Ruby [Story #18]

Ruby’s voice was made of gravel and Virginia Slims. She would wake up at noon and stomp around the restaurant during the lunch and dinner rushes, muttering to the servers and cooks as she walked past. “Thesoupshouldbe…” her indistinct voice trailed off as she passed by. “Anddon’tforgetto…”

I snickered with the other servers behind her back. She was cracked, old Ruby. The restaurant business had snapped her in two and pulled out her meat—just like the all-you-can-eat crab legs we served on Friday nights.

Ruby didn’t notice our snickering. She was too busy tromping around, refilling her gin and tonic, and fretting about her ne’er-do-well husband and criminal son. We would see her son occasionally—Sean was his name—when he popped in for pepperoni pizza and a case of beer. He had been living on an island in the middle of Lake Pokegama to avoid time in prison. He camped, fished, and canoed over to the restaurant whenever he wanted sustenance, Miller Lite, and conversation. To this day, I don’t know what Sean did that forced him into hiding; I never thought to ask.

Today, Sean waltzed into the kitchen at the peak of dinner rush. He had the annoying habit of doing that—materializing at exactly the wrong time.

“Hey Sean,” I said, seeing his lanky figure appear at the back kitchen door. “You’re gonna have to wait on your pizza. I’ve got a 12-top that just ordered four of them.”

“Ah, Jesus,” Sean grumbled, and lit up a Marlboro. Those were the days when you could smoke anywhere inside a restaurant and no one blinked an eye—except in the non-smoking section of the restaurant, of course. But the non-smoking side abutted the smoking side and it was hard to distinguish between the two, air quality-wise.

“Hey,” said Sean to one of the cooks, “you busy? Wanna smoke some grass out back?”

“Yes, he’s busy!” I interjected. “It’s dinner rush, Sean. Leave him the hell alone so he can get those pizzas going!”

Sean muttered something indistinguishable, reminding me of Ruby, and stepped outside to smoke by himself. As soon as Sean stepped out, Ruby stepped in.

“Thewalleyefillets…” she said as she walked past Kim and me. We exchanged glances and shrugged. No one paid much attention to Ruby.

“Hey Ruby,” one of the cooks called out as Ruby shuffled past. “We’re running low on mozzarella. Didn’t Harry place that order?”

Another murmur that ended with “goddamnkill’em” and Ruby trundled to the back office. I knew what she’d find there. A smoke-filled room with dark paneling and her husband hunched over his desk, playing video poker. That’s mostly what Harry did throughout the day—smoked and frittered away his money. Occasionally, he’d leave his lair to come out to the bar and shoot the shit with some of the regulars. He was a man with a hollow look, like he’d lived in a cave for seventeen years and left part of his sanity (and all of his melanin) back in the rocky walls.

I was scared of him. I couldn’t put my finger on why, exactly, but I knew the others felt it too. Harry was the type who might snap at any moment.

Shouting from the back office jolted me out of my thoughts and back into the kitchen. I had to prep a dozen salads and carry them out to my table of twelve. I threw iceberg lettuce onto the salad plates with all the grace of a stable boy shoveling shit. “What dressings did they want, again?” I said to myself as I looked down at the plastic salad dressing cups. “Damn. Ranch, probably. Ranch will have to do…”

“You turning into Ruby?” Kim was at my shoulder, nudging me aside as she cobbled together a Caesar salad. “You’re talking to yourself just like that old bat.”

“I just might be,” I replied. “Soon I’ll be living in the basement of this place, just like our loving couple.” I nodded to the back office where the sound of Ruby and Harry’s bickering could be heard distinctly over the sizzle of the grills.

“Just lay off the Virginia Slims,” Kim winked and we both exited the kitchen and strode into the smoky dining room.

The dinner rush was short—it always was. Looking back, it wasn’t much of a rush at all, compared to some of the other places I’ve worked. But at the time it felt busy, and that busyness is compounded when the kitchen runs out of food, burns the pizzas, or makes a customer’s steak medium-rare when it’s supposed to be well done (Really, Mike? It’s supposed to be well done! Everyone in this town orders their steak well done!).

I made it through the night just like I always did—with a pasted-on smile and a quick step. By the time the last of the dinner crowd ambled out the door, I felt sweaty, smoky, and ready to go home.

But I didn’t rush out the door that night. Something held me up. I don’t remember what it was now—maybe the ketchup bottles needed cleaning—but I do know that I’m grateful for my delayed freedom. It’s how I found out about Ruby and her art.

Ruby must have been drunk by that time—it was nearly nine o’clock and she was usually good and sauced by eight bells.* And when she was drunk, she was talkative. Usually, she found some listening ears at the bar, but tonight she decided to venture into the kitchen and scrub down the grills. That’s where I found her when I began counting down my money from the night’s work.

“Y’ know what this place needs?” Ruby asked me.

I looked up. Rarely had I heard her sound so clear and lucid. “What’s that, Ruby?”

“Bit o’ artwork, that’s what. It’s dull as an old nail ‘round here. Just look at the dining room walls! You call that art?”

I thought about the décor in the dining room. It consisted of prints of fish jumping out of gleaming lakes, heavy-antlered moose tromping through ponds, and at least one black bear ambling through snow-covered woods.

“There seems to be a theme,” I commented.

“Psha,” Ruby waved a hand. “It’s not art. It’s just some outdoorsman’s wet dream.”

I chuckled. “You’re right about that.”

“Course I’m right. I know what real art is. I made it once.”

I cocked my head and stopped counting the money. Ruby had never opened up like this before. I realized I really didn’t know anything about her, besides what I’d observed. I knew about her vices, her spats with Harry, that she lived in the concrete block basement of that shitty restaurant—nothing about the woman, herself. I was fascinated.

“You were an artist, Ruby?”

“And a damn good one too.” She reached for her gin and took a slug. “Worked in California for a while. Sold some paintings to hotels and rich ladies with tiny dogs—that kind of thing. Went back to Cali not long ago and saw one of my paintings in one of them boutique hotels in Santa Monica. It was kind of a jungle scene, but abstract—every color of the rainbow and a big jaguar in the middle. I plumb forgot about that one until I saw it again. Brought back some memories, that’s for sure.”

Ruby went on about California and painting along the boardwalk and romantic trysts with other “artsy types.” I could taste the sea salt and smell fresh acrylic paint. I could hear the crash of ocean waves. Ruby’s face was animated, bright. She gestured wildly when she told me about some B-list celebrity buying one of her paintings.

“And then I met Harry.” Her face darkened. “And that was that, I suppose.”

She finished the rest of her drink and returned to scrubbing the surface of the grill.

“That’s that?” I said, jolted by the story’s sudden nosedive. “There has to be more, right? What about buying this restaurant? Settling down in the Midwest?”

When Ruby was silent, I pressed on. “Are you still painting? Do you have anything I could see?”

Ruby looked up from the grill. “Don’t you have to cash out? Brenda will be shitting bricks if you don’t get that money in the till.”

I bit my lip. “Yes, Ruby. I have some money to count.”

“Then hop to it.”

The rest of the summer passed without another word from Ruby about artwork and oceans and lost lovers. She’d walk past me, mumbling about “damnbeerlinesneedchanging” and “makesureyouget…” but she never opened up to me again, never engaged me in more than a three-second conversation.

But I looked at her differently after that night. She was a Greek tragedy, a beating heart trapped in a cage of rusty iron. I could no longer poke fun at her gravel voice or her loud spats with Harry. These things split my heart in two, made me want to run, sobbing from the restaurant.

I didn’t run; I didn’t sob. But I also didn’t forget. Ruby made me realize that everyone has a story lurking under their skin. All you need is the right amount of silence and gin to let it out.

*I realize this is a nautical term and really refers to the time when your watch is over, but let’s go with it. It has a nice “ring” to it 😉

Kate Bitters is a freelance writer, founder of Click Clack Writing, and author of Elmer Left and Ten Thousand Lines. She is writing a story a week in 2015-2016 on the Bitter Blog. Subscribe to follow her journey.