Seedling 25: Strange in Air
The minute i take care of my plants,
I stop... I render to them... now I'm with you. do you need some water? ...maybe minerals? is your pH okay today? shall I take off some of your leaves and brunches so you better take care of your flowers, fruits and my tomato soup? Do you like it better with the Marins Leaf cut Style that i forced on you? Or do you prefer that I leave your hippy look as it is? You are in my hands do I do you well or do I only think about my tomato conserves for the winter to come?! Do you like my anti mosquito's cologne? Does it disturb you from smiling your own older? Do I wear too much of it too much of it like a lawyer before a trial? I bet that you do like it when do mosquitoes go away with their Buzz, don't you? Like this you can listen to the cucumbers growing. They really grow fast while talking to each other. Noisy nosy creatures. Bragging in front of the quite and elegant royal purpul eggplant, His Highness monsieur AUBERGINE 🍆 …
Hannah looked up from the paper in her hands and gave Paulina a quizzical look.
‘I told him I liked to garden’.
Hannah sighed and folded the letter in half.
‘I’d say that qualifies as sexual harassment’.
I glanced slyly over at the two of them as I laced up my Skechers, pretty confident I knew the culprit. Since we no longer have an HR director, looked like this type of task was falling to Hannah. Just then Mike fobbed in with an ‘Afternoon Ladies’, discarded with little regard. This was his general demeanour when it came to Hannah. As far as Paulina, Mike would hardly care someone like her existed.
‘Oh, Paul, good, glad I caught you. I have a little issue. I’ve been waiting on a six-pack of 1995 Haut-Brion and the supplier says it was delivered, but Baz says he didn’t receive it in goods and I don’t have a signed delivery sheet’.
‘Shit, right…’
‘So, it’s a longshot, but could you go out to the building’s main mail room and do some snooping before service?’
‘Yeah, absolutely, no problem’.
You’d expect Mike’s face would betray some concern or worry, but instead he had that twinkle in his eye and a wry smile. Is this a British thing? Humour in chaos? I see the same with Renee. Well, with Omar, as well, to be fair. I can’t tell you how many full-tilt services I’ve been furrowed brow, nose to the grindstone, concentrating on every movement and task when one of those three will rocket past me saying ‘we’re going doooooowwwwnn!’, a gleeful melody singing from their lips.
I don’t work that way. I mean, I’m not the most serious guy in the world, but I don’t find it funny to fall down on the job.
I grabbed my apron and fob, passing the office and seeing the department heads sitting down to the weekly Ops Meeting.
For the post room, I knew enough to head downstairs and take a left instead of the hard right to prep kitchen and our wine cellars. However, I’d never been into the belly of this beast of a building. There was a long sloped cement hallway running the length of the wing. Several doors opened from it, but most were padlocked and had the dusty, small thresholds that suggested maintenance, storage, or transformer rooms. There were several discarded dollies up against the peeling painted walls and I peeked into one open door to ask a group of janitors, where the post room might be.
It was all the way to the end, out one more door(jammed open with an old keg)and across a small loading dock. To the left, the dock opened onto a massive interior courtyard separating the two wings of Sandown House and buzzing with activity. And at the nearest edge was Melody Williams anxiously dragging on a cigarette. Her back was to me, but even so, she seemed to be lacking her normal sunny disposition and energy. One foot was lifted and bent behind her, pressed up against the stone wall; and her shoulders curled slightly in.
Shouldn’t she be in the Ops Meeting?
A couple of construction workers snickered as they passed me - I was starting to forget how ridiculous my ‘uniform’ appeared outside the Seedling universe.
*
I did the extra flight up to the office, walking past the glass doors so Mike could see the six-pack of Haut-Brion and give me an enthusiastic ‘two thumbs up’, then headed back downstairs to the red cellar. I’d get this into temperature control, yes, but wasn’t going to break open the wooden case without Mike’s guidance on storage.
Oliver was skipping up the stairs with some bar supplies and gave me a wave. Then it was the once-surly, now-chummy American pastry chef.
‘How’s it going?’, she smiled, and fobbed into the second floor by the offices.
I hiked the six-pack higher on my shoulder and then the horror of the case crashing down, suddenly - two-thousand pounds bleeding all over the central stairwell - stopped me in my tracks. I pulled it off my shoulder and cradled it in front of my chest, fobbing into the prep kitchen and then heading straight through to the red cellar. When I fobbed in here, Cosmo was already inside, mopping the floor.
‘Hi Cosmo’.
‘Hello. What’s that?’
‘Some missing wine. ’95 Haut-Brion’. (I knew that would grab 1D’s attention).
‘1995??!! That’s before I was born!’
Jesus Christ…
‘Yeah, true. I hadn’t thought of that’.
I was wedging the case up into an empty space on the top of the Rhone section when I heard 1D sigh.
‘Oh no….’
‘What?’
Cosmo pointed to the floor.
‘Look. You’ve tracked flour all over my clean floor’.
I glanced down and it was true.
‘What the fuck is it with that prep kitchen? Chefs always have flour thrown everywhere’.
Cosmo dipped the mop heavily into his bucket.
‘It’s not chefs it’s mice. They chew through the paper sacks at night’.
‘For real?’
‘Yes, it is for real. Just they can’t get in the cellar because of the hermetic door’. Cosmo slapped the mop onto the cellar floor, leaving a miniature puddle. ‘Stand in this’.
I did as I was told. Then stepped out.
‘There, now you leave no tracks’.
‘Good thinking’.
‘Paul’.
‘Yeah?’
‘Are we the same rank?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean...’ Cosmo hesitated. ‘I guess I mean - you’re just a somm, too, right?’
My heart raced a little. I suppose I should have seen this coming considering some of the shifts we’d worked together. As Mike had instructed, I’d ‘taken control’ more than a few times. Granted, always on the side of 1D. Why wouldn’t I? He was as hard-working and genuine as they came. So, mixed in with my racing heart was a desire I avoided hurting this kid’s feelings.
‘Yeah, I’m just a somm, Cosmo. Why?’
‘Nothing. Guess just wondering’.
He seemed satisfied with this; relaxed. The question seemed to have been haunting him the way my age did the first day we’d met, and once he’d gotten off his chest, he returned to his normal sunny ways.
‘Oh, there was other thing, Paul. You know we have this somm meeting tomorrow, yes?’
‘Yes’.
‘Do you think we are in trouble?’
‘Why would we be in trouble?’
‘I don’t know. I was just wondering’.
The fan kicked on as the temperature gauge hit sixteen degrees. Too many bodies in the cellar.
‘Well, I don’t see any reason why we would be, Cosmo’. (and I didn’t)
‘OK. Just seems strange in air around here, nowadays’.
I paused. Something did seem ‘strange in air’ around Seedling these days, that was true.
‘Nah. No, I wouldn’t worry about it. I’m sure it’s nothing’.