It was early in the summer in 2008, and I was a 23-year-old sommelier at a fancy restaurant in Houston, Texas. We were gearing up for a busy Saturday evening.

After lineup, I noticed my manager motioning for me to join him in the mezzanine above the dining room. He was waving his hand in short, urgent come-hither motions and inhaling rapidly, his eyes wide and crazy.

“What’s up, Kay?” I asked. But as I ascended the staircase, I became immediately aware of an unholy stench. It smelled, I imagine, like dead bodies decomposing in locked cars on a freeway, abandoned in a nameless cataclysm. My nostrils flared defensively, making it worse: the reek morphed into green, rotten slabs of meat, braising in a seafood restaurant’s summer dumpster juice. Then it became a warm island of wet shit, melting into an ocean of burning poison.

It was horrifying sensory data to ingest anywhere, but especially in a steakhouse, to a soundtrack of Frank Sinatra, among tables of pressed white linens and crystal stemware. To date, it is the clearest sense memory of death I possess. Panic started to tingle in the periphery of my brain, and I fought back the urge to puke on the carpet.

Through his teeth, Kay said, “A fucking raccoon died in the wall.” Even now, I don’t know how he knew it was a raccoon, but there was no time to wonder: the smell was fully compromising every table in the mezzanine. We had over 300 covers on the books, and if we didn’t seat the tables, the wait would grow interminably long. Impatient regulars would riot—they freak out when we don’t have Duckhorn Three Palms Merlot in stock, or when we forget to offer them a black napkin for their eveningwear. I fast-forwarded to an image of near-future me, getting screamed at by a pediatric surgeon who desperately needed a beefy, winey escape from his 16-hour workday spent bringing sick children back from the edge of death.

“It was horrifying sensory data to ingest anywhere, but especially in a steakhouse, to a soundtrack of Frank Sinatra, among tables of pressed white linens and crystal stemware.”

At this point in my life, I was definitely not fit to solve complex, bizzare problems like this one. Kay was using every muscle in his face to frown. He stared into the wall, looking beyond the drywall and support beams and—I really believe this—eyeing up the stupid, dead raccoon with the kind of astral-plane third eye that only a fully panicked restaurant manager has the power to summon. I felt the hate emanating from Kay towards our furry little Icarus, who had presumably chased a bug in our walls until his hubris cost him everything. Now it was our problem, and we didn’t have a drop of air freshener in the entire building.

Then it came to him. “GET ME A TRAY JACK!” he yelled as he flew down the stairs three at a time, bounding towards the kitchen.

With shaking hands I assembled the tray jack while Kay seized a portable propane burner. Based on the evidence so far, it seemed he was going to make tableside bananas foster. In the empty mezzanine. As an offering to our dead raccoon? I was completely lost. Meanwhile, dinner service was about to begin.

As a large party walked in, Kay did the thing that only seasoned hospitality professionals know how to do: turn off the pathway that transmits your emotions to your face, and pull on a mask of calm, collected sanity. “Welcome back, folks! Happy birthday!” His pace slowed just enough to imply that he was not proceeding directly towards an olfactory emergency.

We do this every day, by the way: something is always going horribly wrong, and we joyfully carry on our conversation about your fishing trip in the Ozarks while a bartender discreetly whispers that cobras are coming out of the toilets and the hand sinks are slowly filling with blood. I can think of few other industries that teach workers how to stare unflinchingly into the eyes of chaos without blinking.

“Something is always going horribly wrong, and we joyfully carry on our conversation about your fishing trip in the Ozarks while a bartender discreetly whispers that cobras are coming out of the toilets and the hand sinks are slowly filling with blood.”

Kay put his mise-en-place on the gueridon behind him and lit up the portable burner on top of the tray jack. Taking a few deep breaths to calm himself, he set the burner on high, and placed a non-stick pan on top of it.

“Kay, what the hell are you doing?” I asked.

Without answering, he took out a brick of butter, unwrapped it, and dropped it into the pan. It glided across the hot surface, beginning to bubble and brown.

“This is an old trick I learned from years of working in an Italian restaurant,” he said. He opened up a pint container to reveal the secret ingredient: finely chopped fresh garlic. The butter was now a pool, and he inverted the container into it.

“Works every time!”

I had several questions at this point, but the big ones were: what exactly is this a trick for? How could butter and garlic solve the problem of the dead raccoon’s stench? Do Italian joints disproportionately deal with animals crawling into their walls to die?

The garlic hit the pan and hissed violently.

It took one heartbeat for the golden-brown, buttery wave of hot umami to reach me, and envelope me in its oily embrace. For a moment, I felt transported to some idyllic past of safety and contentment, watching the Italian grandmother I never knew I had make me dinner. The perfume poured down the stairs and flowed across the dining room. I could almost see the mushroom cloud of pure flavor as it swept past each of the arriving guests.

“Here’s to you, long-dead trash panda: may you find all the unsecured dumpsters full of fresh produce, discarded by some wasteful line cooks in the sky.”

One by one, their conversations dwindled. They started looking around for the source of this aroma, but Kay was hidden from line of sight in the mezzanine. The music got louder; the lights got dimmer, but warmer. Any fake smiles transformed into genuine, crinkle-at-the-corner-of-the-eyes grins.

“Something smells amazing!” “Wow, I am starving.” “They’re cooking something tasty somewhere!”

Kay’s garlic hex seized the room, and—raccoons be damned—we momentarily transformed into a restaurant that was just that little bit better than normal. This was the smell of the 70-year-old maître d’ who remembers your name and knows to cue the bar to start shaking that massive dirty vodka martini just the way you like it. It was the smell of a little two-top being whisked out of nowhere so that you and your date could have a front-row seat to watch Ol’ Blue Eyes croon in a just-smoky-enough room. It smelled like the perfect union of people who wanted to be taken care of and people who wanted to take care of someone.

I wheeled back to Kay and took a deep breath. The raccoon’s corpse smell was gone—all that remained was our garlicky celebration of life.

“It’s working!” I yelped. “It works!”

Kay looked me in the eyes, grabbed the pan, and swiftly tossed the hot garlic in the air, never breaking eye contact. He smiled, soothed as the aroma rose up again to re-baste every guest.

“Every time,” he said.

Another beat elapsed. “So … what are you gonna do with all this garlic?” I asked.

“No fucking idea. Just stand here and enjoy it for a second longer.”

At that moment, I actually felt bad for hating the raccoon so much. As our pulses stabilized and our fists unclenched, we could see that the raccoon wasn’t out to ruin our lives. This was no kamikaze mission; it probably just saw something shiny and got stuck. I could relate—I’m grateful nobody builds traps with nice half-bottles of amontillado, or else I would be the one stinking up someone else’s Saturday night.

In the privacy of my own thoughts, I dedicated dinner service to the raccoon. Unbeknownst to them, everyone in the dining room was celebrating its wake. Here’s to you, long-dead trash panda: may you find all the unsecured dumpsters full of fresh produce, discarded by some wasteful line cooks in the sky. I ate a piece of rock lobster tail off of a dirty plate in your honor that night.

“We know how to do all kinds of things in service of your big night. But we have no idea how to survive, financially or emotionally, when our purpose has been taken by a necessary shutdown of our businesses.”

Today, as bars and restaurants around the country are shut down to avoid the spread of the coronavirus, I speak for my service-industry brethren when I say we’ve been fantasizing about even the weirdest, worst nights of service in our lives. We would give anything to be quadruple sat with no support. To watch a ticket printer screech out 18 feet of food tickets for a solid 90 seconds, all with dietary restrictions, poorly worded by weeded servers at the POS. All I want is to argue with someone about how absinthe does not actually make you hallucinate, a conversation I once tired of.

I think of the raccoon incident as one of the psychotic, unexpectedly joyful moments I miss, now that I’m unable to work the floor of Public Services or Penny Quarter. Fortunately I’ve grown a lot as an operator since the night of the garlic raccoon. I am a little more ready for the curveballs that come my way.

Right now, there are lots of service-industry professionals metaphorically frying garlic in the middle of this catastrophe. As one of them, allow me to confirm that global pandemics are not covered in standard hospitality training. We know how to do all kinds of things in service of your big night. But we have no idea how to survive, financially or emotionally, when our purpose has been taken by a necessary shutdown of our businesses.

If you feel like helping, there are several things you can do to support us.

1. SPEAK UP ON OUR BEHALF

Co-sign this letter asking Congress to amend the stimulus package so it is better equipped to help the many small bars and restaurants currently facing closures and financial devastation. Economic aid packages right now disproportionately serve industries that can afford lobbyists, and corporations that already have political clout. Please consider speaking up for yourself, or if you’re not in the industry, speak up for those of us who struggle to make our voices heard.

2. INVITE OTHERS TO SPEAK UP

Share these kinds of initiatives and petitions with other people on social media. Tell them during your now-frequent evening Zoom sessions. Spreading the word to others about the perilous state of the industry is an important part of this.

3. CONTINUE TO SUPPORT SMALL BARS, RESTAURANTS, AND RETAILERS

If you have the ability to purchase to-go or delivery items from the small businesses you used to frequent, KEEP DOING IT! Maybe they’re asking for donations for their staff in the event they cannot open at all: put something in their virtual tip jar if they’ve touched your life in a meaningful way.

4. TELL YOUR STORY

If you have a good story about a bar or restaurant, share it. Guests and staff are both currently deprived of the experience of dining and drinking out. Remind people why the industry matters emotionally (not just that it represents 15 million people, and a significant chunk of the U.S. economy).

5. FRY SOME GARLIC

It works. Every time.