0568188_DCD32_david_nicholls_one_day
.pdfconference centres or striding up the steps of a private jet, and yet just this morning he had scooped a plug of yellow pork fat the size of a human head from the kitchen drains. With his bare hands. He could still feel the grease between his fingers. He was thirty-nine years old, and it wasn’t meant to be this way.
‘Basically, it’s your standard beef-stroke-chicken- stroke-pork burrito but with, and I quote, “delicious moist chunks of cod and salmon”. Who knows, they may even get a prawn or two.’
‘That’s just . . . awful,’ laughed Paddy from behind the bar, where he sat cutting limes into wedges for the necks of beer bottles.
‘Bringing a little touch of the North Atlantic to the cuisine of Latin America,’ said Emma Morley, tying on her waitress’s apron and noticing a new arrival appearing behind Scott, a large, sturdy man, fair curly hair on a large cylindrical head. The new boy. The staff watched him warily, weighing him up as if he were a new arrival on G- wing.
‘On a brighter note,’ said Scott, ‘I’d like to introduce you to Ian Whitehead, who will be joining our happy team of highly trained staff.’ Ian slapped his regulation baseball cap far back on his head and, raising an arm in salute, high-fived the air. ‘Yo, my people!’ he said, in what might have been an American accent.
‘Yo my people? Where does Scott find them?’ sniggered Paddy from behind the bar, his voice calibrated just loud enough for the new arrival to hear.
Scott slapped a palm on Ian’s shoulder, startling him:
‘So I’m going to hand you over to Emma, our longest serving member of staff!—’
Emma winced at the accolade, then smiled apologetically at the new boy, and he smiled back with his mouth closed tight; a Stan Laurel smile.
‘—She’ll show you the basics, and that’s it, everyone. Remember! Fish burritos! Now, music please!’
Paddy pressed play on the greasy tape deck behind the bar and the music began, a maddening forty-five minutes loop of synthetic mariachi music, beginning aptly enough with ‘La Cucaracha’, the cockroach, to be heard twelve times in an eight-hour shift. Twelve times a shift, twenty-four shifts a month, for seven months now. Emma looked down at the baseball cap in her hand. The restaurant logo, a cartoon donkey, peered up at her goggle-eyed from beneath his sombrero, drunk it would seem, or insane perhaps. She settled the cap on her head and slid off the bar stool as if lowering herself into icy water. The new guy was waiting for her, beaming, his fingertips jammed awkwardly into the pockets of his gleaming white jeans, and Emma wondered once again what exactly she was doing with her life.
Emma, Emma, Emma. How are you, Emma? And what are you doing right this second? We’re six hours ahead here in Bombay, so hopefully you’re still in bed with a Sunday morning hangover in which case WAKE UP! IT’S DEXTER!
This letter comes to you from a downtown Bombay hostel with scary mattresses and hot and cold running Australians. My guide book tells me that it has character i.e. rodents but my room also has a little plastic picnic table by the window
and it’s raining like crazy outside, harder even than in Edinburgh. It’s CHUCKING IT DOWN, Em, so loud that I can barely hear the compilation tape you made me which I like a lot incidentally except for that jangly indie stuff because after all I’m not some GIRL. I’ve been trying to read the books you gave me at Easter too, though I have to admit I’m finding Howards End quite heavy-going. It’s like they’ve been drinking the same cup of tea for two hundred pages, and I keep waiting for someone to pull a knife or an alien invasion or something, but that’s not going to happen is it? When will you stop trying to educate me, I wonder? Never I hope.
By the way, in case you hadn’t guessed from the Exquisite Prose and all the SHOUTING I’m writing this drunk, beers at lunch time! As you can tell I’m not a great letter writer not like you (your last letter was so funny) but all I will say is that India is incredible. It turns out that being banned from Teaching English as a Foreign Language was the best thing that ever happened to me (though I still think they overreacted. Morally Unfit? Me? Tove was twenty-one). I won’t bore you with all that sunrise over the Hindu-kesh prose except to say that all the clichés are true (poverty, tummy upsets blah blah blah). Not only is it a rich and ancient civilization but you wouldn’t 
what you can get in the chemists without a prescription.
So I’ve seen some amazing things and while it’s not always fun it is an Experience and I’ve taken thousands of photographs which I will show you very very slooooooowly when I get back. Pretend to be interested, won’t you? After all I pretended to be interested when you banged on about the Poll Tax Riots. Anyway, I showed some of my photos to this TV producer who I met on a train the other day, a woman (not what you think, old, mid-thirties) and she said I could be a professional. She was here producing a sort of young people’s TV travel show thing and she gave me her card and told me to call her in August when they’re back again, so who knows
maybe I’ll do some researching or filming even.
What’s happening with you work-wise? Are you doing another play? I really, really enjoyed your Virginia-Woolf- Emily-whatsername play when I was in London, and like I said I think it showed loads of promise which sounds like bullshit but isn’t. I think you’re right to give up acting though, not because you’re not good but because you so obviously hate it. Candy was nice too, much nicer than you made out. Send her my love. Are you doing another play? Are you still in that box room? Does the flat still smell of fried onions? Is Tilly Killick still soaking her big grey bras in the washing-up bowl? Are you still at Mucho Loco or whatever it’s called? Your last letter made me laugh so much, Em, but you should still get out of there because while it’s good for gags it’s definitely bad for your soul. You can’t throw years of your life away because it makes a funny anecdote.
Which brings me to my reason for writing to you. Are you ready? You might want to sit down . . .
‘So, Ian – welcome to the graveyard of ambition!’
Emma pushed open the staffroom door, immediately knocking over a pint glass on the floor, last night’s fags suspended in lager. The official tour had brought them to the small, dank staffroom which overlooked the Kentish Town Road, packed already with students and tourists on their way to Camden Market to buy large furry top hats and smiley face t-shirts.
‘Loco Caliente means Crazy Hot; “Hot” because the air-conditioning doesn’t work, “crazy” because that’s what you’d have to be to eat here. Or work here, come to that. Mucho mucho loco. I’ll show you where to put your stuff.’
Together they kicked through the mulch of last week’s newspapers to the battered old office cabinet. ‘This is your locker. It doesn’t lock. Don’t be tempted to leave your uniform here overnight either because someone’ll nick it, God knows why. Management flip if you lose your baseball cap. They drown you face down in a vat of tangy barbecue relish—’
Ian laughed, a hearty, slightly forced chortle, and Emma sighed and turned to the staff dining table, still covered with last night’s dirty plates. ‘Lunch hours are twenty minutes and you can have anything from the menu except the jumbo prawns, which I believe is what’s known as a blessing in disguise. If you value life, don’t touch the jumbo prawns. It’s like Russian Roulette, one in six’ll kill you.’ She began to clear the table.
‘Here, let me—’ said Ian, gingerly picking up a meatily smeared plate with the tips of his fingers. New boy – still squeamish, thought Emma, watching him. He had a pleasant, large open face beneath the loose strawcoloured curls, smooth ruddy cheeks and a mouth that hung open in repose. Not exactly handsome, but, well – sturdy. For some reason, not entirely kind, it was a face that made her think of tractors.
Suddenly he met her gaze and she blurted out: ‘So tell me, Ian, what brings you down Mexico Way.’
‘Oh, you know. Got to pay the rent.’
‘And there’s nothing else you can do? You can’t temp, or live with your parents or something?’
‘I need to be in London, I need flexible hours . . .’ ‘Why, what’s your stroke?’
‘My what?’
‘Your stroke. Everyone who works here has a stroke. Waiter-stroke-artist, waiter-stroke-actor. Paddy the bartender claims to be a model, but frankly I’m doubtful.’
‘Weeeeeell,’ said Ian, in what she took to be a Northern accent, ‘I suppose I’d have to say that I’m a comedian!’ Grinning, he splayed his hands either side of his face and gave them an end-of-pier waggle.
‘Right. Well, we all like to laugh. What, like a stand-up or something?’
‘Stand-up mainly. What about you?’ ‘Me?’
‘Your stroke? What else do you do?’
She thought about saying ‘playwright’ but even after three months the humiliation of being Emily Dickinson to an empty room still burned bright. She might as well say ‘astronaut’ as ‘playwright’, there was as much truth in it. ‘Oh, I do this—’ She peeled an old burrito from its carapace of hardened cheese. ‘This is what I do.’
‘And do you like it?’
‘Like it? I love it! I mean I’m not made of wood.’ She wiped the day-old ketchup onto a used napkin and headed for the door. ‘Now, let me show you the toilets. Brace yourself . . .’
Since I started this letter I’ve drank (drunken? dronk?) two more beers and so am ready to say this now. Here goes. Em, we’ve known each other five or six years now, but two years properly, as, you know, ‘friends’, which isn’t that long but I think I know a bit about you and I think I know what your problem is. And be aware that I have a lowish 2.2 in
Anthropology, so I know what I’m talking about. If you don’t want to know my theory, stop reading now.
Good. Here it is. I think you’re scared of being happy, Emma. I think you think that the natural way of things is for your life to be grim and grey and dour and to hate your job, hate where you live, not to have success or money or God forbid a boyfriend (and a quick discersion here – that whole self-deprecating thing about being unattractive is getting pretty boring I can tell you). In fact I’ll go further and say that I think you actually get a kick out of being disappointed and under-achieving, because it’s easier, isn’t it? Failure and unhappiness is easier because you can make a joke out of it. Is this annoying you? I bet it is. Well I’ve only just started.
Em, I hate thinking of you sitting in that awful flat with the weird smells and noises and the overhead lightbulbs or sat in that launderette, and by the way there’s no reason in this day and age why you should be using a launderette, there’s nothing cool or political about launderettes it’s just depressing. I don’t know, Em, you’re young, you’re practically a genius, and yet your idea of a good time is to treat yourself to a service wash. Well I think you deserve more. You are smart and funny and kind (too kind if you ask me) and by far the cleverest person I know. And (am drinking more beer here – deep breath) you are also a Very Attractive Woman. And (more beer) yes I do mean ‘sexy’ as well, though I feel a bit sick writing it down. Well I’m not going to scribble it out because it’s politically incorrect to call someone ‘sexy’ because it is also TRUE. You’re gorgeous, you old hag, and if I could give you just one gift ever for the rest of your life it would be this. Confidence. It would be the gift of Confidence. Either that or a scented candle.
I know from your letters and from seeing you after your play that you feel a little bit lost right now about what to do with your life, a bit rudderless and oarless and aimless but that’s okay that’s alright because we’re all meant to be like
that at twenty-four. In fact our whole generation is like that. I read an article about it, it’s because we never fought in a war or watched too much television or something. Anyway, the only people with oars and rudders and aims are dreary bores and squares and careerists like Tilly-bloody-Killick or Callum O’Neill and his refurbished computers. I certainly don’t have a master plan I know you think I’ve got it all sorted out but I haven’t I worry too I just don’t worry about the dole and housing benefit and the future of the Labour Party and where I’m going to be in twenty years’ time and how Mr Mandela is adjusting to freedom.
So time for another breather before the next paragraph because I’ve barely got started. This letter builds to a lifechanging climax. I wonder if you’re ready for it yet.
Somewhere between the staff toilets and the kitchen, Ian Whitehead slipped into his stand-up act.
‘Have you ever been in, like, a supermarket, and you’re in the six items or less queue, and there’s an old lady in front of you, and she’s got, like seven items? And you stand there counting them, and you’re like, soooo angry . . .’
‘Ay caramba,’ mumbled Emma under her breath before kicking open the swing doors to the kitchen where they were met by a wall of hot air that stung their eyes, acrid and infused with jalapeno peppers and warm bleach. Loud acid house played on the battered radio cassette as a Somalian, an Algerian and a Brazilian prised the lids off white plastic catering tubs.
‘Morning, Benoit, Kemal. Hiya, Jesus,’ said Emma cheerfully and they smiled and nodded cheerfully back. Emma and Ian crossed to a noticeboard where she
pointed out a laminated sign that showed what to do if someone choked on their food, ‘as well they might’. Next to this was pinned a large document, ragged at the edges, a parchment map of the Texas–Mexico border. Emma tapped it with her finger.
‘This thing that looks like a treasure map? Well don’t get your hopes up, because it’s just the menu. No gold here, compadre, just forty-eight items, all the different permutations of your five key Tex-Mex food groups – minced beef and beans, cheese, chicken and guacamole.’ She traced her finger across the map. ‘So, moving east–west, we’ve got chicken on beans under cheese, cheese on top of chicken under guacamole, guacamole on top of mince on top of chicken under cheese . . .’
‘Right, I see . . .’
‘ . . . occasionally for the thrill of it we’ll throw some rice or a raw onion in, but where it gets really exciting is what you put it in. It’s all to do with wheat or corn.’
‘Wheat or corn, right . . .’
‘Tacos are corn, burritos are wheat. Basically if it shatters and burns your hand it’s a taco, if it flops around and leaks red lard down your arm it’s a burrito. Here’s one—’ She pulled a soft pancake from a catering pack of fifty and dangled it like a wet flannel. ‘That’s a burrito. Fill it, deep fry it, melt cheese on it, it’s an enchilada. A tortilla that’s been filled is a taco and a burrito that you fill yourself is a fajita.’
‘So what’s a tostada?’
‘We’ll get to that. Don’t run before you can walk. Fajitas
come on these red-hot iron platters.’ She hefted a greasy ridged-iron pan, like something from a blacksmith’s. ‘Careful with these, you wouldn’t believe how many times we’ve had to peel a customer off these things. Then they don’t tip.’ Ian was staring at her now, grinning goofily. She drew attention to the bucket at her feet. ‘This white stuff here is sour cream, except it’s not sour, it’s not cream, just some sort of hydrogenated fat, I think. It’s what’s left over when they make petrol. Handy if the heel comes off your shoe, but apart from that . . .’
‘I have a question for you.’ ‘Go on then.’
‘What are you doing after work?’
Benoit, Jesus and Kemal all stopped what they were doing as Emma readjusted her face and laughed. ‘You don’t hang about, do you, Ian?’
He had taken his cap off now, and was turning it in his hand, a stage suitor. ‘Not a date or anything, you’ve probably got a boyfriend anyway!’ A moment, while he waited for a response, but Emma’s face didn’t move. ‘I just thought you might be interested in my—’ in a nasal voice ‘—unique comedy stylings, that’s all. I’m doing a—’ finger apostrophes ‘—“gig” tonight, at Chortles at the Frog and Parrot in Cockfosters.’
‘Chortles?’
‘In Cockfosters. It’s Zone 3 which seems like Mars I know on a Sunday night, but even if I’m shit there are still some other really top notch comics there. Ronny Butcher, Steve Sheldon, the Kamikaze Twins—’ As he spoke Emma became aware of his real accent, a slight, pleasant