It was another fifty-cent tip, staring up at me like, “Aren’t I enough?” I’m sorry, you’re not enough, not even enough to afford the dirt coffee at this place. I scooped the tip up and dumped it in my linty pocket. A little girl pushed past my legs as I removed a plate of rubbery eggs from the table. At least she had some life in her, unlike the necktie-asphyxiated schmuck who left me that sorry excuse for a tip. In fact, most of our clientele were necktie-asphyxiated schmucks who didn’t care about themselves enough to eat somewhere else. Anywhere else. As though our tiny diner were the last bastion of life on the planet, they dragged themselves in here, parked themselves into a booth, and sucked up food and coffee like fossil fuels. They were the living dead.
And what was my purpose in all this? Well, I pumped the gas and swept up after. Not very fulfilling work to be honest. I couldn’t tell you the number of times I felt like I was looking at a cartoon background that just cycles over and over. Crappy wooden tables topped with mug scratches and stains, red faux leather chairs and booths (obviously in terrible shape). I don’t know what you want me to say, it’s a diner. A little worse than Waffle House, way worse then IHOP.
What could I get you to drink? Would you like coffee?
Do you want eggs (my God are they rubbery) or hash browns with that?
What kind of topping do you want on those pancakes (your breath smells like trash).
Can I get you anything else? (please…please just say no so I can get my fifty-cent tip and leave).
So when I tell you I wanted different, I wanted better, you should believe me. I mean, who among us hasn’t wanted better even when things are the best? And things certainly weren’t the best here. I could list you five other restaurants that were better but still not even the best. I started here with an aspiration of making my way into management, perhaps even ownership. I could make this place better. I could make this place the best. Ten years later and nothing. I’m still a waiter. Like an urban tagger, I saw a crappy, decomposing wall, and thought I could make art of it. Turns out that the crappy, decomposing wall still remains standing regardless of whatever artistic flourishes I spray across it. I could have done better somewhere else, but I’m stubborn.
Things seem bleak right now, but in an ironic way they’ll get better. No one noticed the smell of gas in the restaurant that morning. Really, a faint rotten egg smell always hovered above those plates of rubbery eggs and coffee stains. Your nose just gets used to something like that. It’s a survival mechanism to keep your vomit in your body and not on customer plates. You need to keep those fifty-cent tips flowing. But this rotten egg smell was more oppressive. At least, we would have noticed how oppressive it was if we hadn’t been inhaling the general oppressiveness of the place for so many years. Maybe, some of the workers seemed a bit more tired than usual, they walked around like zombies, lumbering up to tables and stooping over with a grunt. They could barely keep their eyes open. But really, how was this different than how things usually were?
That little girl, you know the one from earlier, pushed past my leg right about the time that Joe, the kitchen cook, was about to light a match to flambé the bananas for our extra watery Foster the Love Bananas Foster Pancakes ($9.00). I could feel the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end the moment Joe sparked that match. I had turned around to carry the empty plates back to the kitchen and the little girl stopped right in front of me, you know, how kids like to do. She just suddenly stopped like a little speed bump. I slammed right into her and fell on top of her, shattering the plates I was carrying. I would have shuddered with the thought of how her parents would have yelled at me if I had even a moment to think. Like a starting gun, just as those plates shattered Joe struck the match that was supposed to engulf a skillet of bananas into rum flames.
Instead, flames jettisoned from the kitchen with Joe’s body, and the whole diner—me, those fifty-cent tips, the plates of rubbery eggs, those necktie-asphyxiated schmucks—all disappeared into a big bang that sent us out of creation. All I saw were bright lights and then impermeable dark. I could see the flashing of stars and felt like I was pulled forward at rocket speeds. I closed my eyes in terror. I didn’t feel cold or hot.
When the initial surprise passed, I could feel my feet planted on the ground… I was standing!? I thought to myself. Did the explosion, at least that’s what I thought happened, knock me up onto my feet again? Was the blast that strong? Slowly, my hearing returned, and I could hear the buzz of diners, the clinking of glasses, plates scraped clean by silverware. My nose opened up to the smells of rosemary, thyme, oregano, intermixed with scents that I had never smelled before that sent my taste buds into over drive. My mouth became an artesian well of saliva. A dim light crept up behind my eyelids.
Hands grabbed my shoulders and shook me.
“Boss! Hey, boss!” the voice shouted as the disembodied hands shook me forward and backwards. “This isn’t the time to zonk out on me! We need you here, man. What’s going on with you?”
I didn’t recognize this voice, I didn’t recognize these hands—so cold and hard—that gripped me with an intensity and severity of someone pleading for his life.
“Open your eyes, man! We got a job to do!”
Just then, I ripped open my eyelids, and a human skull stared at me, face-to-face. I screamed out loud, thinking that these were the charred remains of the little girl from the diner. It took me a minute to realize that the skull’s jaw was moving up and down and the sound of a young Bronx man was coming somewhere from his empty mouth and vocal chords.
“Did you hear me?” He arched a brow and looked as puzzled as a skull could look. “We have work to do here! The Reaper ain’t gonna serve himself!”
My eyes scanned over to my shoulders. Yep, bony hands held fast there. I panned downward in front of me. The man was wearing a dress shirt and black tie topped with a black apron. There were a few pens and a notepad tucked into the apron pocket. A spine escaped upward from the shirt collar. What neck measurement must he have to buy? The most interesting thing was a nametag that read “Tommy… Head Waiter.” The cliché of “I have to be dreaming” crept into my head. A waiting, withering skeleton, with his hands on me, was shaking me into consciousness to… to… to do what again?
“Man, you gotta get it together. I know it’s your first day and all but,” he reached down and lifted up the nametag on my shirt, “Carey…” He stifled a laugh. “Carey, you’re the owner now, you need to step up. This is huge!”
A few sounds spilled out of my mouth, but nothing coherent emerged.
“Damn it!” The Bronx skeleton man looked over his right shoulder and shouted to someone over the din of the room. “He ain’t ready yet. Mhmm. He ain’t! I don’t know what you want me to do!” After a pause, he said, “Well, I guess this one is up to us!” Looking to someone else, “Tracy, go make sure the Reaper doesn’t need another refill!”
The next few hours were hardly understandable. The things I saw, the things I witnessed. Somehow, I crawled my way away from where I was standing and cowered in a corner the whole time while the one skeleton I knew, the one who seemed to know me—as there were many—flew back and forth within what I assumed to be a restaurant.
Yes, a restaurant. Dainty candles flickered on top of elegant white tablecloths. Leather trimmed chairs, stoic and diligent, served as guiding rails for the chaotic movement around the restaurant. The low lighting, elegant tables, and slight hum of jazz music belied the absolute chaos of the place. For one, Tommy, the Bronx skeleton, literally sprinted from table to table along with his other wait staff. And the customers at those tables…
Skeletons, ghouls, spirits, things I had never even seen in books before. At one point, a short blob of flesh with a face waddled into view, and Tommy grabbed a lump of flesh from it and grated that flesh onto a customer’s plate. Eventually, I’d discover that this is a Nuppeppō, and its flesh is an absolute delicacy here. Any respectable restaurant has a Nuppeppō on call. The small lump of flush seemed pleased when the customers celebrated this grated flesh garnish. It actually blushed, bowed, and disappeared somewhere in the back of the restaurant!
I noticed that the wait staff especially buzzed around one table in the place. In fact, it seemed more like an exclusive booth. An orb of oppressive darkness surrounded it. I couldn’t see who was inside it. The misty black orb slowly swirled, and each waiter who entered it, mostly Tommy, returned exhausted, even for a skeleton. One poor girl, I assumed it was a girl, emerged weeping and ran into Tommy’s arms. I couldn’t tell if the orb was a property of that table or whatever guest was sitting in it.
I overheard Tommy talking to that weeping skeleton girl. “It’s alright, Tracy, it’s okay. He’s a tough customer. We just don’t have what he wants tonight. We didn’t have what it takes to prepare it. Maybe next time we’ll get closer.
The night went on like this for some time. Of all the unforgettable things I saw during that time, the thing I will remember most was when that orb finally dissipated and the exclusive booth became clear.
A lumbering figure in black cloak sat alone in the booth, and I couldn’t make out a face beneath the hood. A cloud of smoke, maybe vapor, sprayed out from the black, spatial vacuum under the hood. The wait staff lined themselves up next to the booth and bowed as the cloaked figure stood. It must have been seven feet tall. A bony hand reached out from hanging sleeves and grabbed a massive scythe with a handle like a small tree that leaned against a wall. I only realized that I was cowering in a corner near the front door when the cloaked figure hovered toward my position. It paused right before what I assumed was the front door.
“You’ll have to do better…” it’s voice spoke chills into my body.
An incredible pressure surrounded me. I was suddenly choking, and every joint in my body began an arthritic ache. Darkness spread out like a wing into the corner where I crouched.
“… if you’ll ever deserve life again.”
It turned its hood toward me, and I saw two piercing red eyes in the darkness.
“Tonight, you let them all down.”
And with that, the figure floated out of the door.
Every diner in the restaurant had stopped eating to watch the figure leave. The jazzy hum had stopped as well.
(Nuppeppō)
* * *
“You really crapped out on us tonight, huh?” Tommy and I were sitting on the edge of the loading dock in the back of the restaurant. Spirits were hovering by and floating off into the bright glow of a city of collaged architectures. Pyramids, skyscrapers, and temples loomed in the distances as larger creatures, ferry beasts, carried loads of passengers to their destinations. These beasts ranged from large dragon like creatures to massive cat spirits. Neon signs and billboards glowed with ads for things like “Skeleton Chiropractics – For When Every Bone is Stiff!” and “Post-Life Grief Counseling.” Of course, there were hundreds of signs for restaurants and entertainment venues. Most of the ferry beasts were heading in the direction of these places.
“Tommy,” I started hesitantly, “what did you mean when you called me ‘boss’?”
“Exactly how it sounds,” he looked off at the city. “You’re the boss now, boss.”
“But what does that even mean?!”
He turned around and looked back at the restaurant. “It means that all of this, all of us. We’re yours, man. You’re the one in charge of this.”
“You mean the restaurant?”
“Mhmm.” He let out a long sigh. “Man, we really blew it tonight. We had a chance and we blew it.”
“Why am I in charge? How am I even remotely qualified?”
“Because you’re getting a second chance, man! Celebrate! Welcome to the show. You see, some big shot out there,” he pointed out to the city with a bony finger, “he saw some worth in you and he’s giving you a second chance.”
“A second chance?”
“That’s what I said, isn’t it? Let me explain how things work around here. You, my friend, are what we call a ghoul.” I’d freaked out about this fact just a while earlier. I ran into the bathroom (though many of the restaurant’s guests don’t need a bathroom) after my brush with the cloaked figure. I needed to rinse the sweat off my face. And when I looked at myself, I saw decaying skin and visible muscle. Even bone was exposed in some places. I would have panicked more if I hadn’t just witnessed a skeleton crew (pun intended) run a restaurant for the past three hours.
Tommy continued, “You are a ghoul, but that’s only temporary. You see, even though the afterlife—and this, my friend, is the most after-life I have ever seen—even though the afterlife is eternal, your state in the afterlife isn’t. There are spirits and gods here, beasts and creatures. But the humans who come here go through changes. Over time, you aren’t a ghoul anymore. Here’s how it goes:
Ghoul
Skeleton
Ghost
“As you can see, I’ve already hit my mid afterlife crisis,” he gestured to his exposed bones and chuckled a little to himself. “Only humans and sapient, physical beings can hold jobs in the afterlife because, obviously, they need to be able to touch the things they’re doing and understand how to do them. And if no one had a job, the afterlife would be very, very boring. We don’t exactly get to pick what we do either. We just kind of show up and start the work.”
“Kind of like my situation,” I interrupted.
“Kinda, yeah, but not really. You, man, you’re special. Like I said, someone out there thought pretty highly of you, so you’re getting a second chance, and so are we.”
“Who do you mean, ‘we’?”
“I mean everyone working at this place. With you at the helm, we could really finally make it. Ya see, you’re special because some big shot out there thinks you’re worth saving and has recognized your dream. A few humans who come here get the chance to prove that they can actualize those dreams and finally do here what they didn’t get the chance to do in life! This earns them a second chance at living. I can’t see how it actually works on the other side, the side of the living. But I know it does.”
“That seems far flung.”
“And everything else you saw tonight didn’t?”
“Right…”
“The proof is right there on your nametag.” He pointed at a tiny paw print on my nametag near where it says “Carey” and “Owner.” “That’s the mark of a celestial who has seen you as worthy. So I guess your dream is to own a restaurant?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Listen, man.” He suddenly furrowed the front plate of his skull and assumed a seriousness I hadn’t seen yet. “Just owning the place isn’t enough, you gotta prove you’re the best. And the only way to do that is to serve afterlife big wigs and receive a service star from them. Only the best restaurants here have five stars. We had one, but the service was so bad tonight that the Reaper… he took that only one away.” He sighed again.
“That’s rough.”
“You’re damn right. Our last owner, he had a celestial mark, too. But he became a ghost. It took him too long. He was just okay with owning the place. He had been here long before I got here. I just don’t know how much longer I and others in the crew have. The rule is that if the boss achieves his dreams, then the rest of the crew behaved admirably, too, and deserve life as well.”
“I suppose that makes sense. A restaurant isn’t a one man crew.” I thought about the diner and Joe and how, besides for him, it was such a lonely, soul crushing experience.
“Never ever forget how important your crew is, man. Some of them have been here far longer than you and have been hoping for centuries for someone with some heart. Just because they aren’t chosen doesn’t mean they don’t have dreams or aspirations or things they miss. They seek a second chance just as much as you…”
“How long have you been here, Tommy?”
“A long, long time, man. But you, you’re our new hope.”
Just then, a small, gnome like creature approached us with a paper in hand. “It looks like the reviews are already out,” said Tommy. He paused a long moment to read. His bony eye sockets sunk. “We’re going to have to do some serious damage control. With the review the Reaper gave us, we could be sunk. It took us months just to convince him to come in!”
“What should we do?” As I said this, the small, rosy gnome tottered off into the distance.
“I have some ideas, but we’re going to need to make a statement. We’re going to need to prepare a super dangerous ingredient for tomorrow night. Welcome to Café Carpe Diem!”
(Nisse)
* * *
Afterlife Recipe
Reaper Rigatoni Alfredo
Supposedly, one of the Reaper’s favorite dishes. The Café didn’t have the right ingredients to prepare it on the particular night that Carey arrived. It blends subtle hints of garlic with an overpowering sense of dread in a flavorful explosion sure to knock you into an early grave! Serve it wrong, you might end up there anyway!
Ingredients:
8 oz. Pasta (Rigatoni preferred)
½ Cup of Heavy Cream
½ Cup of Parmesan
5 Cloves of Garlic
1 Carolina Reaper Pepper
2 Cups of Baba Yaga House Broth
2 tsp. Soul of a Jazz Musician
Toenail of a Ferry Beast
1 Tbs. Wood Shavings from Scythe Handle
¼ tsp Salt
¼ tsp Pepper
½ Tbs. Parsley
Method:
1. Preheat large skillet on medium-low with a slight drizzle of olive oil. Once hot, add roughly chopped garlic cloves and cook until slightly browned but not burnt.
2. Add some broth and stir and reduce to enhance flavors. Mix in raw Rigatoni and stir.
3. Quickly add the rest of the broth to cover the pasta. Add everything except for the heavy cream, Parmesan, and parsley. Give it a good stir. If the soul of the jazz musician plays any smooth jazz, throw out the food and start over. Bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer, cover and let sit until pasta is al dente (about 12 min.).
4. Remove cover, bring pasta back to a boil, and add heavy cream.
5. While mixture is still boiling, add a little bit of the Parmesan at a time, stirring to fully incorporate.
6. Lower mixture to a simmer and reduce, uncovered, until the Alfredo sauce thickens and sticks to the pasta. Drag a spoon across the bottom of the pan, and if the sauce is slow to come back together you’re getting close.
7. Turn off heat, add parsley, and stir.
8. Serve on a bone plate with the light hum of jazz music playing in the background (not smooth jazz!).
* * *
Grilled Cheese & Tomato Soup 