* * *
They’re all finishing their desserts so we’re clearing the last of the plates, but they’re still drinking hard. Lushie is on his seventh or eighth whiskey and he’s guzzling the wine too. The goal seems to be not so much pleasure as obliteration. Somebody puts their arm around my waist, a liberty taken with me fairly often because I’m small and just the right height. You sign up for a certain kind of life and shell out the dough for it, you expect the waitresses to permit you. I turn toward the guy to see what he wants. He’s so drunk he’s glowing but he’s been here before, he keeps his words standing up as he asks, Sunshine, can we smoke our cigars in here?
No sir, I say, I’m sorry, there’s no smoking in the building, it’s a city ordinance. I tug away from his arm and notice that one of the others seems to be asking DeMarcus the same question at the other end of the table, he’s gesturing with his cigar and when DeMarcus shakes his head he looks just as disappointed as the one who called me Sunshine. That guy sticks his cigar in his mouth anyway and starts chewing on it.
Everything is winding down and DeMarcus says he’s going to go put the check together, which can take awhile on these parties. I say I’ll stay in the room to watch over them till he gets back but I feel like I need to get out for a minute and everybody’s topped off except Lushie. I can’t keep up with him and I’m not worrying about it any longer, so I step into the hall and lean against the wall in the dark space between two stacks of chairs.
Benito, one of the bussers, comes around the corner into the hall and pulls a stack of the chairs away from the wall. When he sees me he jumps a little and says, Maestra! Me has asustado!
Sorry, Papi, I say. Benito is probably close to sixty but quite spry and often he’ll help me out on my tables even when he hasn’t been assigned to my station. I’ll be holding a stack of cleared plates away from my body, leaning down over a table to answer someone’s question, and suddenly I’ll feel the weight of the plates being lifted from me. By the time I can turn to look he’ll already be halfway to the dishroom. One of his sons, also named Benito though we call him Sanchez, is the barback; another, Orlando called Magic, works the salad line; and his youngest, whose given name I don’t know because everyone calls him Niño, is also a busser. The sons all have their father’s work ethic and Danny will joke with Benito that he needs to bring his other sons over too. Papi, you got any more where these came from? he’ll say. Benito does, actually, and he’ll say, Sí, jefe, sí.
Good peoples? he asks, with a nod toward the wall behind me, referring to my party on the other side of it. This question is strictly economic—it never means, Do you like them? It means only, Are they spending money?
Sí, Papi, I say, muchísimo vino.
Es bueno, es bueno, he clucks as he disappears around the corner with the chairs.
When I open the door this time I step into a thick quiet, the sleepy quiet of the overstuffed and oversoused. If they were younger they’d be boisterous and obnoxious, they’d be cranking up at this point, but those days are behind them and some seem calmed by the cigars they’re holding in their teeth. The Boss is standing up at the end of the table opposite me, and at my entrance he pauses in the middle of another joke. He looks at me and says, Hi. Everyone else turns to look at me. I’m surprised at this late acknowledgment and I say hi back and stand still. In this job you learn to give them what they want and not take anything personally, but I’ve got Asami’s frisky defiant burr up in my skin and I say, You’re gonna stop now? This is the one I want to hear!
No one laughs at my joke. I’m like Lushie earlier, talking about aortal aneurisms. I turn around to get the hell out and I nearly knock down DeMarcus with the door. Whoa, he says, what got into you?
* * *
I am sitting on an upturned glass rack, vigorously working the spots off spoons still hot from the washer, when DeMarcus comes to tell me they’re leaving. Cal thinks it’s bad form to let your guests leave without telling them good night and if he caught me sitting here doing my sidework instead of seeing them off he’d call me out. Just gonna let your people walk out like that, huh? How much money did that spoon pay you tonight? Make sure you give that spoon your card, Hey Spoon ask for me next time you bring in Knife and Fork I’ll take great care of you. DeMarcus remind me not to have dinner at Marie’s house, she one of those Don’t let the door hit you on the way out hosts. Classy.
I leave the silverware half finished and walk with DeMarcus back to the Private Room. We stand in the doorway while the men file out, shaking their hands like two pastors after a church service. Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you so much, sir. Thanks for coming in tonight. Appreciate your business. Congratulations, hope you enjoyed everything. How’d we do tonight? Everybody happy?
* * *
After we get out DeMarcus and I hang in the employee parking lot, waiting for Asami, who promised to share some of her stash with us. We have half a bottle of the party’s cab and a full bottle of the chardonnay they left in the ice bucket untouched, and we drink both of them, pouring tall into Styrofoam cups. I make sure to leave a glass in the chard bottle in case Asami wants some. Other servers and bussers shoot out the back door like pinballs, letting the door crash against the side of the building and stripping off pieces of their uniform as they head toward their cars, calling, Good night, and other more exultant things like, Home fucking free! to us as they leave.
Niño is driving back into the parking lot from a beer run—whichever of the cooks or bussers gets out first takes his turn to buy a case of Modelo Especial or Bud Light before the stores stop selling at midnight. He lets down the tailgate of his pickup and offers DeMarcus and me a beer. There’s something about the way Niño’s navy workshirt is always starched stiff, and something about the way his hair is always trim and gelled, and something about the way he makes eye contact with you when he’s taking plates from you as if to say, Give me all that. I’ll take care of it for you, no problem. Sometimes he actually says things just like this. If you’re female he might say I got it, baby, but you never feel condescended to, only happy he’s in league with you.
He’s so young, only nineteen, but his wife had twins in San Luis Potosí. He got the call after work one night a couple months ago, standing about where he is now. He was overjoyed, he began to cry, and everyone started hugging him and saying, Congratulations, Papa! and, Felicidades! and we all went over to the bar next door and bought him and everyone else in the place a shot of Patrón. He talks about how he’s saving all his money to bring them over so they can be raised in America, he tells me he gave each of them one English and one Spanish name: Thomas Jose and Michael Alonzo. He calls them Pepe and Zozo.
I tip him more than I tip the other bussers, because he works so hard and I like his attitude. It pays to hustle, it pays to bend over, we both know this. You keep your standards high and your work strong but these are necessary for success; you keep your dignity separate, somewhere else, attached to different things.
When Asami finally comes out the back door I say Hey Sandra, how you living?
Dirty, fucking dirty, she says.
I pop a Modelo and hold it out to her. Here, honey, just wash it all away, I say.
Thanks, but I think some of it’s gonna stick, she says.
Nah, says DeMarcus. Only if you let it.
That right, De? I ask. He shrugs, then says to Niño, What do you think, Francisco?
When DeMarcus says his name, which I repeat in my head several times for safekeeping, Niño suddenly seems older to me, but he doesn’t have any more wisdom on the matter than the rest of us. All he says is, No sé, Marco. Es mi job, sabes?
* * *
DeMarcus has fantastic teeth and tight waves. He’s tall and lanky and he smells good. He keeps taking care of me in the parking lot, passing me the green hit when Asami refreshes the bowl, lighting my cigarettes, opening beers for me. The two of us are having a good time—it’s easier on the nights you make money. On the low-scoring nights you feel depre
ssed as hell even if you tell yourself that’s the way it is, inconsistent. You can’t look at the money on the night, you have to wait for the week or even the month to look at it, and you can’t start going home when they overschedule. You have to work it like a nine-to-five even though it’s anything but. Asami is hustling hardcore right now, she’s the speech teacher at an inner-city public high school in Fort Worth, but three nights a week she drives over here too. She can’t stay out late like she used to. In the old times we’d wake up together at somebody’s apartment and she’d give me a ride back to my car at the restaurant, the day looking gray as an old sock through our hangovers. I offer her the last of the chard but she says she has to go now or she’ll be hurting too bad tomorrow.
You can tell she really loves her kids at the school and that’s the job she takes seriously. Not that you can blow this one off—the turnover rate at the restaurant is ridiculous because new people don’t realize quick enough they’re in the army now and they better step up, Chef isn’t kidding when he expects you to know all fifteen ingredients in the hoisin sauce that goes with the fried lobster. I’ve hung in long enough now that they’ve asked me to sub in for a manager on occasion, wear a sexy little dress suit and heels and help out when we’re short staffed. So far I’ve said no. I know they see you in the suit and you do a good job and before you know it that’s where they want you all the time, and then everybody else’s fuck-ups are on you instead of just your own. Plus I’d never see my kid if I started managing and I hardly see her anyway.
All right, I’m out, love you guys, see you Thursday, Asami says, putting her bowl back where it lives in the glove box of her car. Peace, Mama, says DeMarcus, and I tell her to be careful driving all that way home. Niño and the cooks and bussers have cleared out so when she’s gone it’s just me and De, we get into my car and he cranks up my Erykah. Push up the fader / Bust the meter / Shake the tweeter / Bump it, he sings along, grooving in his seat. I saw her in Whole Foods the other day, he says. Damn, woman is a woman. Talk to her? I ask. Naw, he says, I’m gonna say “Excuse me, Miss Badu, got me a fine position of employment as a servant, can I take you out some time?” Whole Foods guy probably has a better shot than me.
Whole Foods guy didn’t make three bucks tonight like you did, I say. Hey, partna, it was smooth, smooth tonight, he says, offering his fist for a bump. I work with you whenever you want, any time, he adds. Likewise, baby, I say, and then, I wish Asami had left us some. There’s a long high pause while we listen to Erykah rock it and I feel him thinking something through. Got some at the house, he says finally. Is that an invitation? I ask. It is if you want it to be, he says.
His brother drops him off at the restaurant and picks him up when’s it over and when B—I’ve never heard DeMarcus call him anything else—pulls into the parking lot I’m drunk and stoned and I have no idea where they live or how I will get back to my car but I get into the cab of the truck between them on the bench seat. It’s an old green Ford, from before they started making everything on cars so round. It smells like smoke. B has the hip-hop station pounding and looks at me like he knew this would happen, his face still, absent. He nods, doesn’t speak. I can tell he’s on something that’s taken him up so far he can see me from above. Crack? I tried crack only once and it didn’t work and now I’m hoping I have some limits. He drives out of the parking lot and I feel DeMarcus relax next to me, he’s realizing I’m committed, realizing I’m down. He puts his hand on my thigh and then we’re making out, the cab of this truck is old-school huge and I swing myself into his lap, facing him, feeling him hard as glass through my thin dress pants. B turns up the music as he pulls onto the freeway. I am grinding on DeMarcus and it’s not enough, I feel like my body will do this without me if it has to. I feel nothing but his hands on my hips and his lips all over my collarbone and the 808 kicking out of the stereo, a primal rhythm I can’t resist any more than the blood pulsing in my cunt. She want it, observes B, looking over at us. He has gold teeth. Not solid gold, the kind with the gold edges.
DeMarcus unbuckles his belt and starts undoing his pants, it’s like he has four hands because he’s getting his pants down and turning me to face B at the same time, pushing me gently onto my knees in the middle of the seat, he’s behind me reaching around to pull off my pants too. He can’t find the button and I’ve got one hand on B’s thigh and one hand on the headrest behind him, I’m concentrating on reminding my drunk self to not grab the steering wheel to hold steady. My pants are too big, I’ve lost weight from doing blow after work. DeMarcus can’t wait so he just pulls them down, they catch briefly on my hips but he tugs and then he’s pushing inside me and I’m pushing back.
B I’m in it, he shouts over the music and I watch B’s face, he doesn’t look at me right next to him, keeps his eyes on the road and says Tight? I feel DeMarcus slow down so he won’t come and he says Shit fuck sweet pussy. Then he asks me do I want to get B in on it and I don’t say anything I just take the hand that is on B’s thigh and I rub his cock through his track pants. He still doesn’t look at me. Suck on me, he says. I bend down and DeMarcus backs up, still inside me, until his back is against the door so I have room to be like a stretching cat between them. I suck on B long and right and he starts breathing deep and making sounds and he takes one hand off the steering wheel and puts it in my hair, puts it on my head, I can tell he wants to push on my head. I go faster hoping he won’t and then DeMarcus starts moving again. I count when I give head or I repeat something over and over in my mind, one-syllable strokes. Sex. Is. The. Same. But. The. Dishes. I say to his cock. This is mean head I’m giving now. It’s firm and I’m not letting it be wet, but this B won’t even look at me. There was a man once to whose penis I said I. Love. You. So. Much. I. Would. Do. Any-. thing. For. You. Can. You. Tell. and every time I got to that Tell I would moan Mmm and he would say Oh my God what are you doing to me but this is not that man. This is me in a truck on Highway 183, this is me drunk and high, this is me doing and being done.
B says I wanna switch and I feel the truck slowing down. He stops on the shoulder of the freeway and rams the gearshift up the column to park. I barely have time to get my mouth off him before he’s out of the cab and then there’s a damp thwack as DeMarcus pulls out of me abruptly, he opens the passenger door and crosses in front of the truck, trotting, he doesn’t button his pants, just lets his long work shirt hang over everything. His brother is in the cab next to me pulling my hips down on top of his cock before DeMarcus has even gotten into the driver’s seat.
DeMarcus glides the truck along the shoulder until he can get back on the freeway, and without being told I take his cock into my mouth, tasting myself. I. Am. An. An-. i-. mal. Good. Then. You. Fire. Her. I think about my daughter, how her eyelids turn lavender at night. I think about how my friend Hal, who also works at the restaurant and also has a daughter, told me I should never do anything I wouldn’t want her to do. How one afternoon he said to me, You know, Rie, we’re doing what we want. If we wanted to be with them we would. We have to face that and decide what’s next. If I wanted to be with Blair I would move to Houston and work at Starbucks if I had to. It’s just money. She. Had. Twins. Mine. Died.
B is hardly moving back there behind me although he’s as stiff as his brother. I feel DeMarcus turn to look at him and I wonder what he sees to make him say B? B, you with us? Then I feel B drop down to the seat from where he’d been up on his knees against me, he moves so fast his cock goes sideways as it comes out of me and it hurts. I stop sucking on DeMarcus to turn and look at B, who’s leaning against the passenger-side window. I think he may have passed out.
After five days of driving we stop in front of their house, which is small. The porch light is on and I see vinyl siding, a tricycle on the sidewalk. DeMarcus and I get out of the truck and walk toward the house, leaving B in the cab. Where are we and whose is that? I ask, pointing at the tricycle. Shh, he says, opening the door. In the front room an old man is sitting in an easy chair hold
ing a can of Budweiser and watching television. Hey Pop, says DeMarcus. Where B? says the old man. Sleep in the truck, answers DeMarcus, I be back with him shortly, how you? The old man grunts in response, he never looks away from the television or acknowledges me.
Want to shower? DeMarcus asks me. I say How much? and he looks at me like he doesn’t get it. When he said Want to shower? I thought He wants to put me somewhere where I can’t see what’s about to happen with B and I thought I want to shower so much and I thought Some of it’s gonna stick and I thought How can I ever get back from here? and what came out was How much?
Do I smell like fries? I ask, trying to act like I am keeping it together, trying to pretend I didn’t just say something incomprehensible. Yes, the restaurant is Zagat-rated and our party spent over four grand on one dinner that involved compotes, reductions, infusions, compound butters, a coulis, a pan jus, but somehow the smell of french fries is what I always carry home on me. He puts his nose in my neck and inhales tenderly. We’re still standing right there in the living room in front of his dad. Crème brûlée, he says. Come on, I’ll show you to the ladies’.
This is the thing about the service industry—you can get trained to be slick and hospitable in any situation and it serves you well the rest of your life. Once you figure out that everything is performance and you bend to that, learn to modulate, you can dissociate from the mothership of yourself like an astronaut floating in space. That’s how you can show a fucked-in-your-truck girl down the hall to the ladies’ and tell her her neck smells like crème brûlée in front of a zombie dad while some freebased flesh you’re related to waits for you to carry it inside. That’s how the crunked girl can get in the shower like she’s told and stand over the drain and pee and not think about what might happen next.
Dallas Noir Page 10