The Competitive Nephew Part 44

"You got everything to do with it," Trinkmann declared. "A pantryman is a feller which no one could depend upon, otherwise he wouldn't be a pantryman, Louis; but a waiter, that's something else again. If a waiter wouldn't see that the forks ain't _schmutzig_, who would see it?

The trouble is here n.o.body takes any interest at all. Me, I got to do everything myself."

Mr. Trinkmann returned to the cashier's desk over which Mrs. Trinkmann habitually presided, and taking a cigarette pen-fashion twixt thumb and forefinger, he lit it slowly and threw away the match with a gesture that implied more strongly than words, "I am sick and tired of the whole business."

The fact was that Mr. Trinkmann had undergone that morning as much as one man could endure without the relief that profanity affords. To be precise, only three hours before, Mrs. Trinkmann had presented him with twins, both girls.

"The thing has got to stop sometime, Louis," he said, as he came from behind the desk. He referred, however, to the ashtrays and the forks.

"Either you would got to turn around a new leaf, or you could act like a slob somewheres else, understand me, because I wouldn't stand for it here."

"What are you talking nonsense--act like a slob, Mr. Trinkmann?" Louis cried. "I am working here for you now six years next _Tishabav_, and everybody which comes here in the place I always give 'em good satisfaction."

"You got too swell a head, Louis," Mr. Trinkmann continued, gaining heat. "You would think you was a partner here the way you act. You talk to me like I would be the waiter and you would be the boss. What do you think I am, anyway?"

"But, Mr. Trinkmann----" Louis began.

"Things goes from bad to worst," Trinkmann went on, his voice rising to a bellow. "You treat me like I would be a dawg."

"_Aber_, Mr. Trinkmann," Louis whimpered, "I----"

"_Koosh!_" Trinkmann shouted. "I got enough of your _Chutzpah_. I am through with you. Comes three o'clock this afternoon, you would quit.

D'ye hear me?"

Louis nodded. He would have made some articulate protest, but his Adam's apple had suddenly grown to the dimensions of a dirigible balloon; and though there surged through his brain every manner of retort, ironical and defiant, he could think of nothing better to do than to polish the ashtrays. Polishing powder and rags alone could not have produced the dazzling brilliancy that ensued. It was a sense of injustice that lent force to every rub, and when he began to clean the forks Louis imparted to his labour all the energy of a discharged waiter wringing his employer's neck.

Before he had half concluded his task the other waiters arrived, for Louis was but one of a staff of three, with the distinction that though his two a.s.sociates were only dinner waiters, Louis served breakfast, dinner, and supper. Marcus, the elder of the two, bore a brown-paper package with an air of great solemnity, while Albert, his companion, perspired freely in spite of a chill March air blowing outside.

"Mr. Trinkmann," Marcus began, "Louis telephones me this morning which you got a couple new arrivals in your family and----"

"Louis!" Trinkmann roared, and Louis in response approached the desk with the polishing cloth in his hand. "Do you mean to told me you are using the telephone without asking me?"

"I thought, Mr. Trinkmann," Louis hastened to explain, "that so long you got in your family----"

"What is it your business _what_ I got in my family?" Trinkmann asked.

Louis' eyes kindled and he gave free play to his indignation.

"For you I don't care at all, Mr. Trinkmann," he said, "but for Mrs.

Trinkmann which she is always acted to us like a lady, understand me, I am telephoning Marcus he should bring with him a few flowers, Mr.

Trinkmann, which if you wouldn't take 'em to her, we could easy send 'em up by a messenger boy, and here is a nickel for using the telephone."

He plunged his hand into his trousers-pocket and dashed a coin on to the desk. Then, reaching behind him with both hands, he untied his ap.r.o.n. "Furthermore," he said, "I wouldn't wait till three o'clock, Mr.

Trinkmann. Give me my money and I would go now."

"Pick up that ap.r.o.n, Louis," Trinkmann commanded, "because, so sure as I am standing here, if you wouldn't wait on the customers till three o'clock I wouldn't pay you not one cent."

"So far as that goes, Mr. Trinkmann," Louis commenced, "I ain't----"

"And if you get fresh to me _oder_ to the customers, Louis," Trinkmann concluded, "you wouldn't get your money, neither."

"Did the customers ever done me anything, Mr. Trinkmann?" Louis retorted. "Why should I get fresh to the customers which every one of them is my friends, Mr. Trinkmann? And as for getting fresh to you, Mr.

Trinkmann, if I would want to I would. Otherwise not."

With this defiance Louis picked up his polishing cloth and his ap.r.o.n and proceeded to the kitchen, to which Marcus and Albert had already retreated. His courage remained with him until he had refastened his ap.r.o.n, and then he discerned Marcus and Albert to be regarding him with so mournful a gaze that the balloon again expanded in his throat, and forthwith--to pursue the simile further--it burst. He opened the door leading from the kitchen to the paved s.p.a.ce littered with packing boxes, which had once been the backyard, and despite the cold March weather he stepped outside and closed the door behind him.

Ten minutes later the first luncheon customer arrived and Louis hastened to wait upon him. It was Max Maikafer, salesman for Freesam, Mayer & Co., and he greeted Louis with the familiarity of six years'

daily acquaintance.

"_Nu_, Louis," he said, "what's the matter you are catching such a cold in your head?"

Louis only sniffled faintly in reply.

"A feller b.u.ms round till all hours of the night, understand me," Max continued, "and sooner or later, Louis, a lowlife--a _Shikkerer_--gives him a _Schlag_ on the top from the head, _verstehest du_, and he would got worser as a cold, Louis."

Louis received this admonition with a nod, since he was incapable of coherent speech.

"So, therefore, Louis," Max concluded, as he looked in a puzzled fashion at Louis' puffed eyelids, "you should bring me some _Kreploch_ soup and a little _gefullte Rinderbrust_, not too much gravy."

He watched Louis retire to the kitchen and then he motioned to Albert, who was industriously polishing the gla.s.ses at a nearby table.

"What's the matter with Louis, Albert?" he asked.

"Fired," Albert said out of the corner of his mouth, with one eye on the cashier's desk, where Mr. Trinkmann was fast approaching the borderline of insanity over a maze of figures representing the previous day's receipts.

"What for?" Max asked.

"I should know what for!" Albert exclaimed. "The boss is mad on account he got twins, so he picks on Louis that the ashtrays ain't clean and the forks, neither. So Louis he don't say nothing, and Trinkmann gets mad and fires him."

He glanced furtively at the cashier's desk just as Trinkmann suddenly tore up his paperful of figures, and in one frightened bound Albert was once more at his gla.s.s polishing.

"Well, Trinkmann," Max cried, as he made ready to absorb the soup by tucking one corner of his napkin into the top of his collar, "I must got to congradulate you."

Trinkmann was on his way to the kitchen for the purpose of abusing the pantryman as a measure of relief to his figure-harried brain. He paused at Max's table and distorted his face in what he conceived to be an amiable grin.

"No one compels you to congradulate me, Mr. Maikafer," he said, "and, anyhow, Mr. Maikafer, with business the way it is, understand me, twins ain't such _Simcha_, neither."

"Sure, I know," Max rejoined; "but so far as I could see, Trinkmann, you ain't got no kick coming. You do a good business here. You got three good waiters and the customers don't complain none."

"Don't they?" Trinkmann grunted.

"Not at the waiters, Trinkmann," Max said significantly. "And the food is all right, too, Trinkmann. The only thing is, Trinkmann, when a feller got a nice _gemutlicher_ place like you got it here, y'understand, he should do his bestest that he keeps it that way."

Trinkmann's smile became a trifle less forced at Max's use of the adjective _gemutlicher_, for which the English language has no just equivalent, since it at once combines the meanings of cozy, comfortable, good-natured, and homelike.

"Certainly, I am always trying to keep my place _gemutlich_, Mr.

Maikafer," Trinkmann declared, "but when you got waiters, Mr. Maikafer, which they----"

"Waiters ain't got nothing to do with it, Trinkmann," Max interrupted.

"On Sutter Avenue, Brownsville, in boom times already was a feller--still a good friend of mine--by the name Ringentaub, which runs a restaurant, Trinkmann, and everybody goes there on account he keeps a place which you could really say was _gemutlich_. The chairs was old-fashioned, _mit_ cane seats into 'em, which they sagged in the right place, so that if you was sitting down, y'understand, you _knew_ you was sitting down, not like some chairs which I seen it in restaurants, Trinkmann, which if you was sitting down, you might just as well be standing up for all the comfort you get out of it."