Waiting; The True Confessions of a Waitress (20 page)

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molotov cocktail waitr ess

After working for a while at Molto’s,
surrounded by so many people on a daily basis, I found myself in one of the loneliest periods of my life. On the day I turned twenty-four, I railed against fate in my journal. What kind of ridiculous age was this to be, I wondered. I’d accomplished nothing and was on a fast track to nowhere. Although I’d continued to write between shifts, on my days off, and late at night when I couldn’t sleep, I was a far cry from the successful writer I’d planned to become when I first started working in the Dining Room. In no particular order, I listed all that I had not accomplished: no great works, no mate, no children, no meaningful contributions to mankind. I couldn’t even get a decent relationship together (and by this, I meant any kind of relationship, even the ashtray-hurling passion that flares and then dies). The few friends I had left from my college days were embarking on serious love affairs, which would later turn into marriages for all of them. They wanted very little to do with me and my connection to their recent pasts.

I worked at Molto’s as often as I could without burning myself out on it altogether. After all, there was only so often I could rub up against the same five people in that tiny kitchen. Besides this, the configuration of Molto’s was changing, slowly but perceptibly.

Following her usual MO, Belinda had quit and moved on to another restaurant. She’d been replaced by Sue, whose super-model looks and sunny disposition seemed too good to be true. We all wondered when she would crack and reveal a fatal flaw. Then the usually unflappable Barry set the events of his own undoing in motion by hiring Pamela, whom he was personally very attracted to, a married mother with a notoriously jealous husband. The developing tension between Pamela and Barry soon began affecting the moods of everybody on the staff. Char
lotte reacted by taking a second job in another restaurant and worked fewer shifts at Molto’s. Wes managed to win the heart of the beautiful Sue, and the two of them embarked on the most publicly physical relationship I’d ever seen. They kissed in the kitchen. They felt each other up at the dishwasher. They made eyes at each other over the line. They came into the restaurant after hours (they told us) and had sex on the floor of the smok
ing section. The fact that they were both incredibly good-looking only made things worse. Watching them was a little like watch
ing a trailer for a home porno movie.

For a while, I managed to make my own life a little more dif
ficult by dating Sonny. It was spring, after all, and I wasn’t immune to the undercurrents flowing through the kitchen. Unfortunately, Sonny neglected to tell me that he was also dat
ing Barbara, who bussed tables at Molto’s. Barbara, who had an abusive speed-freak ex-husband stalking her, was a real hard-luck story. She was also very tough and very strong and she frightened me. I was extremely unhappy about being dragged into the middle of this drama when all I’d really been looking for

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was a little diversion. Of course, I still had to work with both Sonny and Barbara after it all hit the fan, which was interesting since on any given night one of them was preparing my food and the other was bussing my tables. Food was thrown, epithets were hurled, and feelings were hurt.

Finally, Barbara cornered me between Table Twenty and Table Twenty-One one night and said, “You can have him. I’m not good enough for him anyway and I’d only bring him trou
ble.” She was weeping.

“Please,” I told her, “I have no claims on Sonny at all. He’s all yours and I’m sure he loves you very much.”

I stormed into the kitchen and threw a handful of tickets over the line at Sonny.

“What’s the order?” he asked, baffled.

“You are
such
an asshole,” I spat at him.

“So, would that be rare or medium rare?” he asked.

It was getting—in more ways than one—too hot in the kitchen.

I decided that adding more work to my schedule was the only viable escape. Again, Belinda was the catalyst. She was working as a cocktail waitress at Le Jardin, an upscale bistro a few blocks from my apartment in downtown Portland, and offered, again, to get me an interview. In short order I was hired to work a cocktail shift on the two nights I was free from Molto’s.

It soon became evident, however, that Le Jardin was not going to provide me with the type of distraction I was looking for. Nor was it particularly profitable. I barely made enough money on the two nights I worked to justify being there at all. With this in mind, I answered an ad in the local paper for a job as a writer. The ad didn’t specify what kind of writing, for whom, or what salary, but none of that bothered me. My thought was that I had to try to get it.

I showed up to interview for the job in a small office piled high with papers, ashtrays, and half-filled coffee cups. It turned out that the job specifications didn’t exactly match those in the newspaper. The two men who interviewed me were going into a joint venture developing a discount card for use in restaurants, movies, and amusement parks. Hank, the older of the two men, had been selling insurance for most of his life. Tim, the younger man, published a small newspaper that consisted mostly of advertising copy for the businesses that paid for space in the paper. What they really wanted was somebody to sell their dis
count cards over the phone. I was disappointed. I told both of them that I was hopeless at selling and what I really wanted to do was write. Tim hastened to tell me that I’d be doing a lot of writing for his paper (if that’s what I wanted) and that my hours selling would be minimal. They offered me the job on the spot. I felt compelled to take it, even though the pay was pretty low and I’d be adding a long daily commute to my already crowded schedule.

The job was not without its generous dose of irony. Every morning I’d arrive in the office, take a seat in the glassed-off tri
angle of space that had been provided for me, and look at my assignment for the day. The writing assignments bordered on the bizarre. For example, Tim would leave a note on my desk saying something like “Write a story on San Francisco. About two pages should do it.” Sometimes he’d want restaurant reviews. Of course, they couldn’t be real reviews since the restaurants were paying to be mentioned. Instead, I’d get a faxed menu and have to create a fantasy tale about what went into the making of dishes I had never seen, much less tasted. I felt I’d really reached the apex of this type of writing when I was instructed to write about a motel in Capistrano, California. “Like the swallows,” I wrote, “visitors will always want to return to Motel X in Capistrano. . . .” Hank and Tim loved my writing so

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much that my services soon became completely funneled into the paper. I was even listed on the masthead. The discount card never got off the ground. Despite the fact that I felt what I was writing was the height of silliness, I was actually getting paid to write for the first time. That in itself was no small thing for me. This, I reckoned, was a job worth keeping.

But by the fall of 1986, I’d had just about enough of every
thing. My plan to disappear into as many jobs as possible had resulted only in greater personal dissatisfaction. I had been writ
ing short stories frantically in my spare time and had sent a few of them out to small literary magazines. I’d received a few nib
bles, and this was enough to make me think that I should be devoting all, not part, of my time to writing. I was never going to get anywhere slinging plates, I reckoned (of course, all the sto
ries I was writing were about people and events I’d come to know of through the restaurants I worked in, but I wasn’t far
sighted enough to realize this), and I was just wasting my time. Some of Portland’s notorious dampness had settled into my soul. I was tired of watching it rain week after week. I felt as if my entire personality was becoming pale and washed out.

My writing job at the paper had convinced me that I would probably be able to scratch out a living writing something some
where, and I decided I’d have to make a definitive move. San Francisco sounded like as good a place as any to try. A few col
lege friends were living there and actually having some success in their chosen fields. However, I knew I’d never leave as long as I had my job at Molto’s. Despite the fact that it had become a bit oppressive, the money I made there was still good, and I’d worked there longer than I’d worked anywhere up to that point. It was familiar. So I gave notice, telling Barry and my coworkers that I intended to move south and try to make it as a writer.

Because I’d given a month’s notice instead of the usual two weeks, my leaving turned into an extended going-away party.

Every weekend night, I’d join Wes, Charlotte, Anne, and who
ever else wanted to come along for drinks and pool. Wes was in a state of desolation due to the fact that Sue had herself recently moved to California in search of a better life. I started spending more time with him on our weekly forays and listening to his tales. Although he preferred to limit his banter to incisive barbs in the kitchen, I learned that he had a razor-sharp mind as well as an ability to quietly assess the personalities of his coworkers with amazing accuracy. Wes told me that he was getting terribly tired of Barry’s disastrous flirtation with Pamela and was sure that no good would come of it. Barry, he claimed, was getting into some “bad shit” over the whole thing and it was affecting his managerial skills. Wes also told me that he was sick of work
ing himself to the bone for what he was paid. He was looking into opening his own restaurant, he said. All very hush-hush, of course. “Too bad you’re moving,” he added, “you could come work for me.”

But I didn’t actually feel like I was going anywhere. I’d made no plans and was, effectively, just waiting for the end of my time at Molto’s to force me into movement of any kind.

My last night at Molto’s came on a Sunday. Pamela, who had recently been promoted to nights, dominated the floor, scooping up as many tables as Barry would give her. Barry himself looked as if he hadn’t slept for weeks and was irritable beyond what I’d seen before. The whole shift was very anticlimactic. Charlotte was off and everybody else went home early. I went about clean
ing as Wes packed up the kitchen.

“I can’t believe it’s come to this,” I said. “Seems like there should be something more momentous to mark my last night here.”

“So wait for me,” Wes said. “I’ll take you out.”

The two of us ended up at a bar near Molto’s. Wes bought me drink after drink and listened to my grand plans for the

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future. I told him a bit about my past, too, such as it was. He talked about Sue and how disappointed he was that she had decided to leave. Our conversation began to take on the strange elastic shape of drunken exchanges that happen in the wee hours. After we closed the bar, Wes drove me home and walked me upstairs to my apartment.

“Can I come in for a minute?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said. “What’s a minute? It’s almost three in the morning.”

My apartment was very small, but Wes managed to walk around it as if there was much to be seen.

“I don’t have much to offer you,” I said from the kitchen. “Definitely nothing to drink here. I’ve got some oranges, though.”

“Oranges would be good,” Wes said. “I’ll have an orange.”

We sat opposite each other and I struggled to peel an orange with motor skills that were severely compromised by the num
ber of vodka tonics I’d ingested.

“Why don’t you let me help you with that?” Wes asked and took the orange from me. He peeled it gracefully without ever breaking the rind. I could see both the cat and the canary in the smile on his face. He sectioned the orange, handed me two pieces, and placed two in his mouth.

“Very good orange,” he said. “Thank you.”

The silence that followed soon became crushing in its weight.

“What are we going to do now?” I asked Wes.

“Well,” he said slowly, “we got the orange together pretty well. Seems like it’ll be easy from here on.”

Today, I remember strange details of that night. For example, I remember distinctly the sweet citrusy taste of the fruit and that it was the last decent orange of the season. I remember that the weather turned cold that very night, going from Indian summer
to frigid winter. And I remember that all night I had the sad sense of something ending but no vision of a new beginning with which to replace it.