Waiting; The True Confessions of a Waitress (27 page)

I didn’t need any help from Wes, as it turned out. The new manager was happy to hire me based on my prior work history at Molto’s and confirmation of my abilities from Pamela. I expe
rienced a feeling of déjà vu when he told me I’d have to start on lunches and work myself into dinners when shifts opened up. For the sake of my financial survival, I hoped this wouldn’t take very long, but I was almost relieved to have a few “training” shifts before going back into the fray. I felt seriously out of shape and, after speaking nothing but baby talk for the previous year, didn’t know if I could have a sustained conversation with an adult, even if it were just to take an order.

My return to Molto’s was a perfect example of why you can’t go home again. Although the physical structure and menu of the restaurant were the same, everything about the mood inside had changed. There was no longer the camaraderie among the wait
ers and waitresses that I had found so appealing. Nobody sang and danced in the kitchen. Servers argued over sections, tables,
and who would go home first. I was moved to dinners fairly quickly and felt a subtle wave of hostility from those waiters who had logged many more lunches. Aside from Pamela, who had taken a very proprietary attitude toward the restaurant, I was the only server with a child. This placed me immediately in the “no fun” category, and absolutely nobody was interested in hearing my tales of the old days at Molto’s. I went through the motions at my tables but felt curiously out of place and uncom
fortable. It was as if I was attempting to wear clothes that no longer fit.

I began thinking that a major lifestyle change was in order. After years in Portland, I was tired of constantly having wet feet and waking up to gray skies. Our basement apartment was start
ing to become downright depressing with its insidious mold and lack of light. Maya began complaining of hearing snoring noises in the middle of the night. Although I laughed at her and dis
missed her forbodings as hallucinations, I considered them to be another bad sign.

My parents called frequently from Southern California and raved about the quality of life there. They told both me and Maya how beautiful it was and how much easier things seemed to be. We had to move, they insisted.

“There are
plenty
of restaurants down here,” my father insisted, “and they’re all busy.” Still, Maya and I were slow to start packing up our lives and kept putting off a move until “next month.” It took an event that was both comic and frightening to finally spur us into action.

Maya burst into my bedroom at three o’clock one morning and screamed, “I’m
not
crazy! There
is
someone snoring outside my window! And he’s about to roll into my bedroom!”

I followed Maya into her bedroom, unsure whether to laugh or cry, and saw something that, at first, my sleeping brain refused to accept. There was a vacant parking lot on one side of

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our building, which ended in a shallow ditch at the level of Maya’s bedroom window. One of Portland’s many homeless peo
ple had taken up his nightly residence in said ditch and, in an alcoholic stupor, had managed to roll right into her window. The windowpane, in fact, was all that was keeping him from crashing right into her bed. He lay peacefully against the glass, snoring loudly, an empty bottle beside him.

“What are we going to do?” Maya asked me.

“What can we do? He’s not going to fall in. Probably.” I had to laugh.

“Sure, very funny. It’s not
your
bedroom. I don’t think you’d be laughing if a drunk fell on
you
in the middle of the night.”

“Look,” I reasoned, “he didn’t exactly fall on you.”

“I’m sleeping in your room,” she said, turning out the light and grabbing the blanket off her bed. “And you know what else?”

“What? Tell me.”

“We’re outta here,” Maya said. “This is the last straw.”

I had to agree with her. Within two weeks, we had shipped everything worth keeping to our parents and given away what wouldn’t travel. I gave notice at Molto’s for the last time, taking some photos of the place on my way out even though I knew I’d never forget it. Again, I finished my last shift with no fanfare. Only hours after it ended, Maya, Blaze, and I boarded a midnight flight to California and were gone for good.

[ ]

Diners have a certain image
in the collective imagina
tion. Soda fountains, for example. Endless coffee. Inexpensive but filling meals. Bright Formica and stainless steel. Waitresses in pink outfits, on roller skates. Red Naugahyde booths. An innocence of the all-American variety. There is something com
forting in the warm glow of a diner, a feeling of safe haven. Din
ers evoke nostalgia, sweet as cherry pie, of a time when some things, at least, were simpler.

There is, of course, a darker version.

I worked in one.

When I moved to California with Maya and my year-old son, the logical first step was to find a job in the new land of low-fat milk and raw honey. My parents had raved about the quality of life in California:

“People walk around in shorts in the middle of the day!”

“Everybody’s on a permanent vacation—nobody works here!”

“Beaches! Sunshine! Vegetarian restaurants!”

People, it seemed, survived in style down here. Maya and I both reckoned we could get decent waitressing jobs, which would at least pay the bills until we got on our feet and began
doing whatever it was that we were really meant to do. For Maya, who had been playing violin since the age of nine, that whatever involved music. For me, a small voice in my head still whispered (although not very insistently) that I should be writ
ing something. Anything.

Our initial approach to the job search was fairly simple. We’d found an apartment to rent that was close enough to the beach to sport an ocean view (if we craned our heads in a very specific way out of the living room window) and within walking distance of a town very popular with tourists. Because we’d moved without a car, or much of anything resembling furniture, for that matter, I strapped Blaze into his stroller and both Maya and I walked along the ocean from our apartment into town, stopping in at every restaurant along the way. Usually, we took turns going in. If the restaurant looked more upscale, Maya would wait outside with the baby while I filled out an applica
tion. Having only Maxman’s and Peppy’s to her credit, Maya felt unsure of her waitressing skills and, despite tales of my Dining Room experience, was unwilling to try to bluff her way into a fine dining situation. As a result, I filled out countless applica
tions and Maya spent a lot of time with Blaze.

After a couple of days of this pavement pounding, we stopped in at Hoover’s, an eclectic diner only steps away from the azure surf of the Pacific. The restaurant was decorated in shades of black, pink, and seafoam green down to the flecks in the Formica tabletops. There were whole wheat muffins under glass and Warholish prints on the walls. Next to an old-fash
ioned industrial coffee maker was a very high-tech cappuccino machine. The overall effect was Mel’s Diner meets the Twin Peaks café.

Maya and I filled out applications together while I rocked Blaze in his stroller with my foot. The diner’s owner, Adrian, seemed highly amused at our team approach. He was in dire

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need of help, he said, and had to hire someone immediately. I marveled at our good fortune and the fact that he wasn’t even planning on checking our references.

“Can you girls start Sunday morning?” was all he asked.

It all seemed so easy.

Within a few weeks, however, Maya and I both discovered why, despite a steady flow of customers, Adrian had the highest staff turnover of any restaurant in town. We also learned a style of service that I have come to label “guerrilla waitressing.” Within a scant couple of months, we were preparing for our shifts as if we were going to war. And Hoover’s was nothing if not a battlefield.

Allow me to illustrate . . .

I wake up on Sunday morning at 5:30
A
.
M
. and pack a bag for Blaze with toys, diapers, and bottles. He’ll be spending the day with my parents until I finish work. I take a five-minute shower and hurry myself into a pink T-shirt and shorts. For the first time in my life, I’ve eschewed the traditional black waitress footwear for an expensive pair of cross-training athletic shoes. As I strap them on, I realize what a good choice they are. What I will be doing for the next several hours will be more of a work
out
than work. I can’t leave Blaze without saying good-bye to him, so I pick him up out of his crib and kiss his sleepy face before tucking him into bed with Maya.

“I’m leaving,” I tell her.

“Hmmm . . . OK,” she mutters. “See you there.”

I walk to work while the rest of the world sleeps. My twenty-minute route takes me along the ocean, through quiet streets. It’s still fairly dark outside and the salty air has a little bite. But this is California. I’ll be sweating by noon, no matter that this is the middle of January.

I arrive for my shift at Hoover’s at 6:30
A
.
M
. My first task is to rouse Danny from his stupor so that he can unlock the restau
rant and prepare the popovers.

I should explain. Adrian had a very successful business, which he was doing his best to run into the Indian burial ground that his restaurant was suspected of being built upon. By the time my sis
ter and I were hired, he was about three quarters of the way to complete ruin. There were two things that kept Hoover’s busy and saved Adrian from going under: a spectacular ocean view and popovers. Every single day, Adrian, or whatever hapless cook hap
pened to be employed at the time, made dozens of popovers, which were served with every breakfast and lunch. Most mornings the popovers came out late, half burned or half raw. They were sent back regularly by customers screaming with indignation. Yet, amazingly, these same customers came back time and again, lining up for forty-five minutes on a Sunday morning in order to wait another forty-five minutes at the table with seven refills of coffee until they received an omelette that contained not what was ordered but whatever was left in the kitchen and that was gar
nished by a misshapen, ill-conceived attempt at a popover.

But I digress.

“Danny!” I shriek for the third time. “Get up! Danny, can you hear me?”

Danny Davidson is one of two cooks Adrian refers to as “my international staff of chefs.” Danny found his way to Southern California from New Zealand and entered almost immediately into a Faustian bargain with Adrian. At twenty, Danny has been an alcoholic for more than five years. Adrian, seeing a prime opportunity, offered to pay him mostly in beer. While the arrangement suited Danny, it didn’t allow him much spare cash to live on. Magnanimously, Adrian provided Danny with a room off the restaurant, which had been serving as a spare office. Thus, Danny, who had never so much as fried an egg before

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being hired at Hoover’s, has become something of an indentured servant. He drinks steadily all day and finishes with several six-packs when his shift is over. By the time his next shift begins, he is usually deep in a bottomless blackout.

I pound on the locked door until my fists hurt and I experi
ence a familiar flash of panic. Could Danny, whom I like but am unable to help, be comatose this time? Or worse? I bang and scream one more time. There is a muffled groaning behind the door.