Charade - Chapter Four

The weather changed for better the afternoon before classes were to begin. A cooler breeze swept in across the Kashimskis River, which formed the western campus border and across which the white-steepled town of West Aversham hugged a pronounced valley. Cary walked swiftly through campus, heading for the School Street Bridge, which would take him to town and hopefully a place of employment.

He wore a white oxford shirt, crisp chinos and polished wing tips. That this would be construed as an attempt to impress the manager of the Tuscan Sun did not enter into his mind, but if it had, any help in securing a job waiting tables would be welcomed. He waited tables before with a degree of success. A restaurant appeared to be one of the places where his maturity always paid dividends. Walking across the bridge, Cary leaned over the rail and checked the water below as though he were going to drop a line in. The Kashimskis, a minor tributary of the Hocking, swirled around glacial cast-offs and through beds of aggregate. No one would ever mistake it for the Charles.

The town he entered saw better days way before his father attended the college. A local paper mill did great business back in the first half of the 20th Century, but did not modernize when it should have and got trampled in the pulp wars of the sixties. Even a half-baked attempt at producing the packing for Artillery shells did not capture the fancy of the Pentagon. It closed in 1969, putting half the men of West Aversham out on the street. Since the college employed the other half of the male population it made for an even larger disparity between haves and have-nots. Against this backdrop Cary’s father came to town a decade later, applied Calvinist-like work-tendencies and got his degree in three years. This formed the expectations for Cary and he relished the opportunity to not only get it done with all the aplomb of his father, but to hold down a job while doing it. This would take the place of his father’s extra curricular activity, principally that of meeting, courting and marrying a local girl – an ambitious daughter of an undertaker.

Fortunately, for the students and faculty of the college, the town worked itself out of the severe unemployment and restored its self-confidence beneath a thin veil of service economics. Now there were a dozen excellent places to eat, sleep and buy local artworks to take back to the suburbs from which came a high majority of town visitors. One of those excellent places, the Tuscan Sun, adjoined the Sienna Bed & Breakfast, which had taken over the home of Cary’s mother. He stood in front of the Sienna and labored to reconstruct what that home once looked like. A good-sized Queen Anne had been radically reworked, clad in stone and rustic iron to deliver a sort of cartoon version of a Tuscan Villa. The pictures his mother had shown him were of a well maintained classic Victorian era Queen Anne, obviously the home of a thrifty, hard working member of the West Aversham Bourgeoisie and his large, gregarious family. Except, like Cary, his mother was an only child. As a teenager, Cary’s mother rattled around a large, drafty house and concocted wonderfully elaborate schemes to escape the Kashimskis Valley and become the next Eileen Agar.

He smiled at stories unheard for quite a few years now and as he sauntered over to the front door of the Tuscan Sun. Cary looked in the door before pulling it open and getting hit in the face with the smell of what undoubtedly was Wild Mushroom Risotta. "Bella," he whispered. Banging, clanging and the colorful Italian slang of a kitchen in feverish preparation for another busy night escaped out into a deserted dining room. Cary stood at the front station for what felt like a very long time. Finally a young woman emerged from the kitchen and Cary immediately recognized her as Charlotte. "Hello there," he called to her.

She glanced at him. "We don’t open for another half hour."

Cary smiled, put one hand in his pants pocket and used the other to lean casually against the counter of the front server station. "I understand that. I’m here looking for the manager. Is he or she available?"

She busied herself with table set ups, but called out loudly enough to startle Cary. "Bambino. Visitor!" Some of the kitchen noise subsided and a large, round man came shuffling out, wiping his hands on his apron. The young lady stopped suddenly and looked over at Cary. "Wait. It’s you. I know you. Cary, right?" She grimaced, then smiled. "Sorry."

Bambino finally made it to Cary. "What do you need? You know we like sales calls to be earlier in," he turned to the young woman. "You know this guy? Looks like a salesman." He turned back to Cary who had straightened up and offered his hand up for a shake. "Look at those shoes!" The Bambino smiled. "A little overboard for West Av so I am guessing you’re looking for a job."

Cary’s hand disappeared into the Bambino’s. "I wanted to put in an…"

"Application." The Bambino’s eyes narrowed. "What’s your level of experience Mr. Fancy Shoes?"

"Well, I’ve waited tables back home. Before that I bussed and did a little fill in short order work. Bar back, you know, whatever needed doing. You know how it is."
The Bambino’s expression did not change. "I do know how it is. What’s your name?"

"Cary, Cary Grant."

"Frank Schultz. Everyone calls me…"

"Bambino. Very nice to…" Cary smiled as they shook hands again.

"Say, wait a minute. Your name," he paused for a second, "oh, never mind. I’ll get to that in a minute. What sort of volume did the place do?"

"That’s a good question. I did a lot of things there, but I didn’t do the books."

"I bet not."

"I’ve been around restaurants all my life. My father is a restaurant critic for the Long Island Express." He held up his hand. "I know that sounds pretentious but its not. The express is a glorified shopper."

"Okay, okay." He put his hands up as if to shield himself from further qualifications. "I’m short of people and I’m willing to throw anyone into this fire. You can fill out an app and all that shit later. I normally don’t start servers until they’ve bussed a couple weeks." He sighed, then looked at Charlotte who kept busy with set-ups. "But you sound like you know what you’re doing. That’s better than most who come in here begging, am I right, Bella Donna?" He turned back to Cary and winked as though they were in on some joke.

"Right you are fat man," she replied without looking up from her table settings.

"So Cary Grant. I have to see your driver’s license, man. I can not believe that’s your real fucking name. Hope you don’t mind."

Cary produced his wallet quickly and pulled his license. "I don’t mind. In fact, I would be worried about you if you weren’t just a little." He handed it to the Bambino.

"Sure ‘nough. So, you’re from New York."

"Not really the part you think of though."

"Oh?"

"Most people don’t think of Flushing when they think of New York City."

"And you have chosen to grace us with your presence out here in Ohio. We’re gratified."

Cary could not tell if the Bambino was being sincere so he decided to reply the same way. "It’s a beautiful corner of the country."

"Which restaurant did you gain all this valuable, indispensable experience in?" He handed it back.

"La Buona Terra. It’s…"

He shrugged. "If I call the manager he’s gonna say what to me about you?"

Cary considered this for a few beats while he put his wallet back in his pocket. "Geno? Well, I suspect Mr. Caruso would approve of me applying myself in this manner, while away at school." He paused, then added, "I think you’ll find that I check out. But here’s the number in case you need it." He pulled a business card out of his shirt pocket, which had all his information printed on one side. Flipping it over and grabbing a ball point from the server’s station, he wrote La Buona Terra’s number and Eugene Caruso’s name beneath it. "Here you are."

Bambino looked at the card, flipping it back and forth before releasing a chuckle from somewhere deep down in his nicotine-scarred lungs. "Charlotte, you vouch for this guy?" He twisted to shoot a glance at his top server.

Charlotte draped the towel over her shoulder, pausing to consider for just a moment. "Sure, I suppose I do vouch for Cary. Why not?"

Bambino huffed. "Okay, then. Charlotte or Jeremy will show you the line. Black pants, white shirt. Can you handle two nights a week waiting, maybe another night helping in the bar or bussing?"

Cary turned his attention to Charlotte. She stood in the middle of the dining room pawing at the towel with one hand the other hand on her hip apparently awaiting the outcome of Bambino’s light-speed interview. "You have some time right now?"

He nodded. "Lead on, then. Give me the grand tour."

"This is what we here in the Midwest call a dining room." Charlotte smirked and Bambino guffawed as he passed back into the kitchen.

Cary smiled. "Ohio is the Midwest?"

She lightened up. "Sorry. I like the concept of New Yorker as rube."

"I’m hoping to make New Yorkers fashionable here on this campus." Cary shot her a devilish smile as they went on to the server line, an area with which Cary or anyone else who ever waited tables was always familiar.

She stood and pointed to various points of reference. "Salad reach-in, ice bin, coffee station, glass rack. Never double stack. Drives Bambino nuts." She stopped. "So maybe you’re a bit of an F. Scott in reverse. After he went to Princeton, the place was never the same."
This struck Cary in a number of ways. First, he had been reading a lot of Fitzgerald and liked it very much. But also he appreciated her nuance, her assumption he would get her joke. It gave him confidence. "And you know this first hand?"

"Let’s see…well, I’ve read some. And my Dad went to Princeton, as an undergrad, does that give me some sort of cred?"

"Sure." There was a peculiar pause as each expected the other to say something else on the matter. Cary became momentarily lost in her expression, then recovered before the gap in conversation became awkward. "Where’s the dessert reach-in?"

"Right this way." She backed through the swinging kitchen doors. "Most of the time the line cooks will fetch them for us, but when we’re hopping, you’ll need to make a run for it."
Cary tried to avoid watching the Fleur de Lis pendant swaying across the open collar of her tux shirt. Work would not be dull, he thought.