ll take us from a good place to a great place.”

  But what? Friday morning and afternoon I wracked my brain. Entertainment? No money, and no room. Food? I was lucky with the D-Lishus cake mix but, let’s face it, I was no great chef. Decoration? I was no designer, either. A gimmick, a gimmick. Something different. And cheap.

  It came to me five minutes before opening. Rootbeer’s latest hobby was charcoal sketching, and he was pretty good at it, especially the portraits. He’d done one of Jessica that came out so realistic that Don and the Peach had fought over it, tearing it to shreds in the process. Wouldn’t it add a sort of classy and artistic air to have a portrait artist working right in the restaurant? Nothing fancy, just Rootbeer in a quiet corner, sketching the customers. They could pay attention if they were interested; if not, it wouldn’t bother them at all.

  I phoned upstairs to Rootbeer and offered him a job drawing my patrons.

  He was instantly wary. “You mean you want me to work?” You could just hear the burnout coming on.

  I back-pedaled. “Of course not! Work? Ha-ha. Never. It’s your hobby, which is the opposite of work.”

  He was still suspicious. “Are you sure?”

  “Absolutely,” I said, only vaguely aware that I might be risking bad luck if he saw through me. The restaurant was all that mattered. “You just do your hobby, like you normally would, only instead of doing it up there, you’re doing it down here. Try it for one night.”

  “Well,” he said, “okay.”

  Two minutes to four. There were already a few early birds waiting outside the door.

  “Clear a spot in the corner,” I called to Jessica, darting downstairs and coming back with one of Plotnick’s old counter stools. “We’ve got a portrait artist. Guess who? Rootbeer!”

  She was thrilled. “What a great idea!”

  Only Rootbeer didn’t show up. I called the apartment every ten minutes from four-thirty on, and there was nobody home. (Don was working the late shift at the theater, and Ferguson was in Chicago for Plastics Unlimited.) Then we got busy, and all I could do was berate myself as I waited on my customers. Why hadn’t I been more specific? “Try it for one night,” had been my exact words. But I’d forgotten to mention that the “one night” had to be tonight. What if the night he picked was in November, 1997? Rootbeer was like that. Here was such a great idea, and it was going to slip through my fingers because of a technicality! The guy from The Star would come and go, we’d get a mediocre review, and that would be it.

  As the evening wore on, my black despair became just a dull ache. I stared long and hard into the face of every customer, trying to smoke out the reviewer so I could explain that our resident portrait artist was sick tonight. And couldn’t he come back sometime to see how great it was? Like, maybe, November, 1997? Then I gave up on that, too. I didn’t actually expect the guy to be wearing a flag that said “Restaurant Critic.”

  But then, at eleven o’clock, who showed up but Rootbeer Racinette. My hopes rekindled. Maybe the reviewer was still here! Chocolate Memories was full. I grabbed Rootbeer by the arm and began dragging him to his corner.

  “Oh, Rootbeer, thank God!” Suddenly I noticed that he was carrying an enormous portable stereo cassette player. “What’s that? Where’s your easel?”

  “You told me to do my hobby.”

  “Yeah, but your hobby is sketching, remember?”

  “Not anymore,” said Rootbeer.

  And before I could stop him — not that I could anyway — he popped a tape in the deck and hit Play. Slow blues guitar came out of the speakers. There was a murmur from the crowd as all attention shifted to Rootbeer, who was swaying side to side to the music. Then he reached under his poncho, pulled out a shiny new harmonica, and began playing along with the tape — with his nose!

  I prayed that the critic had already gone home to write a nice quiet review of a nice quiet place where nobody played the nasal harmonica. I stood rooted with horror to the spot until I heard Jessica whisper in my ear, “Psst. I thought he was going to draw pictures.”

  I
was bitter. “We talked about it,” I whispered back, “and we decided this would be more appropriate!”

  I couldn’t take my eyes off him. It was disgusting, unsanitary, and gross! I mean, people were supposed to eat here! If this made the paper, I would have to do the honorable thing and fall on my meat fork.

  But then the song ended, and Rootbeer got a standing ovation. Seriously. My first thought was People are sick. My second was Gee, I hope the restaurant critic stayed around for this great show.

  * * *

  The review was a rave. I have it framed on my wall, and I want to be buried with it. The desserts were “delicious,” the decor “charmingly understated,” the service “good,” and the entertainment “unparalleled in its energy, inventiveness, and pure comic appeal. Anybody who doesn’t go to catch the sweets and the show is crazy.” I’ll buy that.

  Don and Ferguson went to the hospital to steal Plotnick’s Entertainment section while I prepared for our biggest night ever.

  I knew we were going to get a crowd, but nothing could have prepared me for what showed up on Saturday. Gourmet Week was an off-night by comparison. I pressed Ferguson and Don into service, and they were glad to be part of the excitement.

  From about five o’clock on, the line stretched from the doorway to Bathurst Street and around the corner. We served cake mix until we were dropping, and Don and the Peach made no attempt to hide their openmouthed astonishment at this, the fruit of my chronic unemployment. The cash register rang like church bells.

  To the delight of the crowd, Rootbeer came early.

  “Rootbeer,” I said in concern, “where’s the tape deck?” I didn’t even need an answer. I knew exactly where it was — in the corner of our living room with the telescope, rocks, stamp collection, et al. A new hobby was about to be premiered.

  Taking his place on the stool, he reached under the poncho and produced a ream of bond paper. The crowd waited expectantly. This was the hilarious entertainment they had heard so much about. He removed the top sheet, folded it painstakingly into an airplane, and sent it sailing over the tables.