Lloyd
Power cables were daisy-chained across Lloyd’s restaurant; they had looped where the kitchen began and concluded under a closed door, Lloyd’s office.
He’d taken the TV/VCR down from above the bar. The TV now rested on his desk. Papers and folders had been shoved aside for space. A flyer for the Copa County Fair had fallen under the desk. It advertised contests and unpopular musical acts, and it advertised fun with images of children laughing.
The TV on the desk wore the VCR as a crown.
Cables were caught under the TV and pinched.
Lloyd was in his rolling chair, waiting for the VHS to start.
He held an opened Postal Service shipper in one hand and the VHS box in the other. The box was saturated in the guru’s marketing, the loud fonts and bright colors and imagery that evoked success.
The VHS opened by thanking the recipient with a flurry of noises and short, punchy title cards for attending the ultra-exclusive, once-in-a-lifetime, rocket to the moon of success seminar.
As thanks was this tape.
Then the guru was on in his yellow track suit.
Behind him was a green screen, and on it was a violent ocean stricken by a strong storm, and the guru was in the middle, first pretending to be blown about by the wind and the waves and then laughing and then getting to the good stuff, the valuable stuff, he said; enough horsing around, let’s get to the super-valuable stuff.
Then he spoke direct to the camera, and it was clear he was reading off a source behind the camera.
He said being successful was like navigating an ocean storm. He talked about waves and awful dangers, and he knew all about them, he said, he’d been through them all, before he found his incredible and vast success. He said success only comes with pain and being a high performer. It must consume you, it must be you from morning until sleep, you must always be pushing the envelope, he said. It must be all you think about, he said, and when you’ve got that down, then it’s all brand, brand, brand, really. What is your brand, he asked the camera. The world isn’t unique, and not one single person in it is unique either, the guru said, but you need to know what makes you unique. He warned and asked the recipient of this 100 percent free VHS tape if they liked the sound of being a high performer, high risk/high reward, high stress but high pay?
In a world where no one is unique, do you know what makes you unique?
The guru said if you like how that sounded, please fill out the order form included in the mailer to order the next VHS of the series for one payment of nineteen ninety-five.
I hate to say it, the guru said, but you gotta spend money if you want to make it.
Lloyd went and stood out front of Lloyd’s under late-morning sun. He looked up at the building, the color and shape of it, and the sign.
Reed came out and asked if he could put the TV back up.
‘What’s our brand, Reed?’
‘Oh, I don’t know, Mr. Wood.’
‘Well, you got an idea.’
‘Oh, I couldn’t say, Mr. Wood.’
‘The world ain’t unique, Reed.’
‘Well, sure it is.’
‘No, I’m saying it ain’t.’
‘Oh. Okay, Mr. Wood.’
‘It ain’t, so what makes us unique?’
‘Why we gotta be unique, Mr. Wood?’
‘Well. We’re making some changes. Doing the same thing isn’t working. Every day it’s the same, and we’re wanting it to be different. It’s never different, Reed.’
‘No, prolly it ain’t,’ Reed said. ‘Prolly it’s the same every day.’
‘So, we’re making some changes.’
‘Yeah, prolly that’s good, Mr. Wood. Change stirs it up.’
‘Go get Kathleen.’
Reed went in and asked her outside, and Lloyd faced her to the sign and the building.
‘What makes us unique? What’s our brand?’
‘Oh heck, Lloyd, I couldn’t say,’ Kathleen said.
‘Well, if one a-you could, what would you say?’
Kathleen started to smoke and said, ‘The heck kinda question is that? I couldn’t say anyhow.’
‘Maybe I’d say something like community,’ Reed said. ‘If you’re making me say, maybe that it’d be it.’
‘Maybe I’d say that too,’ Kathleen said.
Cigarette smoke was going in her eyes, but it bothered her none.
‘You’d say community?’ Lloyd said. ‘Not luxury?’
‘If I could say, I would maybe say something like community.’
‘Me too,’ Kathleen said.
‘Our brand is community?’
‘Yeah,’ Kathleen said.
‘Not luxury? Not fine dining?’
‘Sign don’t read that way to me,’ Reed said.
‘Yeah. Me either,’ Kathleen said. She ashed her cigarette.
The three stood and looked at the sign and at Lloyd’s.
‘Maybe, I’d also say we’re on the edge of Larton. Maybe, I’d also say we’re the first and last thing you see in Larton,’ Reed added.
‘The first and last thing you see in Larton?’ Lloyd said. ‘That sounds luxury. First and last, that’s fine dining to me. That’s big, pricy steaks and big, pricy fish and big glasses of pricy wine. That’s what Lloyd’s reads to me.’
The three stood and continued to look at the building.
‘That’s big pricy tips too, you guys, I’m saying.’
‘You oughta enter Lloyd’s in the county fair cookoff,’ Kathleen said.
This food is frozen, Coach.
‘No, we won’t do that,’ Lloyd said. ‘No fairs, no competitions. Fine dining don’t do that.’
‘I’m still seeing community, Mr. Wood,’ Reed said. He had walked up closer to the building. He was turned around now and glaring back and shaking his head. ‘I’m not seeing anything else, Mr. Wood.’
‘That one guy always wins, and his restaurants are always full over in Clinton City,’ she said. She lit another cigarette. ‘The ones on the TV ads.’
‘What guy?’
‘Don Wallace Eateries, there’s always a wait even during the week. He wins every year at the fair, that guy,’ Kathleen said. ‘Don Wallace Eateries, you know them, Lloyd. I’m sure you know them.’
‘I know them,’ Lloyd said. That goddam van.
‘Don Wallace is the guy, super generous and great guy. He wins every year. I’m sure you know him, Lloyd.’
‘I know him,’ he said.
His tone was harsh. Kathleen went on about Don Wallace.
Over the week, which had been a slow week with few receipts to be reconciled, Lloyd had ordered a new building top sign and was waiting for delivery late one evening.
He had dipped into savings, and he hadn’t been glad to do it, but if you want to make it, you have to spend it, he thought. In the savings there was still a cushion, but now a little less. He’d also ordered an ad in the Larton paper for a proper fine-dining chef, one with experience in luxury, that was the brand, and set aside a salary, one he was convinced was more than fair.
There was still a savings cushion, but less.
He and Reed were out the back door with it wedged open by a rock, waiting for the sign delivery truck.
‘I don’t have school tomorrow,’ Reed said. ‘I can wait all night if you need, Mr. Wood. The whole night.’
‘Don’t think we’ll need that, but okay.’
‘I don’t have school the day after either. Or next week. Or the one after. Got all this free time, so.’
‘That’s nice.’
‘So, if you need me more hours, I can work since I don’t got school for a while.’
‘Yeah. Thanks for notifying me.’
The conversation almost ended there with quiet and waiting.
It continued.
‘The college won’t let me back, so. I can work more.’
Lloyd walked out from the back door and up the back alley. He said, ‘That delivery truck oughta be here.’
‘I don’t even like going to the college, so, plus I’m no good in school, so, they put me on academic probation.’
Lloyd returned to where he was standing by Reed.
‘I like coming in, working, remember I said?’
‘I remember.’
The two were quiet and waited and heard nothing but the evening around them.
‘You give any more thought to me as manager?’
‘I ain’t forgot, Reed.’
‘School is looking like it’s out, so, looking like I need a plan B.’
‘Yeah, looks like it.’
The delivery truck entered the alley with two pops of its horn as hello. A crew of three came off the truck and hauled the sign out of the trailer. It took the five of them, Lloyd and Reed and the crew of three, the better of two hours getting the sign on the roof. They had started in a line and tried handing it off and up a chain of hands up the fire ladder to the roof but proved too difficult. Reed was a weak link, and they had tried other methods in its place, but in the end, it was the line of handoffs that got it up. Reed pulled through.
Another hour, the new sign was up and lit and the old one down.
The truck rolled away into the early night and left Lloyd and Reed out front of the restaurant.
The two were looking at the new sign, and it was shining on them in gold, in luxury.
‘That’s fine dining.’
The sign read Lloyd’s Fine Dining, and below that read First and Last Ya See in Larton!
‘If you ain’t need me here anymore, I’m saying, I should know, is all? So I can have another plan B.’
‘Oh, yeah, we need you, Reed. Lloyd’s still needs you, yeah. So. You’re not going anywheres, okay?’
‘I shouldn’t worry about the ad for a chef?’
‘Oh, no, no, no, Reed. No. Lloyd’s needs you.’
‘Okay, Mr. Wood, that sounds good.’
‘They’ll do the fine-dining cooking. Change is good, like you say, it stirs it up.’
‘What will I do?’
‘Well.’ Lloyd thought for a moment under the light from the new sign, the lot around him bright and empty. ‘We’ll find something,’ he said.
They went in and closed up for the night.
The next morning, there was a car in the lot when Lloyd pulled in. There was a man sitting in the car, and it was running. It was parked in the far end of the lot. Lloyd opened the restaurant and flipped on the kitchen appliances and got them going and warm.
Then he set the tables.
There was a way he liked it done, but Kathleen never did it his way, and so mostly, if she set the tables, they would be set in a way Lloyd did not care for.
A customer came in.
It was the man from out in the car. He was older, and he’d gone to different lengths to appear less so; his hair, his skin, his clothing, none of it matched the state of his body, that is to say, quite withered and wrinkled.
Lloyd seated him.
‘Do you do breakfast and lunch this early?’
‘We can.’
‘Some places only do breakfast till this time, and some places only do lunch at that time.’
‘Ah. We can do both.’
‘Most fine-dining places only do one at certain times. The sign outside said this was fine dining. That’s why I ask. Some places I’ve been to do that. I been to some real fine-dining places, I’m saying.’
‘Yeah. Okay. We can do both here. So.’
‘But it says fine dining outside.’
‘Sign looks good, doesn’t it?’
‘I’ve seen better,’ the man said.
‘But it looks fine dining, right?’
The man said no more on the matter and read through the menu while Lloyd served him coffee. He took out a small notepad and pen and wrote and read through the menu at length, nodding his head as he did.
Kathleen came and punched in, and Lloyd had her collect the man’s order. She made two attempts; each was stopped by the man’s need to read the entire menu. He was attempting to understand the experience, he said.
A menu is a story, he told Kathleen, and he was reading their story. Finally, the man put away his paper and gave his order. He’d like one of each of their best-selling dishes, he said.
Then the man waited patiently.
Reed rushed through ingredient prep and rushed pots over heat and started sauces simmering. He left a mess of chopped vegetables on the counter and the floor. A trail of spilled sauce followed him. The kitchen filled with cursing and clangs and dropped kitchenware.
Reed was failing to deliver adequate attention to each station. Ingredients needed cooking, some needed off heat, some required the next step.
Lloyd watched the man through the kitchen door window.
Kathleen came back.
‘He a critic?’ she asked.
‘Could be,’ Lloyd said.
‘Could be he writes for a paper. They try your place and then shit talk all the ways your service don’t deliver.’
‘Lloyd’s service delivers,’ Lloyd said.
The man was up from the table and looking at the silverware on the other tables.
Lloyd was watching.
‘Yeah, sure it delivers,’ Kathleen said.
She brought food to the man’s table as it was ready, and dishes collected and filled table space around the man until there was none free. There were banana nut pancakes, honey buttermilk biscuits, hash browns, a pork patty and egg sandwich, seasoned fries, scrambled eggs, meatloaf and gravy, corned beef hash, a classic American burger weeping melted cheese, a slice of strawberry pie, a slice of chocolate cake, and handmade ice cream which was not actually handmade.
At the table was a banquet, a series of courses, for a single man.
Lloyd and Kathleen and Reed watched through the kitchen door window as the man sampled, carefully and thoughtfully, each dish.
The man called Lloyd out from the kitchen.
Lloyd waited a moment and tried to predict in which direction the man might converse and found he could not.
He went to the man’s table.
‘I was looking for a story. In fine dining.’
‘A story?’ Lloyd said.
‘I been to a lot of these places, fine-dining places.’
‘Mm-kay.’
‘Mm-kay?’ the man said.
‘Lloyd’s service delivers when you eat with us,’ Lloyd said.
He wasn’t sure why he’d said it.
‘You got all these flavors and they’re a cast of characters, really, and a chef is a writer, really, and he’s writing a story with his cast of characters, his flavors, and maybe there’s a theme and maybe there’s a message in there. The characters are in love and in hate and they argue with each other and then make beautiful love with each other; it’s a whole drama, really, the flavors. You got fine dining up on the sign, so I hoped for a good story with good characters and drama,’ the man said. He looked over the table at the juices and the mess of eating. ‘You’re aware most of this was frozen?’
Lloyd said not a word. His eyes were not blinking.
‘So, you are aware then?’
‘We’re updating the menu, so.’
‘They all say that. I say, your food is frozen, I say this meal was not fresh, and they say they’re updating their menu, and then I say what I just said. Then you know what they say?’
Lloyd shook his head, he did not.
‘They don’t say, they walk away or throw me out. Then you know what happens?’
Lloyd shook his head, again he did not.
‘Then they go under. They fold. They file. They crumble under this frozen food.’ The man pointed to the food. ‘This is your food, really. It belongs to you. I don’t know who cooked it, I don’t care who cooked it, really, it’s yours, you own it and you sell it, and there is no story to be found, no drama, no lovemaking, there’s none of that here, and I been to a lot of places, so.’
Lloyd was nodding and he wasn’t blinking.
‘But you haven’t walked away, and you haven’t thrown me out.’
‘It’s a fine-dining establishment,’ Lloyd said.
The man introduced himself; he was a chef. He asked Lloyd to take a seat.
Lloyd sat.
The chef showed a copy of the newspaper and the ad Lloyd had placed for a chef, and he listed for Lloyd the many, many fine-dining restaurants he’d cooked for and the many, many stories he’d told with his characters, with his flavors, and how much each dish sold for at the time, how much revenue his stories brought in, he said, and he asked if Lloyd liked how that sounded.
‘Well, I like how it sounds. But. You want to chef here?’
‘The sign outside says fine dining.’
‘But, I’m saying, you listed so many—you listed a lot of fine-dining restaurants, and I’m asking you want to chef here?’
‘There was an ad. And this food was frozen.’
‘What are you looking for here, mister?’ Lloyd asked.
Lloyd was blunt about it. He liked how it all sounded, to be fair, he liked how it sounded a lot.
The chef, whose age he’d very clearly invested effort and money into confusing, looked very intently at Lloyd and delivered an answer with a glimpse of what might be underneath all that confusion.
‘Looking for quiet, really,’ the chef said. ‘I want to work here.’
‘You want quiet?’
‘I want easy and I want quiet.’
‘Plenty of quiet here, so.’
Quiet moved between them; the chef welcomed it.
Lloyd said, ‘Real good, then. You’re hired.’
They shook hands, and the chef looked about the room, now with a connection to it.
Lloyd processed, in that quiet, all that had just happened.
‘You like competition?’
‘I thrive in it, boss.’
‘The county puts one together; it’s good for business,’ Lloyd said. ‘I heard the winner has lines out the door during the week, even. The winner’s weekends are packed. That’s what I heard. But I didn’t have a chef.’
‘You have one now, boss.’
‘Between you and me, I don’t like the guy who wins.’
‘We all don’t like a guy, boss.’
‘Yeah, but between you and me, I really don’t like the guy, Don Wallace. Wouldn’t mind knocking him down a peg. So. And it’s good for business.’
‘I knocked a guy down a peg or two before. I knocked a few down before, boss.’
‘Real good then.’
‘We’ll negotiate the salary,’ the chef said. He removed his coat and was wearing chef’s whites underneath. ‘Oh. And, boss, I’m handling all the suppliers from here on, okay? That means I pick where the meats and the vegetables and all that comes from, not you, me. The food is my story, and I get to pick.’
‘Okay,’ Lloyd said.
‘I’m saying, no involvement from you, at all.’
‘Okay.’
‘I don’t think you’re understanding, boss, I’m talking none.’
‘None?’
‘None. I don’t even want you asking me about suppliers.’
Lloyd didn’t like that much, still he agreed; there was more to like than not.
The chef let himself into the kitchen.
In two weeks, Lloyd’s had collected both a new sign and a new chef, and over those two weeks, the menu had been redone.
Not one item Lloyd had chosen for his menu was kept. The chef inserted dishes, all of his choosing, and did not consult Lloyd on any addition.
Not one.
But Lloyd said nothing; he had allowed it. Lloyd chose to not create friction. Lloyd refrained from friction on quite a few matters the chef did not include him in, in fact. The chef ordered online two separate mixers, a bread oven, new servingware, and safety equipment that Lloyd had lacked, and he arranged new ventilation where there was none.
The chef onboarded Nick as a supplier for fresh vegetables and meats from his booming farm business. The order amounts, prices, and delivery frequency were not disclosed to Lloyd.
Lloyd watched the chef work and watched Reed try to assist.
Reed was mostly in the way.
A rhythm lived in the chef, and it decided the chef’s path and his timing, and it was honed and it was precise and it was consistently interrupted by Reed and always in the worst possible moments. It caused broken dishes, burnt meats and vegetables, and delays.
But food the chef was putting out of the kitchen was art.
It was never late or early, and the dishes both warned and teased the eye and burst on the tongue.
His food caused one to crumble around it and to want all of it all at once, and the chef crafted such food that was deceptively simple in its expression and complex in taste and story.
The few customers who dined, and there had been few, more than usual but still few, left satisfied.
They said Lloyd’s was always a disappoint, but not tonight.
One evening, Lloyd was behind the bar, reconciling receipts.
It was nearly close time, but a woman was eating with her husband in the corner.
They were on their dessert and nearly finished.
The chef had gone. Reed had gone early after a spat with the chef. He was always in the way, the chef said to Lloyd. I turn around and I get elbows and he’s always in the way; you gotta do something about him, you gotta get rid of him.
Lloyd had said he’d do something, but he hadn’t done a thing and then he’d forgotten about it.
There were a few more receipts to reconcile than usual, and though there were only a few, Lloyd was happy to reconcile them the same. It was a start, he thought.
A little more than usual, that’s a start.
Toby came in.
Lloyd didn’t notice until the sixteen-year-old was before him.
Lloyd leaned to see out the front window. ‘Mom outside?’
‘Rode my bike.’ Toby sat.
‘It’s after nine.’
Toby said nothing to that.
Then he said, ‘You have the fryer still on?’
‘No. It’s after nine.’
Lloyd saw Toby working up to something; he let it come.
Toby said, ‘You know how you work a lot?’
‘I don’t work a lot.’
‘I was thinking you would work less if you had help.’
Lloyd leaned to see out the front again.
‘Mom say this?’
‘I could help, I was thinking. I got lots of free time, out of practice and school, I mean, and out of homework time, I got lots. I think less free time for me would be better, don’t you? Less free time for a sixteen-year-old like me to get in trouble. That’s a parent’s dream.’
Lloyd was quiet and processing.
‘You’re asking to work here?’
‘Mom liked the idea of me working when I said.’
The pair were quiet.
Lloyd thought carefully and set aside receipts and rolls and came closer to his son. ‘Working ain’t like practice.’
‘What?’
‘Coming fifteen minutes late, coming thirty minutes late won’t be laps. You come late, you’ll be out a job; it ain’t like practice. You come late to the field, you give me a lap around the track for every minute, not here; you come late here that’s a write-up, I’m saying. In work there’s write-ups not laps when you mess up. It ain’t your time here, it’s my time, and you’re selling it to me and I’m paying you for it. You understand? Lloyd’s is buying time from you. And while we’re talking about it, you need to know a thing about work. A man is work, you understand? A man is field, he’s air and sun and grass, he’s sweat, a man is his hands, and work is what they’re for, it’s why we have hands, you understand?’
‘Yeah, Dad,’ Toby said.
‘You want to work here, you need to understand that. A man is sacrifice, I’m saying,’ Lloyd said. ‘Work is what he gives. A man who works focuses on the future, son, and if he doesn’t enjoy the present, that’s okay. The present can be miserable, and that’s fine, that’s now; a man doesn’t focus on the misery now—a man focuses on what’s coming. Where he’s at can be crummy, and that’s okay, because work is how he gets what’s coming. We’re pulling from a barrel of hours in us, and we don’t get to see how empty or full is our supply. A man bets that barrel on what’s coming.’
‘What’s coming?’
‘What’s deserved,’ Lloyd said.
Toby was quiet then. Lloyd didn’t like that quiet.
‘A man is sacrifice, I’m saying.’
‘What’s he sacrifice?’
‘What it takes.’
Silence came and lingered.
‘What do you think about all that?’ Lloyd said.
Toby said, ‘Well, Mom liked the idea of me working.’
Lloyd thought on it. ‘We’ll give it a try,’ Lloyd said. ‘Come Saturday in work clothes.’
Toby stood and appeared lighter to Lloyd, and the teen thanked him many times. He smiled and hugged Lloyd, then the teen was out the door, but not before he said to Lloyd, ‘How close are you to what’s coming?’
Lloyd said he was closer than yesterday.