Authors: Cherry Cheva
She's So Money
For my family
content
“Maya! What are you doing?” my mom yelled in Thai from
her usual spot up front by the cash register. “Table Five needs water! Clear Table Eight and ask if they want dessert! Your ponytail is falling out! I need the bill for Table Six!” She paused, then beckoned me over to her as she lowered her voice to a whisper. “Look at Table Fourteen. The man keeps wiping his fingers on his sock.” I glanced toward one of the tables in the back corner, giggled briefly with my mom at the sight of one of our customers picking apart a chicken wing and then reaching for his ankle instead of his napkin, and then steeled myself to ask her if I could leave work at eight. Half of the kids in my Advanced Placement History class were at a study group session that my best friend, Sarah, was having at her house, and, like any self respecting seventeen-year-old waitress whose first priority was school, I was desperate to get there for at least part of it.
“Mom?” I asked. She looked up from her accounting book, her ballpoint pen hovering as it paused halfway through scrawling a row of numbers. “Do you think it would be okay if—”
I didn’t get to finish, because the phone rang and she turned to pick it up—“Good evening, Pailin Thai Cuisine”— just as a customer started frantically waving at me from across the room. The guy was sitting in my younger brother’s section, but Nat had either gone to the kitchen or disappeared into thin air, so I went over and looked at the guy’s glass. There were a few dregs of Thai iced coffee still left in it.
“Can I get a refill?” the guy asked.
Nope
, I thought to myself. The last time my parents caught me giving free refills on specialty drinks, they yelled at me for half an hour about how I might as well give away entrées, silverware, our Pad Thai recipe, and my virginity.
Of course, I wasn’t going to tell the guy that, so instead I smiled cheerfully and fed him the usual line. “I’m sorry, we don’t do refills on iced coffee, but if you’d like to order another—”
“Oh, come on,” he interrupted, staring up at me expectantly. “Be a pal.”
On a day when I was in a good mood, an extremely cute boy might have had a fighting chance. But this guy was old, with a forehead that was more of a
five
head. Maybe even a sixhead, considering his receding hairline. I summoned up a soothing voice and said as nicely as I could, “I’m sorry. But if you want to order another—”
“Forget it,” he snapped. “Two fifty is overpriced anyway.” He glared at me, then looked back down and dug into his half eaten curried catfish as his wife gave me an embarrassed smile. I smiled back with an expression that I hoped said, “I understand,” and not, “Your husband’s a douche,” then retreated to my own section by the front window. For a moment I stared blankly out through the gauzy white curtains into the darkness, where the late February snow was having trouble deciding whether to melt or refreeze. There were still some long overdue to be taken down Christmas lights hanging on the little sidewalk tree in front of the crafts shop across the street, and I watched as a college professor type walked a small dog past our window, weaving in between some cars before disappearing around the corner. I spent a minute wishing I were outside; the restaurant gets so warm when it’s crowded, and the chilly night air would have felt good on my face . . . until I remembered that I was still at work, and I snapped back to attention. A cute young couple with a baby was just finishing up at Table Two, and the mom was now beckoning me over.
Oooh, a chance to score a big tip—parents love it when you play with their kids. It wouldn’t technically help my wallet, since everything Nat and I make goes straight into our college funds (also known as the Get as Far Away as Possible from Michigan fund, in my case). But a full tip jar might put my mom in a generous mood.
“Aren’t you a cutie!” I cooed at the baby, gently tickling her round, pink clad stomach and admiring her wispy blond curls. She laughed delightedly and clapped her hands. Then she vomited on the table.
You never saw a family leave a restaurant so fast.
Ten minutes later, the ickier than usual table cleanup finished and my hands stinging from a vigorous wash and rewash, I was just about ready to take another stab at asking my mom if I could leave early—maybe this time her gung ho attitude about me getting good grades would trump her dinner rush business instinct. I ducked my head through the swinging kitchen door to say hi to my dad, who could barely hear me over the sizzling seafood dish that he and our assistant chef, Krai, were making, not to mention that he could barely see me through his glasses, which were steamed up from the stove. Nonetheless, he waved cheerfully from underneath his ragged University of Michigan baseball cap, the wooden spoon in his battle scarred cook’s hand spattering a smidge of grease into the air from the motion.
Back in the dining room, my mom was on the phone, taking what sounded like a rather lengthy order. No problem. I could wait it out. She hung up the phone. It rang again Argh.
“Hey,” I said, poking Nat in the back as he returned from making the water rounds to our station behind the bar counter. “Quiz me on my history?” We could see the whole dining room from where we were standing, so as long as we kept an eye out while I was studying, we weren’t technically slacking off.
“Eh,” he said. His hands were wet from the water pitcher, so he dried them off on a stray napkin, then took off his glasses and lazily polished them on his shirt.
“I’ll take that as a yes.” I handed Nat a stack of index cards I’d stashed in my apron next to the spare chopsticks, and he rolled his eyes and picked up the top one, putting his glasses back on to read it.
“Okay . . . Name three members of the committee that drafted the original Declaration of Independence.” Nat lowered the card and looked at me disdainfully. “Dude, I thought you took A.P. History, not retard history.”
“Fewer lame jokes, more helping your sister,” I snapped. “Okay. Thomas Jefferson, obviously. Ben Franklin. John Ad—” The phone rang, and kept ringing; my mom had left her station to seat a party of six who’d just come in. I ran to answer the call and Nat took off as well, probably to scout the kitchen for mistaken, sent back orders he could eat. “Hello, Pailin Thai Cuisine,” I said into the phone.
“Maya?” said Sarah’s voice. I could hear a bunch of people in the background at her house. “Where are you? We’re like, halfway done already.”
“Oh my God,” I said, sighing. “Still at work. My mom won’t let me leave.” I fussed with the black cotton string of my apron.
“Are you gonna make it? I have to kick people out in an hour.” Sarah’s gentle voice sounded apologetic, as if it were her fault that I was stuck at the restaurant.
“I don’t know. . . . I kinda doubt it at this point. It’s pretty busy tonight. . . .” I looked around, hoping that maybe all of our customers had magically vanished. Nope.
“Well, you can totally look at my notes tomorrow morning if you have time before—”
“Great, thank you!” I practically screamed, then continued rapid fire, “I owe you big time, but I have a call waiting. Gotta go!” The phone was beeping at me, and I hit the flash button. “Hello, Pailin Thai Cuisine . . . Sure, we do takeout, what would you like to—uh-huh. With tofu? Uh-huh . . .” I finished taking the order, eyeing my flash cards the whole time, then realized that Mom had seated those six people who’d just arrived in my section. Damn.
I took their drink orders and picked up my flashcards again, but then the kitchen bell rang twice, signaling that one of my orders was up. By the time I finished carrying out the three bowls of red curry chicken and wondering why all three people at a table would order the same thing, it was time to get orders from the party of six, and by the time I finished that, a guy on the far side of the room was taking his last bite of crispy duck and pushing his plate away. Forget it studying at work was a lost cause. I headed over to clear the table.
“Save any room for dessert today?” I smiled brilliantly—the way to a twenty five percent tip from a guy eating by himself is a no brainer. He looked up at me.
“That depends. Are you on the menu?”
I twirled the end of my long, black, messier than usual ponytail and mentally congratulated myself for deliberately shrinking my official Pailin uniform shirt—a simple dark blue three quarter sleeve tee with our logo on it—in the wash to make it tighter. “Not today,” I said with a smile, and handed him our illustrated dessert card. Now if only I had that much game when I was talking to boys at school. One time I’d tried to trick myself by pretending that I was waitressing, and I’d ended up asking Gavin, the hot foreign exchange student, how spicy he wanted his beef.
Here at work, though, I was on fire. The guy ordered mango sticky rice
and
coconut ice cream, and ten minutes later he threw down a twenty on top of paying the bill, plus a business card with his phone number. I look every bit the jailbait I am—being five feet one inch tall never helps—so the thing with the business card was pretty squicky. The guy was somewhat hot, but at least thirty five. On the other hand, twenty bucks is twenty bucks.