Smart Mouth Waitress (Romantic Comedy) (Life in Saltwater City)

by Dalya Moon

  Nigel was nice enough, though reluctant to help out with the other servers' tables, citing his fear of “overstepping his bounds.” No matter how many times I told him that bringing my tables their utensils or ketchup wasn't overstepping, he refused to jump on the clue train.

  Nigel is thirty-something and self-described as light brownish due to mixed ethnic heritage, the specifics of which he coyly refuses to reveal. He has chronic bed-head hair that, coupled with his heavily-lidded eyes, makes him look like he's just come back from a nap or is heading off for one. The kitchen staff swears he's gay, even though he often mentions a girlfriend we've never met.

  I could have strangled him that Monday morning, when he sat Marc—as in, my future boyfriend Marc—in his section.

  My annoyance quickly escalated to full-scale shit-fit when I realized Marc was sitting with a girl, and not just any girl, but Sunshine, his ex-girlfriend, who, as you may recall, is also Cooper's sister.

  My pink-purple dress dress clung to my front, just under my bra, where I'd broken out in a miserable sweat.

  Sunshine had her blue hair up in a high ponytail and was sporting 2003-era-Gwen-Stefani look, with a jewel between her eyebrows, a short athletic top showing actual ab muscles, and track pants with racing stripes.

  Marc was adorable in a dorky-looking cardigan. His hair appeared damp, like he'd just gotten out of the shower. Oh, man, they were totally sleeping together, weren't they? They must have had sex and then decided to go out for breakfast. Was her hair wet? No, but she could have showered first and then blow-dried her ridiculous blue hair.

  The nausea started in the back of my throat and plunged down to my stomach. Everything and everyone around me was whistling for service, but it was all a sick, vomit-inducing blur.

  I ducked down behind the bar counter and sucked on a slice of lemon.

  After a few seconds of being absolutely useless, I jumped up and started rocking my job, because that is what I do.

  I'm gonna hold my head up high, I told myself.

  Waiting tables can be enjoyable, and if you take pride in your job, like I do, that makes it twice as fun. Lots of people will offer their own tips on how to waitress, but I'll keep it simple and offer you my top three:

  Never waste a trip. If you head out to the tables with food in hand, come back with finished plates from another table.

  When you're walking with really full drinks on a tray or in your hands, don't look at them. Your hand can hold the tray level while you're walking, because your hand is smart like that, but not if you're back seat driving with your eyes and brain. If you're watching, you'll over-correct and slip-slop everywhere. Nobody wants a half-full root beer with sticky sides.

  Draw a smiley face on the bill.

  Those are the three things I learned on my first day, and they've served me well.

  That Monday morning, I made the mistake of glancing up at Marc and blue-haired Sunshine while I was putting the smiley face on a bill, and the little guy came out all satanic and mental-looking. With horns.

  Nigel lingered near me, grabbing french fries from a plate he had tucked next to the pop machine. We aren't supposed to eat where customers can see us, but Nigel's skinny enough we let him get away with it as a means to prevent him from fainting.

  Nigel said to me, “Crossword Guy wants you to say hi. Are you friends with him now?”

  “His name's Marc, and yes.” I took two of Nigel's french fries, turning my back to the dining area to eat them. “Did you detect a romance vibe between him and the girl?”

  “The hot girl?”

  “I didn't ask for your personal rating. I mean the girl he's sitting with, obviously.”

  Nigel got one of his evil grins. “I definitely smelled sex in that general area.”

  “You're disgusting.” I grabbed an ice cube from a bus pan of dirty dishes and tossed it down his shirt. He pulled out the waistband of his jeans and let the ice cube slide all the way down, rolling his eyes in super-fake pleasure.

  I took some dishes back to the kitchen, where Toph was toiling away like a gentleman, helping the lady who had just started washing dishes for us a few weeks earlier. She didn't speak a lot of English, but she sure sighed a lot. Maybe once every five minutes, she'd let out a huge sigh.

  We needed glasses out front, so I took a hot tray of clean ones with me, even though that was Toph's job. As I unloaded the piping-hot stemware behind the bar, I wondered what Nigel had meant about smelling sex around Marc and Sunshine. I'd heard people say that before, and I'd assumed it was a joke. If people were doing it, wouldn't they just smell like sweat?

  Times like that, where I wasn't sure about things, but was too embarrassed to ask, made me wish I wasn't a virgin.

  I should tell you that as of now, the point of time from which I'm telling you this story, I am no longer a virgin.

  Bombshell! I know, right?

  I'm not messing around with you, either. I really have had intercourse (as the teachers are calling it these days) with a guy, although my friend Courtney would point out it doesn't have to be with a guy to count as sex.

  I will tell you about the sex, soon enough, but first I'll make a small update about the smell issue, so that if you're a virgin, you don't have to wonder like I did. I think when people say a room smells like sex, they mean it smells like a lady's underwear. That's all.

  I can't believe I'm talking about these things. How funny is it we're all so embarrassed about admitting we're curious about sex, and yet every single music video or clothing advertisement you see is all about getting some?

  On that particular Monday, I decided I would lose my virginity to anyone who was willing to have it. I was seriously considering propositioning Toph, the skinny prep cook.

  Seeing Marc with Sunshine had given my crush on him a complete U-turn. In the mess of thoughts in my head, sleeping with Toph seemed like a suitable punishment for Marc, and he'd come to regret bringing Sunshine into my place of work.

  I know now that I was being particularly petty and idiotic that day, but I never promised I wasn't an idiot. And let's be honest, we all have our petty moments. Don't tell me you've never posted a single passive-aggressive Facebook status update, hoping one specific person would see it and get all butthurt.

  I should have stayed well away from Marc, in my thoughts and in the flesh, but, being an idiot as well as having poor impulse control, of course I couldn't.

  After a quick trip to the washroom to check my hair and makeup, and to make sure my Spanx were still making my butt cheeks look awesome, I dropped by Marc's table just to casually say, “Hey.”

  Marc looked up over his glasses, his eyebrows high with surprise, as if to say, why are you at my table?

  “Nigel, your waiter, thought I should say hey,” I said, avoiding eye contact with the girl. The right side of my face felt the heat of her jealous gaze, but when I turned to face her, she was actually looking down at her cell phone, not even aware I was standing right there.

  Marc snapped his fingers over Sunshine's phone. This probably isn't the appropriate time to mention a fun fact, but did you know that the snapping sound when someone snaps their fingers comes from the middle finger landing on the fleshy part of your hand, below the thumb? The noise doesn't come from the two fingertips, like it looks! Try snapping without letting the finger hit back down on your hand and you'll see: no snapping noise will occur.

  “Sunshine,” Marc said. “This is my friend Peridot, I was telling you about her.”

  I held my hand out and smiled sweetly. “I saw you at your brother's art show, but Marc here didn't introduce us.”

  Sunshine shook my hand enthusiastically. “Peridot!” she said with such glee, I found myself unable to truly hate her. Damn me and my forgiving nature.

  “You two are piercing twins,” Marc said, and it was true—she had a similar piercing in her right eyebrow as well, though half of her eyebrow was missing and filled in with swirly curlicue lines.

  “It's a tat
too,” she said, noticing me staring at her unusual eyebrow.

  I found myself wishing I'd never met Sunshine, because I feared I would always wish I'd been the first one to think of replacing half my eyebrow with a swirly tattoo. It was weird, yet subtle and artistic. Damnit, she was so cool!

  I said it was nice to meet her, muttered some more pleasantries about the weather, and walked away from their table in such a daze that I wasted a trip and returned to the waitress station with empty hands, breaking my first rule of rockin' waitressing.

  Strange thoughts and imaginary scenarios raced through my head. As is typical for any girl in my situation, I had a hundred different theories for what was happening, including, but not limited to the following:

  Marc liked me as more than a friend, but Sunshine invited herself out to breakfast at the last minute, and he was too nice to tell her to get lost.

  Marc saw me as a sexless, robotic object who simply delivered breakfast, and asked Sunshine to come with him because he was still in love with her.

  Courtney's mean girlfriend Britain was the evil mastermind behind an elaborate scheme to crush my spirit.

  Marc was hoping for a threesome.

  Marc had brought Sunshine there on purpose to introduce her to me and thus make her jealous enough to take him back.

  They'd slept together the night before and needed some food to refuel before they went back to his place to do it some more.

  I had gone insane and was imagining Sunshine in sort of a Fight Club mind game situation. To my shock, I would later find out she and I were actually one and the same person. Twist! (Her eyebrow piercing being in the same spot as mine was the only clue.)

  Marc was equally in love with both of us, at the tragic heart of a real life love-triangle situation.

  Marc wanted to date me, but wasn't sure how to make the first move to transition from just being friends, so he foolishly brought Sunshine in to help as a female adviser.

  I was actually a ghost and had been dead since a month earlier, when my mother had run a red light with the Land Rover while applying lip gloss, causing us to get creamed by a giant Costco truck.

  I realize now that some of these scenarios, such as the love-triangle one, don't seem that plausible. You have to admit, though, that the Fight Club one was rather inspired.

  When Marc and Sunshine finally paid their bill and left, I ran over to their table to sniff the air—just out of curiosity. I smelled only empty coffee cups with an undertone of maple syrup.

  At home, Dad announced that Operation Scared Straight By Uncle Jeff would be going down the following weekend.

  Garnet's mouth dropped open in shock.

  I said to my brother, “Unless you want to take over making dinner for me?”

  My father said, “I can't authorize that, Perry.”

  Garnet said, “Shit.”

  Dad and I smiled at each other. There was no point in admonishing Garnet for swearing. Saying shit, or much worse, was a perfectly reasonable response to the news he'd be spending an entire day with Uncle Jeff.

  “Hey pot-muncher,” I said, rubbing it in. “For dessert, would you like a special brownie? I made them just for you. I put something special in them.”

  “That's enough,” my father said, checking his email on his phone while he ate the tuna-noodle casserole I'd made from mom's recipe.

  “Bro! No fair,” Garnet whined to me. “You should get in trouble for snooping in my bedroom.”

  Doing my best approximation of Mom's voice, I said, “I was simply investigating an unusual smell. It was your choice to bring that stuff into our family home.”

  Garnet picked the cheddar-breadcrumbs topping off his casserole with his fingers. “You sound just like Mom.”

  “Thank you, dah-ling,” I continued in her voice.

  Dad said coldly, “Don't do that again.”

  He was still focused on his cell phone screen when Garnet and I exchanged a that-was-weird look.

  Back to my own voice, I said, “So, I still haven't lost my virginity yet, despite my best efforts.”

  Without a word, Dad picked up his plate and left, taking it into his little office just off the kitchen.

  “Can't you just poke it with a Q-tip?” Garnet asked. “That's what they do to cats when they're in heat.”

  “I hope you're joking,” I said, but the look on his face indicated he wasn't.

  I asked him a few more questions and discovered that, despite having his own computer in his room, with no parental controls or restrictions on use, and despite having taken Sex Ed in school, my fifteen-year-old brother still didn't have the first clue about women's bodies or how sex worked.

  I had at least read a few books about sex, thanks to one of Mom's friends gifting me on my thirteenth birthday with a variety of educational titles. While I'd never actually had a guy touch me anywhere except over the bra, I owned a lady body, and therefore knew more than Garnet.

  He said, “Why do you think vaginas aren't round? They don't look like they'd be that good.”

  Stifling a giggle, I finished chewing my bite of casserole and said, “They can take on any shape. Like how you can … wrap a peanut butter sandwich around a big dill pickle.”

  He squealed with embarrassment. “You're so rude!” He fanned his face for a few seconds. “Okay, tell me more. What's the little man in the boat?”

  “I don't know. Is that something you heard at school? Maybe it's a position.”

  He wrinkled his nose. “Why are there different positions?”

  “Honestly, I don't know. We should ask Dad.”

  We both laughed at that.

  His face getting serious, my brother said, “I don't think you should have sex until you're married.”

  “Thanks for your input.”

  “At least do it with a really nice guy,” he said. “And whatever happens, DO NOT tell me about it.”

  “I promise.”

  He picked at the cheese on his plate for a minute, then said, “Mom got pregnant by accident, didn't she?”

  “Not with you, buddy. You were wanted.”

  He smiled. “I'm glad they had you first.”

  “Me too.” I stood and started clearing the plates. “Hey, do you want to borrow some books I have? They might answer some questions you didn't even know you had.”

  He nodded hesitantly, so I ran to my room and brought down my collection of teen sexuality books for him.

  He was most interested in the one about puberty for women, which made sense. Women are pretty private about cramps and periods. The whole thing must be mystifying to guys; I know it sure was to me before I got my first period.

  Garnet said, “You should let Mom know we had this talk so she doesn't have to tell me anything.”

  “You'll miss out on mother-son bonding time,” I said, draping a damp dish towel over his head for giggles.

  He tucked the sides behind his ears and moved on to the next book in the pile. “Oh my God!” he yelled, slamming the book shut.

  “The Joy of Sex is a classic,” I said. “Don't tell me you haven't seen so much more than this on the internet.”

  “That's different,” he said. “That stuff's not real. Can I take these to my room?”

  “Sure, but no solo time using those books. They're still mine and I don't want spankies in them.”

  He held the books tight to his chest. “Don't worry, Dad busted my doorjamb.”

  “Poor little monkey,” I said as he disappeared upstairs.

  As my brother learned about the birds and bees from a non-pornography source, I cleaned up the dinner dishes and wondered how that scenario would have gone if Mom had been there, and if Garnet would have even talked about sex at all.

  My mother is a loving person, but at times she treats us more like cousins or friends than her actual children. My friends think she's so casual because she was young when she had us—barely twenty when she had me.

  I haven't told you very much about my mother, partly becaus
e I've been trained from a very young age to never talk about her. We found out the hard way that so-called journalists aren't above paying to get information, even from the parents of my and Garnet's friends.

  My mother's fears fed into mine, so when I was at a friend's house and her mother asked questions, such as, “Does your mother buy this brand of soup?” I'd get cagey and refuse to answer.

  Mom and Dad had drilled into us that whatever went on in our home was nobody's business, and besides, getting big dough for a biography about my mother was my big plan for being a future millionaire.

  I kid! I kid!

  Selling my mother out was not my plan, though secretly I hoped her sixth album would make us tons of money. Her fifth one had not done well, so, understandably, the pressure was on.

  While she could have recorded in Vancouver, she felt the only way she could make a hit again was to become a rock star again, which meant time away from taking care of her family. I could understand how making tuna casserole and picking up Garnet's smelly laundry was not the fuel for inspiring an album that spoke to people's emotions.

  Mom says the music industry is always changing, and now more than ever, it's about touching people's emotions. An album like Adele's, that makes people cry, does better than one with a great dance beat. I don't know why people like crying so much. I think crying's overrated.

  The truth about my mother is, I don't have that much dirt on her. She reads trashy romance novels and hides them in the couch cushions where she thinks we won't find them. She has Jay come in once a week to give the house a thorough cleaning, but then she lies about it when people ask for a referral, saying he only comes once a month, and that he's booked solid and not taking new clients. She's even referred to him as Kevin instead of Jay to throw particularly nosy friends off the scent.

  I don't know why she'd lie about such a thing, but it's not hurting anyone, except Jay, who probably wouldn't mind a few more clients.