Service Included

by Phoebe Damrosch

  At one time these meetings had terrified me, and I had feigned interest in my heinous shoes in the hopes of not being called on. Now I was quiet for a different reason. I had welcomed spring lamb at the start of two springs. After two summers, the sweet corn pudding had become an old friend. Twice, tomatoes came and went, as did ramps and fiddleheads and wild asparagus. Not only did I know the biographies, philosophies, and eccentricities of our main purveyors, I had met or waited on many of them.

  Beginning on that afternoon of ironing, I began toying with the idea of leaving Per Se. I loved working as a waiter, but I certainly didn’t want to be doing it when I was fifty, or if I ever chose to have a family, unless I could put my baby in a papoose or feed my kids at one of the tables. There were a few big restaurant openings rumored in the city and I considered hopping around, working the first six months in a series of restaurants until I came up with a better idea. Poor Mr. Bruni would be very confused. On further consideration, I concluded that nothing would compare to opening Per Se. Another option to spice things up would be to work toward a promotion, but I didn’t see myself as the management type. As for being a maître d’, I had little patience for the who’s-who aspect of the job. I had no real interest in—or talent for—the historical or business sides of wine, so being a sommelier was also out. The only other career I could think of in restaurants would be reviewing, but knowing as many people as I did in New York restaurants by now, I would have to move. For the first time since I had started working at Per Se, I began to drag my feet when coming to work and wish my guests would hurry up and eat so I could go home.

  Until now, school had always come second to the restaurant. I read on the subway, I wrote stories the morning I handed them in. Soon after starting at Per Se, I began to write about the restaurant, mostly because I worked seventy-hour weeks and thought about nothing but food, stars, and my coworkers. I had no big plans for these stories, but the more I wrote, the more came to me. Sometimes when feeling particularly itchy, I tried to think of work as research for class.

  Another shift in consciousness took place between André and me. No longer did we talk about Per Se alone. He met more of my friends outside of the business; I met a few of his wine contacts. We spent late nights contemplating our respective, and shared, futures after Per Se. And we began to plan our next vacation. The closure was still five months away, but it became one of our favorite topics of conversation. We thought about wine regions, hitting a few Michelin three-star restaurants, fulfilling my fantasy of living on a houseboat in France, but then André had a suggestion that sounded perfect. A road trip.

  “It should have a theme. Like food-on-a-stick.”

  André looked repulsed.

  “Diners? Pie? How about roadside attractions?”

  In my collage of America there are drive-ins, fairs, rodeos, bowling alleys, towns with crazy names, and ice cream socials, but I think most of those faded with the advent of color television. André’s America was a very different place, I noted when he offered a suggestion.

  “How about motels with vibrating beds?”

  In the next five months, we didn’t officially live together, but we began to divide our time between our “pied à terre” in the city and our “country house” in Brooklyn. This meant that André’s apartment needed a little attention. I assumed that Leigh took most of the amenities with her because until I brought over my duvet, there was nothing on the futon but a pilled fleece blanket that either covered our shoulders or our feet—not both. I bought a standing lamp, so as to avoid the fluorescent ceiling lighting, and a stovetop espresso maker, so as to survive. Other than that, I tried to let André run his household as he pleased. One morning, he was rushing to get ready for work while I lounged, having commandeered his half of the mini-blanket. He tended to go in midmorning, while I didn’t have to be there until three o’clock. Sometimes I stayed at his place, wrote for a while, and slipped him his keys later at work.

  “Do you want me to do anything?” I called to him.

  “Do you want to iron some shirts?”

  “Not really.”

  He had meant the request to be a joke. We both knew I would not be ironing his shirts. I assumed that this was one more way Leigh and I differed. She nicknamed herself “Henrietta Housewife”; I didn’t even own an ironing board. She liked to cook; I liked to eat out. She did the laundry; I dropped mine off. If he wanted a domestic goddess, he would be disappointed. And if he expected me to stay home while he went to restaurant openings and wine dinners, I would be more than disappointed, I would be out of there. My idea of hell was waking up in the middle of suburbia with frosted hair and cakey makeup, making English muffin pizzas for my children as they zoned in front of the television or fought over video games and then grew up to be pharmaceutical lobbyists or vegans.

  At one time, I would have preferred for André to go to work and leave me with my solitary morning. Now, I wanted to pull on a pair of jeans, tame my Little Prince hair, and head over to the diner. Given the size of André’s place, the diner became an annex of sorts. Sometimes, on days when he didn’t have to be at the restaurant until late, we got up early, had breakfast, and then went back to bed. In the mornings, children in booster seats ate French toast with sticky fingers, well-worn couples silently divided the paper, and old men in argyle ate corned beef hash, as they should. My favorite part of the breakfast menu was the muffin selection: blueberry muffin, corn muffin, banana-nut muffin, bran mjuffin. I liked this section for two reasons. The first was that spelling errors—not my own—always make me feel a little superior. Also, I like muffins because they are really just an excuse to eat cake in the morning.

  “You want coffee?” the harried waiter always barked, hurling napkins, silverware, water glasses, and menus onto the table as if we had asked for too much already. André and I made up Seven Dwarf names for all the waiters here; this one we called Grumpy because when he was not berating a coworker, he had his head stuck in the window to the kitchen. His words were lost amid the scraping of spatulas on the grill and the roar of the dishwasher, but his flailing arms were a good indication of the tone. Sleepy ran the cash register, resting her drooping head on the palm of her hand so that her coarse, overdyed hair fell dangerously close to the bowl of mints on the counter. The mints seemed always to have been picked over, leaving only neon lemon and licorice.

  “Coffee would be great,” I answered, shrinking into the booth. I read carefully, trying to remember what I meant to have the last time. I only ordered from the Griddle Specialties column when I remembered to bring my own maple syrup. This might never have occurred to me had it not been for a nondescript blue-haired old woman who we watched fish a bunch of plastic supermarket spice containers from her handbag one morning. Once she had them in place on the table, she carefully pried open each spice (or unscrewed, depending on the tops), smelled them, and gently dusted her meal.

  André and I had a recurrent conversation, no matter the hour.

  André: I am going to ask what the hamburger patty is.

  Phoebe: It’s a hamburger with no bun, served with eggs any style, home fries, and toast.

  But he would still ask, as if running his own little experiment. I think he liked the thought of getting himself a reputation, even if said reputation was being illiterate and a little dim. In the end, he always ordered the usual: egg, cheese, sausage, and bacon on a roll. If I forgot my syrup, I might have poached eggs on an English muffin, which I allowed to get nice and soggy before I began.

  André’s lease was up at the end of January and mine at the end of February, but we both agreed that it was too early to think about officially moving in together. He needed some time to get used to ironing his own shirts again, and we both needed the option of going home alone. This did not mean, in my opinion, that there weren’t baby steps that could be taken between casual dating and moving in together. In the continuum of many New York relationships, the bestowal of keys falls between becoming exclusive and the
popping of certain questions. Exclusivity must be established because while “in flagrante delicto” has a nice ring, that is just about all it has going for it.

  Once this is settled, preparations for key exchange can begin. The bestower is wise to dispose of anything sordid and all evidence of relationships past. This includes erasing browser histories; clearing the digital camera; combing the apartment for renegade hairs; establishing passwords for the BlackBerry, Palm, or cell; lowering the volume on the answering machine; and alerting potential callers.

  Key privileges come with their own set of responsibilities: refraining from organizing, rearranging, and doing laundry. Groceries, however, are welcomed. If the recipient has not introduced a toothbrush permanently, now is the time. It is not yet time for a drawer. I had a toothbrush and an overnight bag that spent the night at André’s even when I didn’t, but I did not have a drawer. Nor did I have keys. This meant that on days when I was not working, or nights when I got out before he did, I had to wait somewhere. For this reason alone, I began to frequent the diner without André.

  BESIDES MY WORKPLACES, I had never spent as much time in a single restaurant as I did in that diner. I got to know it so well that I began to feel that it had replaced Per Se as the set for the reality television show that was my life. From four stars to no stars, from silver to stainless, from crystal to tinted glass, I felt as if I were stepping back into the real world.

  Between two o’clock in the morning and daybreak, the city that never sleeps sometimes nods off. As I sat in the diner window looking out, the streets were quiet. A few cabs sped by now and then on Broadway and the occasional lumbering garbage truck wove down a cross street. I’d experienced diverse social circles during my time in New York, but the predawn diner crowd was a new one. At this hour, single men read twenty-five-cent papers, the occasional cop had a coffee at the counter, and postconcert Juilliard students discussed vocal exercises over grilled cheese. I always placed my cell phone on the top left quadrant of the table so that I would hear it when it chirped, alerting me that André was on his way. Below my phone, a vase of plastic flowers, loosely modeled after daisies, snuggled close to a newish bottle of ketchup. I was briefly reminded of the floral arrangements at work, expressly chosen to be seen and not smelled. My water glass reminded me of tinted eyeglasses that darken in the sunlight.

  The menu was about the same dimensions as Per Se’s, albeit brown vinyl with plastic pages. Unlike some diner menus, this one did not feature the segmented page where specials are stuck into slots like shoes in one of those shoe organizer things that hang from your closet door. They wrote their specials on a dry-erase board in multicolored letters: matzoh ball soup, gray sole filet, beef goulash. I never ordered the specials. I did once order almost every dessert—minus the cream pies—just to know what I was up against. The apple pie had clearly been baked in anticipation of a slow death in the glass cabinet behind the counter and had been heavily embalmed with cinnamon and allspice. Desert-dry layers of the chocolate cake were held gallantly together by an icing so pasty and thick that elementary schools might consider it an alternative to that gloppy adhesive the kids eat anyway.

  I imagined that many regulars never even consulted a menu. The only real reason to even read a diner menu is to remind yourself of what you already know is there and hope to be surprised. Here, hidden between the Greek salad, the hot openface turkey sandwich, and the Diet Delights (most of which included cottage cheese or Jell-O) was a bison burger. It was followed by a tiny nutritional table in which the fat, calories, and cholesterol were measured against its chicken, turkey, and beef counterparts. I imagined many a paunchy truck driver felt quite proud of his choice, after opting for the leaner, protein-packed bison. Blintzes also seemed out of place, as did the jelly omelet, but my recent discovery that the blueberry pancakes actually contained blueberries, as opposed to cowering under gelatinous blueberry goo, was a welcome surprise.

  Another highlight of this menu were the illustrations that flirted from the margins—the kinds of things your mother was supposed to make: pork chops with mashed potatoes and gravy, roast chicken, a pie with curlicues rising from the crust, signifying the sweet smell of nostalgia. It occurred to me that I should master an upstanding and moral meal of this sort, should I prove key-worthy.

  My preoccupation with André’s keys was not about access to his 150-square-foot studio apartment. It was not about the futon that served as couch, bed, desk, kitchen table, and ironing board, or the overenthusiastic radiator, or the sneezing Japanese man who lived next door, or the microwave that smelled like popcorn even when not in use. Such milestones as keys or rings or pins or shared pets or important introductions are more about momentum than they are about the object or occurrence. I believe that this is what women mean when they talk about the relationship “going somewhere.” Because if it is not going somewhere, they will be going somewhere—taking their roast chicken with them, lest they wind up with cankles and National Geographic breasts, the single parent of cats.

  THE MORE TIGHTLY André and I wove our lives outside of Per Se, the more I wanted to meet 2040. It didn’t matter how in love with me he was, or how many other women he had dated in New York, or the fact that she was now seeing someone else; I needed to know that we had no more secrets. I brought this up a few times and André answered that we were certain to run into one another at some point. From his tone, it seemed he wasn’t looking forward to this.

  And then one day, he informed me that we had been invited over for dinner. I froze.

  “Wasn’t that what you wanted?” he asked.

  I had, indeed, wanted to meet her, but spending an entire evening at her apartment was more than I had bargained for. Still, I figured I should be glad that he felt comfortable with our meeting in such an intimate setting.

  “She loves to cook!” he shouted from the shower on the night of our dinner, making it sound as if we were doing her a favor by allowing her to cook for us.

  “It’ll go fine—she’s very likable.” He assured me as we walked toward the subway. “She lives in a great neighborhood, but it takes forever to get there. I usually take a crosstown bus.” The word usually induced a spell of heart-racing and nausea.

  “This is a terrible idea,” a friend said, after I told her what I knew about 2040, including her desire for children, culinary expertise, and choice in pants. “This woman sounds like a walking womb. Can’t you just meet for a drink?”

  I imagined 2040 standing in the doorway like a peasant in an impressionist wheat field, breasts spilling from a lazily laced bodice, blond curls begging for release, eyes adoring—yet capable, loin throbbing with the anticipation of lineage.

  André’s familiarity with the route, with the intercom, with the finicky elevator made him a stranger. Fortunately for him, it made him the alluring kind of stranger. The kind who causes a girl to miss her stop on the train.

  2040 and the man she was seeing—whom we all nicknamed “Big A,” with his reluctant consent—had nearly polished off a bottle of wine by the time we arrived. She was a husky-voiced, minimalist version of my impressionist nightmare. By minimalist, I mean she lacked the bodice and wheat field; the breasts, locks, and inviting loin remained. André and I settled into the couch, which separated the living area from the open kitchen. Glasses in hand, we all toasted and proceeded to act as if we knew very little about one another. I watched André and 2040, André watched 2040 and me, 2040 watched André and me, and Big A ran down to his car to get some CDs.

  “I’m sorry. He’s not the kind of guy I usually date,” she said, leaning close.

  Obviously, I thought. André was certainly not a Big A. The thought of her ever being single set my heart racing again.

  “We really don’t have that much in common. I mean, he sells cars.”

  She got up to stir something simmering on the stove. Big A came back with a pile of CDs.

  “I hear you’re a writer,” said 2040, changing the subject. Even though she
faced her cauldron, I knew this was directed toward me. I narrowed my eyes at André.

  “What are you writing about?”

  Not liking to discuss my writing with strangers, I had been privately auditioning possible conversation stoppers, but I didn’t think that I would ever have the nerve to use one. But now, in the most awkward of situations, it seemed appropriate.

  “Actually, I’m writing a biography,” I responded casually. “About a man in Alaska who makes foie gras from penguins.”

  Now, if this were the movies, André would have sprayed his mouthful of wine across the coffee table. Instead, he looked mortified; 2040 looked disgusted and went on stirring.

  I considered detailing the anti–foie gras legislation up for debate in California, bogus Alaskan food regulations, biographical information for my ex-funeral-pianist hero named Mr. Dirge, and the working title: Bing and Dirge. Instead, I buried my face in my glass and hoped to be rescued.

  “She scares me,” Big A announced.

  André asked Big A the kind of questions one is supposed to ask a man who sells cars, questions about models and years and names that sounded to me like screen names for Internet porn. Lacking a driver’s license, I chose wisely, if a little too late, to remain silent. On the other hand, 2040 piped in from the stove about some difficulties she had been having with her scooter. I imagined André behind her on the leather seat and grew nauseated again.

  As 2040 served mussels, then escargots, then mushroom soup, I felt like the kind of New York woman who wears black in July and does most of her shopping at the corner deli, both of which were true. Before the filet mignon and cheese courses, I offered to wash some dishes. André raised an eyebrow, and I tried to remember if he had ever seen me scrub a pot.