by David Leite
One morning after breakfast, the doors to one of the private dining rooms opened. We were all folding napkins and polishing silver. Moira led a small man with a shock of bleached hair into the room. His shoulders were somewhere up around his ears, like he was in a perpetual state of uncertainty.
“Everyone, this is Ronnie. He’s starting today.” A chorus of “Hey” and “Hi” burbled up. She looked around the room. “David, let him trail you.”
“Sure.” From the looks of him, I gave him two days, three at the most.
Without my asking, he grabbed a bunch of knives and began dipping the blades in water and buffing them with a napkin. “I don’t need to trail; I’ve been a waiter for years.”
“And I don’t need a wiseass with an attitude bothering me all day.” He made a face, as if to say, Nicely done.
“Who’s that?” he said, cocking his head over to the table of Bangladeshi waiters. I knew exactly who he meant.
“Mayur. And he’s not gay.”
“What makes you think I’m gay?”
I stumbled. “I just thought—” I said, pointing from him to Mayur and back.
“Relax. I’m just busting your balls.” Ronnie was never one to let you have the last word.
Over time we grew close, but only at work. Ronnie took immense delight in shocking me, which wasn’t hard back then. Sometimes at morning announcements, when we all were lined up in our spotless naval whites, he’d slide in beside me, late and bleary-eyed. He’d lean in close, smelling of stale cigarettes and vodka, and recount his sexual exploits of the previous night—just to watch me blush. What struck me most about Ronnie was he never judged. His greatest gift to me was a shrug from his already-hitched shoulder, no matter what I said. He didn’t give a rat’s ass that I had tried to be straight, or never walked in the gay-pride parade, or didn’t know a single person with AIDS. He knew I had no idea how to be gay yet. But anytime I mentioned Aesthetic Realism, he dragged me to the far side of the cappuccino machine, cooing at the Ecuadorian cook to put away the cleaver he had pointing just inches from our crotches, and tilted his face up close to mine. “They’re fucked, you know that, right?” he’d say, stone-cold serious. I nodded. “Good. Say it.”
“They’re fucked.”
“Again.”
“They’re fucked.”
“Now get out there and find a rich guy to marry, so that I can mooch off you the rest of my life.”
I couldn’t see it then, as steeped in self-loathing as I was, but Ronnie was like a lot of the staff: nonjudgmental and supportive. I’ve often wondered if I stumbled into that circle of people at the moment in my life when I needed them most, as if we were shuffled together for a reason. To heal, perhaps? For me, certainly. I ask because after more than thirty years, so many of them have remained bright and saturated with life in my mind, whereas hundreds of other coworkers since have faded into nameless nothingness.
There was the giantess, Brett, with her short hair and smug British superiority. At first she wanted nothing to do with me. (I think she thought I’d last only a few days—the same thing I’d thought of Ronnie.) Eventually, I could tell from the way she’d purse her lips and look down that she’d grown fond of me—not that she’d ever deign to tell me. Mayur was the sexy Bangladeshi object of Ronnie’s affection who, like Daniel, the premed student, knew how to work his robe for bigger tips. The pixie-faced actress Kellie had a mean son-of-a-bitch boyfriend who we suspected beat her, and we tried our damnedest to help her leave him—even enlisting her mother—but she never could. Aurora, the former model from Senegal, asked me every day in her musical, sweeping accent, “How was your acting day, David?”—which by that time consisted of calling my answering service several times a day only to be told, “No messages.” She had a rip in her earlobe where an earring should be, which Kellie said hinted at something sinister and violent. The loudest of our group was Angie, a single mother straight out of Jersey who sported a mullet, proudly. And then there was Deshi, the gentle older waiter from China, who said little. Once, he stood motionless in his section, looking shattered because he was slammed with guests, so I took out his food and served it for him. Afterward, he laid his hand on my arm and looked up at me. No words, just a nod and a soft smile.
“You’ll never guess who’s in my section!” Angie said, barging into the kitchen one evening. Celebrities were everywhere in the Hors D’Oeuvrerie at night. Even the handsome piano player was rumored to be a protégé, some said lover, of Leonard Bernstein. He would only smile and sip his coffee if you asked him. We all bunched around one of the service doors to peer out. Sitting quietly one row from the windows was Cher and her son Elijah Blue Allman, who couldn’t have been more than ten years old.
Even Brett, the most cynical of us all, was impressed.
“The least they could have done was seat them by the window,” I said.
Suddenly, we all found reasons to visit Angie’s section. We watched as Ronnie, clutching a fork behind him, dropped it just as he was passing the table. He stopped, picked it up, and said something to Cher, who looked confused at the appearance of a third fork. I refilled the nearly full water glasses, and Aurora, who usually acted like she was above it all, suddenly swooped in to replace something on the table. And then there was Angie. Every time I walked by, she was hugging her drinks tray to her chest, chatting with Cher as if they were sitting side by side getting a pedicure. When they moved to the main restaurant for dinner, we all watched from the kitchen as Angie slid a cocktail napkin in front of Cher and handed her a pen.
“You gotta give it to her,” Brett said. “She’s got balls, that one. Good thing Lewis isn’t here to see that.”
Alan Lewis. He was the general manager of Windows, and the right-hand man to the temperamental Joseph Baum, one of the famed restaurateurs responsible for the Four Seasons, the Rainbow Room, and Windows. Every day Mr. Lewis would come in for lunch, most of which he never touched, and read his paper, every so often lifting his head, watching, and waiting to spot something out of place. Although only in his midsixties, he reminded me of Truman Capote’s bulldog in its later years. Everyone hated to wait on him.
The first time I waited on him, I climbed the stairs to his table, terrified. He mumbled his order into his newspaper, never looking up, which suited me just fine. A few minutes later, I slid a plate in front of him, and he hesitated.
Shit.
“You’re new.” How could he have possibly gleaned that from my hand putting down a plate? He glanced up.
“Yes, sir.”
“What’s your name?”
“David.”
Then he returned his formidable gaze to his newspaper.
After that, he asked for me by name.
“So what do you do besides this?” he asked me one day, sweeping his hand across the room. Knowing he was famous for tripping up unsuspecting staff by revealing their less-than-fanatical devotion to the industry, I smartly sidelined acting—which in the two years I’d been in New York had amounted to one MTV commercial as an extra: Guy Holding Pizza Box.
“Baking.”
“What do you bake?” he asked, as he looked up with an arched eyebrow that clearly telegraphed, Don’t disappoint me.
“Um, well,” I stalled, mentally flipping through the sticky pages of my cookbook—a bargain tome with recipes from around the world that weighed as much as a Sunday brisket. “Éclairs and gougères.”
“Bring me something.”
Because Lewis’s descent on the Hors D’Oeuvrerie was capricious, I carted a homemade chocolate éclair in a brown paper sack on the subway from South Oxford Street to the 107th floor of the North Tower almost every day for a month, as cautiously as if I were transporting the Shroud of Turin. That meant every morning boiling water and butter, then dumping in flour and mixing with a wooden spoon until my arm ached. Watching the mess go from pallid gray to slick yellow with each addition of an egg fascinated me. When the batter shone, I piped stubby fingers onto a baking
sheet and crouched in front of the oven, watching them breathe and heave to life.
When our orbits finally aligned, I presented Lewis with my éclair with just a whiff of self-importance.
“Here’s one of the pastries I was telling you about,” I said, sliding the plate into his field of vision. He looked up confused. “You know, the one, the pastry I told you I make.”
He took a bite and grunted.
That was it. A grunt. A single frigging grunt. I stood there until he looked up over his glasses at me, and I withered back to the kitchen. When I returned to clear his table, though, I was stunned to see the éclair was gone. Lewis’s imitation of high praise.
Up there a quarter of a mile in the sky, popping open Champagne for movie stars and convincing Midwesterners they wouldn’t die from eating raw fish, was the most normal I’d felt in more than four years, since my break at Birch Grove. Break was the only word I dared use back then. Breakdown threw up images of jittery sixties housewives who had come undone—my mother grasping at her housecoat, screaming that I would send her to Taunton State. A “break,” on the other hand, was nothing more than a snap in the routine of life, like the crack of a bone that can heal, seamless. I was whole again.
24
A BEAUTIFUL CORPSE
Ronnie snuck behind the bar in the private dining room we’d just cleared and poured himself a sizable shot of vodka. He did a cartoon double take, as if he hadn’t seen me standing there watching him the whole time. “What?” he said with faux innocence, his already-high shoulders hiking higher. “You can’t expect me to face a PG movie—a movie for kids—sober, can you?”
Having worked Sunday brunch and a Christmas party for a group of suits bent on drinking their bosses dry, we both were off the rest of the day. I was too wound up to pack it in at five in the afternoon, and there was no way I could bear sitting at home listening to instrumental music one more night. I’d had it up to my cojones with George Winston’s plinking piano solos and trying to meditate. I asked Ronnie if he wanted to go out, maybe see a movie. To my surprise, he said yes. He liked to steer me clear of his social life, for reasons I think had to do with leather, rubber, and stainless-steel accoutrements in graduated sizes.
His choice: an indie flick downtown that was way too violent for me. I lobbied for Young Sherlock Holmes, which had opened up a few days before in Times Square. The mention of Steven Spielberg as producer was what sent him barreling for the vodka.
I’d been picking up extra shifts at the restaurant since Thanksgiving, tumbling into bed at two in the morning, and getting up some days at five-thirty for breakfast. Yet I was humming with energy. That turbine inside was back. Gone was the Quiet Me, the clomping, oafish me. In his place, a guy who liked to wink a lot and crack jokes and toss zingers straight out of those 1940s Tracy-and-Hepburn comedies. The lady at the Laundromat got a kick out of it. So did the homeless guy in front of McDonald’s, whom I bought breakfast for on weekends. Where did it come from? Damned if I knew; I just didn’t want it to stop.
Seized with energy. That’s a good way to describe it. And that old-fashioned word, feverish. My apartment became the Cradle of Possibility. Slips of paper were scattered everywhere. Lists: of presents to buy, awards to win (Tony, Emmy, Oscar, and—I have no idea why—a Clio for advertising), the number of sit-ups and push-ups I set out to accomplish. I wrote down all the things I needed to do for my first-ever Christmas party, with a real tree, handmade ornaments, warm cheese puffs, and a badass punch. Hell, maybe I’ll even invite Mr. Lewis! During meditation, a habit I’d taken up as a way of harnessing this 220-volt surge, I began hearing words, so I took dictation. Someone named Amarok decided to borrow my body for a while each morning, so I let him. (Don’t judge me: This was the era of Shirley MacLaine and her spirit guides. Everyone was speaking to the disembodied.) In a tone that was vaguely pretentious and British, he told me things like “The gifts you perceived were always inside of you”; that consciousness was like “fluffy pastry dough, with all its layers and flakes”; and that I should play the lottery on a particular day. That afternoon, I slapped down a dollar and a dream at the local bodega, cocksure I was going to wind up on the news as New York’s newest multimillionaire. I had not one number. When I questioned Amarok, he seemed to have suddenly—and without warning—vacated the premises of my body.
At work? Well—that was all showtime, boys.
Everything is dark, and suddenly a spotlight hits me. I’m wearing a black skintight bodysuit. My belly is flat and tight, which means I can see that I do my dance belt proud. I hear the strains of a song. My body responds automatically. My wrists turn in tight circles, fingers extended. My pelvis thrusts, small and controlled. Knees knock. When I beckon with both index fingers, boys—a whole bunch of boys—in bowler hats and spats step out of the darkness to frame me. I’m in Chicago, the musical!
The person everybody loves is gonna be: David
The big guy making all the tips is gonna be: David
I’m gonna be a superstar,
Y’know, somebody dripping with class,
They’re gonna idolize my style, my hair, my laugh, my voice, my ass.
One Saturday night I was working the section of the restaurant that faced Brooklyn and Queens. “David, what bridges are those?” said a handsome woman in a flowing top the color of a French manicure. She was pointing to three sets of lights arcing across the East River. The whole table turned to me. Ha-cha-cha.
“The easiest way to remember this is to think of my favorite car.” They shouted out different models, all wrong. I shook my head in dramatic exasperation. That got a few laughs.
“Well, what then?” the handsome woman asked.
“B-M-W.” And moving from right to left I counted off, “Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Williamsburg Bridges.” A round of chuckles and delighted oh’s rose from the table.
When I returned with their drinks, I slipped on a patch of wet marble floor and skated into the table. Instinctively, I tilted the tray against my chest to prevent the cocktails from spilling on my guests. But the heavy silver pitcher tanked forward, splashing water down the front of the woman’s blowsy top and causing her to yelp and jump up, which knocked me back into another guest, who was drunk enough to stay upright by holding on to me with one hand while nursing his drink in the other.
Now, a woman has the right not to wear a bra any damn time she pleases. But in my section, she does so at her own peril. The fabric of her blouse, so soft and opaque while dry, was nearly invisible and cupped her, giving all of Brooklyn and the east-facing part of the restaurant proof she’d never gone to a plastic surgeon. She clapped a hand on to each breast and was immediately descended upon by Angie and Brett, who draped several napkins over her as they ushered her into the bathroom.
After she sat back down, windblown and flushed from the hand dryer, all it took was a few well-timed comments and a neon-bright smile and—bingo!—they were thanking me for making their holiday. And their tip confirmed it.
I’m a star
And my customers adore me
I adore them
And they adore me for adoring them.
At the movie theater, Ronnie and I grabbed some Diet Cokes and popcorn and made our way to one of the rows in front. Slouching way down in the seats, we got a huge, perspective-distorting view of the screen. Ronnie was snorting at my running commentary on the people around us, stuffing his face into my arm to stifle his laughs.
The lights dimmed.
A man with enormous muttonchops makes his way through snowy streets in fin de siècle London. Outside of a restaurant, he stops to read a menu as a hooded figure lurking in the shadows raises a dart gun—thwip! Muttonchops swats at his neck, inspects his empty hand, and looks around. Inside, a waiter brings the man his favorite dish: roast pheasant. (“Look! Its ass feathers are still attached!” whispered Ronnie. I elbowed him to shut up.) Muttonchops slices into the bird, which begins gushing blood. Its head worms its way out of its body and pe
cks at the man’s eyes, gouges his raised hands. He grabs it, trying to hold off the attack. Cut to the view of the other diners: The man is grasping at air and howling. He’s hallucinating. He’s going insane. I was watching this man become unhinged right in front of me.
I felt it gathering. This is a PG movie. A Spielberg movie, for crissake. Diverting my attention from the screen, I said something to Ronnie, but he was too engrossed. I knew what was about to happen, and I was powerless to stop it. I could check off its plan of attack—chest, heart, face, skin, joints, excuse, escape—like a pilot to a copilot.
A landmine detonated in my chest, shooting up my esophagus, throwing sparks against the back of my throat. Check.
My heart heaved against my ribs like a broken washing machine. Check.
A million needles prickled my face. It felt like they were embroidering my lips, nose, eyes, ears, cheeks. Check.
A wave of heat almost annihilated my skin. Tiny beads of sweat popped up on the back of my hands. Check.
My knees and ankles were pumped full of fire ants. I needed to move them. I couldn’t sit still any longer. I needed to run. I need to run now! Check.
I lied to Ronnie, something about having to be somewhere else. He looked at me, jaw slack, confused. Check.
I ran up the aisle, through the doors, across the lobby, and burst into Times Square. Humiliated. Check.