Ask ten diners what the worst job in a restaurant is, nine of them will say washing the dishes. Before Tonya had landed the gig with Banque Gauche, she might have made the same mistake, imagining a group of low-paid workers in rubber gloves, elbow-deep in soapy, food-particle-filled water, wiping grimy sponges over dinner plates. She’d since learned better.
Doing the dishes wasn’t nearly as messy as people imagined. More than anything, it was a sorting and loading exercise. Plates were blasted by a power hose capable of sending all food scraps into a sink strainer. After, they were racked and pushed into a massive stainless-steel contraption that sanitized them with chemicals and boiling hot water.
The grossest and perhaps most dangerous kitchen roles were cleaning the equipment. Grills. Meat grinders. Ovens. Everything had to be washed, sprayed with chemicals, and descaled by hand. In some cases, as with the grinders, the machines needed to be partially disassembled for proper sanitization and then reassembled before the next service. The scraps inside many of the cutting machines weren’t even cooked. Whoever got the job needed to wipe raw, extruded proteins out of holes and gears, then dry each piece, and then rewipe them down with food oil to guard against rust. It was a dirty, greasy, labor-intensive job.
Fortunately, Tonya didn’t have to do that one. At least, not yet. Philip was taking it easy on her. In addition to the dishes, he’d asked only that she mop the floors and squeegee the outside of the walk-in fridge.
The first task had been pretty much done by the end of dinner service. As the meals were all takeout, the plates and cutlery were recyclable one-use items thrown into bags. Only the pots, pans, and cooking utensils had required washing.
Tonya had moved on to the rest of her responsibilities. She dipped the mop into the soapy water in the yellow bucket at her side and then slapped it onto the floor. Sliding the cloth ribbons back and forth across the gray tile felt good, satisfying in a way that standing outside, desperately trying to attract patrons, hadn’t been. The latter role had made her permanently anxious. She remembered hours of shivering, trying not to look as uncomfortable as she’d felt and hoping that her hourly wage would reflect a generous tip or two, deep down knowing that it wouldn’t.
There weren’t any unknowns in her new role. No need to fake a smile behind a mask and attempt to exude sex appeal through a boxy uniform shirt. She would clean for several hours a day, six days a week, during and after the dinner shift. In exchange, she’d receive two furnished, sunlit bedrooms and a private bathroom in a beautiful home located mere blocks from her daughter’s school.
It was a fair deal, Tonya thought. She continued to glide the mop over the floor, feeling pride in the wet gleam on the tiles, the emerging whiteness of the grout, and the disappearance of the black rubber marks left by skidding work shoes. In some ways, the job reminded her of farm work. Repetitive and tiring, but also visible. She’d have something to show at the end of the day. Or night, as it were.
Because her new gig required cleaning after dinner service ended, Tonya’s shift had swung to an after-hours schedule. She would work until ten thirty most nights, returning to Brooklyn long after Layla had gone to bed. Tonya told herself it was temporary and didn’t matter at the moment. Her daughter was in a locked house with an adult in a safe neighborhood. Or, at least, what had passed for one until Nate’s murder.
Tonya shuddered, perhaps at the thought of Nate, dead on the floor of his multi-million-dollar mansion or, more likely, the unshakable eeriness of her own surroundings. As soon as the clock had struck ten, Banque Gauche’s kitchen staff had all rushed off to spouses and children or late-night drinks, leaving Tonya to listen to the fridge’s hum and the slap of sopping cloth against stone.
Tonya finished up around the baseboards and then twisted the mop into the wringer at the top of the bucket, squeezing out the dirty water into a separate compartment. She then pushed the contraption into an out-of-the-way corner and grabbed the chemical spray, squeegee, paper towels, and a shammy. Wiping down the kitchen counters and fridge were the sole tasks left on her to-do list.
As she started, a door slammed. Tonya froze, her arms filled with weapons against grime, but nothing that could fend off an attacker. The last line cook had locked the staff entrance behind him, hadn’t he? Or had he expected her to do that? Had the door been cracked all this time, beckoning some drug addict or thief hiding out in the alley to come in from the cold?
Tonya backed toward the sink and lowered the contents of her arms into the basin. She scanned the counter for knives. Banque Gauche’s cooks typically brought their own custom tools. But there had to be house knives for when they forgot or when a blade grew dull.
The counter was empty save for the butcher’s station. A variety of stainless-steel appliances sat on the space, each outfitted with sharp blades—on their insides. Seeing nothing else, Tonya crouched below the fry station and grabbed one of the large, cast-iron skillets. Abused women killed husbands with these things. She could knock a man senseless.
Philip entered the kitchen, carrying a plate and some wadded napkins. His head was down, as usual. His shoulders were rounded. Her boss had the physique of an attacker but the posture of a victim.
Tonya set down the frying pan. Though she tried to accomplish it softly, the weight of the thing made an attention-grabbing thud as it landed on the counter. “Sorry,” she murmured.
Philip whirled around, his body language shifting from downtrodden to defensive in a blink. The plate turned sideways as he raised his hands in a fighting stance. Tonya felt that same shiver from earlier, only stronger.
“Oh. I thought someone had broken into the restaurant for a second.” Philip’s body seemed to shrink back to its former state as he bent to pick up the food that had fallen to the floor. “I didn’t realize you were still here.”
Tonya took a deep breath. Philip’s presence was something to take comfort in, not fear. Her boss was tall, broad, and, as she’d just witnessed, ready to protect them if needed. Tonya recalled a joke between Philip and one of the guys in the kitchen about combat training. She wondered if he’d had any.
“I’m finishing up.” Tonya walked back to her cleaning supplies in the sink. “But if I was a robber, I don’t think I’d want to tangle with you.”
Philip came closer, stopping to throw the food and napkin in the trash. “Sorry about that. I’m jumpy lately.”
“You looked ready to throw down for a minute,” Tonya said, bundling her items back into her arms.
Philip shrugged. “Once a marine…”
“You were in the marines?”
“Only four years active.” Philip walked his plate over to the same sink and pulled down the power hose. “I enlisted straight out of high school many, many moons ago.” He raised his voice to be heard over the spray. “It wasn’t really for me. Too much yelling. My body seems to remember more of it than I do.”
Philip shut off the water and put his plate in the dishwashing rack. “Don’t worry about that tonight. It costs too much to run the machine for one plate.” He pointed to the bundle in her arms. “Sorry you’re still working. The job will go quicker once you find your rhythm.”
Tonya looked up at Philip’s lined face. His bottom lip folded under the top in a faint, forced smile. He wasn’t exactly handsome—certainly nothing like Mike—but his face had a certain masculine, older man appeal.
“It’s fine,” Tonya said, spritzing the counter with chemicals. “Your wife’s home.”
Philip’s translucent smile faded completely. Tonya wondered if he’d taken her mentioning his wife as an aggressive attempt to dissuade flirtation. Nothing he’d said had warranted her telling him to back off. In fact, she’d been the only one to hint at something happening between them.
“It’s great for Layla to have an adult in the house,” Tonya added, trying to soften the comment. “Whenever I worked the dinner shift, I would often ask one of the neighbors to check in periodically. Lately, I’d been leaving her at home alone without anyone popping in, though, which wasn’t really good. I forget sometimes that she’s only eleven. It’s great to know she’s safe in your house. And the guest rooms are so nice. It’s really incredible to have a house like that in Brooklyn.”
Tonya realized that she was talking too much, making up for an unintentional and likely unperceived slight. She stopped herself on the last compliment, even though it failed to bring back Philip’s slight smile.
“It belonged to my parents.” Philip grabbed a paper towel from a nearby rack and picked up the spray bottle that she’d set on the counter. He drenched the cloth and began doing the job that she, clearly, wasn’t accomplishing fast enough. “I grew up there. They left it to me when they died.”
Tonya resumed cleaning her section, unsure what to say in response. I’m sorry they’re dead, but nice they left you a mansion? It was difficult, given her own financial problems, to feel too devastated about how Philip had received his inheritance.
Philip rubbed down the fridge’s exterior. “It happened a long time ago. I was a kid, just back from the aforementioned marines.”
Tonya peeled off another paper towel sheet. “They were young, then?”
“Yeah. Though I suppose I didn’t think that at the time. But they were barely older than I am now.”
“How did it happen?”
“Car accident.”
The flat way Philip said it made Tonya stop working. Philip, however, continued cleaning as he spoke. “I’m pretty sure my father had been drinking, though the cops never said. He was a prominent guy, and back then, the media covered up that sort of stuff for wealthy people.”
“Drinking and driving, you mean?”
Philip snorted. “Drinking and driving. Smacking your wife around. Child abuse. Wealthy people have always had a kind of carte blanche.” He tossed the cloth into a laundry bin. “Anyway, they reported that he might have had an allergic reaction or something.”
“Was he allergic to anything?”
Philip took another paper towel from the rack and began to dry the areas that he’d previously wiped down. “Peanuts. I am, too, actually.” He ran the towel over the walk-in’s handles. “My father was always pretty careful about asking what was in his food, though. I can’t see him actually ordering anything with peanuts.”
Philip balled up the towel in his hand, looking away as he squeezed it in his fist. “Anyway, he crashed the car with my mom in it.”
“Geez.”
Tonya realized she was simply standing there, listening rather than working. Yet she couldn’t do anything else. It was one thing for Philip to clean a counter while sharing the news of his parents’ deaths, distracting himself from the emotional weight of his story. It was another for her to do so. She didn’t want to appear dismissive.
“Is it possible to crash a car because of a food allergy?”
“If you go into anaphylaxis, then sure. The body can become starved of oxygen. You can have a heart attack. Food allergies can be pretty serious.” Philip threw the second used towel in the laundry bin. “I wouldn’t want to stand beside the fryer when it’s bubbling with peanut oil.”
Tonya glanced at the dormant contraption. It sat in a corner, its metal baskets suspended over empty wells. “You use peanut oil even though you’re allergic?” Tonya asked.
Philip shrugged. “It has the highest smoke point, which means it’s the best for frying chicken. And it’s not like I can get really sick from breathing it alone.” He placed his hands on his hips and surveyed the room. “I think we can call it for tonight. Why don’t you get the rest of your stuff? I’ll drive us home.”
Tonya thanked him distractedly. She grabbed her coat, still thinking of his sad story with his father. “Are you as allergic as your dad?”
Philip slipped an arm into a wool jacket. “I can’t know for certain. But if I swallowed a bunch of it, I suspect it would definitely kill me.”