update from the trench
Wednesday 9 June 2004 | I like a cookie
Due to emotional complications with the Incomprehensible Irishman, N. is no longer a compost boy, which had been his strategy for avoiding attractive guests over the summer—to be forever smelly and lugging around rotting tubs of things. But the Incomprehensible Irishman has more than once brought him to tears and rage (frustrating, because they’d been good friends before N. had to work under him) so he requested of the Director a transfer and promptly, sympathetically received it—back into the kitchen (and perhaps to the dining crew later) (where he will of course be directly in the line of fire of the attractive guests).
So yesterday he was standing chopping various things and looked up through the window and saw, standing as if in a ray of light, a Beautiful Girl. I was immediately mesmerized, he admits; she wasn’t just beautiful, there was something about her, something different. And she saw me looking at her, and it was like she was used to having people look at her, you know? And she was totally cool about it, which made her even cooler. Then the Beautiful Girl stuck out her tongue at me and smiled and casually walked away. I stood in the kitchen all morning thinking about her and being totally smitten and drooling on my cutting board. I thought about her all during lunch break, and started to worry about myself. When I came back to the kitchen in the afternoon, the Ethiopian monk came up to me and hissed in my ear, Do you know who’s here?! Do you know who that Beautiful Girl is?! And when I said no, I have no idea, he said MAGGIE GYLLENHAAL that’s who.
And then N. smirked for the rest of the day, until he could call me and tell me all about it. The dining crew was all in the most pathetic twitter, he says. Green tea!—she likes green tea! get her some green tea—she’s a Tibetan Buddhist you know—she talked to me! I told him if he was going to fool around on me with some freaking guest it had better be Maggie freaking Gyllenhaal, I wouldn’t settle for anyone less. Good, he says, we have a bathhouse date as soon as I get off this tedious phone call. [Pause.] I’m kidding! Her boyfriend is like all over her. The only date I have is with my hand. We sigh at this, sadly, and the pause this time is simmering and burdened.
It’s weird because only four or five phone calls ago I bravely told him about Secretary, which he still hasn’t seen, and then he confessed how much he liked her in Donnie Darko, which I haven’t seen, and then I said yeah but I like Jake even more, and he said who’s Jake, and I said you’re kidding right. Actually you’d Jake would have had an even more powerful effect on him.
So, that’s all the news from the trench right now…although it’s interesting always to hear how the same people who gave Mandarin so much grief also make N. crazy—the Dog-Owning Shuso, Mr. Anger Management (who recently gathered the shreds of his dignity and left, rather than be booted out, apparently) and a few other assorted overly officious priestly people. It verifies my reality as well, that they were indeed truly annoying and it wasn’t just me. N. even pinpoints one of the weaknesses of the beloved Gay Maine Episcopalian—his tendency, when you approach him after work circle needing an assignment, to stare at you blankly, as though he doesn’t know who you are, and then to stutter and change his mind several times, and then only after long minutes of fluster and agitation to finally blurt out “kitchen, please”—though he could have saved himself all the struggle by just saying that right away, since that’s invariably where one is sent. N. has deep wells of patience with him, patience I can’t quite fathom myself, being one of the more irritable and revved-up people I know.
Patience. So I confess at one point that I when people hand me their infants I usually don’t know which end of the baby goes up and he was dismayed but took it on the chin, telling me bravely, Well I’ve been trying to prepare myself for this moment; I suspected this about you long ago. His high school job was babysitting, his college work/study job was in the day care center, his summer jobs were working with at-risk kids: N. is officially one of those Men Who Loves Children. Never mind, it’s okay, he says heroically, I can have kids with Maggie.
His only other report of note was that breakfast yesterday was very tasty, tofu-potato hash and warm applesauce. What was in the third bowl, I asked. I didn’t touch it, he says somberly. It was purplish and the sign just read “juice.” I think they mixed some things together.
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