Brief Encounters with the Enemy by Saïd Sayrafiezadeh Read Free Book Online Page B

chair with his fingers to his chin, staring up at the dark skylight, where rain was pattering. It had rained every day for a week. They said it was going to rain every day for another week. Fall was always like this in our city. But this fall was worse than others, they said. Soon it would be winter. “Business is bad, Ike,” the manager had told me briskly, effortlessly, as if he had been rehearsing the scene all night long also and was waiting for me to ask so that he could answer and rid himself of the refrain in his head. Not knowing how to respond, I said nothing, one foot crossed uncomfortably in front of the other in what had been, initially, an attempt at bold informality but, as time passed, quickly began to feel like an effeminate posture that would help only in the case against my confidence and assertiveness. And then my manager broke the awful silence by reminding me that two meals were returned by customers that evening. Why had two separate meals been returned, he wanted to know. The clock on his desk read one A.M. I wondered whether, if I had chosen to speak to him earlier that night, he would have been in a different mood, a moreconciliatory mood, and would not have dismissed my request so swiftly. Next to the clock were lists of the various ingredients that needed to be ordered; check marks in small boxes indicated the amounts. We dealt in volume: crates, jugs, sacks. The manager’s pen was uncapped. His shirt was white except for a trail of red dots, presumably tomato sauce, running along one sleeve from elbow to shoulder. Or perhaps the dots were blood.
    “A grilled cheese sandwich was returned tonight, Ike,” my manager said. He stated it as if genuinely interested, philosophically speaking. “A grilled cheese sandwich and a plate of linguine. Why were they returned, Ike?”
    I did not know why, and my face tightened with false concern. I realized that if I did not say something convincing, and say it fast, I would implicate myself by admitting not only that I had made defective, inedible food but that I had so little awareness of my job that I could not even recall why or when such an error had occurred. “I’ll have to look into that” was all I said, as if I had my own underlings to consult. The clock now read 1:03. The manager’s face was round and kind, with puffy cheeks, and in the office light it looked for some reason even kinder than usual. I should change the subject, I thought. And I should uncross my feet so that I don’t look like a supplicant. I should talk about the rain and ask him when he thinks it will stop. It will make him think that I respect his authority. And then I will come back in a week and ask again for a raise—or in two weeks, maybe, not more than three, at some point in the near future, when everything has been forgotten and no meals have been returned and the rain has stopped and I have come up with a good response for when he tells me that business is bad.
    But before I could say anything, my manager swiveled around in his chair, faced his desk, placed his hands lightly on top of the piles of paper there, as if they were a Ouija board and he was reading a signal from the beyond. Then he shuffled the papers around. Very rapidly, he shuffled the papers. “Seven-twenty-three the grilled cheese sandwich was returned,” my manger read. “And eleven-fifty-two the plate of pasta came back.”
    Those times seemed so long ago. My manager looked up at me with his kind face, almost angelic. A baby face with puffy cheeks.
    Answer him!
But all I could think was that I was in the restaurant at 7:23. I was in the restaurant at 11:52. And here I am at 1:07, still in the restaurant. Tomorrow, I thought, I will be here. And the day after that. And the day after that is my day off. But then I will be back.
    “Is it really that complicated, Ike, for you to make a grilled cheese sandwich?” the kind face asked.
    Somewhere in my past, something had gone wrong for me. Years