“I don’t think that’s Feldspar’s style,” Vera acknowledged. “He’s not interested in cutting corners.”
The cold line, too, was replete with the same: brand-new Bloomfield salad and soup stations, three Univex mixers, and Groen speed-drives, plus an array of shredders, slicers, graters, and grinders. The entire kitchen glimmered in stainless steel newness.
“Every chef’s dream, right?” Vera suggested.
“You ain’t kidding.” Dan B. walked, nearly in a daze, behind the lines, glancing astonished at an entire wall of Dexter/Russell cutlery, Wearever pots and pans, and Wollrath prep gear. “Service bar’s the same way,” Dan B. went on. “Donna’s in there having a baby rhino. And Lee…”
“Holy shit!” the voice exclaimed around the line.
Lee was running around like a kid under a Christmas tree. His chubby moon face bloomed in delight with each of his shocked glances to and fro. Then his belly jiggled when he stopped before a mammoth Hobart chain-washer, which could crank three hundred sixty racks per hour. Lee’s eyes widened in something like veneration. “It’s…it’s beautiful,” he stammered.
“Look at that,” Dan B. laughed. “He’s getting hard. It’s not the Hustler Honey of the Month, it’s just a dishwasher.”
“No, no, it’s more than that.” Lee grinned at Dan B. “It’s the best dishwasher in the world, and it’s even more beautiful than…your mom.”
Dan B. promptly gave Lee the finger. But Lee was right; the great machine was one of the best dishwashers in the world, and so was the three-stage glasswasher behind it. Vera realized that just the equipment in this kitchen probably cost upwards of half a million.
“Let’s not embarrass him,” Dan B. suggested. “Lee wants to make love to the dishwasher.” He took Vera by the arm, getting serious. “Come here. I want to show you something.”
Vera followed him to the end of the line, past a pair of five-hundred-gallon lobster tanks and customized Nor-Lake walk-ins.
“What’s wrong?” Vera asked. “Aren’t you happy about all of this?”
“Sure. But there’s something…I don’t know. Something’s not right.”
“Like what?”
“Like that Hobart machine, for one,” Dan B. said. “That’s a fifteen-thousand-dollar rig, it’s something you use for a banquet house or a mess hall. You don’t need a machine that elaborate for a country restaurant. And the same goes for all of this stuff—sure, it’s all great stuff, but it’s overkill. Feldspar’s got to be out of his mind dropping this much cash for a restaurant in a questionable location.”
Why are men always so skeptical? Vera wondered. “Don’t complain. If we work our tails off, and get in some good advertising, we could fill this place every night.”
“Come on, Vera. That’s wishful thinking. You and I both know that the chances for any new restaurant, anywhere, are less than fifty-fifty.”
“That’s why Feldspar’s going full-tilt, to up the chances.”
“Maybe,” Dan B. conceded. “But take a look at this.”
He led her next to a stainless steel door at the back of the kitchen. He pulled it open. Vera stared in.
“Can you believe this?” Dan B. inquired.
Vera shrugged. Okay, maybe Feldspar was going a little crazy with the money. What she was looking at, past the door, was another kitchen, nearly identical to theirs.
“A second kitchen just for room service?” Dan B. questioned. “Feldspar thinks business is going to be so great that he needs a separate kitchen just for the hotel orders? It’s ridiculous.”
“No, it’s not.”
Vera and Dan B. turned at the remark.
A young man stood immediately to their rear: tall, trim, wavy longish light-brown hair. Vera found him instantly attractive in a lackadaisical sort of way. He wore tight, faded jeans, a white kitchen tunic halfway unbuttoned, and old clunky line boots. He smiled, almost cockily, and extended his hand to Vera.
“You’re Ms. Abbot, right?”
“Vera,” she said.
“I’m Kyle, the room-service manager. And you’re…Don?”
“Dan B.,” Dan B. corrected, and shook hands. “The chef.”
“I heard what you were saying just now,” Kyle went on, “and I can understand where you’re coming from. I felt the same way when Mr. Feldspar first took me on. But I can tell you, Magwyth Enterprises has inns just like this all over the place, and not one of them has lost money yet. In fact they’ve all jumped into the black right off. So don’t worry about the location, or the fact that Mr. Feldspar’s spent so much money up front. The guy knows what he’s doing.”
“We didn’t mean to imply that he didn’t,” Vera hastened to say. First day on the job she didn’t need this guy running to Feldspar with negative implications. Immediately she viewed Kyle as her personal competition: room service would have an instant edge in gross receipts. Make friends with him fast, she warned herself. She’d been in the business too long to play hoity-toity.
“And I can tell you something else,” Kyle added, and flipped a lock of hair back off his brow. “You do good work for Mr. Feldspar and the sky’s the limit. But you have to prove yourself first. You have to show him what you’re made of.”
Vera repressed a sarcastic face. Kyle was showing his true colors right off the bat. It was the same as him saying: I’m the one to beat around here, and I’m not going to give you an inch of slack. “We appreciate the input, Kyle,” Vera eventually said.
Kyle glanced to Dan B., nodding. “I hear you’re pretty good behind the line. I’m looking forward to trying out some of your grub.”
“My ‘grub’ will knock your socks off,” Dan B. promised.
“Me, I do all the cooking for room service. I always have a standing bet with the restaurant chef, quarterly evaluation. Whoever comes out on top takes a C-note from the loser. Interested?”
“Sure,” Dan B. said. “I’ll take your money, no problem.”
Kyle laughed. “Okay, man, you’re on. It’ll be fun, you’ll see. Mr. Feldspar wants me to show you to your rooms whenever you all are ready. I’ll be over here in my gig.”
“Thanks, Kyle,” Vera said.
“See you all later.”
Kyle went into the room-service kitchen and closed the door behind him.
“What an asshole,” Dan B. concluded at once.
“Yeah, but at least he’s a good-natured asshole,” Vera said.
“And I didn’t like the way he was scoping your rib-melons.”
Vera squinted at him. “Whating my whats?”
“The way he was looking at your t-…your breasts.”
Vera nearly blushed. “He was not—”
“Of course he was, Vera. Christ, I thought the guy’s eyeballs were gonna pop out and land in your blouse. Talk about low-class. And how do you like that shit he was spouting about a quarterly evaluation? That snide punk probably can’t even cook microwave tater-tots. I’ll bet he thinks mahi-mahi is an island in Hawaii. If I ever lose a cook-off to him I’ll turn in my gear and jack fries at Hardee’s for the rest of my life. The punk.”
Chef rivalry, Vera realized. It was worse than the Redskins and the Cowboys. “Don’t get your dander up,” she advised. “Try and get along with him for now; we don’t need any personality conflicts before we even open.”
“And I’ll tell you something else.” Dan B. lowered his voice, as if Kyle might hear him through the steel doors. “Me and Lee saw a couple of really freaky types wandering around the place earlier. Maids or something. Looked to us like they were stoned on ’ludes. We tried talking to them, but they just walked away.”
“Yeah,” Vera acknowledged. She remembered the odd woman she’d seen pushing the cart of vases back in the dining room. She hadn’t spoken a word. “So what?” she allayed. “What do we care about the maintenance staff? They’re probably people Feldspar grabbed from some other inns, foreigners probably. They don’t talk to us because they probably can’t even speak English. Ten to one a lot of them don’t have green cards, so don’t make a stink about it. If Feldspar wants to run illegal labor in the background, that’s his business.”