O-Town: Chapter 4
Chapter 4: The Dinner Part 1
“I’ll forgive you today because of the weather,” said Moe, following Renata through the kitchen and into the backroom where employees had small lockers and a grungy bathroom to themselves.
“I am so sorry. I fell asleep at Flora’s.”
“Still having nightmares then?”
Moe slouched against the doorframe while Renata opened her locker and tried to dry herself off. Moe was a good sloucher. Tall and lanky, with a tastefully dishevelled black mop of hair, he eased his way into everyone’s hearts without them even realizing it. This evening he was wearing a crisp white collared shirt underneath a tailored black jacket with tails. Renata felt a pang of jealousy at how dapper he looked. Clearly Duncan had picked this head server uniform out special to impress this evening’s VIPs. No such finery for the women though. Renata’s usual black skin-tight nylon dress hung limply inside her locker. Plunging necklines were suitable for all The Orange Club’s diners.
“You know, I have a med school hook up if you need some sleeping pills,” said Moe, following her out of the locker room into the kitchen. Renata ignored the question and looked at the evening’s menu stuck on the staff cork board. The menu at the Orange Club rarely strayed beyond standard French and Italian fare. This evening was no different. Gougères, Cucumber mint salad, Lambchops in cream sauce, and—
“Ooh Raul has a new coconut cream pie? Do we get to try it?”
Moe offered no answer. There was a shout in the kitchen. Usually the kitchen was an homage to the gods of food preparation, with the staff concentrating at their stations like priests in front of their idols. The stainless-steel space was usually immaculate. Once a month the whole staff cleaned the grout of the light blue tile walls and slate floor.
The two waitstaff peered around the wall to see Yves talking intensely to a circle of five junior chefs, interrupting himself with occasional bellows to three new station chefs frantically finishing a peach and saffron salad and grilling thick caribou steaks. Raul, meanwhile, was barking at two new busboys about where the silverware went. One of them dropped a handful of knives. The metallic clatter puncturing the rising frenzy of voices.
“Great now you have to wash those again—let’s go,” said Raul.
“Did Duncan hire more staff?” asked Renata, turning back to the cork board. No wonder Yves was pissed, the chefs must have gotten the wrong menu?
“Just for tonight—hey,” Moe turned Renata to face him. “You are a really hard worker. But you’ve fallen asleep twice on shift here too. Do you need help? My guy takes blood, if it’s a money thing.”
Renata looked down, her cheeks reddening. First Sandra, now this.
“I just quit my other job so I can focus on this one. And I’m good, really, I actually find that new seltzer O-Town helps me sleep usually, it just hasn’t been as good lately—”
“Jesus you should not be drinking that shit,” Moe looked at her in astonishment. “Have I not told about it?”
“Okay mes enfants gather up, it’s a big one tonight, so shut up and pay attention.”
“We are not finished,” Moe whispered.
Everyone gathered around Yves. The Orange Club’s head chef was perpetually scrunching a checked handkerchief in his left hand, at the ready to mop sweat off his wide forehead and long roman nose. His brown hair was kept from his face with a faded red bandanna. This evening, he looked sweatier than usual. His whites were already grimy from the smoke and the splatters from various courses.
“It’s two services tonight, same party. Eight in the private room, twelve at our regular tables.
“No doubt where the underlings will be,” muttered Moe.
Yves gave Moe a warning look before continuing.
“For the regulars, it’s what you saw on the board. For the private room, we’ve been given a menu.”
Murmurs rippled through the group. Blake and Raul, standing behind Yves were wearing barely concealed frowns of annoyance.
Yves clapped his hands.
“We’ve been told the guests have particular tastes, we don’t get paid to argue.”
“So, who is it then?” asked Lucy.
Yves took out a many-folded piece of paper from his breast pocket.
“I’m sure you’ve all heard the news. The Bolivian President is in town. It’ll be him, the PM, along with Pitty, President of CAPP, President of the Mining Association of Canada, some Postmedia guy, MP for Ottawa West-Nepean and…the mayor.”
Moe gaped at Yves.
“What is going on. This is not your average head of state wine-and-dine.”
“Please let’s try not to speculate, okay? I don’t need you making any self-incriminating comments within my earshot, thank you.”
Moe just smiled impishly. He and Yves had been hooking up for months now. Yves probably knew more about the inner workings of Canadian politics than a House of Commons bathroom attendant.
“One more thing—sorry Julie, they’re bringing their own wine.”
“Are you serious?” cried Julie. “What am I even doing here?”
“We need you for service.”
“Does Duncan know? He’s going to have an absolute shit fit.”
“This keeps getting better and better,” said Moe with unrepentant glee.
Renata nudged him in the ribs to keep quiet. The whole evening was too ripe for radical mischief. Back in their locker room, Moe, Lucy and Jude were already scheming in front of the floor length mirror about how best to hide microphones in their uniforms. A party with this many high-powered guests meant at the very least a big trade deal was underway. The old Renata would be plotting along with them, warning the President of Bolivia about her country’s tendency for exploitative pipeline deals and lax environmental regulations via messages written in his peas. This thought was followed by an anxious squirm in her belly. She shouldn’t get involved. Bad things would happen. But her mind kept churning out inane sabotage plans that would embarrass the PM and, if possible, end the stranglehold oil, gas and mining had on the country’s political elite. Not a huge challenge for a veteran activist, right?
There was half an O-Town in her locker. Renata let out a sigh of relief. It always quieted her mind. She grabbed it, closed the door and took a swig.
“Oh no you don’t,” said Moe, yanking it from her hand before she could get any of the sugary liquid past her lips.
“I need you focused tonight. I’m starting to see why you’re so moony all the time.”
Moe then closed the door to the locker room so none of the kitchen staff could hear.
“I’ll pay double what Dennis is paying your tonight to be my Handshake sources. There is a story brewing here, I can’t afford to miss anything.”
“You won’t boss,” said Lucy.
Jude nodded in agreement while slicking her hair back into a tight ballerina bun.
“C’mon Ren, what do you say? Some fun journalistic espionage?”
“What happens if I say no?”
Moe shrugged.
“I’ll ask you what you heard anyway. I might just be a bit more annoying about it. You know, get out the thumbscrews,” he winked.
“Fine. But I’m taking you all down with me if I get caught.”
“That’s the spirit,” he said, rolling his eyes.
“Elevator!” yelled Blake from the kitchen.
“Showtime,” sang Moe, giving himself a final once over before heading out the door.
Renata followed behind the others, heart racing. It’s just a dinner, like all the others she’d served in the last three months, she thought. Nothing to worry about.
Interlude: A party, six months earlier
Even though it’s 30 degrees, the scant trees that have survived downtown Ottawa’s increasingly torched summers are beginning to lose their leaves in deference to the turn towards autumn. There is a faint breeze that might imply a visit from the polar vortex in the coming months, but for Renata, it is merely a welcome participant in the celebrations she and at least a hundred others are having on the somehow still-lush lawn of Major’s Hill Park. The park, daubed with flower beds and lined with oaks and honey locusts, offers wide patches of grass for laying out a blanket and gazing down the park’s gentle sloping hills at the National Art Gallery’s prismatic glass spire, at the Alexandria bridge and the Ottawa river beyond.
It’s been a brutal summer punctuated by torrential rain and wildfire smoke—a year-round phenomenon these days. Smoke is currently obliterating the otherwise sumptuous view of the Gatineau hills and Museum of History across the river. The river itself is so low you can see old tires and sunk kayaks on the mucky riverbed. No matter how much rain they might get this winter, it won’t be enough to replenish the region’s watershed.
The revellers in the park see these grave problems as surmountable challenges to tackle tomorrow. Because today they have bent the federal government to their will. For, instead of selling five office towers-cum-affordable apartment buildings to for-profit landlords, the government has acquiesced to the apartment dwellers’ demands and agreed to convert the buildings into a land trust, run by and for residents.
It took every tactic the organizing team knew to get the agreement in place for what were now known as The Lauriers, along with some they had to invent on the fly over five long, exhausting years. They occupied MP and NCC offices, spammed property management companies, aggressively lobbied Ministers and shadow Ministers, canvassed renters at their other buildings, recruited whistleblowers, cultivated relationships with every media outlet in the country, partnered with Acorn and every other local organization they could think of, and even recruited rural supporters thanks to an anti-developer and solidarity campaign. Their coup came via a Prime Ministerial press conference.
Touting deep-sea mining as important for Canada’s national unity in Iqaluit, the PM stood in front of his usual scrum of journalists and smiled when he saw five children at the front of the group, with serious faces and large microphones. Thinking they were local young people eager to work as oceanic miners and destroy the ecosystems that supported their way of life, he invited them to ask their question first.
“Why do you want to kick us out of our home?” they asked.
The PM frowned. He asked them to clarify, at which point, all five yelled in unison:
“We flew 3,000 kilometres to ask why you won’t give The Lauriers to the people who live there!”
The moment went viral, catalyzing all the hard work that had been done up to that point. The organizers vowed to follow the PM wherever he went and ask the same question. A month later, here they are, on the eve of signing the transfer of ownership agreement.
It is the best thing Renata has ever done.
And she’s done a lot. Along with her anarchist cycling collective and radical accountant club, Renata has helped take over Ottawa roads from cars, revealed the financial misdeeds of oil and gas companies and politicians, run away from the police countless times for spray-painting graffiti on office buildings and holding outdoor fundraising concerts for Anishinaabe Algonquin land back legal battles. Currently, Renata is scheming with several electrical engineers to create five micro-grids in various parts of town, owned and operated by their respective neighbourhoods. She is angry about a lot of things in Ottawa, but these only inspire her next action. The people are good, the potential is there. See Renata greet everyone who passes her by in the park with a smile and a question about their family, work, art project or pet.
Renata dreams of mobile repair cafes and clothing libraries and third spaces and locally managed tiny forests.
Today she wears a neon yellow tank top with “The Lauriers” screen-printed across it. Her hair sways in the breeze. She is lying back, enjoying the dancing of delicate and yellowing fronds of a honey locust above her, and listening to her companions discuss rooftop gardens and a daycare centre for The Lauriers. Sandra has joined this particular cluster of revellers, Renata’s neighbour at 269 Laurier. Sandra sits alongside the twenty members of the organizing committee, cozying up to Akunna, the logistics captain, who has not been subtle in extolling the virtues of women who fit Sandra’s description with pointed accuracy.
There is a communications captain, a volunteer captain, fundraising captain, morale captain, and a dozen other invaluable organizers who ensured their campaign’s success, cheerleading their membership and reassuring them that their action had purpose. Renata is the Chair of the organizing committee. Basically the people-wrangler and big-picture minder. She would be relinquishing her position tomorrow after the signing, in their first Land Trust management roundtable. After that, new battles to fight, though perhaps a vacation first.
Music and alcohol weave through the party. Children play tag and get their faces painted. The night ends with a ceremony of honour for the five kids and their parents, who made the difference, got them over the edge. They are given new toys carved and knitted by fellow Laurier residents. The parents receive vouchers for the Ottawa Tool Library, so they can learn to renovate their apartments however they want, now that they own them. At eleven p.m., when the sun has completely set, the party disperses.
Renata walks home arm-in-arm with Gersh, the committee’s memory. When he is not taking notes at committee meetings, Gersh is interviewing tenants, urban planners, historians, councillors and long-time organizers, so he can write the definitive history of The Laurier’s for posterity. Everything they learned along the way would be shared with future organizers, to be kept in the Ottawa Radical Library—not yet born, but vividly imagined.
Gersh is a quiet, bookish man, with a painter’s hands and eyes that brim with ironic humour only the truly attentive can grasp. He is Renata’s ideal counterpart. They have only been dating for a month, but Renata’s been in love since their first organizing meeting.
We find them by following the bright lodestars that are their dreams for Ottawa. So powerful, so strongly held, they shone across dimensions to catch our attention. We moved toward them like moths to porch light.
In our recollections, dreams like these are typically crushed under the exhausting weight of small-minded politics and bureaucratic risk-aversion. But today, dreams might become part of Ottawa’s fabric. We love returning to this moment, so heavy with possibility and triumph. It is worth returning to, despite what comes next.