Page 9 of The End of Summer

I swallow the last mouthful of my burrito. “Do not.”

“Yeah, you do. This thing with your dad has aged you.”

I laugh. “I’m just concerned. It seems a little dank. That’s all I’m saying.”

“Don’t knock it. That’s some salt of the earth people living up in there. People who fuel the tourist industry: housekeepers, food handlers, gardeners. They work hard to keep our economy going.”

“And I’m all for it, you know that. But why do they have to live underground? Bunch of mole people is what it is.”

“I like that,” Big Mike laughs, wagging a finger at me. “You keep quoting literature. That shit suits you, bro. And it’s not underground. Only halfway.”

“Anyway, it’s just temporary,” I say aloud, mostly as a reminder to myself.

“Exactly,” he agrees. He crumples up his garbage into a paper bag and hops off the tailgate. “You got trash?”

I shove my burrito wrapper into my empty coffee cup and hand it over. “Thanks.”

My dad kicked me out of our family home in a town called Sandwich. Yes, that is the real name of the town. It’s an irrelevant piece of trivia now, I suppose, seeing as how I’ve managed to downgrade to the Cape Cod version of a halfway house more than 20 miles away from there.

I am not an elitist. It’s very important that I make that point clear up front. My whole life, people have made assumptions.Oh, Brady? He’s Chef Brax’s son. Must be filthy rich.Wrong. Myfatheris rich. My mom took off when I was in high school, and I can’t say that I blame her, seeing as how he’s such a ball sack. She invited me to come with her, but she was heading to Iowa to chase some dream of becoming a writer, and I was in high school. I had a bustling, teenage social life. I wasn’t trying to give that up for a land where corn was the biggest topic of conversation. She enjoyed some nice success, too. Her debut novel came out a few years back, a psychological thriller about a woman who escaped a marriage by poisoning her husband in his very own restaurant. The irony of it all is that she doesn’t make much money off of her writing, but her alimony checks are plentiful enough to keep her living her very best life, even if it is in the middle of nowhere.

Anyway, when she left, I didn’t consider that I’d be stuck with all of my father’s expectations. He wanted me to go to Cape Cod Community College on the culinary track, with the goal that I should get into Johnson and Wales and reallylearn the craft there. But I have zero interest in cooking. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I like a good meal as much as the next guy, but I’m not, likepassionateabout carrots or whatever.

I prefer business. Economics. I think it’s fascinating how finances can vary so much from a small town to a big city, and I find it especially interesting in a town where almost 100% of the revenue comes solely from tourism. Against my father’s wishes, I went to Boston University to study management – a hellish commute, for sure, but well worth it, as the classes were both thought-provoking and engaging. He and I struck up a deal. I could study whatever I wanted as long as I worked at the country club. And, while that was never great, it was fine when I was younger. But once I graduated, I got an entry-level job as a Market Research Analyst, which drove the old man bat shit crazy. He forced me to continue my Saturday night shifts waiting tables for him at Diamond Excelsior, but the point was entirely moot, because the world came to a screeching halt when the pandemic hit.

I got laid off from my day job – part of the wholelast one in, first one outthing, and of course all restaurants (including those at country clubs) shuttered their doors, so I proceeded to spend the next year suckling off the government teat like just about everyone else I knew.

Including Chef Brax.

It was really hard on him, being home. He watched a lot of cooking shows and yelled at the TV when he didn’t agree with the flour:fat:water ratio in the pie crust, prepped new recipes in the kitchen, and joined the Peloton revolution.He got through the lonely days just like the rest of us – by distracting himself. I noticed how few people he spoke to. Where I had friends who I could text, have Zoom drinks with, or hang with outdoors, my dad had grocery delivery service that drove him almost to the point of madness, with produce that he himself didn’t hand-pick and meat too close to the expiration date for his liking. He was used to being in charge of a huge operation – a man who thrived on the pursed mouth of someone trying his gazpacho and the inevitable compliments that flowed from those lips after swallowing – but during COVID, he had none of that. No praise. No accolades. No minions. No drive.

Which is why, when the club reopened the following year, my father went back with renewed purpose, as if he had to make up for lost time.

“You’re coming with me, Brady,” he demanded, and seeing as how I had no job and my UI benefits had run dry, I had little choice but to oblige. He said, “You like business? You can manage the waitstaff for me.”

So I did. And, not for nothing, I did it well, despite the ever-diminishing quality of workers in the world at that time. J-1s were fine, but they were essentially just kids here on vacation. My year-round waitstaff team was solid. I could count on them to handle the high-end clientele. Nance, my best server, was with me from the beginning of my tenure. She’d been waitressing at the Diamond Excelsior since I was in diapers, she’d often tell me. My other two weekend-must-haves were Trish and Monty: both top-notch waiters. The issue was that they all played poker together on weekends after closing, a tradition which exists to thisday. Which is how they all ended up with norovirus when Nance's godson was visiting and caught what she thought was a stomach bug. Twelve hours after a card game I found myself literally scraping the bottom of the barrel to find some random pub girl to work in private dining on the day now dubbed “the incident.”

Believe me, I tried to get other servers. But at the beginning of peak season, private dining is a really tough fit, and no one does it quite like Nance. I needed an adult who could be professional around the clients, so the J-1s were definitely out; too many of them are just here looking for a good time and I couldn’t be responsible for a celebrity encounter ending up on TikTok. The main dining room was also short-staffed, so I couldn’t in good conscience pull from there. I would have served David Krumholtz myself, but I had too much running around to do between the two spaces, and we’d been trained (by my father) that private dining clients are to receive a dedicated server, not a multitasking mid-level manager.

I wasn’t responsible for direct oversight of the pub, but these were desperate times and I needed someone immediately. I ran down the flight of stairs separating main dining from the Diamond Mine Tavern. Upon entering, I saw that they were understaffed as well – but they had a bartender plus three, and could stand to lose a body for a few hours.

She was the only native English speaker there. Her hair reminded me of a ripe Honeycrisp apple, red with traces of pink, but it was neatly twisted up into a bun minus the few loose pieces framing her face. She looked about my age, andwas hustling a tray of lobster grilled cheese sandwiches over to a party of two in the corner.

As she walked back toward the kitchen, I stopped her. “Excuse me,” I said. “I’m not sure we’ve met, but I’m Brady Hawthorne, Assistant Manager of Personnel –”

“I know you. You’re Chef Brax’s son.” The corners of her mouth turned up.

I looked at her nametag. “Gretchen,” I said, holding out my hand. “I’m Brady.”

She shook it, and the baby soft skin of her palm lingered on my own. “Can I get you something?”

“I need a favor,” I explained. “Do you think you could handle yourself with poise in front of a famous person?”

“Depends,” she said. Her pink lips stretched into a smile. “Who is it?” she asked, in an exaggerated whisper.

“David Krumholtz.”

She knit her eyebrows together, thinking. “I know that name.”

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