Food Prep

Mike had worked at Roma Italiano Pizza Restaurant and Family Fun Center longer than anyone else except the owner, but suffered from the malady of the meek. He'd even been told by Craig on the pizza line how to do things long after he'd first taught Craig how to do them, but then that was Craig. Balding and heavyset with a sour demeanor and a frowning mouth under a brief mustache, he should have been a cop on some cable show rather than on the pizza line. Mike was younger, wore glasses and would have been chosen by casting agents as Craig's quirky meticulous partner who actually did the crime-solving.

Christian was Mike's friend, though; Craig was no one's friend. While Craig grumbled and spun sauce to the edges of the dough without flair, Mike and Christian would clown as they worked, hurling bad kung fu movie imitations at each other: "You killed my village! Prepare for my revenge!" dubbed Mike, twisting his mouth. "You stupid youth! You do not know the techniiiiique!" sneered Christian. He always made Mike laugh.

Craig thought it all stupid, but then Craig was a fountain of harmless hate.

When Jeanette came to work for Roma Italiano, the malady of the utterly dumbstruck was added to Mike's list of uncertainties. With her glasses and severe ponytail, Craig thought her geeky and beneath notice. With her slightly hooked nose, ivory skin and crinkles around her mouth when she smiled, Mike thought her dazzling. He had no idea how to talk to her. He'd cut himself twice now while dicing, and Mike never cut himself.

"Christian, what do you think of Jeanette?" Mike asked innocently, pushing celery under his staccato knife. Mr. Bellard had recently decided that vegetables for the salad bar must be prepped by hand, not shredded by the grey teeth of the Hobart machine. Craig was elsewhere, dealing with the customers he hated.

Christian was his mentor, wisdom flashing from under tousled Latin hair. He pulled the dishwasher's square steel hood down over another crate, wreathed in the onrush of steam. "What do I think? I think she's cute. For a girl." He peered at Mike. "Oh, I see. I'm one step between guy and girl, so I can give you advice. I'm your gay-friend conduit." He was kidding.

"No, I kinda mean it, really. Um, I'd like to talk to her. How to act."

When Mike was serious, Christian was too, almost. "Are you kidding? Doesn't every stupid romantic comedy and every stupid self-help book tell you to just be yourself?"

Mike looked up at him, helplessly. Christian's mouth ticked.

"Okay, fine. How about this. Whatever you do, do it like you're so comfortable with it that you command it. Girls like confidence." The hood fell upward, spent, and he yanked the crate dripping onto the steel shelf at his right side.

"Er, I chop vegetables."

"Then chop with confidence. Chop like the wind, bitch."

Almost as if on cue, Jeanette burst through the swinging doors from the main room, arms full of glass-laden plastic crate; waitstaff were expected to perform busing service. Horrible party music chased her. She had heard Christian's last remark but not the conversation. Jeanette smiled enough to cover the room, and sang: "I got to chop! Chop like the wind... to be free again...!"

Few AM Gold pop songs from the 1970s escaped Mike. "Christopher Cross."

Jeanette arced her smile to him and froze him solid. "Oh. My. God! You knew who that was. How cool is that?" Mike's head aimed downward against his will, celery suddenly the only thing in his world. She clanked the crate of dirty glasses on Christian's shelf and bounced off, ponytail whipping her shoulder blades.

Christian regarded him with mock solemnity. "You did well for two words, then lost it."

"I can only hold two words at a time," Mike said miserably.

The steel washer hood descended in a shroud of hot vapor. "I steam at you."

Mike chopped silently, steamed at.

Roma Italiano was busy right at lunch, right at dinner and during weekend lunches when kids' birthday parties would stumble in, destroy the building, and leave. Over the remainder of the day Mike's head cleared. He rolled great drums of pre-made pasta sauce from the storage room, carefully dumped them into the Hobart's bowl, upended bags of pre-mixed seasoning into it ("muy autentico!" was what Mike or Christian usually cried out at this time), flicked off the safety, pressed the button, and the Hobart rumbled like a cement mixer.

Christian brought his discomfort to the fore, which Mike did not want at this time, not with Craig's eternally sunburnt head bobbing up and down behind the low wall, assembling pizzas. "I tell you, Mike, confidence. When you press that button on the Hobart, press it like you're going to launch nuclear missiles at Burkina Faso."

Mike played along. "What did Burkina Faso ever do to us, that I must launch missiles at it?"

"Do? Do! It need do nothing, amigo, except die for the cause of you meeting girls."

"What the crap is a burkina faso?" grouched Craig. "Speak English, ladyboy."

"He needs to learn his way around an atlas," said Mike, daring Craig's wrath. He shut off the Hobart and cocked the giant mixer upward, waggling off the spiral mixing blades that twisted like gore-splashed columns of pop art.

"He needs to learn his way around gender studies. You don't fool me, Craig. You're two six-packs away from wearing colored handkerchiefs in your back pocket!" sang Christian.

"Screw you," came the mumbled response. Craig was more comfortable tossing unrequited abuse at what he didn't understand, not directly interacting with it. He was afraid to "catch the Gay." He continued his pizza assembly, refusing as usual to weigh the toppings in the rickety scale above him.

Mike placed the blades carefully on the counter. The pasta sauce's red results were transferred to a big Tupperwarian rectangle, flowing in layers like lava. He pressed a length of masking tape onto its end, wrote the date and the name of the contents: 7/22, Pasta Shosh. It was not for him to label things simply; the shredded yellow pizza cheese was Cheese of Doom. He sighed as he labored the heavy container toward the walk-in refrigerator. Yeah, real massive expertise here, he thought. Total confident command of the mixer.

He straightened up from sliding the reluctant container underneath a shelf, blowing out clouds of air, and saw her. Jeanette was piling up small containers of veggies to populate the salad bar with. She smiled and locked him into place again.

"Are you the one who labels these things?"

Oh, no... she's not going to get it, Mike thought in a panic. She's going to think I can't spell. I can totally spell. God, I'm stupid. "Uh, yeah. That's me."

"So funny!" she said. "I like how the carrot coins are called 'bunny currency.'"

"Yeah, I got in trouble once... I wasn't thinking and I labeled the cucumbers the lonely woman's companion.' Mr. Bellard wasn't pleased." Then Mike's brain spasmed: Oh God, what did I just say to her. That was just completely offensive. What a jerk.

But Jeanette laughed, and in such music the top container fell from her arms, scattering baby corn across the tile. "Oh, hell, I'm sorry! Ha, ha, hee!" She tried to put down her armful of containers and almost lost the entire stack; Mike rescued her and together they began scraping up tiny cobs from around cardboard boxes and cold aluminum racks. "Sorry, you spent all the time chopping these up." She leaned close to him, ponytail brushing his face. He breathed her.

"No worries. I don't chop the baby corn. I just collect it and send it to starving countries."

She laughed again. "Who eats baby corn anyway? It's a silly veggie. Totally manmade."

He agreed, heartily. With anything she said, he would agree, with joy.

"It's so cold in here," she said. "No duh, huh?"

Strangely enough, the cold air bolstered him; this was his element, his command center, where he'd retreated so often from the noise and chaos to stand among silent rows of prepared food, in metal-tinged air. This was the part of the restaurant he owned. "Oh, I know," he said. "Someone should come in here and fix this. Hey, the walk-in fridge? Too cold."

"Ha ha! I know! I demand comfortable temperatures and fresh food!" she cried.

It took the corralling of the last of the fleeing baby corn, the careful re-stacking of her salad bar components, and the trading of several pop songs older than either of them--notably Foreigner's "Cold As Ice" and Little River Band's "Cool Change"--for him to gain the sudden courage to ask her out for some coffee. She said yes.