“It’s ten miles. Don’t kick, Sylvie hon.”
Teko pays for the pitcher of beer and carries it into the back room. He puts it on the table.
“Ever hear of Grossinger’s?”
“What’s that?” asks Tania.
“Big Jewish resort. Lots of rich doctors and whatnot, coming up from the city. It’s just down the road, it turns out.”
“So?” asks Yolanda.
“So? So, purses and wallets left by the pool. Room keys. We could clean up in one afternoon.”
Cash is an issue, again.
“There’s a bus,” Teko continues. “I’ll take it up and see what there is to see.”
“Funny,” says Joan, “you don’t look Jewish.”
“We can work around that. I’ll bring Tania with me. We’ll blend in.”
“Aww,” says Yolanda.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea for the two commanders to accompany each other on a dangerous mission,” he explains.
“Don’t be an idiot,” says Yolanda. Turns out she’s not objecting, just giving him necessary advice.
The bus is nearly empty, with Teko, Tania, and the aggrieved householder and his family from New York the only passengers. They disembark at the Ferndale depot, where several cabs await to take passengers on the last leg of the trip to the famous resort. Teko is digging in his pocket to count his change when they are approached by a middle-aged man who seizes Teko by the wrist.
“Joshua.”
“Excuse me?”
“Joshua. As in, Joshua and Beth, the new staff. Right? Your mother called to tell me that you would be taking the later bus. I had just about given up on you but for your mother’s sake I decided to wait, and here you are. Well, come on. We are very shorthanded and there’s no time to waste. If we hurry you can start helping get the Pink Elephant ready for the first dinner service.”
“The Pink Elephant?”
“You’re a restaurant critic? The ambience falls short in your opinion? Look, the way business is, we’d serve dinner in the parking lot if that’s what the customers wanted. People want to drink, eat, and see a show all at once.”
“OK.”
“So what are you waiting for?” He pulls a little, and Teko takes a step forward. The man keeps his grip on Teko’s arm until they arrive at a big Chrysler. He turns. “Beth, what are you waiting for?” Well, cheaper than a cab. The man unlocks the door, and they get in. On the backseat are cardboard boxes full of grass skirts, garlands of paper flowers, plastic tiki figurines, and paper umbrellas.
“Don’t ask. All right, go ahead. What it is, we’ve discovered that our target customer is on account of lowered airfares and more frequent departures heading for Hawaii. I don’t see the big thing, personally, but the place has a certain charisma right now that you can’t deny. We keep hearing about clean beaches, pleasant weather, warm buoyant water, half-naked women, and breathtaking natural scenery. It has all the earmarks of a total fad, but as a trend it is bleeding us dry. So we thought we’d institute a Hawaiian Night. Kosher luaus and fruity drinks out of fishbowls. I know a girl who’s half Puerto Rican and half Chinese and does exotic dancing who I figure she can give a few hula lessons to interested parties. Worth a shot, right?”
The car enters the grounds of the resort, rolling up a long wooded drive toward the main cluster of buildings.
“Now, Joshua, we’ll start you in the kitchen. You’ve done prep work — chopping, peeling? No? There’s nothing to it. But Beth, honey.” He grabs her knee. “You, you I’m putting out on the floor.” He gives a little squeeze. “Now,” he says briskly, “we got to get some uniforms on you. There’s not a minute to waste. You can just leave your bags in my car for now.” Tania casts a sidelong glance at Teko. Apparently their host hasn’t noticed that they carry nothing with them.
The man steers them up a gravel pathway that leads to the kitchen door, which is propped open with a battered old hubcap. Two young people, dressed in whites, drop cigarettes and grind them underfoot into the gravel.
“Come inside, everybody,” says the man cheerfully. “Show Josh and Beth how hard we work around here.” They step into the enormous kitchen. “Here’s Josh and Beth. They’ve come to save the day.”
A desultory cheer goes up in the kitchen.
“Attaboy. Now let’s get some uniforms on you.”
They stand before a group of lockers in a brightly lit passageway linking the kitchen to several dining rooms.
“Take any locker you want. If you don’t have a lock it doesn’t matter because you kids can always sort it out amongst yourselves in the unlikely event of a misplaced personal belonging. That is to say it happens rarely if at all around here. Now get dressed, go see the captain, and give your mother my very kindest regards when you call her first thing tomorrow.”
For the next two hours neither Teko nor Tania sees anything resembling a purse, a wallet, or a room key. She sets tables, hand washes spotty glasses, rolls silverware, folds napkins, fills cruet sets, fills monkey bowls with Parkay pats and single-serving creamers, vacuums, polishes chrome and brass, evens stacks of coasters, straightens barstools. He fillets chicken and fish, peels and chops vegetables, washes lettuce, prepares trays of desserts and salads, schleps beer kegs up from the storeroom, sterilizes and stacks dishes. For the first time since the Marines he is doing the work of the People, though in this case the People mostly are boys and girls speaking of Columbia Law or the dentistry program at NYU.
By the time the diners begin to enter the room Tania is exhausted, and she stands with Sarah Horowitz, a psych major at Sarah Lawrence and a veteran of five weeks at Grossinger’s, on the gravel path outside the kitchen door, smoking and drinking black coffee.
“You look sort of familiar. Where you from anyway?” asks Sarah. She looks her up and down. “The Upper West Side, or something?”
“California,” Tania answers promptly. She drags hard on the cigarette.
“California!” exclaims Sarah. “Westwood or the Valley?”
“Bay Area, actually.”
“Didn’t know they had Jewish people in the Bay Area.”
“What about Levi Strauss?” They laugh a little.
“You better hope he’s funny, Beth.”
“What? Who?”
“The comic tonight.”
“OK, I hope he’s funny.”
“Ha. Seriously. He’s not funny, they don’t tip.”
“Really?”
“You kidding? Everything’s our fault.”
“What’s funny up here?”
“Take a look at the house.” She shrugs. “Strictly Geritol.” She tosses the cigarette. “We better get inside. It’s about to go bananas.”
They duck inside, Tania kicking the hubcap and allowing the kitchen door to slam behind them.
“Get out there, twatlick,” explains the chef. “I’m not taking shit because your section’s orphaned.”
Tania steps into the dining room in time to see their driver from this afternoon, wearing evening clothes, stride out onto the stage. Apparently he is the show’s compere as well, his right hand placed strategically over a small gravy stain on his left lapel so that he assumes a pious or patriotic mien.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we are so happy to have each of you here with us as our guests tonight, to see you having such a good time. And so you should. Many of us work too much, too hard, too often. We are terribly pressured every day and often can’t find any time for ourselves, for contemplation, for recreation, for some peace from the rat race and the endless demands. Some do this — they go to the shul or synagogue or temple of their choice on Shabbat. They sing, they read Torah, they listen to a sermon. Some talk to their friends. Some visit with their grandchildren to play and dote and incidentally to strike a lasting family bond with their son- or daughter-in-law as the case may be. And some come up here to our beautiful Catskill region, for a weekend or with our special family rates for a stay of a week or of even longer duration, circumstances permitting. Not anymore the most fashionable destination maybe but still a place for family togetherness and the company of like-minded people getting away from it all like yourselves. Forget the daily grindstone for a while and cut yourself off from the everyday tsuris that besets us all. Relax, forget the stock market, the clients, the customers, the patients, the students, the office politics, and all the other concerns that nag at a person. It’s better than golf, though here we have a quality golf course that visitors with a professional involvement in the game have showered with the highest praise. It’s better than canasta, though here a willing partner is always to be found. It’s better than watching your favorite television programs, though here each of our comfortable rooms is equipped with a famous maker seventeen-inch color set. So live a little. As they say in the antacid commercials, try it, you’ll like it. And that reminds me, incidentally, the chef has asked me to mention that our specials tonight, the baked halibut and the apricot-glazed chicken, are very fresh and still in plentiful supply. These each come with a lovely cauliflower kugel in fresh tomato sauce, as well as your choice of tossed salad or the soup of the day, of which we happen tonight to have two, which are cream of asparagus or a delightful gazpacho.”