Waiter Rant (5 page)

“I believe it,” I reply.

“What happened?” Louis asks, joining the conversation.

“People having sex in the bathroom again,” I say.

“Those two?” Louis snorts. “I saw them in the bathroom together earlier.”

“You think they went two rounds in a restaurant bathroom?”

“Nah,” Louis says. “I think they were snorting coke the first time around.”

“Classy.”

I look at my watch. My customer’s entrées should be ready. I look back at the young couple’s table. They’re still holding hands. The girl’s stopped crying. Two people sharing an ordinary moment in an ordinary restaurant. Sometimes everyday little moments become chances for people to start over. That young couple is having such a moment. A light’s shining in the girl’s eyes. Maybe she’s gonna have that baby after all. Generational redemption’s happening inside a busy restaurant, and I’m the only one seeing it.

When you work in a restaurant, there’s never a shortage of interesting stories. Anyone can learn about people by watching them eat, but I think I’m especially attenuated to what’s going on around me. You see, I’ve always had a need to know people’s
stories
. Part of that need developed early in life. Knowing what made people tick helped me to protect myself from them. I became adept at gauging other people’s moods and emotions. To this day I often know what people are feeling before they know what they’re feeling themselves. As a child I learned to pay attention to the timbre of people’s voices, note the words they used, and watch how their faces and bodies moved as they talked. I developed a talent for spotting liars and forecasting emotional storms. My rector in the seminary told me I was adept at quickly reading horizons. But sometimes I misread those horizons and got into trouble. Sometimes I acted without possessing all the facts. Time on the analytical couch eventually stopped me from doing stupid things, but like military training from a long-ago war, my ear for dialogue and antenna for human emotions never went away. I still needed to know people’s
stories
. And at The Bistro these stories can go from the sublime to the ridiculous in ten seconds flat. It’s amazing what you see when you keep your eyes open.

Heading back toward the kitchen, I jink and dodge busboys carrying heavy trays of dirty dishes and roll under the beckoning stares searchlighting out of the customers’ eyes. Pushing aside the thin curtains that separate the kitchen from the dining room, I plunge into a different world. Inside the kitchen’s cramped confines tempers flare, Spanish music plays, aprons twirl, loud strong men yell, water splashes, and dishes clatter like oversize dimes on metal countertops. It’s controlled bedlam.

“Where’s my food?” I shout over the din.

“Fuck you,” Armando yells from his post near the roaring-hot convection ovens. “Can’t you see I’m busy?”

Armando is a good-looking, powerfully built man. Blessed with a handsome Roman nose and lean and narrow face, his lips are usually graced with a humorous smile. Even though he slaves
sixty hours a week in the kitchen, Armando somehow manages to hit the gym almost every morning. Thanks to his exercise regimen, he can easily bench four hundred pounds. Luckily for me, in a world where the media lionize foul-mouthed and abusive chefs, Armando’s blessed with a fairly pleasant disposition and a strong sense of professionalism. In all the years we’ve worked together I’ve seen him flip out only once. Trust me, that’s miraculous for a chef.

“I fired the food twenty minutes ago!” I yell back.

Armando looks at the ticket, realizes I’m right, and flips me the bird.

“You’re right this time,” he yells.

“Don’t give up your day job,” I shout back.

“Whatever.”

“Move it,” yells Dawn, a young blond waitress tugging on my shirtsleeve.

I step back. Dawn, impatient as usual, angrily tries to wedge past me. At that moment a bus person slams into my back. I fall forward. Dawn reaches out to steady me, and we end up in one of those accidental embraces. For a moment I feel the fullness of her breasts rise and fall against my chest. Dawn, ever the flirt, tosses me a seductive flash through her blue eyes. Suddenly I want to kiss her. I wonder if she wants to kiss me. Then the thinking part of my brain reminds me that Dawn was wearing diapers when I was a junior in high school.

“You wanna dance or something?” Dawn asks, giving me the up-from-under look.

“My bad,” I say hoarsely. The moment passes. Like two boxers in a clinch, we break.

Dawn grabs her stuff and runs out. Armando’s still working on my entrées, so I decide to give myself a mental cold shower and grab a cup of coffee. As I sip thin brew out of a chipped porcelain cup I watch Fluvio as he maneuvers eight pans across a six-burner stove.

“Glad to see you remember how to cook, boss,” I yell. “I thought you forgot how.”

His face a mask of concentration, Fluvio doesn’t display any indication that he hears me. Fluvio seldom does any of the cooking in his own restaurant. Since tonight’s crazy he’s been forced to strap on his apron and wade into the fight. After working his way up from the sadistic environment in which chefs are forged, Fluvio would much rather leave the heavy lifting in the kitchen to others. This is not unusual in the restaurant world. Have you ever wondered why the smocks of so many executive chefs are pristine white? Because they spend most of their time in the dining room hobnobbing with customers and lapping up the praise like honey. Several years after the publication of
Kitchen Confidential
, Anthony Bourdain’s iconic exposé of what really goes on in restaurant kitchens, people are still shocked to discover that it’s usually an illegal immigrant named Ramon who’s doing all the cooking.

Fluvio’s an interesting guy. Before he ever got near a cooking school he served in the Italian navy, did a stint as a bodyguard, worked in a pharmacy, and even tried his hand at club promoting. Along the way he blundered into a bad marriage, had two kids, and ended up getting divorced. After leaving Italy with his chef’s diploma he cooked in exotic locations like Saudi Arabia, India, New York, and New Jersey. While he was working at Amici’s, he met Bridget, a respiratory therapist from Long Island. Within eighteen months they decided to get married, open a restaurant, buy a house, and have a baby. Compressing all those life changes into such a short time frame would crush most people, but not Fluvio. Now, after six years at this location, he’s getting restless. Just a couple of weeks ago he told me that he’s thinking about opening another restaurant. I wouldn’t put it past him.

Suddenly the pickup bell rings. My food’s up. I balance the hot platters on my hands and arms and set out across the restaurant to deliver the entrées to my table. Halfway to my destination I realize I misjudged the temperature of the plates. I can feel the platter balanced on my forearm radiating intense heat through the sleeve of my shirt. As the pain begins to set my teeth on edge, I remember how the Shaolin students in the TV series
Kung Fu
would grip a burning-hot iron cauldron with their bare forearms and brand themselves with the raised relief of a tiger and a dragon as a final test before becoming full-fledged monks. If they can do it, I can do it.

“Be one with the pain, Grasshopper,” I silently chant to myself. “Be one with the pain.”

By the time I get to the table the nerve endings in my arm are screaming at me to let the plate crash to the floor. Since that would be a disaster, I let the pain wash over me and try not to let anyone see the agony crawling up my limb toward my face.

“Your entrées, ladies and gentlemen,” I announce.

I gingerly place the dishes in front of the customers—ladies first, then the men. Of course the platter that’s reverse branding the words M
ADE IN
C
HINA
into my flesh belongs to the last person to be served. As I lift the plate off my arm I swear I hear something peel loose. My epidermis probably got fused to the polyester fabric of my uniform shirt.

After I make the appropriate polite noises I race to the beverage station and stick my arm into a wine bucket filled with ice water. After a minute I pull out my arm and roll back the dripping shirtsleeve to survey the damage. A nice red welt is forming on the top layers of my skin, similar to the burn you get when you’re careless in handling a red-hot clothes iron. I know from experience that the burn will be visible on my arm for several days—my own Shaolin waiter mark. It’s inevitable that anyone working in the restaurant business will pick up at least a couple of burns and scars along the way. I’ve got a bunch of them.

The second seating clears out, and the third seating piles in. This is the heavy-spending crowd. This is the seating that will make or break our evening. Of course, one of my two tops is a drunk regular squiring a hooker clad in a skimpy outfit that has no back and barely covers her breasts.

“Good evening, sir,” I say. “Nice to see you again.”

“Gimme a bottle of Dom Pérignon,” the man says. He’s a wealthy bond trader. He can afford it.

“Yes, sir.”

“What’s Don Perpignoooan?” the man’s delightful companion replies.

“It’s champagne, baby,” the man says.

“Huh?” the woman says. Poor dear. She’s out of her depth.

“It’s like ginger ale with a kick,” I explain.

“Oh good,” the hooker says. “I like ginger ale.”

I fetch the expensive bubbly from the walk-in fridge and pour it out. The man has obviously premedicated at home. Reeking of gin, he’s already swaying in his chair as he fades in and out of consciousness. My God, I think to myself, this is straight out of the movie
Arthur.
I must be playing John Gielgud’s part.

The hooker is stone-cold sober. As she looks at the New Year’s menu her face knits itself into a scowl of incomprehension. “I don’t know what any of this stuff is,” she says, vulnerability leeching into her tough voice.

I look at the woman. She’s younger than me by at least ten years, but the heavy makeup and overdone eyeliner make her look far older. All waiters who work in high-end restaurants deal with prostitutes from time to time. Usually they’re expensive call girls who blend in with their high-society environs. This woman looks like she got picked up off the street. The bond trader could afford a less shopworn sex worker, but something tells me this guy likes them sad and desperate. I feel bad for this girl.

“Miss,” I whisper, “what do you like to eat?”

“I like spaghetti and meatballs.”

“We don’t have meatballs, madam,” I reply. “But we have whole wheat spaghetti with mushrooms and sausage.” It’s the rabbit sausage we’re using for the wild boar special, but she doesn’t need to know that.

“Is that with red gravy?” the hooker asks.

“Of course, madam.” The dish is made with a white sauce, but switching to red will be no problem.

“Thank you,” the hooker says. “I like sausage.”

I’m sure no pun was intended here either.

The man and his date eat their dinner. I can tell the hooker’s really enjoying her food. Good. At least she’ll get something positive out of this whole sordid transaction. Her date, however, has drunk the entire bottle of Dom and is valiantly attempting to polish off a $700 bottle of wine. If I dug up a corpse and fed it to him he’d never know the difference.

I encounter many rich and successful people in my line of work. It never ceases to amaze me how people can be completely capable in one part of their lives but total fuckups in most of the others. This guy’s a super-smart financial type—but he’s also a desperate alcoholic who picks up whores. And believe me, I feel sorry for the whores. This guy’s a pig.

Before you know it the clocks are striking midnight. The customers toot their paper horns, crank their noisemakers, and scream “Happy New Year” at the top of their lungs. I go around to wish all my tables a happy and healthy 2006. The woman with the fake pearls at table 26 just glares at me. That’s odd. She’s been smiling at me the whole time she’s been here. Before I can think about it any further Louis liberates a bottle of champagne and starts passing it around.

“Happy New Year’s, man,” Louis says, offering me a swig.

“Happy New Year’s, Louis,” I say, taking the bottle out of his hands.

“How’s our bond trader?”

“His blood alcohol must be, like, twenty-five percent.” I say, taking a pull from the bottle. Ugh. Cheap domestic. I prefer Veuve Clicquot.

“He’s not driving home, is he?”

“No,” I say. “He always goes home in a cab.”

“You think he’ll be able to get that tiny pecker of his up when he gets home?”

“Probably not,” I chuckle. For the hooker’s sake, I’m happy.

By one-thirty the customers start going home. Of course, the bond trader and the hooker are the last to leave. I drop the man’s $1,500 check. Half an hour later he still hasn’t looked at it,
preferring to babble profanities at his paid companion instead. I decide to move him along.

“May I take care of that for you, sir?” I ask, gesturing toward the check. (That’s waiterspeak for “get out.”)

“Uh, no,” the drunk trader says. After a few clumsy seconds, he produces an American Express Black Card from his wallet.

“Bet you’ve never seen one of these before,” he says, handing me the credit card. A Black Amex card feels like a piece of ceramic tile. They say you can use it to buy a yacht. I see at least one every week.

“No, sir,” I gush. “I don’t. They’re very exclusive.”

“Damn straight,” the trader says, releasing a profane belch.

“I’ll be right back, sir.”

I run the man’s Amex. It goes through. A $1,500 check is child’s play for this guy. When I return to the table, the trader grabs the check holder out of my hand, inks in a tip, signs it with a flourish, and hands it back to me.

“Howdya like the tip I left ya?” he asks, eyeballing me strangely.

I open the check holder. On $1,500 the man’s left me $250. Roughly a 17 percent tip. Of course, $250 is nothing to sneeze at, but this guy’s been a consummate pain in the ass all year long. I want
more
.

I look into the man’s drunken eyes and unleash my thousand-yard waiter stare. Over the years I’ve improved on Rizzo’s version. Already a Bistro legend, my gaze has been known to frighten kitchen staff, scare waiters, silence screaming children, and cause movie stars to stutter. This guy has no chance.