The Forsaken

Personal Yummy #39

The entrance in the back of The Grill sees a lot of action. It is through this gateway that the men of Sysco deliver all of the restaurant’s essentials.

While working, we employees often have to watch out for overstuffed boxes and crates full of heads of lettuce and various vegetables (you can every once in a while see a radish or a carrot peeking out), large, plastic containers of dressing (Russian, French, raspberry vinaigrette, pepper parmesan, chunky blue cheese, buttermilk ranch), and large, glass jars of Boar’s Head pickles making their way through the tiny, crowded kitchen, down the worn, cracked, wooden steps, past Bobby’s small, paper-ridden, photograph-laden, and newspaper article–covered office, and across the hot, stuffy basement to the walk-in cooler.

Of course, this secluded doorway isn’t nearly as aesthetic as the front entryway: The road along it isn’t paved (which can be quite muddy when it is raining, and really slippery when it is icy), many garbage cans are located on either side of it, and there is a short concrete wall facing it (behind which a row of thick, tall bushes live, obstructing any kind of view). We employees can take a load off and relax on this wall (and escape from the customers!) when we desire a few minutes of peace and quiet or a breath of fresh air (if you can call the air fresh)—or a cigarette (Shane and Diana sit together out there in the twenty-degree weather, no coats on but the orange tips of their cigarettes giving away their presence in the darkness, and their puffing and the rising smoke providing some warmth, making them forget about shivering). But despite the cigarette butts lying here and there, the garbage cans (and their occasional nasty odor), and the inconvenient mud and ice, I feel special to know about this private entrance and experience a surge of pride as I enter The Grill this way, like a royal member of the court.

That’s not the end of it, though. You know what really interests me and makes me think as I stand in this doorway or pass in and out of it? It’s what it allows me to see next door. Not more than a few feet away, in fact, is the Squirrel Hill Flower Shop. As would be expected, the area outside its back entrance is also used as a garbage-storing area. The flower shop’s garbage isn’t always garbage, however. Over and over again, I witness boxes upon boxes overflowing with bundles of flowers, sometimes red roses, other times yellow and orange tulips, still other times orchids, apparently tossed because they were no longer in “perfect” selling condition. Sure, there are instances when the flowers are completely dead or dried up, but most of the time they are a tad bit wilted and the edges are just beginning to turn brown, but they are still pretty, and valuable—definitely good enough for my dorm room.

Obviously Mary Ellen feels the same way. Every once in a while I’ll walk through the back entrance and she’ll be standing there working, a glass vase beside her containing a white daisy or a pink carnation, keeping her company.

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The above excerpt is from my coming-of-age novel—The Grill on Murray Avenue—about the inhabitants of an unassuming bar-and-grill in Squirrel Hill, a vibrant neighborhood in the east end of Pittsburgh. The story is told by Jenna, a young waitress who dreams of becoming a professional dancer.