Waiting; The True Confessions of a Waitress (14 page)
Read Waiting; The True Confessions of a Waitress Online
Authors: Debra Ginsberg
Rosemary’s makeup was brilliant. She blended her eye-shadow with the colors of her bruises so well that by the time she was finished, they were mere suggestions of abuse. Rose
mary had a final ritual she performed before leaving the locker room. She kissed her fingertips lightly and pressed them to a photograph of her two small children, which she kept, along with her array of makeup and sprays, in her locker.
“See you at dinner?” she asked, locking up her cubicle.
“I’ll be in,” I told her.
“You working the Fantasy tonight?”
“Yup, first one. What about you?”
“Card Room. Hey, good luck,” she said and breezed out of the locker room, leaving a myriad of scents in her wake: baby powder, hairspray, gardenia. Rosemary had just turned twenty-one. Two years older than she, I felt immeasurably younger as I watched her leave the room.
I waited a few beats before changing into my own version of Rosemary’s outfit. As she had done, I put my shoes on last, delaying the inevitable. I did not have Rosemary’s long legs and felt I looked like an overgrown schoolgirl in badly fitting clothes.
By the time I made it into the staff room, Deane was already there, showered, shaved, and shined up like a new penny.
“More java?” he asked me as I sat down with my dinner, which consisted of a roll, some butter, and a cup of coffee.
“Can’t find anything that appeals to me over there,” I said, gesturing to the staff buffet.
“Well, I can’t blame you,” Thelma piped up, planting herself at our table. “This”—she held up a forkful of meat dripping with
a suspicious sauce—“is supposed to be prime rib. It’s so tough. Prime rib should melt in your mouth.”
“Thelma, do you really think they’re going to give you the good stuff ?” Deane sighed, tucking into his own plate, which looked both symmetrical and color coordinated.
“I’ve been here twenty years,” Thelma grumbled. “Why not?”
Deane shrugged and turned his attention back to me. “Ner
vous?” he asked.
“A little,” I said.
“What’re you nervous about?” Thelma asked, chewing her tough prime rib.
“She’s working the Fantasy tonight,” Deane answered for me.
“What?” Thelma looked both annoyed and incredulous. “They’re letting you work a Fantasy after two months? I had to be here years before they let me work it.” She swallowed and sized me up. Thelma was possibly the most hostile of all the older waitresses. Her husband was a retired beat cop, and a gen
erous portion of his toughness had transferred to her.
“It’s probably because you’re so young,” she added. “They’re trying to get some young girls in there to mix it up. Foolish, is what it is.”
I studied Thelma’s face. Her skin was a mosaic of lines, every one of which, I assumed, had its own story. She shaved her eye
brows and penciled them in later, complementing the effect with electric-blue eye shadow. Her orange hair was piled precariously high in curls on top of her head, setting off the brick-colored frown of her lips.
“You’re probably right,” I told her. “But here I am.”
“Hmm,” Thelma mused.
Deane rolled his eyes. “C’mon,” he said, “let’s go work the Fantasy.”
The Dining Room was abuzz with fishy excitement. Looking around, I actually thought I was underwater for a minute or two. The best part of the Fish Fantasy, I found out, was that it was a prix fixe buffet. The waiters only had to provide hot towels, open wine and champagne (which came with the meal), and clear plates. Although much busier than an average night, it was actu
ally easier and more profitable. The guests were also a sight to behold: all of Portland’s oldest money dressed in tuxedos and finery, struggling to free lobsters from their shells. The whole thing had an aura of fuzzy unreality. I felt I was crashing a party that clearly I would never be invited to. A few of my customers asked who I was or how I liked working at the club, but most were simply interested in learning where Agnes and Ethel were. Since I was new, I had fewer tables than the other waiters and plenty of opportunity to watch the proceedings from behind the bus station. Belinda (who I noticed was violating both the nail polish and earring codes) was running her narrow behind off. Deane, usually smooth and evenly paced no matter how busy he got, was developing a line of perspiration on his brow. I knew they would both make much more money than I would by the end of the night.
I turned my attention to the buffet, manned by several chefs in starched whites. I recognized all but one, a tall, stocky new
comer who waved his hands in flourishes over the food and greeted all the guests. He stood directly in front of a giant salmon carved from ice and it framed him in rather a unique way. I saw him look up and over in my direction, so I averted my eyes. When I looked up again, he was still staring at me. I disap
peared behind the bus station and busied myself organizing sil
verware and turning ice buckets. When it was time for me to reenter the fray to serve coffee to one of my tables, the tall new chef was standing right in front of me, blocking my path. I actu
ally had to crane my neck to look at his face.
“Hi, little girl,” he said.
I suppose I should have been offended at the term he used and the slightly lewd way he offered it up, but I wasn’t. Perhaps it was the giddy atmosphere of the Dining Room or my own feel
ings of isolation from the festivities. For whatever reason, I was instantly charmed. He introduced himself as Leo and immedi
ately adopted a conspiratorial air, telling me how silly he found the whole concept of a Fish Fantasy. I learned that he was a visit
ing chef, called in by his good friend Hans, and would be oversee
ing the menus in the kitchen for a few weeks. Leo didn’t make any attempt to downplay his credits and listed the names of sev
eral restaurants and professional societies I had never heard of. It was almost as if he was presenting me with his résumé to see if it met with my approval. In the short time we talked (and it couldn’t have been longer than five minutes), I learned that Leo was originally from New York (something in common, we mar
veled) and now lived in Colorado. We shared our thoughts on the Dining Room and its patrons and traded facetious quips (still more in common). When we’d gotten through all of this, Leo said, “I’ve been watching you all night.” I was spared having to come up with a rejoinder to this impossible statement because Leo was interrupted by Hans and a very flustered-looking Carol, who was clearly annoyed at who I was talking to. Leo left me to greet more people and unveil another batch of lobsters and sauces.
“Please come and find me before you leave,” he said. “You know where I’ll be.”
I am still not sure what attracted me to Leo. It might have been that he seemed so sure of himself or that he seemed to have a very sharp sense of humor. Perhaps it was that he was much older than I was or that he was obviously successful in his career. Physically, at least, he wasn’t what I would have thought of as my “type.” He was balding, for one thing, heavier than I
would have liked, and had a pleasing, rather than handsome, face. Nevertheless, although I was wary, I was intrigued by his obvious attention to me. I really hadn’t had much experience fielding pickup lines or parrying advances from men who weren’t my own age. And then again, some of us are just born with a naïveté that no amount of experience seems to eliminate. I am, without doubt, one of those people. This romantic blindness has allowed me to maintain a certain optimism over the years, but it has also led me to make some very poor decisions.
For whatever reason, though, I did go looking for Leo at the end of my shift and we spoke a little longer. He said he wanted to take me out for dinner and claimed to know the chef at Port
land’s best restaurant. I told him I’d think about it and he seemed pleased that I hadn’t agreed right away.
“Good idea,” he said. “I could be an ax murderer, for all you know.”
He had a certain talent with lines like that.
We had our first date soon after. Leo liked to do everything in a big way. He showed up at my apartment with roses and made a show of escorting me, holding doors open and pulling out chairs whenever possible. The restaurant he took me to had a 360-degree view of the city, allowing the lights of Portland and the Willamette River to twinkle erratically through every window. We had a special table reserved for us and the chef came over to talk to Leo, shaking his hand and chatting a bit about the state of the business before going off to prepare our dinners. I admit I was impressed with the display. Leo’s plan for seduction, however, had only just begun. I’m sure that had I been older, he would not have told me the story he shared once our dinners arrived. But he had guessed (with amazing accu
racy) at my need to collect the tales of others and fold them into my own experience. What he threw at me next was a guaran
teed direct hit.
“I learned to cook in Vietnam,” he told me, and my eyes grew wider. “I was drafted at eighteen, right out of high school. Marines. Spent two and a half years in Da Nang.”
“Did you kill anyone?” I asked, half jokingly.
“Well, if somebody’s shooting at you,” he said, “you don’t wait to feel bullets ripping through your stomach. You tend to shoot back.”
I noticed for the first time that his brown tie did not match his blue jacket. In fact, there was something a little off about his whole outfit.
“You don’t feel bad?” I asked. “Knowing you’ve taken lives? It doesn’t bother you?”
Leo was eating a plate of veal. I noticed that he sliced it into very small portions before placing it carefully into his mouth. “You don’t see them,” he said. “You don’t know who they are. It’s not real. Anyway, if it comes down to a question of my life or someone else’s . . . well, I’m not going to let myself be killed by somebody I don’t even know.”
“Why would you want to put yourself in that position in the first place?”
“I didn’t.” He shrugged. “The government made that deci
sion for me.”
“You could have tried to get out of it,” I said.
“I would have if I’d known what it was going to be like.”
There was a silence between us, punctuated by the sounds of silverware clattering against plates and the ambient hum of con
versation.
“Well, how’d you get out, then?” I asked, determined to see the story through to the end. He had me and he knew it.
“It was an injury. They sent me home.”
“So you did get shot?”
“No, I always managed to avoid that.”
“Then what was it?”
“I stepped in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was a brilliant device someone dreamed up called a Bouncing Betty. It clicks when you step on it but it doesn’t explode until you take your foot off. They told me I was lucky to have survived. I lay on the side of this road bleeding and unconscious for fifteen hours before anyone got to me.”
“But,” I said tentatively, “you don’t have a limp or anything. Do you?”
“It didn’t exactly hit me in the leg,” he said. I was sure I detected a glint of excitement in his eyes. “More like upper thigh. Very upper. Not the sort of damage that shows.” He watched my expression for a moment as if measuring his next words carefully. “Everything’s in perfect working order,” he said, “but I can’t ever have children.” I gasped a little and he said, “You don’t like this conversation, do you? It bothers you, doesn’t it?”
“I think it’s interesting,” I managed to say.
“We don’t have to talk about it anymore.”
“I don’t mind.”
“You keep staring at my tie. Did I get something on it?” He checked the tie, laughing a little.
“No, it’s nothing. I was just kind of thinking . . . it’s brown and your jacket is blue.”
“I’m color-blind,” Leo said.
He had an answer for everything.
The fact that Leo and I were dating soon became common knowledge in the Dining Room. In the kitchen, at least, it afforded me a unique, if wary, respect. I had broken through the ranks and obtained the unique status of being the top guy’s girl
friend. The other chefs seemed quite in awe of Leo and his culi
nary abilities and they demonstrated their deference toward him by making my life considerably easier. My dishes always came out first, and I was instantly forgiven if I made a mistake on an order. And after word of our involvement spread, I received none
of the ribbing that other servers got routinely, especially that of a sexual nature. Leo himself made no secret of the fact that we were an item. He cooked special meals for me and fed them to me on the side. Since he didn’t work the line, acting more as a supervisor, he couldn’t be accused of giving me preferential treatment, although he clearly was. He rarely called me by name, preferring to greet me always as “little girl.”