Molly's Game

by Molly Bloom

  No matter how much I tried to explain my decision, my parents refused to fund my undefined California hiatus. I had saved about $2,000 from a babysitting job I had taken over the summer. I had one friend in L.A. named Steve, who had been on the ski team with me. He had reluctantly agreed to a limited stay on his couch.

  “You need to have a plan,” he lectured me over the phone one day while I was driving on the highway to Los Angeles. “L.A. isn’t like Colorado, nobody will notice you here,” he said, trying to prepare me for the harsh reality of this place. But when I put my mind to something, nothing and nobody can dissuade me; it’s been a strength and, at times, a huge detriment.

  “Mmm-hmm,” I said, staring at the desert horizon, halfway to my next adventure.

  Lucy sat copilot, sleeping.

  “What is your plan? Do you even have one?” Steve asked.

  “Of course, I’ll get a job and get off your couch, and then I’ll take over the world,” I joked.

  He sighed. “Drive safely,” he said. Steve always had been risk-averse.

  I hung up the phone and fixed my eyes on the road ahead.

  IT WAS NEARLY MIDNIGHT when the 405 started descending into Los Angeles. There were so many lights, and each light had a story. It was so unlike the stretches of darkness in Colorado. In L.A., the light far outweighed the dark—the lights represented a whole world waiting to be discovered. Steve had made up the couch for Lucy and me and we crashed hard after our seventeen-hour drive. I woke up early, and the sun was streaming through the windows. I took Lucy outside for a walk. L.A. smelled heavenly, like sunshine and flowers. But if I wanted to stay, I needed to get a job STAT. I had a little waitressing experience and I felt like that was my best bet since you could make tips right away as opposed to waiting for a weekly paycheck. Steve was up when I returned.

  “Welcome to L.A.,” he said.

  “Thanks, Steve. Where do you think is the best place for me to get a waitressing job?”

  “Beverly Hills would be the best, but it’s really hard. Every pretty girl is an out-of-work actress or model and they are all waitresses, it’s not like—”

  “I know, Steve, I know it’s not Colorado.” I smiled. “How do I get to Beverly Hills?”

  He gave me directions and wished me luck with doubtful eyes.

  He was right, most places I tried were not hiring. I was greeted icily by one pretty hostess after another who gave me a disdainful once-over and explained haughtily that they were fully staffed and I could fill out an application but it would be a waste of time because there were so many other applicants.

  I was starting to lose hope as I walked into a last restaurant on the street.

  “Hi! Are you hiring?” I asked with my biggest, brightest, most hopeful smile.

  Instead of being a slender, perfectly put-together mean girl, the person in front of me was a man in his ’forties. “Are you an actress?” he asked suspiciously.

  “No.”

  “Model?”

  “No.” I laughed. I was five four on my tallest day.

  “Is there any reason you would ever have to go to a casting?”

  “Sir, I don’t even know what that means.”

  His face relaxed.

  “I have a breakfast shift. You need to be here at five A.M., and when I say five A.M., I mean four forty-five A.M.”

  I smiled bigger to conceal my horror at this ungodly hour.

  “No problem,” I said firmly.

  “You’re hired,” he said, then explained to me about the uniform, which was a pressed, heavily starched, white dress shirt, a tie, and black pants. “Don’t be late, I don’t tolerate tardiness.” he said, and walked away quickly to berate some poor employee.

  IT WAS STILL DARK when I drove to the restaurant. I had borrowed an oversized shirt and tie from Steve. I looked like a puffy penguin.

  My new boss, Ed, was already inside, along with another waitress. There was only one customer. He led me through the restaurant explaining my duties and informing me proudly that he had worked there for fifteen years, and he basically, as far as I was concerned, owned the place. He was the only one who had the ear of the owner, who was very rich and very important, and if I saw him I was never to address him unless Ed had instructed me to do so. The owner had many rich, important friends, known as VIP’s, and we were to treat them all like God.

  After my training session, Ed dispatched me to serve.

  “VIP,” Ed mouthed dramatically.

  I gave him a thumbs-up, trying to hide my contempt.

  The customer was a cute little old man.

  I walked up with a megawatt smile. “Hi there! How is your morning so far?”

  He looked up, his pale watery eyes squinting at me. “Aren’t you something. Are you new?”

  I smiled. “I am. It’s my first day.”

  He nodded. “Thought so, turn around,” he demanded, tracing a circle in the air with bony fingers.

  I turned around, and looked at the front of the restaurant, trying to see what he wanted me to see. There was nothing of note.

  I looked back at him, confused.

  He was nodding in approval.

  “I’d like you to be my special friend,” he said. “I’ll pay your bills and you can help me out.” He winked.

  Now I was utterly confused, and my face must have shown it.

  “I’m a diabetic,” he began. “So I can’t even get it up,” he continued, reassuring me. “I just want affection and attention.”

  My expression went from confused to aghast. Oh my God, this old man who could’ve have been my grandfather was propositioning me. I was mortified. I felt the blood rush to my face. I wanted to tell him off, but I had been taught to always respect my elders. I wasn’t sure how to handle this. I had to find Ed.

  I mumbled something and rushed off.

  I approached Ed, my face burning.

  “Ed, I know he’s a VIP but he . . .” and I whispered the proposal into Ed’s ear.

  Ed looked at me blankly

  “So what’s the problem? I thought I discussed the policy on VIP’s.”

  I looked at him incredulously. “Are you serious? I’m definitely NOT going back over there. Can someone else take the table?” I asked.

  “Molly, it’s not even two hours into your shift and you’re already causing problems. You should count yourself lucky that one of the VIP’s has taken a liking to you.”

  I felt my chest fill with hot anger.

  Ed looked at me with a sneer. “That offer might be the best you will ever have in this town.”

  I rushed out of that restaurant as fast as I could, but the tears were coming hard and fast. I ducked into an alley and tried to pull myself together.

  STILL WEARING MY UNIFORM, I walked toward my car.

  A shiny silver Mercedes sped by at an alarming speed and pulled onto the sidewalk in front of me, nearly obliterating me.

  Perfect. Could this day get any worse? A young, good-looking guy wearing army fatigues and a rhinestone-skull T-shirt exited the coupe, slamming the door and shouting at his cell phone.

  He stopped screaming as I passed him.

  “Hey, are you a waitress?”

  I looked down at my uniform.

  “No. Yes. Well, I mean, I . . .” I stumbled for words.

  “You either are or you’re not, it’s not a hard question,” he demanded impatiently

  “Okay, yes,” I said.

  “Stay there,” he ordered.

  “ANDREW!” he yelled.

  A man in a chef’s coat walked out of a restaurant and approached us.

  “Look, I found you your waitress, so stop crying. FUCK! Do I have to do everything around here?”

  “Does she have experience?”

  “How the fuck should I know?” the man barked.

  Andrew sighed and said, “Come with me.”

  We walked inside a restaurant, which was filled with frenetic energy: the construction workers—drilling, pounding, polishing
; the designer in midtizzy because he ordered powder-pink peonies, and not soft pink, bartenders stocking the bar, and the waiters doing side work. “Our soft opening is tonight,” said Andrew. “We’re short-staffed and construction isn’t even finished.” He wasn’t complaining. He was just worn down.

  I followed him into a beautiful vine-covered courtyard, an oasis amid the chaos. We sat on a wooden bench, and he began to grill me.

  “How do you know Reardon?” he asked.

  I assumed that Reardon was the terrifying man with the silver Mercedes.

  “Um, he almost hit me with his car,” I answered,

  Andrew laughed appreciatively. “Sounds about right,”

  “How long have you been in L.A.?” he asked kindly

  “About thirty-six hours,” “I said.

  “From where?”

  “Colorado.”

  “Something tells me you don’t have fine dining experience.”

  “My mom taught the manners class at my school, and I’m a fast learner,” I offered.

  He laughed.

  “Okay, Colorado, I have a feeling I’m going to regret it, but we will give you a shot.”

  “What’s your policy on VIP’s?” I asked.

  “It’s Beverly Hills. Everyone is a fucking VIP,” he said.

  “So hypothetically, if a gross, perverted old man tries to solicit you, do you have to wait on them?”

  “I’ll throw them out on their old ass,”

  I smiled. “When do I start?”

  Chapter 2

  From the outside, Boulevard, the restaurant where I’d just been hired, looked dark and mysterious. When I walked in, I saw the young Hollywood set lounging on suede ottomans and leather banquettes. I felt as if I were crashing a private party.

  I arrived thinking it would be like the other jobs I’d had. I would receive some training and then start, but that wasn’t the kind of place Reardon Green ran: it was sink or swim in his world. Everyone was rushing around, nobody had a second to answer a question, and I was constantly in the way. I stood in the middle of the whirlwind and took a deep breath. It appeared I didn’t have any tables assigned to me yet, so I started doing laps around the restaurant clearing plates and refilling drinks. I placed a lemon-drop martini in front of a woman I recognized from some show on television.

  “Oh, actually, can you bring me the whole lemon?” she asked me.

  She turned to her fellow diners. “I like to cut it myself—just to make sure it’s really fresh. You see them sitting out there in those plastic bins covered with flies.” She shuddered and the whole table shuddered with her. Of course, then they all wanted to garnish their own drinks now. I was sent off to find an orange, a lemon, and a lime.

  The walk to the kitchen took me past tables full of celebrities and socialites, and I tried not to stare at the A-list faces I had seen in magazines but never in person. As I pushed through the kitchen doors, the noise of the dining room receded behind me.

  The kitchen had its own sound, a symphony of orders and acquiescences, the clink of plates, the thud of heavy iron pots, and the hiss of meat hitting a pan. Andrew was screaming at the sous-chefs and hurrying plates to go out to the tables. I rushed through it all and made for the fridge, trying not to bother anyone or get in the way. In my hurry, I turned the wrong way and found myself in a supply closet where Cam, one of the owners, was leaning back against a mountain of paper towels with his pants around his ankles. I stopped dead in my tracks. This was by far the most humiliating moment of my life.

  “Sorry!” I whispered, still frozen in my tracks.

  He smiled at me, affable and completely unembarrassed.

  “What’s up!” he said. “Wanna be in my movie?”

  He pointed toward the security camera on the ceiling and widened his boyish grin, raising his hand for me to high-five him. The girl who squatted on her knees in front of him giggled. I did not want to insult him, so I gingerly leaned over the girl and quickly slapped his palm. Then I fled as fast as I could, my face burning with embarrassment.

  What had I signed on for?

  A WEEK AFTER I STARTED WORKING at the restaurant, I went to a party with Steve. I was standing and listening to everybody talk about the pilots they were shooting and the scripts they were writing, feeling very much like an outsider, when a pretty girl grabbed my hand.

  “Who cares?” she whispered in my ear. “Let’s take a shot!”

  She was dressed head to toe in designer clothes, carrying a bag that was worth more than my car. I followed her into the kitchen. Three tequila shots later, she was my new best friend.

  Blair was a party girl, but she was down-to-earth and kind, and she seemed not to have a care in the world. She was the heir to a peanut butter fortune, and her family had houses all over the world, including Beverly Hills, where she had spent her childhood before being shipped off to a fancy private school in New York.

  A couple of young girls walked into the kitchen, and Blair flinched. I recognized one of the girls from a popular MTV reality show.

  “Oh shit!” Blair said, grabbing the tequila bottle with one hand and my arm with the other. She dragged me into a bathroom down the hallway.

  “I hooked up with that girl’s boyfriend and she caught us. She wants to kill me!”

  I started laughing as she tipped the bottle back and took a swig. We spent most of the night in the massive marble bathroom, laughing and taking shots, talking about our lives and our big plans for the future. I told her about my living situation—because in a week I wouldn’t have one. Steve had laid down the law.

  “Oh my God! Move in with me!” she squealed. “My apartment is gorgeous, you will love it. I totally have an extra room.”

  In one drunken night, hiding in a bathroom from a scorned reality star, I found a new comrade and a place to live.

  That was L.A. You just never knew what would happen when you left the house.

  I DIDN’T LOVE WAITING TABLES, and to be honest, I was pretty terrible at it, but the restaurant was a way into this strange new world, composed of three primary layers: the staff, the customers, and my bosses.

  The staff was not your normal restaurant employees. They were all aspiring musicians, models, or actresses and most of them were actually very talented. The waiters were usually aspiring actors who treated their restaurant position simply as a role they were playing. I observed them as they got into character, put their ego aside, and became who they needed to be for the table: flirt, the frat boy, the confidant. The bartenders were usually musicians or models. The girls were sexy and glamorous, and they knew how to work a room. I studied their ability to be flirtatious and coy at the same time. I practiced doing my hair and makeup the way they did, and I took note of the sexy outfits they put together. I tried to make myself small, and take it all in.

  The customers were larger than life: celebrities, rock stars, CEO’s, finance wizards, actual princes; you never knew who would show up. Most of them had a pretty healthy sense of entitlement, and keeping them happy all the time was next to impossible. I learned little tricks, though, like speaking to the women first and primarily (for the date tables) or being efficient but invisible during business lunches. I was good at reading human behavior but terrible at food service. I was constantly dropping plates, forgetting to clear certain forks, and I was a disaster at opening wine in the ceremonious way the owners required.

  But to me, the most interesting characters of all were Reardon and his two partners.

  Reardon was brilliant, impatient, volatile, and impossible. He was the brains of the operation.

  Cam was the son of one of the richest men in the world. His monthly trust-fund checks were enough to buy a small island. He seemed to take little interest in the business and, as far as I could tell, spent his time womanizing, partying, gambling, and indulging in every hedonistic vice you could imagine. He was the money; his role was signing off as the guarantor.

  Sam had grown up with Cam. He had brilliant people
skills. He was charming, hilarious, and he knew how to schmooze better than anybody I had ever seen. I guess he was the head of marketing and client relations.

  Watching the three of them interact was like observing a new species. They did not live in the same world I had known for the last twenty-some years. They were over the top, unfazed by consequence and had a total disregard for rules and structure.

  THE FORMULA AT THE RESTAURANT was the same as at any in Beverly Hills that hoped to survive—provide the discerning customer with the best of everything. The partners had spent a small fortune on Frette linens, Riedel glassware, and wines from the finest vineyards. The servers were attractive and professional, the chef was world-renowned, and the decor was beautiful.

  The inviting atmosphere that the staff created was part of our act. Our politeness was the curtain that concealed the frenzy that was always threatening to surface. You see, the bosses expected perfection and professionalism—that is, until they got a couple drinks in them and would easily forget their carefully laid plans.

  One Sunday morning, I went to open the restaurant for brunch, and discovered that Sam, a DJ, and a bunch of girls were still there partying. Sam had turned our fine dining restaurant into his very own seedy after-hours club. I tried explaining to him that I needed to open the large suede curtains and remove the makeshift DJ booth so that I could ready the restaurant for service. He replied in gibberish.

  “Dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb . . .” he garbled, and closed the curtains as quickly as I opened them.

  I called Reardon. “Sam is still here partying. He won’t leave and he won’t let me open the restaurant, what should I do?”

  “Goddammit! Fuck! Put Sam on the phone. I’m coming down there.”

  I handed Sam the phone.

  “Dumb dumb dumb dumb,” he continued to Reardon, and handed me back the phone.

  “Get him in a cab!!” yelled Reardon.

  I looked around the room, but Sam had disappeared.

  “Wait, I think he’s gone,” I said.

  Just then, I looked out the window. Sam, with his large-face gold Rolex, polished Prada shoes, and beige silk pants, was outside boarding a bus. I ran out to try to stop him. I started laughing into the phone.