Waiting; The True Confessions of a Waitress (33 page)

“Need any help with that?” he asks.

In the kitchen, David is taking a minibreak and helping him
self to the leftover tiramisu. He eats piggishly, leaning forward so that globs of marscapone cheese and rum-soaked ladyfingers fall onto the floor instead of his jacket. Mario emerges, flushed and sweaty, from the dry storage room, where a burst sack of flour is visible, and berates David.

“Hey,
stronzo, che cazzo fai
?” Mario demands.

“It was just sitting here,” David says, his words muffled by the cake. “Why can’t I eat it?”

“Fuck you, that’s why,” says Mario.

“Ooh, baby,” David says.

Sarah, Tina, and Gino enter the kitchen together and line up at the bread station. Gino grabs the bread knife first and tells Sarah, “Let me do this for you. How many people?”

“I don’t need your help,” Sarah says.

“
Per favore, fiorellina
. Don’t be mad.”

“Little flower?” Mario interrupts. “Why you call her that? Save that for your wife.”

“My wife?” Gino says, dropping the bread knife and backing up. “
Che cazzo dice
? Maybe I should save it for somebody else’s wife.”

“I’m outta here,” Sarah says and marches out of the kitchen without her bread.

“And I thought
I
had problems,” Tina says to herself.

“Tina, come here, baby,” says David. “I’ve got something for you.” He begins feeding Tina bits of tiramisu, which she licks off his fingers with slow exaggerated motions. Disgusted, Mario leaves the kitchen and goes back to his post on the line.

For a very brief moment, the kitchen is all but deserted. The dishwashers carry on behind their cage, but mostly drunk or
drugged (requisite conditions for the job they perform) see nothing, hear nothing, and say very little. It is within this pocket of calm that Kathy and Stefano walk into the kitchen from oppo
site ends, look around, and walk out the back door. Not content to settle for a place as public as the dry storage room or the linen closet (where Tina and Jesus will shortly be frantically kissing and grabbing at each other), Kathy and Stefano climb a ladder that leads to the roof. It’s dark, after all, and hell, nobody’s going to accidentally walk in
there
. Kathy and Stefano don’t last very long on the roof. Later, Kathy will complain to Maggie that Stefano is too quick on the draw. Stefano, in turn, will complain to Vito that Kathy’s breasts “hang down like two rotten pears.”

As the night lengthens and moonlight replaces sunshine as the source of sparkle on the ocean, the restaurant grows even busier. A seemingly endless parade of parties seeking nourish
ment streams through the door, across the floor, and over to table after table. There’s a raucous birthday party under way in one of the restaurant’s private dining rooms. The group is made up entirely of women and the entertainment is a male stripper who has brought his own music and who, for a grand finale, sets his G-string on fire.

“I’m hot tonight!” he exclaims, and the women shriek with laughter and too much white zinfandel. Every time their waiter, Frank, appears at the door with food, water, or wine, the women offer him increasing amounts of money to strip as well. But Frank has five other tables and asks if he can, perhaps, join the party later?

The waiters and waitresses have begun to tire of the con
stant movement and start bumping into each other with increas
ing frequency. This leads to several arguments:

“Stop touching me. You’ve been touching me all night.”

“What are you talking about? I don’t want to touch you. I’d have better luck touching myself, thank you.”

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“You’re in my space.”

“Because you’re taking too long putting that order in. What, are you writing a novel or something?”

Gino yells at Sarah that he saw her touch Frank’s ass. “What do I want with Frank’s ass?” Sarah says.

At her table, Tina prepares to take a wine order. Although she appears to listen intently to her customer’s questions, Tina is fixated on the vision of Jesus clearing plates from a table opposite hers. Her eyes become a little glassy as she watches him stack several dishes on one arm.

“So, which one is your favorite?” her customer says. “I’ve had the cabernet before, but I’ve never tried this sangiovese.”

Jesus meets Tina’s gaze and the two exchange a passionate glance.

“The sangiovese is very, very good,” Tina says dreamily.

“Wow,” the customer responds, “you must really like that wine. We’ll have it.”

Across the way, Jesus stacks one too many plates on his arm while trying to keep his eyes on Tina and the lot goes crashing to the floor, creating an explosion of broken china and angel hair pasta.

“Job opening!” cries the bartender in the brief silence that follows the crash and all his bar patrons laugh uproariously into their drinks.

At the pantry, Gino is arguing with the pantry girl over a half-melted dish of ice cream. “I can’t take this out,” he tells her in Italian. “It’s disgusting.”

“You’re too slow,” she answers in Spanish. “It’s been sitting there for ten minutes. It wasn’t melted when I put it up.”

“Please, my love, make me another one. Please,” he begs in Spanish.

“Forget it,” she says and puts up another dish of ice cream for Frank. Very casually, Gino places Frank’s ice cream on a liner
plate and walks off with it. Frank appears at the pantry moments

later and studies the dish of melted ice cream.

“Is this mine?” he asks the pantry girl. “Why’s it all melted?”

“
Hijo de puta,
Gino!” the pantry girl shrieks and runs off a stream of curses in rapid Spanish.

“You know what?” Frank says, placing the melted ice cream on a liner plate, “I don’t understand a fucking word you’re say
ing, so I’m just going to take this ice cream and fuck off, but if it comes back, don’t fucking blame me!”

As Frank delivers his soupy ice cream, telling his table that it’s a special Italian blend and that’s why it’s so soft, Giancarlo walks around the restaurant with a copy of the seating chart in his hand. It is at this time of night that he wields the most power, deciding who will go home and who will stay to close. Several waiters and waitresses make slicing motions with their hands across their necks, imploring to be cut. David wants to go out dancing. Frank is planning to go out with his party of women. Tina begs another busboy to close for Jesus, who says nothing, opting instead to shrug and raise his eyebrows.

“You two,” Giancarlo says, pointing to Gino and Sarah, “you close tonight.”

“But I’ve only got two tables left,” Sarah whines.

“What’s so bad?” says Gino. “We can leave together.”

The action at the door slows. Waiters and waitresses begin giv
ing their tables to Sarah and Gino. Sarah inherits an angry couple from Tina’s station. They’ve been waiting to order for several min
utes while Tina’s been busy trying to arrange her exit with Jesus.

“I’m so sorry about the delay,” Sarah says to their pouting faces. “Your waitress is leaving and I’ll be taking over now.”

“Yeah, terrific,” the man says. “Can we just order a bottle of wine already?”

“Sure,” Sarah says and hurries to the bar to get their Chianti. The bartender, however, is conspicuously absent from his post.

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“Hey,” Sarah calls out to the empty bar, “I need a bottle of Chi
anti
now
.” When nobody appears at the bar, Sarah steals a glance at her unhappy table. She can almost see the smoke rising from their ears. She sneaks behind the bar and rummages around in the wines, unable to find the bottle she needs. Now frantic, she heads off to the wine room, hoping that she’ll be able to find the bottle in question.

Stumbling into the darkened wine room, she almost trips across the bartender, who is seated in front of the cocktail waitress, who is doing a slow striptease for his pleasure. In the dim light, Sarah can see the outlines of some particularly lovely lingerie.

“Oh no,” Sarah sighs.

“Do you mind?” the bartender says, somewhat snappishly.

The cocktail waitress hurriedly buttons herself up.

“I don’t believe this,” Sarah says. “Can you hand me a bottle of that Antinori, please? I don’t have time for this.”

“Why are you so pissed?” the bartender says, reaching behind him and grabbing the bottle of Chianti. “It’s not like you’ve never done anything like this yourself.”

While he speaks, the cocktail waitress runs from the room. In the flash of light by the doorway, Sarah can see a crimson blush on her cheeks. Gripping the bottle of wine by its neck, Sarah is close behind her.

“Come on, Sarah,” the bartender pleads to her retreating back, “it was Victoria’s Secret, for god’s sake . . . .”

Sarah’s couple is fuming by the time she arrives back at the table. “So what did you have to do, press the grapes?” the man asks as she uncorks the wine and pours.

At his table, Gino is whistling. He is waiting on a party of four who are asking him about steak and veal chops. Gino knows that if they order these items, he will be stuck with them for at least an additional hour.

“I’m so sorry,” Gino says. “We have only pizza and pasta left.”

“Whaddya mean?” his customers ask. “You’ve run out of steak? How’s that possible?”

“Busy night,
ragazzi,
” Gino says. “But our pizzas are very good.”

“Yeah? Which one do you recommend?”

By the time he’s finished with them, Gino has not only con
vinced his customers to order three pizzas to split between the four of them, he’s also talked them out of appetizers and recom
mended a place down the street for dessert.

Frank rounds up everybody who’s left on the floor to go sing happy birthday to his party of wild women, prompting several excuses:

“I can’t sing.”

“I’m too busy.”

“My throat hurts.”

But Giancarlo is adamant about the singing. “Everybody goes,” he says, “
Vai a cantare
.” Everybody trudges over to the pri
vate dining room. Frank leads, like some sort of parallel universe Pied Piper, holding a piece of tiramisu with a sunken candle sput
tering on top. The song, when it comes, is grating and hideously off-key. “
Tanti auguri a te,
” the waitstaff sings. “
Tanti auguri a te. Tanti auguri, carissima, tanti auguri a te
.”

The women clap and screech. In the middle of all this sound and fury, Sarah turns to Gino and whispers in his ear, “You won’t leave without me, will you?”

Gino finds her hand with his own and lightly runs his fingers across her palm. “
Amore mio,
” he says. “Of course not.”

As the restaurant begins to clear out, the temperature within drops by several degrees. Gino and Sarah scramble to feed their last few tables so that they, too, can leave. Sarah’s Chianti couple is considerably happier after receiving their entrees in record time. Gino’s table ravenously slices into three hastily prepared pizzas.

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The smell of garlic still hangs in the air, but added to it now are the scents of the beach and night-blooming jasmine wafting in from the open doors. Vito sits down at a vacant table for a late dinner and is joined by the chefs and hostesses. Most of the other cooks are sitting in an enclosed space behind the restau
rant, smoking and comparing notes on how the night went. Aside from Sarah and Gino, the remaining staff have begun to move in slow motion.