The Tower by J.S. Frankel Read Free Book Online Page A

my alarm rang at four-thirty a.m. Shutting it off, I just lay there, listening to my body wake up. Then, the intercom buzzed. Fumbling around, I found the button and pressed it. “Yeah, who is it?” I said groggily. I was still half asleep.
    â€œMy name’s John Campbell,” the voice said. “Head cook on this ship. It’s time for your shift. Do you know where the lift is?
    â€œUh, yeah, I think so,” I said, rubbing the sleep from my eyes.
    â€œGet ready, I’ll be down soon.” The line went dead.
    I got dressed in a hurry. The suit they’d supplied for me hung limply on my frame and I had to cinch the belt in a few notches. I ran to the lift area and Campbell greeted me there. A gray-haired, portly man on the short side of five-eight and the long side of forty, he wore a stained cook’s smock and a pleasant smile. “I was told you’re the new guy,” he said.
    â€œUh, yeah, I was just hired last week.” He extended his right hand. What for…oh, right, dummy…shake it . We shook hands, and he motioned me into the lift. “Get in. I’m, uh, not supposed to hang around down here too long.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œOh, off-limits and all that,” he answered. “The tech staff and the Ultras don’t mix all that much. Wonder why they put you down here?”
    â€œMaybe it has a better view,” I answered. It got a laugh out of him, and we rode up to the ninth deck. On the way, he said that he’d come from New York and that he’d been hired from his former place—a small diner in the heart of the city—a couple of years ago to manage the Commissary. He was in charge of the morning shift. Another guy named Carl Anderson manned the evening crew. I’d probably meet him later on. We talked a bit more, and soon arrived at the Commissary.
    Time to go to work; I was on the clock. My first real day on the Tower had begun.

Four: On the Job and Meeting the Cast
    â€œYour waffles are burning, Bill.”
    â€œAw, crap, not again!” Yeah, once again, the food had been ruined.
    The warning came from Gwyneth, one of the other cooks. Morning shift in the Commissary, and twenty minutes into it, I was screwing up for the umpteenth time. Hastily, I took the now-ruined waffles from the griddle, tossed them in the garbage, and started over. Gwyneth gave me a sympathetic look and said softly, “You’ll get the hang of it.” Yeah, I wondered, when?
    I’d been on duty for only two weeks and already, I’d earned the reputation as being the worst cook on the Tower. John, my boss, had warned me repeatedly, saying, “Shape up, bud! This ain’t the Hotel Florence. It’s a cafeteria!”
    And I’d tried, but cooking for almost two hundred people who all wanted the food NOW was a totally different story. I took another look around the Commissary and sighed. It seemed like all the Ultras and the regular crew was more than a little dissatisfied with my piss-poor effort and try as I might, I just couldn’t keep up.
    John pulled me outside again after another fifteen minutes of burning everything.
    â€œThis has been going on for two weeks. You were a cook on Earth, right?”
    Alright, tell the truth . “Actually, no I’m not. My…uh…parents passed away and I needed the job. I’ll try harder.”
    John, shook his head, muttered something about “dumb-ass kids making an old-timer’s life rough” and went back to cooking. When I watched him prepare the morning grub, his hands were fast, deft, and sure; mine were clumsy and slow.
    â€œHang in there, Bill.” That came from Nick, another cook who was preparing hash browns and toast—he was repeating Gwyneth’s words. “It takes time. Just try to keep up.”
    All of the cooks had experience. Gwyneth was a plain, plumpish woman in her mid-twenties, and Nick, a short, blond guy, was about the