Last Night at the Lobster

Last Night at the Lobster Read Online Free PDF Page B

Book: Last Night at the Lobster Read Online Free PDF
Author: Stewart O’Nan
Tags: Fiction, Literary
and messy, and at the end they’re likely to pool their dollars and scrimp on the tip.
    “Thanks a lot,” Roz says, helping him muscle the balky tables into place.
    Jacquie pitches in, and so their first real moment face-to-face is an awkward dance with a four-top in the middle of the room, with an audience looking on. He wants to talk to her like they used to, curled into each other under the covers, his lips so close to her ear all he had to do was whisper. She’d laugh and push him away and they’d clinch again, trading secrets from when they were little kids, even the few memories he has of his mother.
    Jacquie lifts with her fingertips and shuffles sideways with him, adjusting the table after they set it down so the edges are straight, then moves to the next one. Manny follows. Per company policy, she’s taken her diamond stud out, and seems defenseless and vulnerable, like his abuelita waking up in the hospital without her glasses. He already asked Jacquie if she wanted to come with them—them, not him—and she’s already said no, so how is he supposed to change her mind now? He can see himself begging her and freaking her out—giving her even more reason to put all of their sorry history behind her.
    He remembers working beside her like this just this spring, how sharp and rich it was, carrying their secret; it could pop out in a deep kiss back by the coatrack, a tug on his hand out on the loading dock. Now the same silence between them carries a negative charge, and a dull one, as if they’ve agreed to keep their emotions muffled, or pretend they have none. He keeps forgetting, they’ve declared a truce. He’s supposed to be neutral.
    They arrange the chairs, and Manny signals Kendra to send the party in. The guy with the bow tie nods as he passes, one boss to another, as if Manny’s done all this for him.
    Nicolette brushes by with an empty tray. With the big party taking up so much space, Kendra will have to double-sit her section, and one of her four-tops is a pair of moms with a toddler who stands on the banquette, bouncing up and down and waving his fists, stopping only to crane over the table and sip soda from a straw. He’s too big for a high chair, so Manny detours for a table touch and asks the mother if he can bring her a booster seat.
    “That would be wonderful,” she says.
    He makes sure to wipe off the one he takes down from the top of the coatrack, pebbly brown plastic with twin indents for a tiny bottom. At first the boy sits, interested in the novelty and the attention, but by the time Manny loops through the bar to help Dom with the office party’s drink order, the kid’s standing on the booster seat, even more precarious than before. Again, Manny’s thoughts drift to lawsuits, hefty settlements, the lottery-winning dream of a house in the country and never having to work again. A flash of lightning through the room brings him back—someone in the party taking pictures. Maybe a birthday. They’re already loud, blasts of laughter that make the other customers glance over, and again he’s glad he didn’t give them to Nicolette.
    Dom drains one bottle of chardonnay and opens another, while Manny spaces the glasses in a daisy pattern on a tray for Jacquie. They’ve got it covered, so he heads for the kitchen, noticing on the way a lamp in Nicolette’s section is burned out. He unscrews the bulb and takes it with him, shaking it near his ear to hear the filament jingle, then fending off the swinging door with his free arm.
    The kitchen’s in business, sizzling and chinking and clattering, but with so many no-shows it seems empty, and though he knows better, he’s afraid they’re not ready. Ty’s got Leron beside him on the line and Fredo on backup, shuttling to the walk-in. Rich is baker, while Eddie’s racking the very first dishes from the early birds’ starters.
    “How we looking?” Manny asks Ty, who’s stockpiling skewers of grilled shrimp in a chafing
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