The New Kings of Nonfiction

by Ira Glass

  It’s been decades since I’ve heard kids choosing up sides between the Allies and the Axis. Sometimes I wonder whether anybody ever did after my friends and I stopped. Maybe nobody followed our secret paths through dank apartment basements or worried if the old shuttered house on the next street harbored a Nazi spy ring. But evidently the war was already fading out around us as we played. We never suspected it, but we were the last defenders of Evanston.

  Is it possible to say precisely when a war ends? When I was a kid there was a version of the bogeyman legend that we repeated to one another constantly, in tones of delicious dread. Hitler had survived the wreck of Germany and was still alive on a South American plantation, plotting his revenge against the world. Even as we played at recess and argued about our favorite TV shows, we worried that he was lurking out there, maybe right outside the school’s fences, waiting for a chance to snatch at young Allied warriors. But there was a point—unrecorded, unknown, but still undeniable—when even this tottering ghost of the führer became too old and weak to trouble the sleep of the world any longer. The rumor died, and took the last terrors of the war with it.

  War ends at the moment when peace permanently wins out. Not when the articles of surrender are signed or the last shot is fired, but when the last shout of a sidewalk battle fades, when the next generation starts to wonder whether the whole thing ever really happened. World War II ended as war always ends—by trailing off into nothingness and doubt.

  This is excerpted from a much longer story that originally appeared in the Chicago Reader, March 7 and March 14, 1997. The full text is on the author’s Web site, www.leesandlin.com.

  THE HOSTESS DIARIES: MY YEAR AT A HOT SPOT

  Coco Henson Scales

  It is near midnight and I am standing at the door of the restaurant with Kevin, the bouncer, patiently waiting for customers, so that I can turn them away.

  “Who are you here with?” I ask a man holding a woman’s hand.

  “Just us,” he says. Couples are usually passive, pleading. I look them up and down. I look past them and around them, even if there is no one else there. I bite my bottom lip as if I am genuinely worried for them. “I don’t know,” I say pensively.

  If they are meek and I am bored, I will let them in. But if they become agitated, I turn away, or—even better—pick the group behind them. Either way, my ego is going to get a boost.

  I have been working at Hue, a Vietnamese restaurant and lounge in the West Village, since shortly after it opened last summer. From the beginning it was a hit with a young, fast crowd because of one of its owners, Karim Amatullah. He has been in the nightlife business for years, starting as a promoter and most recently as an owner of Halo. So many celebrities have been coming that we have grown selective. Once, Chad Lowe’s assistant called and asked if he could have a table in the next hour. “Sorry,” I said, “we’re all booked.”

  “Really? That’s a shame because his wife, Academy Award-winner Hilary Swank, is very hungry.”

  “Ah, yes, something just opened up,” I say.

  Celebrities and models are my least favorite customers. They never want to pay and they demand constant attention. The models wear jeans or a jean skirt with heels and a white T-shirt. Drunken skeletons, they stand outside smoking and talking in foreign accents. They don’t tip, but if they aren’t here, the men who do won’t stay, so we cater to models. I don’t bother learning their names. I call them all darling.

  One night Karim, the owner—a short, bald man with perfect posture, who has the habit of looking people in the eye a little longer than is comfortable—waves me over. “Star Jones is coming tonight,” he says. “I want you to take care of her. Where will you put her?”

  At Hue there are two floors—a bar at street level and, one flight down, restaurant seating, a lounge and an inner sanctum known as the suite because it has king-size beds for sitting or lying. I tell Karim I will give Star Jones one of the beds.

  “Fine,” he says, patting my head, which makes me both happy and uncomfortable; I don’t want him to feel my tracks of fake hair. I dash upstairs to tell Kevin on the door that Star Jones is coming.

  He shrugs. For an hour I run up and down the stairs to the front door, thinking she must have arrived. Then I see Kevin holding her at the door and hear her dressing him down.

  “I do not like your attitude,” she tells Kevin, who is well over two hundred pounds and dressed in a black suit—a good-looking baby giant. Star is in full makeup with a long wavy wig. Short and chubby, she is with a tall man with curly hair, wearing gold MC Hammer-ish glasses. I recognize him as Al Scales Reynolds, a banker who is Star’s fiancé (and no relation to me). He is wearing a diamond pinky ring.

  “I’m sorry,” I interrupt. “Please come inside.”

  “No!” says Star, backing up. “I don’t think I want to. I don’t like the way I’ve been treated.”

  Here we go, I think. Now someone else’s ego is looking for a boost. “I’m sorry,” I say. “It’s his job to stop everyone at the door. Please come in, let me buy you a drink.”

  “He has a terrible attitude,” Star says. “I am a guest, invited by Karim. I do not have to come here.”

  “No, you don’t,” I say. “But I’m so glad you did.” I wince, thinking that sounds sarcastic. “He’s sorry,” I say. She and her fiancé step in cautiously, and I lead them down to the VIP room. She laughs when she sees the beds, and the two of them climb onto one. He orders two Passion Cosmos—girly drinks, I think. I run to the bar and tell Liza, a server, that Star has just sat down in her section.

  Liza sighs. “Is she paying?” she asks. I frown at such a silly question.

  A few minutes later, I check on the happy couple. Fully clothed, Star is on her hands and knees on the bed, laughing. Her fiancé is behind her, hands around her waist, mimicking a sex act. In front of the other customers in the room, he then flips her over and climbs on top of her. I stare, mortified.

  After two rounds of drinks, they are ready to leave. I watch curiously as they ask for the check and Liza tells them politely it is on Karim. “Oh, wow, thank you,” Star says. “I’m sorry, I would tip you but I don’t have my wallet,” she tells Liza.

  “Oh, no problem,” Liza says, clasping her hands in prayer. “God will provide.”

  Star smiles as her eyes look to the ceiling. “Yes,” she says. “He will.” I never aspired to be a nightclub hostess. I wanted to be a waitress. I had heard of waitresses making nice money, and, really, how hard could it be? After a string of low-level office jobs, I was burnt out working eighty frenzied hours a week or worse, forty boring hours. Jobs I was hired for because I looked attractive but would later be fired from because I wasn’t “detail oriented” or punctual. At twenty-six, I felt old.

  So I quit my latest office job and interviewed at restaurants, even though I had no experience. At Hue, the third place I tried, a manager quizzed, “What kind of wine would you recommend with a beef en-tree?”

  “Something light,” I said. “You know, beef is heavy so something light.” I smiled, pleased with my answer. He smiled back and said, “Maybe you can start as a hostess and then pick up some waitressing shifts.”

  It turns out I like working at a restaurant very much. I like dealing with people, making them happy, being with them on their date or their birthday. I tilt my head to the side and nod at customers, particularly when giving bad news. “Yeah, it’s going to be about a half hour before your table is ready,” I say. Head-tilt, nod, no smile.

  Initially I am too nice. I am nodding and apologizing to everyone who is unhappy, but then they feel free to keep complaining. They all want to speak with the manager, who demands I become tougher. This is unnatural for me, particularly because I often agree with the customers. They did have poor service. Waiters forgot their orders or ignored them. Why is the wait so long? Good question. Because one of the owners or a celebrity arrived with eight friends and needed a table. There are too many reservations in the books. />
  “Stop apologizing so much,” the manager insists.

  Slowly, I grow thicker skinned. About a month after I start, on a crowded Saturday, a dark-haired young man wants a table for himself and five friends. They don’t have a reservation and don’t want to wait. I tell him it will be “about an hour,” which really means two. After consulting with his friends, he peels off a one-hundred-dollar bill and slips it to me in a handshake. I am surprised—no one has offered me a bribe before—but I give him the next available table. The hostesses all divide the money, and when he and his group leave, we wave to them, smiling.

  I like this business of people paying for tables, and I begin to go out of my way for customers, hoping for a reward.

  In the lounge there is “bottle service” only. At first, I am too embarrassed to ask what this means, and when I learn that customers have to buy a whole bottle of vodka or rum for three hundred dollars rather than single cocktails, I am shocked. But soon I learn to push those bottles.

  Karim likes to keep the tables turning. He surveys the room, eyes fixing on a table of men without dates. “Turn the lights down right there,” he tells me, without pointing. “Right away.” I dash to the dimmer and run back to his side. “How many bottles do they have?” he asks. I have no idea. “Three,” I say.

  “Get them another one,” he orders. “Or drop the check.” He shakes his head at the men and walks through the room. From his years in the club business, he knows everyone—celebrities, models, socialites. People stop him every few feet to shake his hand. He greets them all but smiles only for the models.

  Other times, we are less subtle about urging customers to leave. On a cold night around Halloween, Monica Lewinsky and a friend are deep in conversation downstairs when Liza approaches them. “Hi, I hate to bother you,” she says.

  I can see Monica look up and break into a pretty smile—her face is pale, if overly made-up, like someone who has come from a television appearance. She seems to think Liza wants an autograph. But the waitress tells her she might want to leave the restaurant.

  The big smile fades. Liza explains: Chelsea Clinton and her boyfriend, Ian Klaus, are upstairs having a drink.

  “Oh my God!” Monica says loud enough to hear halfway across the room. “Why won’t these people leave me alone?” she whines, and stands straight up.

  The woman she is with asks: “What’s going on? What happened?”

  “Chelsea Clinton is here,” Monica says. “We’ve got to leave through the back.” Her friend’s eyes widen.

  Liza says she doesn’t mean right this moment, just whenever they’re ready. But as her friend pulls on a scarf and hat, Monica shimmies past the other tables. She is curvy and walks with a bounce. The rest of the waiters collect at the service station, trying not to stare.

  “Monica is walking out,” I tell Kevin over the walkie-talkie. “We’ll escort her through the rear exit.” But instead she heads toward the stairs that lead to the main bar—where Chelsea is having her cocktail.

  “Excuse me,” Liza calls out. “Moni—. . . Ms. Lewinsky!” Other diners look up or self-consciously study their plates. Monica whips around, and Liza, who has long curly hair and ornate tattoos on her legs, signals her to come back down the stairs. “This way,” she says quickly. She seems to be biting her lip in embarrassment.

  Monica storms back down, and the waitress escorts the two women through the lounge, toward a glowing exit sign, me following behind. The lounge is closed tonight, and furniture is pushed aside and the carpet filthy. I feel embarrassed and want to apologize to Monica. At the end of a passage leading up and back out to Charles Street, Liza pushes open the door. Cold wind blasts us all.

  “I can’t seeeee,” Monica cries, her voice like a hurt kitten’s. A motion-activated light has not yet come on. Liza flaps her arms like a stork to trigger the light. Finally it goes on. “See?” she says, consolingly. “That’s much better.”

  “There we go,” she says, extending her arm out the door.

  Monica turns and smiles. “Thank you,” she says.

  “Thank you for coming,” Liza says, somewhat absurdly.

  We watch to see that she steps off the property and then dash back in and upstairs to the bar, where we break into laughter and jump around holding each other. I have no idea why we are so excited.

  The next morning, the Daily News reports that Chelsea Clinton and Ian Klaus haven’t been out together in weeks and suggests they have broken up.

  My shift begins at 6:00 and ends at 2:00 a.m. I am not allowed to sit and am reprimanded for leaning on the wall. My legs hurt almost all the time from standing in heels. I begin to take baths instead of showers, just to sit. The other staffers, who wear sensible flats, tease me for insisting on heels.

  Every day, I spend over an hour getting dressed. I hate to wear the same thing twice, and I spend nearly every cent I make on clothing. My rent is always late. But people compliment me on the way I look, and I glow with the attention. One day my bosses tell me that I am being promoted to host of the VIP lounge, in charge of guarding the door and managing the waitresses.

  Shortly after I begin the new job, Karim tells me: “You wear too much black. No one can see you in black. You have to stick out, wear brighter colors. And be sexy, damn it.”

  Greg, the bartender, echoes the message. “You’re the peacock,” he says. “You’ve got to stick out.”

  I spend my next paychecks buying yellow, orange and white outfits, trying to chose sexier pieces. My skirts are not much longer than a belt, so I have to be careful to never actually bend over. When I pass through the kitchen, the cooks mumble, “Diablo.” I smile and wave. I often trip or fall staring at my reflection in the steel hood of the stove.

  Karim is fanatical about making the lounge an oasis of rail-thin, beautiful women. He drills me about the kind of clientele he wants and doesn’t want. If people are unattractive, I must seat them in corners or turn down the lights so as not to draw attention to them. I make sure the servers know to bring their orders quickly so they are not tempted to walk around.

  One night a manager tells me that Naomi Campbell will be giving a party in the lounge. We have all heard the stories about her—how she hits a restaurant like a hurricane—and when she appears later that night she is wearing a white fur coat over a white minidress with gold heels. Her very perfect, very long brown legs and arms are shining, and in my life I do not remember seeing a woman more beautiful.

  I offer to check her coat, picturing the stark white fur with fish sauce and rum spilled on it.

  She looks at me wildly, her eyes hugely open. She nods her head in quick jerking movements. Yes? No? She’s not speaking. She lifts her hands above her head, fingers spread apart, and does a quick shaking dance. She towers over me, her waist-length hair swinging. I smile and move to take her coat from the chair she has draped it over when she grabs my shoulder.

  “Where are you taking that?” she says in her light English accent.

  “I’m going to check your coat,” I say. Didn’t we just cover this?

  “Yes. Oh God, I need a drink,” Naomi says. “I need a drink, give-me-a-drink-I-need-one-please!” Her voice is a cross between a loud scream and a pleading demand.

  “Yes-well-what-do-you-want?!” I reply. Her style of speech is contagious.

  “I want a pink one,” she squeals.

  I literally run to the bar. But I realize I don’t know what to ask for. I search for Ariana, our best waitress, who is good at memorizing customers’ drink orders. Maybe Naomi has some special blend. Ariana doesn’t know, and I look around the room and realize Naomi wants a Passion Cosmo, several of which are being passed around and which are indeed pink. I pluck one from the waitress’s tray and find Naomi ducking into the back suite with the beds, which is empty. She is alone there when I deliver her drink, and she looks at me perplexed.

  “Here’s the drink you asked for,” I say.

  “You’re beautiful and nice,” she says.


  “Thanks,” I say, frowning.

  “I want to eat dinner in this room, away from everyone else,” she says with her arms spread wide. “What’s for dinner?” she asks.

  “Um, whatever is on the menu,” I say, wondering for a moment if that is rude.

  “I want fish,” Naomi says, sticking out her bottom lip like a child asking for candy.

  We have cod. Good, she says. She likes cod. She wants her friend Norma, part of the entourage in the lounge, to come sit with her while she eats. Okay, I’ll get Norma. I am beginning to feel like a mother tending to a needy toddler.

  Later that night, after Naomi leaves and we are closing up, I tell Karim all about her behavior. He shakes his head. “Man, she is crazy as hell,” he says. “She’ll start screaming—yelling at people for a drink at the top of her lungs.

  “And that’s during dinner,” he says, laughing.

  “Hey, she did that tonight,” I tell him. I add that she looked beautiful, perfect in fact, in a fur coat and short dress, all white.

  Karim shrugs. “She wore the exact same thing the last time she was here,” he says.

  One cold night I am working the lounge when a waitress grabs me by the arm. “A guy wants to talk to you,” she says.

  I assume it’s a complaint.

  “This guy,” the waitress says, pulling me toward a tall, heavy-set man. He is clasping his hands and leaning his head to one side in a pleading gesture. He is going to ask me if I will let his friends in, I see.