After the excitement and turmoil of the past week with everything regarding the mural, Joey returns to the more mundane world of work at The Fox Hole.

I make my way to the Fox Hole now after being out ‘sick’ for the last three days, actually feeling way more ill than I supposedly had been before. I walk in, and Tommy (the owner) is sitting at his usual table in the back of the restaurant, a half-empty bottle of Campari off to his side, the standard glass of Campari and soda in front of him, grumbling to himself, as he reads over the Newark Star Ledger. Heavy rings of smoke from his ever-present cigar linger lazily in the dim lighting, and My Way plays in the background, as usual. I figure he’s probably drunk (again), so I sneak past him, hoping to avoid having to sing My Way with him again. As he usually demands when he’s soused.

I tread lightly into the kitchen to find Tommy Boy there at the counter, violently chopping the heads off of the day’s fish. Ashes from the Marlboro dangling from his mouth drop down, mixing with the blood.  

“Nice of ya to show up,” he grunts, without even looking up at me.

“Where’s Marc?” I ask, referring to the other dishwasher.

“He’s not here.”

He motions with his head over to the sink area, where there’s a mountainous pile of those huge 20 gallon pots they cook the sauce in. All stacked up, stained with burnt, hardened tomato sauce. Great. This day is just getting better and better. I hate that job, man. You have to use these Brillo pads to scour that burnt shit out - only they aren’t even real Brillo pads. No, they’re these cheap, third-rate, pseudo Brillos that fall apart right in your hands, in only a few minutes. Even though you’re wearing these rubber dishwasher’s gloves, the fibers from these shitty pads go right through them, cutting up all your fingers.  Even worse than that though, is the heavy-duty detergent soap water that you’re scrubbing with. It seeps inside the gloves, and mixes with the acid from the tomato sauce, burning the fuck out of those cuts on your hands. Misery on top of nausea. To complete the torture, the sound and the sensation those quasi-Brillos make when they scrape against the metal of the pots, just completely freaks me out.  Nails raking the blackboard got nothing on this nightmare.

Salvatore, the other son, comes stomping up the stairs, carrying a few crates of tomatoes.

“You got a lot of fuckin’ work tonight, Joey.  Marc’s not comin' in.”

“Thanks, Salvatore.”

About the only good thing, is that Philly won’t be in to bother me tonight. So I take some comfort in that.

Hours pass by as I dutifully scrub pot after nasty pot. My thoughts begin drifting to Esperanza, and the mural, and how I had put my ass on the line just to impress her. It’s only when Tommy Sr. announces that we’re closing early, because of Halloween, do I snap out of my ruminations. Of course, that’s why we were so dead tonight! All the parents had probably been out trick-or-treating with their brats. Making sure there were no razor blades in the Snickers bars, or Candy-Corn drenched with Drano, or anything like that.

And here I am, scraping fuckin’ burnt tomato sauce off of fuckin' twenty gallon pots. Yeah, Happy Halloween! As I hit the street after work, I wonder what Esperanza is doing tonight, and who she’s doing it with. She probably has a bunch of parties to go to. I should go up there, man; I gotta get her to see this mural. Yeah.

 As I zip up my coat, I get a good look at my hands. Oh my God! Shit, they’re like the scariest costume out there! That tomato sauce and the detergent have totally fucked them up, even worse than usual. It burned right through those rubber gloves, man. Yeech. They look like something from the Creature Features, like, some mutant monster claws from a nuclear radiation accident.  Red, scaly, cracked and cut up, they are nasty! They had been getting like that for a while anyway, but this is catastrophic. No girl is ever going to want to hold these monstrosities. No way can I see Esperanza like this. I thrust them disgustedly back into my jacket pockets, and trudge down the dark, cold streets on my way back home.