Cecil and the Silver Dome
Cecil was down on the bottom shelf of the dessert cart, taking his sweet time with a spoonful of rice pudding. Outstanding. And he knew what he was talking about because he had spent his whole life getting himself into the best kitchens in the world. He would turn up on some ordinary day, stay as long as it took to learn the one thing that kitchen did right, and the minute he had it down, he packed up his things and went looking for another one. That year alone, he was up to 64 gourmet recipes, and he wasn’t bored one little bit. He nosed into everything and everybody. A kid eating his father’s flan while his father told the same story he always told. The prissy little thing who didn’t want tomato in her tomato salad. The couple fighting over the last piece of cake they had ordered to share. For Cecil, that was a hundred times better than the movies.
That Thursday, at a nice round table, there were five men in suits. One of them talked a whole lot louder than the other four. He had his phone out on the tablecloth, face up, turned toward the others so they could all get a good clear look. “Take a look at this.” The other four leaned in. “That right there is what my investment portfolio did this week. Five days.”
“Well, hey, that’s real good. I don’t have to work anymore if I don’t feel like it. This works for me. And while you boys are asleep, huh? I’m making money while you boys are asleep.”
He put his arm up to call her over, and the enormous watch he wore out over his cuff went sliding around his wrist. “Sweetheart, I want this salad with no dressing.”
Nora, who ran the whole floor by herself on Thursdays, took the salad away and came back with another one. “Sweetheart, dressing after all, but just a little.” She took it away again. She came back again. Six times he put that arm up in twenty minutes. “Please understand, I have other people, sir.”
“Let’s get something straight. I pay and you bring. Are we clear?”
The steak came. He looked at it for three seconds and pushed it away with the side of his hand. “Too rare.”
“You ordered it rare, sir.”
“And now I want it a different way. You see how easy that is?”
While the waitress went back and forth, he held court on what money can do. “That’s the thing about money,” he told the others. “You’ve got money, you can do whatever the heck you want.”
When the steak came back, he shoved the plate across the tablecloth at her. “You cut it for me. I’m tired today.” Nora stood there still, holding the plate in both hands. “See that? Today you’re my slave. Tomorrow we’ll see.” And he laughed at that all by himself for a few seconds. Then the other four laughed too, the way you laugh when you have to. Nora cut his meat.
For dessert, he did not order anything off the menu. “The chocolate mousse, no sugar, no dairy, and a little jar of salt on the side. And bring it to me covered.”
“Covered, sir?”
“Yeah, with that metal dome thing. There’s a lot of people in here breathing, and nobody breathes on my food. And you don’t take the lid off. I’ll take the lid off myself.”
Back in the kitchen, they set the dome over the plate and left it on the pass, ready to go out. Cecil came out of his hiding spot, steaming. He slipped into the kitchen, lifted the edge of the dome and got in there, right next to the chocolate, which, by the way, smelled incredible. He made the trip on Nora’s tray, riding along happy as could be, like a man in an elevator.
The plate landed on the round table. “I’ll take the lid off myself, sweetheart.” He lifted the dome without ever looking at the plate, because he was telling them about his investments again, and all four of them had better be looking at him. Nobody saw the Magikito come out from under that dome at a dead run. Cecil crossed the tablecloth in three strides, threw his arms around the phone, which to him was the size of a door, and went over the edge with it. Thump. Down on the carpet, he slid under the table and got to work.
Up above, things got loud. “My phone! Where’s my phone? It was right here, waitress!”
“Maybe you stuck it in your pocket.”
“How am I going to stick it in my pocket when it was sitting right in front of me?” He went through every pocket in his jacket and made the others empty theirs out, the waitress included. What Cecil did in those two minutes, nobody knows.
When they finally found it, the phone was on the floor next to the man’s chair. “Here it is,” said one of the men with him. He grabbed it furiously and put it back on the table, right beside his wineglass, face down this time, and locked. They went on talking about how many houses each of them had and about tomorrow’s round of golf.
The check came at quarter past ten. He took out an aluminum card case, popped it open with a click, and fished out a card with two fingers. He ran it through the reader. Declined.
“That machine of yours is broken.” He put it in again. Declined. He took out another one, a black one, and that one he held up for everybody to see before he put it in. Declined.
“All right, what the heck is going on here?” He picked up the phone, opened his bank app, and his mouth fell open. Fifty cents. That was his whole balance. Where there had been millions, there were now fifty measly cents. He turned red, real red.
One of the men cleared his throat. “Everything okay, Chad?” Chad didn’t say a peep. Nora waited on her feet with the card reader in hand. “Whenever you’re ready, sir.” The man stayed quiet, looking at the little screen on his phone. In the end, the others paid, and every one of them left without a word.
That night, Nora worked overtime helping with the cleanup. She locked up well after midnight and got on the bus to go home. Right about then, an alert came up on her phone. She counted the zeros three times, and she missed her stop. Nora had gone from barely making rent to an account with more zeros in it than she had ever seen in her life.
A few months later, she opened her own restaurant, twelve tables, and she only serves people who come in without a jacket and ask for things with a smile. Everybody who goes says the food is out of this world. So much so that since the day it opened, Cecil has not budged from that place. It is the happiest spot he has seen in his whole life.
