Surviving the Evacuation 17.5 No More News by Frank Tayell

Author:Frank Tayell [Tayell, Frank]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Butch
Published: 2020-05-02T03:00:00+00:00

The hotel didn’t have any empty rooms, but it did have an empty gym, which Pete was given, along with the promise of a few sheets and mattresses. But not even that was free. Money was worth no more in Thunder Bay than in Broken Hill, but the kitchen was understaffed, while the overworked cook, Renatta LeMouk, was handing out meals nearly as fast as they could be eaten.

“Two Michelin stars,” she muttered, as Pete scrubbed pans. “I had two Michelin stars and now I’m making tray-bake lasagne.”

And she was making a lot of it. Through the swing doors, as they opened for the empty trays to come in, the full to go out, Pete saw glimpses of the packed dining room. The tables were arranged in regimented lines, while a long line had formed by the door. An old man dressed in tails and a bow tie was acting as maître d’. As soon as someone finished, the old man ushered a new diner to their seat, prompting the finished soldier to stand and bus their plate to the long racks near the door. From there, an exhausted teenager with blaring headphones propped on her blonde-frosted hair, dragged the cart inside, and then loaded the dishwasher.

Her name was Christina, but Pete got that from the chef, not from the young woman who didn’t even bother asking Pete his name. As the chef was only interested in complaining and cooking, Pete concentrated on scrubbing the giant metal trays.

Though she was not in uniform, he got the impression that Christina, like him, had been drafted into this work. So too had the chef. LeMouk was another refugee who’d found safety and hoped for a hot meal. Having made the ill-advised comment that she could prepare a better meal than she’d been given, she’d been drafted into the kitchen. The maître d’ was actually the hotel’s owner, and was willing to talk, but the constant stream of customers kept him too busy to share more than a few words.

Those customers, or diners since no money exchanged hands, each wore a uniform. Not always Canadian, and not all were military. Some were in neatly pressed hunting gear, who must be retired and recalled locals. Others, wearing nondescript tactical gear, he pegged as Special Forces, but whose? From among them he caught snippets of conversation in English, Spanish, Arabic, and what he was reasonably certain was French. But there were other languages, too. Were these not-so-recent immigrants, vacationing foreign military personnel stranded in Canada, or had they been recently deployed as part of some co-ordinated effort?

“Hey, no! No dogs in here!” the chef said.

“Sorry,” Olivia said. “I was looking for him.”

“Well, he’s working,” LeMouk said. “You can work, too. But that can not come in here.”

“He’s a he, not a that,” Olivia said.

The exhausted mask Christina had been wearing fell from her eyes as she knelt by Rufus. “You’re a nice dog. A friendly dog. Like my dog.”

“And he can’t come in here. Not in a kitchen,” the chef called.

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