The weekend passed, the owner's in a foul mood.
A menacing, non-speaking calm, he's not talking to anybody but the customers, this I can bear. It's better than the outbursts and tantrums.
It breaks on Monday. G, helping him with the car, breaks a tiny piece off a weathered ancient plastic level in the radiator, and the owner flips. Completely. Off his nut, one-hundred percent derailed, outside it's a beautiful spring evening and I'm hoping that perhaps tonight will be the night.
The night passes. Not tonight.
Tuesday he seems to have gotten it out of his system, but spends long hours with regulars in the back room - "trouble at home" I hear him confiding, and while we all guessed it must be bad if he's confessing.
Generally his approach is to accost the customers with pictures of his beloved wife and children, all and sundry get treated to stories of how wonderful she is, this alone for me has always been a cause for suspicion. It's reaction formation, the same underlying psychological process that sees whores describing their great romantic ideals, every rogue protesting his honor, it's the mechanism wherein the owner is denying that this marriage, like the others before it, is in deep trouble.
Of course it's in deep trouble, so seldom is he ever home, and he finds every possible excuse to stay late at the restaurant, talking with customers who would have on their own long since left. It's in trouble because he's never there, because of his temper, because - quite possibly, of the abundant cameras with which his wife can watch him watching us, there are so many reasons it's in trouble I can't think of a single reason it wouldn't be. Well, one, but that gold card and unlimited shopping can only have so much appeal, probably it's been exhausted and she's looking for more.
The nephew, nothing new there of note, on a lunch break he went home to discover his condo surrounded by a SWAT team, they were there for a neighbor, he filmed it, later regretting he didn't ask them to get his picture taken with them.
And M, not drunk but forever with the rheumy eyes of a bad hangover, I've plans to dress him up as a leprechaun for St. Patrick's day. He'd be a perfect leprechaun.
Days pass...