Let me start part two by saying I had been in plenty of “real” kitchens already, this was just the first one that really meant a big deal to me. Not a chain, great food, an actual chef, etc.

Continued from yesterday’s post.

I arrived at 6:45 a.m. The stillness of the early morning speaking to me through a lake of mud. I had stayed sober the night before in anticipation. As fresh as pink panties past the knees. I lived a mere six blocks away and sort of just floated my way there, to the center of Church Street to find that the front door was unlocked, that anyone could have gone in there, and I bounded down the metal steps ready for action. The first great opportunity I’d had in my young life. I knew it, I could smell it just as tangibly as the ancient garlic and tomato exuding from the whitewashed walls of the place. 

Three cooks worked down there. One guy over by the dirty dishes window, the cold side, Teddy, the salad man. A sort of big boned frat boyish type with short hair and a chubby face. Another at front and center. The sauté and pasta station guy. This was Adam. Short hair, same length as the beard on his face. Coke bottle glasses perched at the end of his aquiline nose. Whimsical, frustrated eyes. Over by himself at the pizza station, Grey. Long hair in a ponytail, scraggly, long beard. A perpetually stoned thin hippy. The first of them I related to the most and felt comfortable enough to speak to.

“Uh, hi.”

“Yeah?” He said. 

“I’m the new dish washer.”

“Dish dog.”

“Eh?”

“Dog. New dish dog.” He smiled. 

“Dish pig,” Adam said without looking over.

“Is Chef Kevin here?”

“Chef Kevin is busy at his daily mind reprogramming assemblage,” Adam said as he walked by us holding a monstrous clear plastic lexan full of what looked like cooked ziti to me. Grey laughed at him. Adam punctuated his introduction by aggressively kicking open the door leading to the back hallway.

“That’s Adam, Kevin is at his AA meeting. He’ll be here at seven.”

“Uh, ok.”

“Let me get you all set up. Follow me.”

Grey led me to the back hallway again and into Kevin’s office. He went into a large cardboard box and dug through it, pulling out a pair of baggy black pants. 

“Here you go,” he said as he tossed them to me. “Coats and shirts are down here.” We walked to the very end of the long hallway and almost got run over by Adam as he smashed open the stainless steel door of the walk in cooler and strode out with his head down, indifferent to our presence. Grey laughed again as he noticed me glancing at Adam. 

“He’s harmless, just wound up a little tight.”

Along the wall in this section was a rack with fresh coats, aprons, and dish t-shirts, little snap button jobs with flimsy pockets on the left breast. Grey went through the shirts and selected one for me. 

“Here you go,” he said. “You can change right here and leave your clothes on one of those hooks or use a hanger. I wouldn’t leave anything of value back here.”

He walked away and I changed into my garb. I took everything off and hung my pants and shirt on a hook. I slid the pants on and then stepped back into my shoes. The pants had a grimy unwashed feel to them, tight elastic at the ankles, very baggy, and I looked out of place wearing them with my regular sneakers. I pulled my arms through the shirt holes, did all the snaps. The fabric was so threadbare my nipples poked through. I decided to take the shirt off, put my t-shirt back on and then pull the thin garment back over. 

After all of this I walked back down the hallway and over to Grey with a look on my face of what do I do now? He showed me over to the dish pit which was located in the back of the kitchen out of the way of where people could see and past a long line of steel prep tables. Without a word, Grey just gave me the get to it motion with both his hands. It all looked familiar enough. A hose, a machine, a shitload of dishes to wash. 

I got right in there and cleaned it all up quickly. At the end of where the racks are pulled once the clean dishes came out of the machine I had a sizable stack of odds and ends because I still had to familiarize myself with where they had to go. As I stood there and scratched my head, I heard a voice behind me.

“Already slacking on the job?” 

Kevin appeared with a strange look on his face, not the friendly one he had on during the interview but the face of a man who had just battled a legion of personal demons. 

“Sorry I’m late,” he said. “I had a meeting.”

“No problem.”

“Oh no,” he said looking at a set of four stock pots I had washed. “This won’t do at all.”

“What? They’re clean. I promise.”

“Does this look clean to you?” He pulled a pot up by the handle with one hand and brandished it in my face. I looked inside, not a blemish to be found.

“Yes.”

“Fucking wrong,” he said. “Come here.”

I turned and watched him as he took a few steps over to the hose area of the dish pit. He reached down to the floor and grabbed a plastic gallon jug of pink dish soap called Total Quality and placed it down, the stainless steel platform shuddering with the impact and rattling the clean dishes on the other side of the deck. He wore an Oxford shirt, plain clothes, rolled up sleeves exposing his jacked, veiny forearms. 

“Watch me,” he said with his jaw set forward, a strange, mad look in his eyes. 

He poured a glut of the pink soap on the outside of the pot, grabbed a steel wool scrubby and began to scour like a man possessed. Every few seconds or so he looked at me over his shoulder, his eyes blazing with intensity, veins in his hands and forearms straining with the effort as he scrubbed. Every thirty seconds or so he added another glob of pink soap followed by a blast of water from the hose and continued, the foam from the bubbles obscuring the pot itself, water and suds riding up and moistening the rolled cuffs of his shirt. He turned the pot and scrubbed. He ferociously attacked the areas under and between the handles, even the rivets, all the while obsessively repeating the cycle of glaring at me, scrubbing, adding soap and water, turning, scrubbing, glaring, until after a good five minutes he finally sprayed the pot down with the hose to reveal the pot’s exterior shimmering like a polished chrome bumper. 

He held the pot up an inch in front of my face, beady, intense eyes peeking over the top.

“This is how I want these done. Everyday. Every fucking time. Got it?”

“Yes.”

“Yes what?”

“Yes, Kevin?”

“Yes, Chef.”

“Yes, Chef.”

“Ok, buddy.”

He reached up to my face and pinched my left cheek between the two front knuckles of his pruny hand, leaving a wet smear reeking of Total Quality and walked away. I looked at the other three pots. Cloudy on the outside. Dull gray. A disaster. I looked at the one Kevin had mirror finished, the shitty fluorescent kitchen lights shining off it like a beacon to all that was pure and fine in this world. For one moment I thought of walking, but I needed the money. It was my first day and part of me wanted to give up but another part of me wanted to show this crazy guy I had what it took. I grabbed a pot and dug into it with the scrubby. I scrubbed hard for a minute or two, straightened up and admired my handiwork. I sprayed the pot with the hose to remove the suds. Nothing. I had done nothing to it.  I added some pink soap and began again, this time really going for it, ignoring the pain in my right shoulder. I sprayed off the section I had polished with the hose. Better. It worked. I did a few windmills with my arm and continued. More Total Quality. More scrubbing. More intensity. I found it helped when I knitted my eyes and brow together like Kevin. After a good twenty minutes I had finished my first pot. It shone like a sweet beacon of hope. I looked at the others waiting for me, two ugly sisters to this Cinderella ready for the ball. After a deep breath I grabbed the next one and commenced my attack.

No thoughts dwelled in my head save one. Total Quality. My mantra. It was all I had and resounded inside my skull like the chanting of monks in secret, far away mountain locations.

It was all behind the eyes, you see. That was the secret. You had to set yourself to it, to focus, empty your thoughts and leave nothing behind.

Grey came behind me and dropped off a stack of dirty utensils and dishes, I turned and glared at him the same way Kevin had done to me like a feral, untrusting dog. 

“Quality,” he said. “Total Quality.”

When I got to the last pot I had nothing left. As I stood there looking at it Adam came over and grabbed the three that I had finished.

“I am going to need that last pot,” he said in his monotone nasal whine. 

“Ok. Just give me a minute. My shoulder’s gone.”

“Yes. Hmm. Yes. Kevin’s fetish. Please do hurry. I will need that pot.” He drew the last sentence out slowly to make his point and walked away carrying the other three pots. If he wanted them so badly then why didn’t he do it? 

I half assed the last pot. I had no strength left in my shoulders. Adam came through and took it. I cleaned up the rest of the dishes in the pit and the moment I began to relax, Kevin barged into my area, moving me aside with his hip, holding the pot I had cheated. He was back in his full chef regalia. The immaculate white coat, the houndstooth, the clogs.

“It’s all about the pink soap,” he said. “I’ll show you this one more fucking time.” He dumped a colossal amount of Total Quality on the pot and went at it, gritting his teeth. I turned and saw Adam and the coke bottle glasses watching through the dish window from the other side,  as if examining some foreign curiosity, a creature yet unexplored by humankind. He pushed his glasses back up his nose and hurumphed. Kevin caught this and stopped scrubbing for a half second. 

“Oh, Adam, you pissy bitch!” He turned and looked at me. “Adam gets a little cunty when I get in his way.” He smiled, eyes twinkling, beads of sweat on his brow, and then twisted back into scrub mode, adding more pink soap. 

“Never enough. Got it?”

“Yes, Chef.”

“Fucking pink fucking soap,” he mumbled to himself. “Total Quality.”

When he finished the sweat came down his face in rivulets. I half expected the droplets to hit the deck of the kitchen and sear right through the tile, right down into the center of the earth. He sprayed the pot off and once again held it an inch from my face to reveal a mirror finish then puffed his chest out and strode around to bring it to Adam.