Episode 5: The Third Wheel Part 1- The Culling
“Where the fuck is Nick?” Johnson frowned, as he smoked a cigarette. We stood outside, in an island of light, that was shining down from a lamp fixture mounted next to a security camera, above a grey metal door, on the outside of a dirty, white, industrial building.
Looking agitated, Johnson jammed his thumbs into the keypad of his phone, and sent another SOS message to Nick.
“I mean seriously,” Johnson huffed, “at least have the balls to tell me you’re not going to make it in. Don’t say you will, and then fucking flake!”
We still had an overwhelming amount of work to do tonight. We were short staffed and had a long, long ways to go.
Johnson was clearly upset about Nick not showing up. On the other hand, there was virtually nothing I could do, to hide my giddiness, and the joy that I was experiencing. Not only was Nick f***ing up, and turning Johnson against him, but it was also just nice, not to have to listen to Nick’s voice for one night; extra work be damned.
I wasn’t necessarily proud of it, but I was certainly self-aware of the fact that Nick’s downfall, was a sweet moment for me. I wanted to make sure that I could exploit this opening for all it was worth. Also, if I was being honest with myself, I wanted to punish Johnson for the pizza debacle, which was still festering in my fanny.
“That’s kind of a big shock to me,” I deadpanned, “I’ve always thought of Nick as being a super reliable, and stand-up employee…”
Johnson looked over at me and raised his eyebrow, as if waiting to see where I was going.
“…not to mention,” I laid it on thick, “a warm and wonderful human being and dare I say,” I fluttered forward, “a glowing ray of sunshine, and just a pleasure to work with.”
“Please stop talking.” Johnson’s eyes were humorless, “this isn’t funny at all. We’re paying by the hour for the kitchen, and that’s three ‘no call, no shows’, including Nick tonight.”
“We have higher turnover here,” I assessed the situation, “than membership, at a Pentecostal Snake Handling Church.”
“Still not funny.” Johnson was fuming.
“I know,” I agreed, “but it is, kind of funny, if you think about it,” I pressed on, despite a cold, mean look from Johnson, “Nick billed himself, as being this big time professional, business guy; and he treated me like I was some useless, third wheel. Well, where is he now?”
Johnson had no answer.
“My guess,” I continued, “is that Nick’s probably just focused on something that’s more important to him. For instance, maybe he’s tending to a skeleton in a wheelchair that he calls ‘mother’, in the basement of his roadside motel.”
Johnson looked tired and irritated, but he didn’t respond or take the bait.
“That was a reference to the movie, Psycho,” I informed him, “in case you were wondering?”
There were no crickets in the city, but I imagined what they would have sounded like.
“Alfred Hitchcock,” I clarified.
I realized that I was being obnoxious, but Johnson had let this situation with Nick get out of hand, and it was time for me to make a point and take a stand, the best way that I knew how, which was through sarcasm.
I had been battling since day one to implement my vision, and I was finally, and maybe for the first time really, in the driver’s seat and able to take control of the vehicle.
I haven’t had an anxiety attack in weeks! I reflected.
“This isn’t a fucking joke.” Johnson was not amused, “you’ll notice I’m not laughing right now.” Johnson stubbed his cigarette out on the vertical receptacle, outside of the front door, and then went back inside of the building.
I, on the other hand, unlike Johnson, was very amused, as I followed him inside.
I bolted the door shut behind me and went in through the hallway to the left side of the kitchen where Lauren was standing at a prep table, chopping up peppers with a food processor. She wore sunglasses and a bandana over her face to filter out the caustic, Capsaicin fumes.
Lauren was in her mid-twenties, about my height, with a neck length, ‘Snow White’, haircut. She was a friend of Nick’s who had just started her third shift in the commercial kitchen with us. Lauren was an aspiring actress and writer that had been in Hollywood for just a few months. When Nick had met her, she had been dressed as Marilyn Monroe on the Hollywood walk of fame, outside of the Chinese Theater with Superman, Elvis, Jack Sparrow and the other movie characters, come to life.
I had to give Nick credit for making good on his commitment a month before, to find us a legitimate manufacturing space in a commissary kitchen in Culver City. The facility manager would only let us book the entire space when no one else was using the kitchen, which was mostly at night and at odd hours. It wasn’t ideal, but it didn’t require much upfront capital and worked within our budget.
That being said, the availability there was often sporadic, and we had to take the opportunity whenever we could to book shifts. For this reason, we counterintuitively coveted, these long continuous chunks of time that would pop up every so often in the schedule. These were brutal shifts that we would have to capitalize on, to get as much done as we possibly could in the time that we had rented. We not only had to make hay while the sun shined, but especially when it didn’t.
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“Hey Lauren,” Johnson approached her from behind, as she shut down the food processor and turned around. Lauren took her gloves off, shoving them into an apron pocket. She pulled her kerchief down from her face.
“Hi Johnson,” Lauren looked up at him, making eye contact, “did you need help with something?”
“Thanks, hon,” Johnson grinned, “have you heard from Nick at all, by any chance?”
It was growing increasingly obvious that Johnson was making sexual advances on our first ever, female employee. If I hadn’t realized it before, than everyday it was becoming more clear, that despite Johnson’s conservative ability to save money, and act fiscally responsible, he was otherwise, nothing more than a savage animal; a primal untamable beast, driven by base desires.
I had furthermore, come to understand, that Johnson really didn’t have any scruples.
In fact, I figured, Johnson wouldn’t even recognize a scruple if he bumped into one on the street!
Not that I was necessarily interested in asking out Lauren anyway, but I never would have thought to try in the first place, because we were her employers, and it seemed kind of wrong, and possibly illegal. Johnson made no such distinction, nor would he allow any such guardrails on his behavior.
“I’ve tried calling and texting him like, eight times now,” Lauren looked concerned, “it’s really not like him to flake out.”
“It’s ok,” Johnson reassured her, “I’m sure he has a reasonable explanation for it.”
“Yeah, let’s cut Nick some slack,” I offered some context. “He’s probably just busy figuring out how to dispose of all the dead hookers in his apartment.”
Lauren looked serious for a second. “No, I don’t think he would do that.”
“Gabe’s just joking,” Johnson painstakingly explained, “he has a really inappropriate, sense of humor.”
“It’s ok,” Lauren seemed a little nervous, “It’s just that I know you guys through Nick. I don’t want this to reflect badly on me.”
“You don’t have to worry about that,” Johnson warmly put her at ease, “you’re doing great, and we’re not like that.”
Watching the two of them interact, I started to grow sick to my stomach.
“To be fair,” I pointed out to Lauren, “you haven’t really known Nick that long. And so far, no one has been able to provide me, with a shred of evidence to lead me to believe, that Nick’s not a serial killer.”
“How do you prove someone’s not a serial killer?” Johnson asked scornfully. “And what evidence do you have, to suggest that he is? Have you found any bodies? Has Nick, tried to kill you, personally?”
“Not yet,” I conceded, “but it’s only a matter of time.”
“Hey, how are those brownies coming along?” Johnson smiled, sardonically.
“Amazing!” I beamed, back.
“Well how would you know, if you haven’t checked on them?” Johnson questioned me.
I called out across the kitchen.
“Hey Carl!” I shouted. “How are the brownies doing?”
“Great,” Carl hollered back from the other side of the kitchen, “I could use a hand over here, though!“
I sneered at Johnson.
“You win this round, Johnson.”
“Just get the fuck out of here,” Johnson cracked up, in spite of himself, “what is wrong with you?”
As much as I too, was annoyed with Johnson and his barbaric approach to business and friendship, I wasn’t about to let him smother my elation over Nick’s high octane, well-lubricated, journey into the chomping maws of the meat grinder.
I walked around to the other bay of the kitchen where Carl was washing off a large metal sheet-pan in a stainless-steel sink that was split into three separate wash stations, each with their own faucet.
Carl was wearing a white shirt and apron and looked strangely… normal. Without his costume on, Carl appeared to be even shorter than me, and was surprisingly thin, with a wiry, cut frame.
Carl Cannabis, as he called himself, was an eccentric Hollywood weirdo, whose schtick was dressing up as a pot-leaf, and charging tourists to pose in pictures with him. Carl had formerly been a magician, a porn star, and a crystal meth addict, and was now trying to evolve into a real life, adult cartoon-character.
I took a sheet-pan full of cold brownies that Carl pulled from the walk-in cooler, and then carefully placed it upside on a large, white, cutting board.
With the butt of a cutting knife, I strategically banged on different spots along the back of the sheet-pan, targeting pressure points that would help release the uncut sheet of brownies, hopefully, without causing them to fall apart.
Once I thought it was safe, I carefully shimmied off the sides of the sheet-pan, as the entire cake came unstuck at once and plopped down on the cutting board, with minimal damage done to back of the brownies.
I carefully flipped over the sheet of brownies. Even though I had managed to keep the structure intact, there was fraying, and degradation in spots, particularly along the edges.
“What you want to do,” I instructed Carl, as I painted thick waves of buttery chocolate onto the brownies with a spatula, “is to think of the frosting like the glue that’s going to repair the cracks and crevasses, and generally keep everything together when we slice it up in a few minutes.”
“Gotcha,” Carl nodded.
“Do you think you can take it from here,” I tasked, “so I can go start on the rice crispy treats?”
“Sure,” He shrugged, “I can make brownies. I can also make rice crispy treats. Whatever you want me to do?”
“You may know how to make rice crispy treats,” I chastised Carl, “but you don’t know how to make OUR rice crispy treats.”
“Ok,” he shrugged again, giving away no readable emotions.
“We do things a certain way, here.” I micro-managed him.
“That’s fine,” Carl didn’t seem to care at all, “I can do the frosting.”
I was concerned that Carl might have been minimalizing the amount of artistry and craft that went into my production of the rice crispy treats and frosting, but I wasn’t about to get into that now.
“Ok,” I tried to call up a second wind from deep within, “I’ll start the cereal bars.”
Instead of moving though, I stared down at the cutting board, as Carl cut up the brownies into uniform slices. In the process of evening out the brownies, Carl cut off a long, thin sliver from the right side. This brownie ‘cutoff’ piece was unsalable as a standalone product, and not abundant enough to justify creating a new spin-off product, like dried brownie chips.
Looking down at this, with my stomach growling, I unconsciously grabbed a chunk of the brownie cutoff and shoved it in my mouth.
After swallowing, I realized what I had done, and immediately regretted it.
What in God’s name, did I do that, for? I scolded myself, I’m not going to make it much longer without real food!
We were only about halfway through an 18-hour shift, with almost 9 more hours to go! I was starting to nod out, occasionally falling asleep on my feet from fatigue, hunger and the lingering effect of edibles.
I almost wished Nick would check in, so that he we could have him bring some more pizzas.
Ok, I recognized, I need to do something to pick up the energy.
“Alright Carl,” I abruptly decided, “we’re going to race the other team.”
“What do you mean?” He was puzzled, as he continued to chop up frosted brownies on the cutting board.
“It’s a race,” I educated him, “that means, whoever finishes first wins, and vice-versa.”
“I know what a race is,” Carl laughed, “I’m just not sure how it applies to this situation?”
I walked around to the middle of the kitchen where I could see both bays and shouted out to Johnson.
“Johnson, let’s race to get this done and get out of here early,” I challenged him, “savories vs. desserts?”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Johnson stirred his pot of hot sauce, while Lauren was cleaning up a prep station, “I’m making hot sauce. You’re making brownies and cereal bars. It’s not really, comparable.”
“So,” I tried to goad Johnson, “you concede defeat, before the contest has even started?”
“Ok.” He seemed to be completely disinterested in my proposal.
“Well, Carl and I are going to race you guys, anyway,” I was determined.
“Great,” Johnson smiled, “whatever makes you happy.”
“Yeah, whatever that is,” I chuckled, “I’m still trying to figure that out.”
“Well, keep me posted,” Johnson continued to patronize me.
“I will,” I smirked, “Oh… on a completely unrelated note… have you heard at all from Nick, yet?”
Johnson stopped smiling.
“No.”
“But, did you try to call him again?” I bugged him.
“Yes.” Johnson begrudgingly answered.
“What a crying shame.” I rubbed salt in his wound, “I had such high hopes for him.”
“Will you just shut the fuck up, and go back to your side, please?”
“Sure, I’ll go,” I agreed, but didn’t actually leave, “but first, let me just say, that I think the ‘desserts vs. savories’ race has gotten into your head, and I feel like maybe, just maybe, you’re just a little bit rattled by my challenge earlier?”
“Yes,” Johnson played along, like he was talking to a two-year-old. “That’s it, you got me.”
“I appreciate your honesty.” I told him, finally heading back towards the other side of the kitchen. I found Carl at the prep table, moving at the speed of molasses, as he frosted the brownies in meticulous detail, like he was carefully painting a model airplane.
“Carl!” I came up behind him, shouting suddenly, and startling him. “We really need to step it up. Johnson was totally calling you out, and talking shit!”
“What did he say?” Carl eyeballed me suspiciously.
“Johnson said that you’re a little bitch, and that you make desserts slow.”
“That’s not true!” Johnson shouted over from the other side of the kitchen, apparently still able to hear me, “I didn’t say that, Carl!”
“He’s in denial,” I shook my head to Carl, “but’s that’s ok, we’ll show them.”
“Whatever you say boss,” Carl continued to move at the same pace, without any noticeably enhanced, pep to his step.
I realized that it would be up to me, to show the whole crew up at this late hour, by busting out the cereal bars in record time.
On a stainless-steel table, I quickly counted out and stacked twelve bags of marshmallows into piles in front of a large range-top burner.
I scooped four cups of green butter out of a Tupperware container into three large, stainless-steel pots, and turned the burners on low.
As the butter melted into green oil, I turned up one of the burners and started dumping bags of marshmallows into a pot, before moving on to repeat the set up for the next two pots. With superhuman speed and maniac-motivation, I raced back and forth between the three pots, vigorously whipping the green, oily marshmallows, and stirring the rice crispy’s into the first pot.
“Carl, can you come here for a minute?”
Carl helped me tip over the giant pot and empty out the still malleable, rice crispy treat globs, into the sheet pan, while I flattened everything out with a spatula into a stable form.
Carl covered up the tray with plastic and took it into the walk-in cooler to harden up, as I stirred cereal into the next pot, so that it would be ready to pour into another tray, by the time that Carl came back out.
“We’re going to beat Johnson’s team,” I crowed enthusiastically at Carl, as he came out of the walk-in cooler to grab the other side of a pot, that I was struggling to tip over by myself, and dump out, onto another sheet-pan.
“You think so?” Carl seemed underwhelmed by the news, “how fast are they going?”
“Slow,” I replied, “Very, very slow. We are crushing them.”
“They’re only making one pot though, right?” Carl cleared up, “and they can’t make it any faster, than the recipe calls for?”
“You are correct sir,” I nodded, “we are totally winning right now. We’re wiping the floor, with their asses!”
“That doesn’t sound sanitary.” Carl countered.
Energized by a meaningless competition, that only I, was participating in, I continued to press on at full speed ahead for the next hour, cutting up the rest of the brownies and the cereal bars that were in the cooler, as Carl packaged the products behind me. I was moving at least twice as fast as him, so that he was always staying busy, and perpetually had work in his queue.
As I was cutting up a tray of rice crispy treats though, all of a sudden, I felt feint. I was lightheaded and growing sluggish. For hours I had kept forcing myself to find another gear, to work harder, and to go further than I had thought that I had been able to. I was still willing to continue to sacrifice my body, in theory, for the greater good of the company, but that being said, this was becoming a self-inflicted wound. Especially given the long haul that we were on, there was just no good reason to run the gas tank dry.
In what universe did Johnson think two baby, pint sized pizzas would be enough for everyone? Low on sugar, my blood started to boil, this is all his fault!
It was 2am and I was fading fast. If someone went to get some food, then I could keep going all morning; if not, I was done for.
“I’ll be right back,” I conveyed to Carl, “In fact, you can take a break now too, if you’d like?”
“Of course,” Carl didn’t mince words, “This is miserable. Who, wouldn’t want a break, right now?”
I walked back over to find Johnson on the other side of the kitchen.
Johnson and Lauren were hitting it off over the hot sauce again, as Johnson stirred the pot on the stove and Lauren stood nearby watching him and talking.
Strange how Johnson so recently stopped being such a total dick about wasting money on the inefficient use of kitchen and staff hours, I observed and further reflected, this could metastasize into a real problem, if Johnson starts giving special treatment to employees that he’s f**king…
“Hey Johnson,” I complained, “I’m not going to survive the rest of this shift without more food. I can’t believe you only brought these two puny, pipsqueak pizzas for the whole crew for an 18-hour shift! What the hell were you thinking?”
“I’m hungry too,” Johnson rebutted, “what do you want me to do?”
“Has anyone heard from Nick?” I pestered, “try him again.”
“I just did, like a half hour ago.” Johnson was visibly frustrated.
“Lauren, you try,” I pleaded, “you’re friends with him, or something.”
“Sure, not a problem.” She grabbed her phone off of the counter. “I’m not really getting reception in here, I need to step outside.”
Lauren left to call him.
“We’ve got to figure out some kind of solution for the food,” I whined.
“Eat some edibles,” Johnson suggested.
“Fuck you,” I laughed, “that’s not going to help.”
“Look,” Johnson posed, “next time we’ll get more pizzas. Meanwhile the hot sauce is almost done, and I say that we just leave a little bit early tonight?”
The door opened, and Lauren came back in looking upset.
“Are you ok?” Johnson inquired caringly.
“Not, really,” she looked reluctant to talk.
“What’s going on?” Johnson pushed, “I mean, if you feel comfortable, sharing?”
She looked at Johnson and then at I, as if unsure if she could trust me.
“Well, I know why Nick isn’t here,” Lauren admitted.
“Why not?” Johnson tried not to let his anger seethe through his faux-friendly voice.
Lauren hesitated for a moment. She shared down at her feet which were crossed together and then looked back up at Johnson, before opening up to him.
“The thing is…” Lauren’s words were slow and drawn out, “Nick, was arrested.”
“Holy cow,” Johnson’s voice was flat, betraying no judgement, “what for?”
“Well,” Lauren smiled, “apparently Nick, thought it would be a good idea to get drunk at a bar, and get into a fight… while he had… cocaine on him. So… yeah…he’s not going to make it into work.”
“That’s terrible!” I offered. “Now, who’s going to get the pizza?”
Johnson shot me a look of warning and then turned back to Lauren who seemed to be freaking out a little.
“It’s going to be alright,” Johnson sympathized, “we’ll figure it out.”
Lauren looked down at her phone.
“Johnson, I think I need to go help Nick’s friends bail him out.”
“That’s ok,” Johnson was understanding, “you go take care of what you need to.”
The second that Lauren had left, and the door closed behind her, I turned to Johnson, confronting him.
“Hey Johnson,” I stated the obvious, “we need to talk.”
“Yes,” he acknowledged.
“About Nick.”
“Right.” Johnson nodded.
“I was thinking,” I proposed, “that the appropriate response at this juncture,” I paused, “would be, to give Nick, a promotion.”
“He’s done,” Johnson was stoic, “I’ll call and fire him tomorrow. I have no problem, with that.”
“Classic example of ‘addition by subtraction’,” I glowed.
“Yeah,” Johnson seemed sullen and distant, but I couldn’t and/or wouldn’t attempt to obfuscate my own happiness. Morose faced, Johnson tapped an additional dose of cayenne pepper into his hot sauce.
“Thank you, Johnson,” I breathed a genuine sigh of relief, as I felt like a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders.
“I’m a team player,” I continued, “and I’m willing to work with anyone, but it was obvious that Nick doesn’t like me, doesn’t respect me, and was out to get me.”
Johnson continued to silently, stir his sauce.
“Why should I have to put up with that, in a company, that I started?” I continued to rant.
“I mean, Nick was bringing a lot to the table,” Johnson chimed in, “and now, we have to figure out how to replace him.”
“That was a rhetorical question,” I retorted, “you weren’t supposed to answer. The right answer, is that there is no good answer.”
“Nick has experience in business that we don’t,” Johnson quarreled, “he’s an asshole, but he could have been an asset, and we still need the skillset that he brought.”
“Ok,” I nodded flippantly. “I get that. If we owned a restaurant, we would need a head chef, but that doesn’t mean we should hire, Jefferey Dahmer.”
“Sure,” Johnson turned off the heat on the stove. “The sauce is done.”
“It smells great,” I complimented him, “even better than the last batch.”
“In fact,” I explored common ground, “I have reservations about even selling this stuff. We should just keep it all as our head-stash.”
“We’ll definitely keep a case or two,” Johnson agreed, “or three.”
The heavy metal door of the kitchen slammed closed as Carl came back inside from his break, walking by the left bay of the kitchen where Johnson and I were standing around the corner from the baking station.
“Do you want me to start another batch of brownies?” Carl checked in.
“No,” I cut it off, “we’re going to wrap up. Can you please start washing the dishes?”
“You got it, boss.” Carl saluted facetiously and walked over to the other side of the kitchen where he started setting up the washing station again.
Johnson paused deep in thought, as he was wiping up a mess of hot sauce and pot butter from around the stove with a rag.
“I think I’m going to call Alan,” Johnson looked like he was up to something.
I grabbed another rag and followed suit, helping Johnson clean up, as we were talking.
“Alan, like college, Alan?” I confirmed.
“Yes, Santa Fe, Alan,” Johnson chided, “How many Alans, do we both know?”
“Just the one.”
Johnson grabbed four empty Cambro containers and started carefully pouring hot sauce from the pot into the first 8 qt, plastic tub.
When he was finished, he sealed a red plastic lid on top and moved the next container into position to fill.
“So…” I had been waiting to see where Johnson was going, “what are you going to talk to Alan about?”
“He has a business degree,” Johnson entered into evidence, “and he’s not doing anything right now.”
I had always liked Alan in college, but I found myself instinctively growing uneasy. Alan had practically lived at the house with us the last semester we were there together, and went on to be Johnson’s roommate the next semester, after I graduated.
“Alan and I, already have history working together.” Johnson seemed to be reading my mind, “We sold weed and molly after you left, and he was a great partner.”
I don’t know about this, I ruminated, I just survived my battle with Nick, to prove once and for all, that he… is the third wheel.
If Alan comes out here… I grasped, then… it’s going to be me.
As much as I appreciated Alan and believed that he’d be fun to have around and could add value; I also knew that he was Johnson’s friend, and I had frankly been traumatized by Johnson. I was afraid of being double teamed and overruled on decisions, or even cast aside and voted out of the business, like Johnson and Crackle had done to me in college.
I grabbed a mop bucket and started going after stray puddles of hard green butter stuck to the floor, while Johnson finished pouring the sauce.
“We’ve just shaken loose an albatross in Nick,” I spoke after a long mutual silence. “We’ve unshackled ourselves from a potential busines partner that could have brought us down, not only through his drunken, cocaine fueled antics, but most importantly- by creating a hostile and uncomfortable, company culture.”
Johnson didn’t say anything as I continued to mop the floor for a few minutes.
“We’re still rebounding from that relationship.” I kept talking to fill the void, as Johnson quietly packed up his section of the kitchen, “let’s take a minute to figure things out, before we jump into bed with a new partner.”
I didn’t want to be the one responsible for keeping us here any later than we had to, so I went back towards the other side of the kitchen to make sure that clean up, in the dessert section, didn’t fall behind.
“I’m calling Alan tomorrow,” Johnson proclaimed, as I carefully walked over a greasy rubber mat towards the baking-bay.
“That’s great,” I turned back to him, “nothing wrong with an exploratory phone call.”
“Let’s, just take it slow.” I added.
“I’m going to call Alan tomorrow,” Johnson was determined, “I’m going to call him and see if he’ll move out here; like, right away.”
“I’m not sure if-”
“I thought you said you were a team player?” Johnson interrupted and entrapped me.
Caught off guard, suddenly I was sweating; flustered, and flummoxed.
Deflated, like a spent balloon, I grimaced, as I found myself, sinking back
down to earth. A familiar weight settled over my soul, like a heavy, fat suit, that an actor would wear in a movie, pressing around and across my whole body, and squeezing me tightly.
My anxiety, I lamented, it’s back!
“I am a team player,” I protested, scowling and frowning, as I massaged my forehead with my fingertips, “and I did say that… but that… that, doesn’t mean that, I… um… you know…”
“Don’t worry about it,” Johnson beamed brightly; his mouth, wide, shining, toothy pearls. “Everything is going to be fine. Alan can stay with us!”
To Be Continued…