The Vice of Self by Robert J Brunet (essential books to read txt) 📕

I sat in Jack’s small office above the kitchen listening to the cluttered noise coming through the open window over the courtyard of the old French Quarter restaurant. The air trickling in was filled with the smell of spicy roux and the sticky remnants of the morning rain that evaporated across the city of New Orleans like a clinging phantom from the surrounding marshes.
I could hear waiters nagging for food from cooks barking for tickets, and dishwashers banging pots and slamming plates while singing words no one understood. I knew from experience that somewhere in the middle of it all was a manager trying to control the chaos and I smiled, hoping that person would soon be me. I checked the armpits of my only dress shirt for stains and if they needed to be wiped dry when I heard Jack walk in through the door behind me.
“Lee, sorry to keep you waiting but I wanted to be at the door to greet the latest bus of gumbo frenzied tourists.”
He shook my hand with a strong grip and took a quick seat behind his desk. He may have been all confidence and smiles but I could see by the way his suit fit and the scuff marks on his shoes that life was not as good as he wished it would be.
“You’ve got quite a business going on in that dining room downstairs. Reminds me of old times, except now you’re the boss.”
The moment I said it I regretted showing my hand in eagerness. I laughed, but was distracted by the way he was staring at the papers in front of him and not at my face. When he did look up I knew it was from that place where people go when they get rid of their emotions and belief in loyalty to friends. I tried to pull him back by talking about the days when we worked together at the other restaurant.
“Remember all those sweaty people standing outside, all night long, just to eat a meal that was over so very fast, just to say they had been there? That’s because no one knew how to make people feel at home better than we did, right? I still have it in me, how to take care of people and I could bring in a heck of a business if I was your maitre d’ – “
“Lee, how are you feeling? There was a lot of talk going ‘round after you disappeared.”
“I left. There’s a big difference between deciding to go somewhere and just up and – “
“Nobody knew where you were. I talked to, still talk to people at the old place.”
“Yeah, people talk and run their mouths for things they don’t know anything about.”
I looked up at the water stains on the ceiling to keep the burning anger from tearing through my eyes. I wanted to ask him why he was doing this, acting superior to me. Instead, I took a breath to calm myself because I knew he needed answers, but was too good of a person to come out and ask the question.
“I wanted a break, that’s all. I needed to get away from the never ending need to accommodate the next guest, the special requests, the unhappy diner with the hair in her soup that was driving me – “
“– Into the arms of the devil?”
We sat there in the stuffy room brimming with the smell of tomatoes and burnt rice; the sounds of the world we were negotiating surrounded us. I felt the long streak of tickling sweat down the sides of my body and I realized this was a mistake. But just as I did, he came back from that place he was in and for a second I saw in his eye’s my old friend, the one who always told me the truth, even when it was not what I wanted to hear.
“How old are you Lee? I know you’re not fifty but you look it. This is a young man’s business. It’s hard work, double shifts and late nights, always on your feet.”
“You think I don’t know the restaurant business? This is what I’ve done my entire life.”
“And this is what it’s done to you. After it’s eaten you up, you come crawling back, begging to be let in again.”
I stood up and walked to the door without another word. There was a time when I was in charge of the hottest Creole restaurant in this town, and no one was going to accuse me of having to plead for a job. I stopped when he started talking again.
“I don’t do maitre d’s here Lee, and if I did it wouldn’t be you. All I have is a need for waiters who show up for work on time and serve a couple hundred people a day. I’m sorry, I got nothin’.”
I was facing the door with a sneer, wanting to leave with my dignity, but there was no way I would walk out without letting him know exactly what it took for me to walk in here today.
“Man, you got a job. I’m thirty nine years old and I’ve lost everything I’ve ever owned, I’m living with a nut job who writes his name all over the house and…I’m the one who has nothin’ Jack.”
I turned the doorknob, but paused. It was a move that paid off when he asked me to stop and listen.
“Look, you got black and whites? Can you show up on time Friday morning? If you can do that you can have a job, just don’t come in…don’t screw this up. All right?”
I turned around, my face filled with a smile I couldn’t control and tried to shake his hand, but he waved it off. I left the building small and humiliated, having to pan handle a job from someone I once fired for something I can no longer remember. But I had a job and that battle was won.

It was late summer and the light of day was thick and heavy. I walked the few blinding blocks from the restaurant to a bar on Toulouse Street where I knew the stale darkness would offer me shelter and a place to celebrate in peace.
I sat down and ordered a soda with double lime, the smell of burnt coffee and old cigarettes creating an incense around me in this temple of indulgence. I raised my glass, toasting my reflection in the mirror at the success of winning a position with Jack. The clicking echo of billiards in the back of the room and the snarling leer of an old man at the end of the bar were the only response to my lonely moment of victory.
This has always been one of my favorite places to hide in the middle of the day when your activities need to be sheltered from the people going to and fro in the Quarter. The old man looked familiar to me but when I looked around I did not recognize anyone else, and I wondered what had happened to the girl who worked here right before I left town. In my mind I can see her standing behind the bar, but I can’t conjure up her face and the cold stare from the woman refilling my empty glass assures me she is not the same person.
The last time I was here, the missing bartender bought me shots and we sat together drinking beer, talking about silly things that only matter when alcohol is involved. Later, she was either too kind or didn’t care that I was wearing an Italian suit which hadn’t been cleaned in weeks or that I was living in an apartment building filled with gutter punks and transients on Decatur Street.
The sex was fast and rough, and afterwards when I tried touching her hair she shot out of the bed leaving me lying there without the burden of exchanging glances or numbers. I raised my empty glass to the woman who no longer mattered and congratulated myself that her name remained unknown since it was easier than calling her up and telling her the truth.
I wiped my mouth with the sleeve of my shirt, ready to begin my walk to Canal Street so I could catch the street car home. I threw a couple of dollar bills on the bar, thinking my life seemed better already, looking around at how much worse it could be when I caught the eye of the old man shaking his head at me. I laughed, not bothered by someone who was there when I walked in and would be there long after I left.

The street car stopped at the corner of Melpomene and St. Charles Avenue, and I walked the half block towards the river to the house where I had been staying for the past few weeks. It was a double camelback with a waist-high wrought iron fence that was badly chipped and a gate that squeaked when opened. Across the parking lot next door was a bar that always looked empty but never seemed to close.
When I placed the key in the doorknob, I noticed the small green and black sign above the doorbell had been freshly painted.
“Please ring or knock twice, not more or less!”
I opened the door, stepping into a high-ceilinged room filled with photos and awards from my roommate’s many years as a police officer in the city. In the pictures he stood side-by-side and arm-in –arm with celebrities and politicians at parades, balls and football games. On each of the frames in the upper right hand corner was the name ‘Frank’ written on a small piece of white paper. Almost everything in the house was labeled like that, some including dates and times. The mantle was covered in awards and acknowledgments from his forty years of service and in the center of it all, mounted in a small silver frame, was his very first badge.
I met Frank when he was working in the Quarter. He would stop in the restaurant for coffee at the end of my night and the start of his beat. I used to enjoy standing at the end of the bar drinking frothy cappuccinos, which were my excuse for being wide awake and shaky at the end of a shift, and listen to him talk about how things used to be in the city.
He was older than me, with thinning grey hair, a mousy smile and tiny hands that I never thought were capable of being forceful, and this feeling that he would not threaten me was why I became such good friends with someone, who, if he had just searched my eyes or my pockets, would have thrown me in jail without hesitation.
I walked into the kitchen where he sat at the lime green table with the question balanced on the tip of his nose like a pair of reading glasses looking me over.
“I got it. I had to beg and crawl but I’ve got a job.”
Frank stood up and gave me a quick, crushing hug, and I knew that would be all the discussion to take place on the matter. He had never asked me about the last few