Monkey Suits

by Jim Provenzano

  The two would mention the firing throughout the night. The news would spread quickly, for the efficiency of the homosexual tongue frequently rivals the AP wire. Each of forty-three waiters would have their own version of the event by evening’s end. But rather than act on it, as any concerned group of employees might, they merely whispered and commented among themselves while waiting in line for their next tray to be garnished. The murmuring would amount to just that. No one needed to lose his job by protesting, at least not until he got a modeling shoot or another showcase. Besides, one less employee meant a better chance for oneself, didn’t it?

  4 The moment the last guest left the Temple, Philipe called a brief meeting, glancing at the doors to ensure that there were no outside eavesdroppers. Two waiters closed them silently, leaving the small herd in the vast tomb of a tomb. Philipe stood on a small milk crate, waiting for the workers to assemble. With the timeworn mausoleum behind him, Lee noticed how Philipe strangely resembled Boris Karloff’s Ardeth Bey in The Mummy.

  Philipe raised a hand. A dozen obedient “shhhh”s stilled the group.

  “We had an unfortunate incident ziss evening. One of our workers was dizmissed. I do not like to take ziss kind of disciplinary action, howev-ah, ziss employee was reprimanded several times before. We state the rules and remind all of you. No eating food until we let you go on your break. No drinking of alcohol. Understood?”

  Heads nodded. The silence breathed consent in the flavor of fear.

  “Good. Now go und shenge quickly and come beck to finish ze break down.”

  A crack of a grin escaped Philipe’s composure as a few waiters mimicked his accented instruction, “Shenge, shenge,” before trooping off quietly.

  By deploying the elements of strict control, treachery and abuse, all with a slight sliver of humor, Fabulous Food, the SS of catering companies, and the best in New York, possibly the entire East Coast, did so with the efficiency of an ant colony. A party that may have taken months of planning, days of cooking and hours of setting up could be completely disassembled in less than two hours.

  Potware, samovars and serving trays, thirty round tables, half a dozen squares, three hundred chairs, nine hundred fifty plates and espresso cups, fourteen hundred glasses (water, wine, red wine, champagne), and two thousand pieces of silverware were scraped, rinsed, stacked, boxed, and packed back into trucks and returned to the rental company, which washed, maintained and stored the equipment in a vast Brooklyn warehouse.

  Fifty pounds of leftover food and untold gallons of half-drunk liquids were variously scraped, wrapped, poured, and dumped into drains and dumpsters. This night it wasn’t accomplished in record time, but to Philipe, Lenny and their many underlings, things were running smoothly.

  Some changed into street clothes. Others merely draped their jackets at various points, working in rolled-up shirts and suspenders. The other bartenders packed and crated the remaining alcohol under watchful supervision. Marcos Tierra, true to Fabulous Food’s less than subtle racial hierarchy, acted as loading dock go-between and supervised the transfer of chairs and tables from white waiters to Latino rental company workers.

  In the same men’s room again, Brian and Lee poured an awkward plastic tub of leftover liquids into a toilet. Lemon peels, cigarette butts and bits of cork cascaded over the crimson spillage like sacrificial guttings.

  “Ugh, that’s disgusting,” Lee winced as he kicked the flush handle.

  “Ya got a weak stomach.” Brian let the last drops fall into the swirling water. “C’mon. We’re done.” Lee noticed his stomach doing a few odd things as he carried the plastic tub. Perhaps it was the combination of wine, veal, espresso and three lumps of sorbet that did it.

  As all traces of the party were swept from Dendur, those who chose not to stay late stripped off their tuxes and redressed in the Arms and Armor Room. Closed for years, forever in a state of renovation, many pieces remained, including, encased in a glass cube, a 14th-century full body of armor sitting atop a fiberglass horse. The young men disrobed at its feet, doing bad impersonations of Philipe’s accent; “Shenge, shenge.”

  Lee finished dressing as he watched Brian kiss the back of an almost naked blond man. He’d been introduced to Ed, Brian’s new boyfriend, but hardly included in Brian’s new circle of friends. Actually, he’d rarely met any of Brian’s friends during the past summer since he’d met him. Now he had been dispensed to the sidelines. His gaze was interrupted by a familiar voice.

  “Well, honey, where are you off to?” Marcos asked Lee, while stealing glances at the bent-over Calvin Klein-wrapped butt of a hunk he’d had his eye on since that afternoon’s chat at the napkin-folding table.

  “Um, home, of course.” Lee said.

  “Yes, dear, but where?”

  “Um, Jersey City.”

  Marcos regarded his answer as a verbal fart. “Oh.” He pulled his bag over his shoulder, considered leaving to hit on the crewcut hunk, then felt a dash of sympathy that outweighed his craving.

  “You’re new, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah,” Lee admitted, as he tied his worn out Pumas.

  “Well, c’mon. Let’s go.” Marcos was a bit excited, having managed to sneak off into a stairwell after the dinner break for a third rushed cup of coffee.

  “But, I’m gonna wait for ...”

  “Who dear? I’ve got my eye on that one,” he nodded at his choice. “So take your pick.”

  Lee scanned the room. Brian had disappeared.

  “Never mind.”

  After a brief baggage search at the desk by the loading dock (“I’ve got a Monet in here!” Marcos teased the guards), the two headed up the side driveway and onto Fifth Avenue. The grand steps of the museum glowed a silvery gray in the night.

  “You need to get downtown. Let’s share a cab.” Marcos raised his hand. A yellow cab stopped beside him.

  “That’s okay,” Lee stuttered. “I’ll walk to the PATH.” He actually didn’t know if he had enough money to share a cab.

  “Oh, then I’ll share with someone else.” Marcos waved the driver off.

  “Hold it! Taxeee!” A familiar voice shouted behind them. The car again lurched to a halt. Marcos and Lee turned to see Brian and Ed running to catch their ride.

  “It’s Ozzie and Hairy Ass!” Marcos hissed as they ran up.

  “Watch it, girl,” Brian teased. Ed waved goodnight and hopped into the cab.

  “Say,” Brian leaned to Lee. “Have you had your shots?”

  “My shots?”

  “You better.” Brian nudged Marcos. “’Cause this girl bites!”

  “You go play house, Miss Fuck-anything-on legs!” Marcos snapped back.

  Brian ignored this retort, and ducked into the passenger seat, waving blithely at Lee and Marcos. The yellow cab, with Brian and Ed in it, receded down the street.

  “Don’t you mind that whore,” Marcos sniffed. “We joke around, but we’re old girlfriends. Although, I can’t understand how they stay together. Ed’s an angel and Brian is a total monster. I just don’t get it.”

  “He has a certain charm,” Lee said.

  “Oh, that’s right. You were ... oh, faux pas, faux pas. Do forgive me. You too are a member of the Survivors of Brian Burns 12-Step Program.”

  Lee grinned sheepishly, amused that his ‘summer of love’ could be so quickly reduced to a two-month fling. He felt insignificant, like a cipher, especially after Brian’s swift departure.

  “Opposites attract, girlfriend,” Marcos said.

  “Are you one of those guys that calls other guys by girl’s names?”

  “Not always,” Marcos huffed. “But you would definitely make a fine Loretta.” They laughed and continued strolling down Fifth Avenue. The open air, the scent of dying leaves and bus fumes took Lee a little higher than the two glasses of champagne he’d managed to sneak during dessert.

  “Anyway, I didn’t mean to rip those girls. I don’t wanna make enemies. I get enough freeze attitude at my day job.”
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  “Which is?”

  “I work at the Wiz on Sixth Avenue. So naturally, I prefer to hang with fun folk in my spare time. You see, I pay homage to the benevolent gods. Bacchus, Dionysus. Pan.”

  “You don’t seem like the type who’d be interested in stuff like that.”

  “You’re surprised a mere cater waiter such as myself might have such lofty ideas?”

  “Well, it’s not that. It’s just that they don’t seem to have ideas about anything. I mean, did you hear about them firing that guy?”

  “It happens.”

  “But the way they were so smooth about it. It was like, like they just made him disappear.”

  “This whole line is all show biz, dear. We serve stupidly simple food in an elaborate manner.”

  “It gave me a headache.”

  “The cater waiter is the ultimate illusion,” Marcos sighed. “Queer posing as straight, liberal and radical posing as conservative, hedonist posing as eunuch.”

  “Are you a hedonist?” Lee asked, not that he wanted Marcos to prove it to him that night.

  “I enjoy my life.”

  “Oh, well, I just thought I’d give you some options in case you felt like going out.” Lee didn’t want to go home. He wanted to try and forget Brian’s immediate dismissal as quickly as possible and Marcos seemed just the person to do it with.

  Marcos’ face brightened. “Oh! Well, that’s a horse of a different zip code! Why don’t we hop down to my place, dump off our prison garb and make a game plan?”

  The moon hung over Cleopatra’s Needle like a balloon waiting to be burst.

  5 “We have to go now.”

  After sharing the last of his orange juice and a dry bran muffin, Pete, who worked at F.I.T. and lived in SoHo, was suddenly in a rush to get Lee out of his apartment. They had met at Uncle Charlie’s. Marcos had kept the chat going, then benevolently excused himself, allowing Lee to dive into the first of what would be many quick rushes into one-night romance, as if he could fuck away the lingering aftertaste of Brian.

  After checking his datebook, hidden in his bag under a pair of smelly black socks and a crumpled white shirt, Lee realized that he was booked to work an East 84th Street luncheon which began in less than an hour. Working sporadically for Fabulous had yet to train him in the art of being constantly prepared. It didn’t help that Marcos kept dragging him to one club after another, usually after they’d secretively guzzled a few glasses of Veuve Clicquot and were feeling a bit cocky.

  “Shit. Can I use your phone?”

  “I guess so.”

  He called Marcos, whose machine clicked on. Lee hung up, not leaving a message. Going home and back again and then uptown would take over an hour and a half. The Jersey curse.

  “Can I borrow some clothes?” Lee asked Pete, who was rolling up a jacket sleeve just so.

  “Is this one of those co-dependent things?”

  “No, I just need a clean shirt and a pair of socks for work.”

  “Alright,” he said heading toward his closet. “But this is a funny way of making sure you’ll see me again.”

  “I’ll mail them back if you prefer.”

  “Here,” Pete handed him a laundry-folded white button down and a pair of socks. Lee sighed in relief as Pete betrayed a slight grin. “Think of last night when you wear it today.”

  He did. Sex with Pete had been a lot like Lee’s new job; slightly glamorous, occasionally exhausting, and a bit too efficient.

  An hour later, as he served the luncheon (he’d splurged on a cab and arrived fifteen minutes early), the lingering chafe of Pete’s stubble grazings and the terrific view of Central Park kept Lee distracted from the arguments between the Iraqi dress designer and the French diplomat’s son. They could not agree which country was best for a summer home, since so many were being invaded these days.

  Exhausted from the day’s work, the pleasures of Pete’s hard body and the agony of Pete’s futon, he trudged up the Grove Street exit of the PATH train into the late afternoon rush and headed for home.

  Lee Wyndam was a closet bridge and tunnel kid.

  His neighborhood, a usually quiet residential section of downtown Jersey City, was nice enough, even better than the Manhattan areas that he’d heard were considered ’cool.’ He didn’t mind living in “the burbs.” The problem was how other people, specifically Manhattan residents, minded it.

  Lee had no excuses. He hated the PATH trains, which were as messy as New York’s subways, but were slower and released ear-piercing squeaking noises when rounding the bends in the dank tunnels. His only true reason for living in New Jersey was his private sense of attack and defeat. He could escape the pressure of the city by crossing a state line under the river. He thought of himself as a soldier in a medieval battle, daily assaulting the fortress for entry, daily retreating to the outlying camp to plan a new strategy.

  Although mostly Latino, some of the white residents had snagged pricey brownstones, renovating them into modern Formica-layered kitchens and expansive wainscoted dining rooms. The streets lined with squat brick tenements usually housed Puerto Rican and Dominican families, with a sprinkling of struggling artistic white kids. Lee’s studio lay tucked away on a side street, where children played in driveways and handsome men could occasionally be seen through bedroom windows painting walls in faux-marble. With a little more lawn space, the serenity of the block reminded him of his first home in Bloomington.

  Lee stopped by a bodega for some bananas and orange juice. The smaller of two men watching a TV ambled over to the counter.

  “Cuanto tiempo los platanos?” he asked his co-worker.

  “Cobra el maricon uno cinquenta.”

  Lee paid, and the man counted the change, leaving it on the counter, despite his open palm. He thanked them in Spanish and walked toward home, dodging a trio of children on roller skates. They glared up at Lee, giddy and fearful. No, it wasn’t exactly Bloomington, but it was quieter and cheaper than any of the neighborhoods in Manhattan he’d apartment-hunted.

  He turned the corner where Las Americas Funeraria stood, a solemn brick building painted white with a Kelly green awning and matching green shutters. Several people stood near the steps. Someone had died.

  In his younger years, Lee would have been haunted, even frightened by the sight, but out in the open air, with friends and family chatting away as if they were at a picnic, the service had an almost perfunctory calm, a necessary tone. It served a purpose, like the small real estate office, the Catholic Church and the C-Town grocery, each at adjacent corners. Live, pray, eat, die.

  Once home, he set his groceries on the kitchen counter, walked over to the bed area (the studio was much too small to have a bedroom), stripped down to his boxer shorts and carefully hung his tux in the closet. The phone machine eagerly blinked for a response. No, that could wait. Right now, he had to lie down.

  He thought of the previous night’s escapade with Peter. While feeling unusually horny again, he considered masturbating. He also considered throwing away the guy’s phone number. It was a sort of test. If he really likes me, Lee thought, then he will be the one to call. Not like last time. Not like Brian.

  In the year and a half he’d lived in Jersey City, only two guys had had the bravery (or desperation) to sleep over at Lee’s place, one of them Brian. Although it was always clean, well lit, and presentable, the response was always, “Isn’t that far away?” or “Why don’t you just come over to my place?”

  Lee would always convenience him, whichever him it was at the time. He learned to bring a change of underwear, socks, and a toothbrush on every date, always playing the guest, always giving the upper hand. On nights when sex didn’t turn out, clipped on a doorstep by a goodnight kiss, he left feeling quietly foolish, his extra clothes sitting in his bag like the remnants of a thwarted vacation.

  Brian was different. He had liked visiting, not just because it was Lee’s place. It seemed Brian had liked to fuck someplace different every time. Lee glance
d around the small studio. There on the window sill. There on the chair. Around the corner in the tub. In the kitchen. The place was an invisible monument to Brian’s gymnastic versatility. Why couldn’t anyone else be as much fun?

  They’d met working part-time at Christopher’s, a dark clammy restaurant and bar in the West Village. Brian said he had worked for a catering company during the year, but that things were always slower in the summer, what with most of the rich guests leaving the country. They had both endured the smoking cloistered den of tourists and quiet male couples. The two months working together, sleeping together and eating together became intense, nerve-wracking, and deliciously passionate.

  As July became August, Brian had stopped coming over, saying he’d met someone who had moved in with him.

  “What’s his name?”

  “Ed.”

  “You love him, or is he just more convenient?”

  “Stop.”

  “I just did.” They didn’t speak for days, but his feelings welled up in his new silence.

  Finally, Lee couldn’t stand to be near Brian and have him ignore him so. Brian hushed Lee at the mention of sleeping over. He never wanted to go out and see movies, introduce him to his friends. He separated parts of his life like the fussy diners they’d served who separate their portions, fearing indigestion. Brian seemed embarrassed to have ever dated Lee, who cajoled, flirted and, one night, begged Brian to come over. He’d been reduced to that in a mere two months.

  So he quit one day, for a combination of reasons. His primary excuse was that the chef was insane, but all chefs in New York were insane, brandishing knives if he served an entree too late or messed up the garnish. But the root of it was Brian’s presence.

  After explaining it over a long dinner that, to Lee’s disappointment, did not end in sex, Brian offered to get Lee an interview at Fabulous Food. “You’ve got the looks and the training, just pick up a tux.”

  Now he was once again working with this ex-boyfriend, if he could be permitted to use that term with such an enigma as Brian, and serving food, although to a society crowd. What a career boost. At least they didn’t pat his ass.