Waiting; The True Confessions of a Waitress

by Ginsberg, Debra

  “Uh-huh,” I say. I don’t have the energy to correct them. I’ve already told them what my name is at least six times before.

  “Is it crazy today?” They are both grinning ear to ear, as if they’ll be disappointed if I say no.

  “A little,” I say hopefully.

  “We thought so. We’re so glad you’re waiting on us today, you’re so nice. I hope the popovers aren’t soggy today. Sometimes they’re pretty soggy. But we don’t mind because it’s always so much fun to eat here.”

  “Like Dinner Theater?” I ask.

  “Ha ha ha, you’re so funny. She’s so funny, isn’t she, Greg?”

  “Cute, too,” Greg says. “Say, Brenda, we’d like to have a couple of omelettes, but Kate doesn’t eat the yolks. Do you think you could get her an egg white omelette? If it’s too much trouble, don’t worry about it, we’ll understand. We know things can get a little wild around here. Also, do you think you could find some kind of cereal for the baby? Maybe some polenta or something like that. Do you have polenta? If you don’t, that’s OK, but she does need to eat, so if you could get something soon for her, that would be great. But don’t worry, we’re not in a big hurry. If you could bring us a few popovers while we’re waiting for our food that would be terrific. Also, can you check and see if you’ve got any asparagus? It would be fantastic if I could get a side order of asparagus steamed with a little olive oil. We’d like to start with some coffee drinks, if you’ve got time. I’ll just have a double decaf latte. What would you like, Kate?”

  “Yes, Brenda, can you make me a half-decaf low-fat cappuccino?” Kate asks. “Nonfat would be better, but I know you might not have it. If you do, I’d be so happy. I love your cappuccinos here, they’re so good. Except the last time we were here, it was a little cold. If it’s not too much trouble, could you make sure that my cappuccino is really hot? Can you do that for me, Brenda? By the way, how’s your sister? What’s her name? Myra, right?”

  “You guys are both so cute,” Greg adds.

  I hate these people.

  In the kitchen, a new storm is brewing. Terry rushes up to the grill and tells Adrian, “Can you fix this omelette? The woman says it’s not done in the middle.”

  Adrian opens the omelette with his fingers and pokes at it. “It’s fine,” he says. “It’s the best fucking omelette we’ve ever made. Tell her—”

  “Well, she’s right behind me,” Terry says. Indeed, the woman in question, wearing workout clothes and a huge attitude, has waltzed right into the kitchen.

  “Are you the owner?” she demands of Adrian. “I’ve got to tell you, this is the worst omelette I’ve ever had in my life. In addition”—she checks off the list on her fingers—“it came late, the coffee is cold, I couldn’t get orange juice, and this bimbo”— she points at Terry—“is rude.”

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  Time stops as we wait for Adrian’s reaction. The hum of the restaurant fades against the crackling of static in the air. Calmly, Adrian walks out from behind the grill and puts an arm around the woman.

  “Let’s not talk about this here,” he tells her softly. “Let’s go outside.” He opens the screen door for her, and as she exits the kitchen, he slams it at her back.

  “First of all,” he growls, “don’t call my waitress a bimbo. Second of all, get the hell out of my restaurant. Learn some manners.”

  As she strides off speechless and fuming, Adrian mutters, “Ah, fuck her. In fact, fuck everything. Close the kitchen. Shut down the restaurant. I’m outta here.” He throws his apron on the floor and walks out. Terry shrugs and Oaxaca grins broadly.

  “You know he’ll be back,” Danny says hopelessly and picks up a frying pan. Oaxaca inspects the tickets, which have continued to roll in from the printer. “Garden salad,” he says, “side of potatoes, two short stacks . . . ”

  At two there is a brief lull in the madness. I take the time to start my portion of the day’s cleanup, which mostly involves trying to clean the cappuccino machine, which now looks as if several gallons of milk have exploded and then dried on its surfaces. Because I can feel someone staring at me from across the counter, I turn and see Dominic holding a couple of pink cake boxes.

  Dominic is one half of Cake and More, a tiny company he runs with his partner, Ian. These two make some of the most beautiful confections I’ve ever seen, which is why Adrian, who can’t even keep up with his juice payments, has lately decided to sell their cheesecakes. I have to smile when I see Dominic because, despite the fact that Adrian refers to him and Ian as “those pastry fags,” I know that he’s come all the way out to Hoover’s on a Sunday afternoon mostly to see me. We’ve had a running flirtation going since he started bringing his cakes to

  Hoover’s. Right now, I couldn’t be happier to see him.

  “Hi, how are you?” I ask him.

  “Pretty good,” he says. “Just thought I’d bring these by. We’re working on something new and I thought maybe you’d like to try a sample.” He opens one of the boxes and shows me a tiny round gâteau coated with dark chocolate and topped with a pink sugar rose.

  “Wow,” I tell him, “you guys are really talented.”

  “Maybe you can share it around,” he says a bit nervously.

  “Thank you,” I tell him. “Cup of coffee for your troubles?” Dominic smiles and nods assent. I make him a double espresso and rummage in my apron pocket for money to pay him for the cakes. At Hoover’s, we have to pay our distributors out of the day’s sales. Lucky for Dominic, I’ve sold more than enough today to cover his bill. It won’t last, I know. Sooner or later, we’ll have to stop paying him. But for now, I want to keep him around, so I give him the cash and he hands me a receipt.

  “Busy day?” he asks.

  “This place is insane,” I tell him. “Two of our servers are in jail in Tijuana.”

  Dominic laughs and I start telling him about my morning. For a moment, things feel almost normal. I’m just a waitress in a pretty diner, leaning over the counter I’m polishing, flirting with the good-looking cake man.

  But it can’t last.

  A clot of hungry beachcombers, crusted with sand, stumble through the door demanding immediate service and wanting to know if they can get popovers to go.

  “Sorry,” I tell Dominic, “I’ve got to get back to work.”

  “Right,” he says. “Thanks for the coffee.” He pulls himself up from the counter and starts to head for the door. At the last minute, he stops himself and comes back, behind the counter

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  this time, so he can speak close to my ear. “Maybe we can get together sometime?” he says.

  “That would really be nice,” I tell him and pause. “You know, I’ve got a kid,” I add.

  “No, I didn’t know,” he says, smiling. “How old?”

  “One and a half.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “It’s a boy. Blaze.”

  “Well, where’s Blaze today?” he asks.

  “He’s with my parents.” I’ve said everything I need to with those four words. There’s no boyfriend, no husband. I’m a single mother, plain as day.

  “So Blaze can come with us,” Dominic says. And now he’s said everything he needs to. Ah, the modern rites of courtship, I think to myself.

  “Why don’t you call me?” I say and scrawl my phone number on a paper napkin and hand it to him.

  “OK, good,” he says and, in another second, is gone. I head toward the kitchen and am immediately body-slammed by Terry, who is coming around one of Hoover’s many blind corners. Terry happens to be carrying a pot of scalding hot coffee, half of which splashes across me and sinks, still steaming, into my chest.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” she mumbles as I yelp in pain. “I didn’t see you.”

  I spend the next thirty minutes trying to assuage the burning pain in my chest with icy towels. There’s not much for me in the way of sympathy. Terry is claiming that I walked into her and has actually become indignant. I f
inish my cleanup and my last few tables. My enthusiasm for Dominic and his cakes translates into cash as I am able to happily sell several slices of the cherry cheesecake to the late lunch crowd.

  By three-thirty, the flow of business is slow enough for me to leave. I can identify at least four different food stains on my apron and my legs threaten to fold at any moment. I have been in a state of constant movement for eight hours. I prepare my cash drop and take it upstairs to Adrian’s office, where he’s been hiding for the last two hours. He says nothing as I dump cash and tickets into a cardboard box near the door.

  When I come back downstairs, my parents are waiting for me with Blaze.

  “We thought we’d just drop him off here,” my mother says, “so he can have a nice walk home.” She hands me Blaze’s stroller and diaper bag. “You look tired. Long day?”

  “You don’t even know,” I tell her and tuck Blaze into his stroller. “Un un un,” he says and, right now, I’m interpreting that to mean, “Hi, Mom, let’s go home.”

  On my way out, I pass Danny sitting outside the kitchen, drinking a beer, taking his first break of the day. Oaxaca is attempting to scrape dried popovers from the kitchen floor.

  “Look at the little mite,” Danny says, smiling at Blaze. “He’s so sweet. Hey, chum.”

  “Un un un,” Blaze responds.

  “You going home?” Danny asks me.

  “Yes, if I can make it there.”

  “Y’know,” he says, “I’d like to have a son someday.”

  “Why’s that, Danny?”

  “Well, so I could name him Harley.”

  “Harley? Is that a family name?”

  “No, it’s so his name would be Harley Davidson. Isn’t that a great name for a kid?”

  “Have a good night, Danny.”

  When I get home, I am too tired to ponder the riddles of the day. Why, for example, people keep coming back to Hoover’s. Or why Danny and Oaxaca don’t take a kitchen knife to Adrian. Or how much longer I can work in this restaurant without having a nervous breakdown. I am, however, sure of two things. For one,

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  I have the day off tomorrow. I will take Blaze down to a park by the beach and push him on the swings while he watches the ocean. On the way home, I’ll stop in somewhere and have a cappuccino for myself and an apple juice for Blaze. It will be warm and sunny. The taste of life will be sweet.

  The other certainty is that I have a hundred and fifty dollars in cold cash tucked into my apron pocket. Whether or not the trade-off to earn those dollars has been worth it is a question that will have to be addressed tomorrow or as soon as I can lift my aching body off the couch.

  Maya arrives home at 5:30 P.M. and falls onto the other couch. “I can’t believe I have to go back there in the morning,” she says.

  “How’d it end up?” I ask her.

  “Not good. When I left, Adrian was giving Danny and Oaxaca a lesson on how to make popovers properly. I think they might be there all night. Oaxaca missed his bus and Danny looked like he was on his fiftieth beer.”

  “How much did you make?” I ask her.

  “A hundred. You?”

  “One-fifty.”

  “Not bad,” she says. “What shall we have for dinner?”

  I lasted six months at Hoover’s. The final weeks were grim. Adrian stopped paying everybody, including staff. Because our paychecks bounced regularly on paydays, and this was a wonderful sales incentive, we’d have to sell at least the amount on the check in order to collect any wages at all. The muffin and doughnut man was not that lucky. He stopped coming around after issuing the following edict: “Tell Adrian to pay me or I’m comin’ back here to break both his legs.” Because Adrian engendered such unbridled hostility among his distributors, many of us actually started fearing for his life. Maya, for example, had a real fear that one morning she would arrive at work and find Adrian’s dead body stuffed in the Dumpster. As a result, she avoided going into the back of the restaurant until she saw Adrian, still alive, walk in the front door.

  Poor Danny managed to scrape enough money together to go back to New Zealand. Before he left, Maya and I invited him over for dinner. He arrived with a bottle of wine and twin turquoise necklaces, one for each of us. “You girls have been so nice to me,” he told us, “and I know I haven’t always been easy to work with. I don’t know how to thank you.” I couldn’t decide which was more heartbreaking, the fact that Danny had such a low opinion of himself or that, aside from our apartment, all he ever saw of the United States was the view from inside Hoover’s kitchen.

  Oaxaca, whose name turned out to be Francisco, worked like a galley slave for many months before finally quitting. He resurfaced years later at another restaurant where I worked, hired as a busboy. We greeted each other like survivors of a particularly nasty accident. Unfortunately, Francisco seemed permanently scarred by his experience at Hoover’s. He’d lost his edge and wandered around the restaurant as if lost, spilling coffee and showing up late. He just wasn’t used to being treated fairly and quit after a couple of weeks.

  As I had predicted, Adrian soon canceled orders for Dominic’s cakes. Dominic, however, did call me for a date. Ultimately, we ended up seeing each other for almost a year. Dominic had a few talents. He was a very hard worker and a good businessman, and he made a Linzertorte to die for. Unfortunately, he was also peculiarly old-fashioned when it came to women and believed in traditional roles for males and females, which bordered on outright sexism. This attitude also led him to assume that I had an immediate need to provide Blaze with a father. Dominic was the first man I’d dated since John and I wasn’t even sure if he was the

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  right man for me, let alone my son. At any rate, I wasn’t about to let him experiment and audition for fatherhood with Blaze.

  “He’s two years old,” Dominic would say. “He shouldn’t have a bottle anymore. He needs to be potty trained. Why don’t you put him in day care?” It was a rude awakening to one aspect of single motherhood and a call for me to put as much distance as possible between myself and a similar situation in the future. This, I assumed, virtually assured that I’d spend a long period outside of any other serious relationship.

  Perhaps, when he first met me, Dominic mistook me for an image of some diner waitress he had in his imagination: a poor working girl struggling to raise a kid on her own and desperately in need of a man to fix everything for her. I couldn’t fault him too much for this. For a brief while, I thought I was that waitress, too. In any case, though, I’d been paving my own way for much too long to become the “girl” Dominic was looking for. The end of our relationship, when it came, was not pleasant. Anything started at Hoover’s, it seemed, was destined for failure.

  After the local sheriff showed up for a “till tap” to make good on bad debts, Adrian managed, through witchcraft, we all assumed, to sell Hoover’s. The unsuspecting buyer was unaware of the curse on the place and he eliminated popovers from the menu to boot. After accusing Adrian of falsifying the books, the buyer and Adrian actually came to blows one day when Adrian refused to renegotiate the sale. Adrian sued the buyer for assaulting him and won a settlement. He, too, showed up later in a restaurant where I worked and insisted that I wait on him.

  “Hey!” he shouted drunkenly, although he wasn’t drunk at all, just mad as a hatter. “See this girl?” He pointed at me. “I taught her everything she knows!”

  “Do you know that guy?” my manager asked me incredulously as I hung my head in abject embarrassment.

  “I used to work for him,” I answered.

  “That’s a relief,” my manager said. “By the way he was talking to you, I thought maybe you used to date him.”

  Hoover’s itself maintained a certain aura of madness and drama that drew customers for quite some time. Without Adrian’s unique brand of insanity, however, it just wasn’t as much fun. Slowly, business died. Today, Hoover’s is no more, having been replaced by an upscale restaurant speci
alizing in designer salads and fresh fish.

  As for me, I leaped from the sinking ship as soon as I saw the opportunity. I headed for a new Italian restaurant that arrived in town with a sterling reputation and the promise of big money. Ironically, it was Adrian himself who pointed out this restaurant while it was still under construction.

  “See that?” he said one morning. “There’s a big fancy Italian place coming in there. They think they’re going to do so well. I’ve got news for them. They’re never gonna make it in this fucked-up town. Not with their overhead.”

  Not surprisingly, he was completely wrong about this.

  Desperate to escape the vortex that was Hoover’s, Maya and I both climbed over construction rubble and bits of pink Italian marble to apply and interview at the new place. Once again we took the tag team approach, with one of us interviewing while the other sat with Blaze. These people, I realized, were serious. There were four separate managers conducting interviews and quizzing us on our knowledge of wines, fine dining, and Italian food. They spoke of “teams,” “expansion,” and “opportunity.” It sounded a bit like they wanted to take over the planet rather than open a restaurant, but I didn’t care, I just wanted to be hired. There was a second interview and then a third. All my references were rigorously checked. Finally, after I’d almost given up hope, I received a call inviting me to “join our team at Baciare.” There would be three weeks of training and testing before the restaurant opened and could I be at the site at ten

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  o’clock the next morning to complete the paperwork? I said I’d be there with bells on.