Waiting; The True Confessions of a Waitress (13 page)

As for the cork, you can tell if the wine is spoiled only by looking at it. If the cork is crumbling or moldy, chances are that the wine has been improperly stored and is turning. But one can
tell absolutely nothing by
smelling
the thing. A cork will always smell like a cork. In fact, proper protocol says that the waitress should remove the cork from the table altogether once the cus
tomer has had a chance to inspect it.

Champagne, or sparkling wine, is a bit of a different story. No matter how many bottles of champagne I open, I’m still terri
fied of being hit by a cork. It takes only one shot to the head or any other part of the body with one of these projectiles to know that it’s an experience not worth repeating. I open champagne now taking great care to hold the bottle at a forty-five-degree angle, cover the cork with a napkin, and twist the bottle slowly to remove the cork. Opened this way, the cork gives a more muted pop than when forced out with two thumbs, but you also lose much less wine in the ensuing spray. I once opened a partic
ularly bubbly bottle of Cristal and watched it foam over the top of the bottle into the wine bucket.

“Hey, hey,” the customer said, “you just spilled about fifteen bucks worth there!”

Belinda didn’t stop her instruction with opening wine. She also showed me how to position a tray with my shoulder, distribute the weight evenly, and set it down without pulling every muscle in my back. She even demonstrated how to flip open a kickstand with one hand while the other balanced the tray. After two glasses of wine, I was convinced that Belinda was some kind of crazy acrobat waitress who could defy the laws of gravity. There seemed to be no aspect of table service that she hadn’t seen or done herself. She even had beauty tips designed specifically for waitressing.

“Do you know why my eyes look so bright?” she asked me. I shook my head, noticing for the first time just how bright her eyes seemed.

“Clown White,” she said triumphantly and pulled a tube of actual clown makeup out of her purse. “A little bit under the eyes,” she said, spreading some on my face, “really makes them bright. That really helps, especially when you’re working in a dark dining room.”

Belinda was also the only waitress I’ve ever met who was content to make a career out of waiting tables. In her teens, she’d won a few local beauty pageants and had thought her call
ing was on the runway, but that promise had never materialized and she’d taken a job at Denny’s during high school to save some money. Her tips at Denny’s had afforded her the ability to move away from an oppressive rural family life and she’d never looked back, upgrading restaurants every few months, always looking for the biggest payoff. Belinda’s long-term plan was to find and marry a rich man. In the meantime, she was having as much fun and making as much cash as possible.

Physically, Belinda was everything I was not. She was tall and had short, curly black hair, dark eyes, and pale skin. As we became friendlier and started giggling over the small absurdities of the Dining Room, Deane took to calling us Betty and Veron
ica. Though I wasn’t sure of the reason, Deane never really liked Belinda and so my friendship with him developed on a separate path. Belinda, being much more of a professional (and also much pushier) than I, got moved to dinners immediately. She was even given the coveted “Fish Fantasy” shift mere weeks after being hired.

The Fish Fantasy (nicknamed “Neptune’s Nightmare” by Deane) was the Dining Room’s biggest event. On the first Friday night of every month, the club pulled out all the stops and put on a culinary show that would terrify the most stalwart of ocean dwellers. Every manner of Pacific crustacean, fish, and mammal was featured boiled, steamed, filleted, and surrounded by exotic garnishes and steaming lemon-scented towels. But the fun didn’t
stop there; also included in the price were elaborately carved ice sculptures of mermaids, dolphins, and Poseidon, sparkling fish
ing nets, and a variety of banners suggesting the deep sea. Atten
dance was very high on Fantasy nights and the waiters made good money.

As I had only recently learned to open a bottle of wine and still felt unsteady on my feet, I reckoned it would be quite a while before I was scheduled for a Fantasy. In the meantime, I spent my afternoons with Deane (we often worked split shifts together and so had two useless hours to kill in the middle of the day), running around downtown Portland, drinking espresso, and searching for the Edith Piaf records he collected. Sometimes he came over to my apartment and we sat around chain-smoking and sharing stories. Deane’s tales were much more exciting than mine. Very matter-of-factly, he told me of his past promiscuity and of the fate of most of his exes. Almost everyone in Deane’s circle of friends had either full-blown AIDS or ARC. He was just beginning to attend the funerals of friends and lovers. After get
ting to know him a little, I could tell that while he was cavalier about his past, Deane had real fear about his own future. I came upon him in the bus station one morning, scrutinizing a blemish on his face with a hand mirror. “Can you look at this for me?” he asked. “Do you think it’s Kaposi’s?”

Deane had been living with his current lover, Bill, for a cou
ple of years and told me that they were very much in love. He had met Bill at an AA meeting and they shared a passion for col
lectibles of all kinds. He told me that his goal was to be able to save enough money to open his own shop with Bill.

Like Belinda, Deane also felt the need to educate me. When I asked him one afternoon why he had never felt the urge to at least
try
having sex with a woman, he laughed at me and blew coy smoke rings in my direction. “Are you volunteering?” he asked, and when he saw my expression, he added, “Oh,
honey,
there’s something you’ve really got to see.” The next day he took me on a tour of Portland’s gay bars, complete with annotated descriptions of what went on in them. There was absolutely no tale that was too extreme for Deane, no conversational boundary that couldn’t be crossed. Deane was possessed of an extraordi
narily generous spirit and a cunning insight into the motivations of most of the people he met. Both of these qualities overrode his slightly neurotic and often bitchy behaviors. In all of these ways, he was an ideal friend. We developed a genuine affection for each other.

When we were “on the floor,” however, Deane kept to him
self. Helping out wasn’t his strong suit. So I was on my own the night Hans came in for dinner and sat down at my table with a couple of executives from the upstairs offices. I was petrified to be waiting on him and sure I would make some sort of fatal mis
take in my service. Naturally, I did. I served from the left instead of the right and removed the plates in the reverse order. And of course, Hans pointed it out at the end of the meal. As he went to sign off on his check, Hans said, “Your service was good, but I noticed that you served me from the left. Are you aware of that?”

I looked at Hans, sensing the end of my career in the Dining Room, and saw that he was staring back me, pen held poised in his left hand.

“Well, yes, sir,” I answered him, “but I’d heard that you were left-handed and so I thought you’d be more comfortable if I served you from that direction.” And then I smiled as broadly as I could. “I’m left-handed myself,” I added, “so I can understand the difficulty of living in a world where everything is designed for right-handed people.”

“Oh,” was all Hans said, but there was an equally broad smile on his face and the acknowledgment that I had scored quite a few points.

Unfortunately, I was unable to score the same kinds of points with Carol, who attempted to make my schedule as unappealing as possible. Occasionally, she’d even schedule me in the Card Room. I needed only one lunch shift with this group of cantan
kerous, feebly lustful old men to know that I’d have to quit if Carol continued her quest. I was saved only by the fact that there were a few waitresses who preferred working this particu
lar room and who were annoyed when I took their shifts. I never quite figured out why Carol had such a needle to me. Perhaps it was because I didn’t seem servile enough. Perhaps it was because, even at that early stage of my waitressing career, I saw restaurant managers as mostly out of touch with what was really going on at the table and I didn’t disguise those feelings well enough. Per
haps she just didn’t like me. Whatever the reason, I felt I was always swimming against the tide with Carol and that whatever success I had on the job would be in spite of her and not because she helped me in any way.

I was not very popular with the contingent of veteran wait
resses, either. I suspect that they felt somewhat threatened by my (and Belinda’s) presence in the Dining Room. They’d received very little in the way of rewards for their service over the years, and some of them were understandably bitter. Most of them had children my age. Nevertheless, I made a few attempts to develop some sort of camaraderie between us. I’d spend time in the break room, for example, joining Agnes, Thelma, and Ethel as they drained countless cups of coffee and smoked sev
eral packs of cigarettes, and try to insinuate myself into the con
versation. If they were talking about their children, I’d try to come in with some sort of story about my own family. If they were discussing the rules of the Dining Room, I’d add my own two cents about how I felt things were running. It was fairly hopeless. I had absolutely no experiences in common with these women and they knew it. Most times they simply ignored me
until I went away. Strangely, they all seemed to love Deane although he never seemed to make any attempts to ingratiate himself with them. I began avoiding the break room unless I had Deane in tow. In a way, he became something of a protector. Belinda never spent time in the break room. She always showed up for her shifts already dressed in her work clothes (against the rules) and cut through the front entrance (really against the rules) to the Dining Room.

Despite the frosty reception I received from the ladies of the Dining Room and Carol’s permanent dislike of me, I did manage to make some allies. Tracy (who I suspected was looking for an extramarital adventure) was very kind to me and consistently put in a good word or two about my abilities on the floor. Then there was Hans, who had been so impressed with my earlier improvisation at his table that he returned for lunch shortly thereafter and specifically asked for “the new little left-handed girl.” Carol couldn’t possibly ignore this.

The next week I was scheduled for my first Fish Fantasy.

The following Friday, Deane and I arrived at work with plenty of time to spare before the dinner shift began. He had assured me it would be a particularly long night and said he wanted to take a shower before it all began. It took us ten min
utes to take the two elevators and navigate the series of hallways leading to our locker rooms. When we finally arrived, Deane tapped me lightly on the shoulder and raced by me on his way to the men’s locker room. “See you inside,” he said, his words blurry from too many cups of espresso. I’d had three cups of the stuff myself and I sensed a coffee headache starting at the back of my skull.

Rosemary, a waitress I’d worked a few lunches with, was alone in the women’s locker room. Her preparations always took longer than anyone else’s, and when I walked in she was just beginning her transformation. After greeting me, she changed
carefully out of her T-shirt, jeans, and sneakers and stood in a bra and panties for what seemed like an inordinate amount of time. Finally she seemed ready for action and applied a feminine hygiene spray to herself and the locker room in general. Next came panty hose. Then deodorant (also in the form of a spray). She hummed to herself, occasionally interjecting lyrics. “Money for nothin’,” she sang as she donned her white work shirt. And as she put on her tie, she added, “Chicks for free.” My head buzzed with caffeine as I watched, transfixed, the meticulous care Rosemary took with every detail of her uniform.

“Have you seen that video?” she asked me. “It just came out. It’s great. I can’t stop singing the song. Aren’t you going to get dressed?”

“Too much coffee,” I told her. “I can’t move. I’ve got some time anyway.”

She slipped the regulation black 100 percent polyester pinafore-style dress over her head and stood on a bench so that she could see the full body effect in the small locker mirror. I loathed that dress and felt it was designed to make every woman who wore it look as unappealing as possible, but on Rosemary it looked like evening wear.

The last items to come on were her work shoes. The shoes were identical to mine and those of every other waitress in the building. Black, crepe soled, ugly beyond belief, they were some
times a reason in and of themselves to look for another job. She whipped her long brown hair into a ponytail and doused it with hairspray. Whatever small sections of her body were without scent were then covered with several generous squirts from a perfume bottle. Rosemary’s makeup came last of all because it required the most attention. With the easy skill of a profes
sional, Rosemary proceeded to cover a black eye under careful layers of foundation. She kept a store of such makeup in her locker for good reason. This wasn’t the first time I’d seen her
cover a shiner and I’d known her for only a couple of months. By the looks of it, this one had already faded considerably since she received it. Her wounds were an open secret. Everybody knew that they came from her alcoholic husband, but nobody ever dis
cussed them with her.