Alter Boys (29 page)

Demon took it and said nothing.   Something deep inside of him wanted to come out and inform him that he was being used.  But if it did, it would mean that he would have to deal with it.  And since he had not the verbal or social acuity to resolve such matters, it was easier just to do the work and take it.

From day one, he had worked fast.  As the productivity of his evening partners decreased, he worked even faster.

But tonight was a good night.  Tonight he was working with the Bird.  The Bird had come to work all smiling and squinty-eyed. 
He moved slowly.  He had examined his timecard up and down, back and forth, before puzzling out the correct way to insert it into the punch clock.  He paused again as he tried to find the open gap in the card holder from which he had retrieved his timecard just a moment ago. 

The Bird was stoned.  Columbian gold stoned.  And two hours later, a full house with two more hours to go, the Bird was finally coherent enough to make more than token contributions to the effort. 

“Effin’-A De-man, slow down.  I don’t mind you doing all of the work but you’re makin’ me look bad.”  You keep up at this pace and they’ll only need one busboy a night – you!” 

The Bird had shared these words and he was sure that the d-man had heard him.  But there was something else, something that could only come from a person with insight, and that person was the Bird.  “You
also
gotta slow down because it makes
you
look bad, it makes the Prospector look bad.”

Demon had the utmost respect for the Bird.  It was the Bird who had commiserated with him after the music appreciation fiasco.  It was the Bird had told him about the busboy job.  The Bird had said, ‘from now on, you are no longer Demon, but De-man!’  And who had shared with him the pair of pants to land the job.  The Bird.

The Bird now had his complete attention.  “Look at the hostess over there, is she running?”  Demon watched as the hosted gracefully led a party to number 6.  “Now watch the waitresses.  Do you see them running, hell no!  They move quick, but this ain’t no track and field, this is the Prospector, this is class d-man, class.  Remember, diamond rings shoved up their asses?”  But you; you run, you run like your ass is on fire.  And I’m just being straight with ya.  You wanna know how it looks?” 

“It looks bad!”

Demon heard the words.  Words that came from a respected authority.  And with the words he had seen the visuals.  There appeared to be understanding, but only at the most fundamental of levels.  It was going to take something much stronger to drive the point home.

“Listen, I’m gonna do this one time and one time only.  And you are gonna watch.  I’m gonna show you exactly what you look like out there.”  The Bird snatched up a bus tub and scrambled out to the floor.  He flew to the far side and down the aisle to table 18.  bang. Clink. Clank, chink. Dishes and silverware rudely deposited in seconds.  Then the wipe cloth – a frantic whirling dervish of white.  He grabbed the tote and ran to the dish room.  Next he scooped the napkins and silverware and made another dart for the cleared table.  Ting-ting-ting-ting.  The silverware splashed into place.

Table set, the Bird made his final dash back to the busboy station, but was stopped short…by Boone Merrill.

“We need to talk.  Now.”

After what he had just observed, Mr. Merrill had his demon. 

8

With a packed house, Boone Merrill could ill afford to pull one of his two busboys off the floor.  Originally, he had intended to drag the offender, the demon, back to his office for a good old fashion desk-thumping, ball-breaking, coming home to Jesus sermon about the importance of dining room presence.  It would have to wait.

For the moment he could provide a quick lesson in pace, with the promise of a full-blown confrontation at a later date.

He moved determinedly toward the busboy’s station where another yellow shirt, the
Valley street
kid, was watching with an expression of something just less than outright horror.

“In there.  Now.”  The Bird took the cue and joined his coworker at the back of the narrow room.  Mr. Merrill moved in; his girth and his height all but blocking out the entrance.

“This is directed at you.”  He pointed at the Bird.  “But you’re both going to hear it.  What I just saw was a disgrace.  You were running around the restaurant like a maniac.  Do you think this is some kind of game?  This isn’t your playground.  You are not here to chase around like you’re playing tag.  You are not flash Gordon.  You are not Speedy Gonzalez and you are not the goddamned road runner with a roman candle stuck up his ass!”

At this the Bird had to lower his gaze and grimace, he put on his best expression of supplication while inwardly he was a heartbeat away from exploding with laughter.

Demon was not laughing.  He was mortified.  The boss was chewing out the Bird when it really should have been him.  He had no words.  Painfully he longed to correct it, but how.  No words.  No words.      

Manager Merrill had entered dangerous territory, and he knew it.  He technically was ‘in front of his desk’ and ‘on the floor.’  The busboy station offered some privacy, but not all.  His anger had made his tongue loose, and while the yellow shirts deserved it (and more!) He could not be at risk of having any customers catch even a snippet of this impromptu disciplinary action.

“Do you understand me?”  The question was unnecessary, but it did buy the needed moment to temper his speech and his blood pressure.

Quiet ‘yes’s’ came from both boys.

“Let me be clear.  You need to work and you need to work fast.  But you shall
not
run in this restaurant.  You will
walk
.  You will
not
fling dishes into the tub.  You shall
place
them in the tub.  You will
not
scatter silverware on the table.  You shall
set
the silverware on the table.”

“I have been getting
complaints
about you.” He looked directly at the Bird.  Complaints may not have been precisely true, observations would have been more fitting but Boone Merrill needed to convey how serious of a matter they were dealing with.

“Customers, paying customers, gawk at you, running around like a freak.  And they even have a name for you.  Demon, they say he flies around here like a demon.  And I understand that’s also what they also call you at school?”  “Yes sir” from the Bird.  “I don’t know why, but they call me Demon.”

Mr. Merrill crossed his arms and nodded.  “Well this isn’t school and we can’t control that.  But what we can do is control what happens here, can’t we.”

A shadow fell from behind the manager and his expression immediately transformed into sunshine bubbles.  He turned to face the new arrival.  It was only the hostess.  “Oh, excuse me Mr. Merrill, we have customers waiting and five tables that need to be cleared, I had to leave my station to see if there was a problem with the…”  He waved her off mid sentence.  “We’re done here.  The tables will be ready in a few minutes.”  The hostess departed.  The manager swung clear of the entry and was succinct:  “Now.  Back to work.  Like I told you.”

The Bird moved first.  He plucked a tub and wipe cloth with confident ease and walked professionally to clear a table just like he had done 1,000 times before.  Under the watchful eye of the general manager he skillfully and nimbly cleared, cleaned and re-set without causing a hint of distraction. 

Good, much better, Merrill congratulated himself.  Maybe it wasn’t the busboys who needed the sermon, maybe it was the front line supervisors who
trained
or were supposed to train the busboys who needed their clocks wound.

Demon on the other hand, was utterly lost.  His mind was not on his work, but miles away, processing what had just occurred.  The Bird had been showing him, teaching him about himself, something that no one else had ever bothered to do.  And he had seen it, yes, when the Bird was out flying around he could see it in himself.  ‘This is what I look like.’  And then the manager had come along and chewed out the Bird for running around like a maniac.  Yet all the time, the Bird was just trying to help.

But the hardest things he tried to sort out in his mind included the shame, ‘why, why couldn’t I say something, why couldn’t I tell the manager that it wasn’t the Bird
’
s fault, he was teaching me.  And then there was the most colossal, unfathomable thing of all.  When the manager said, I’m getting complaints about you, they call you Demon, he had been talking to the Bird.  And the Bird just took it.  He didn’t say ‘you’ve got the wrong guy’ he just took the blame, and even said that they call him Demon at school.

Demon’s head swam with never before experienced emotions.  He wanted to hide them somewhere.  Somewhere so dark and deep and hidden that they never get out. 

But he had a job to do, and a whole lot of relearning about how to do it. 

Demon pulled a bus tub out of the stack with all of the delicacy of handling fine crystal.  He retrieved a wipe cloth from the sanitizer bucket and wrung it out. 

Still too wet.  He wrung it some more.  He checked the corners for drips and pinched one offending area into submission.  Fully armed, he faced the dining room.  The urge to race to the table
was paramount.  The freshly delivered lecture its twin.  ‘You shall
not
run in this restaurant.  You will
walk
.’ 

Demon walked.

He gingerly picked his way through the dining room toward table 24.  He passed diners on their way to and from the salad bar.  He noticed patrons leaving their tables and others in the anxious queue at the hostess station.

Never had he noticed the people, not in such vivid clarity.  Before the only things in his mind were objects:  tables, dishes and silverware.   

24 was empty of eaters but laden with dishes.  On busy nights like this the waitresses didn’t always have the chance to clear the dinner plates before the patrons departed.  Demon set to work.  ‘You will
not
fling dishes into the tub, you shall
place
them in the tub.’  With gentle deliberate strokes, Demon picked up each piece of dinnerware and independently parked them in the tub.  As he deposited a water glass it clinked harmlessly against a plate.  Demon hissed in breath, then carefully laid the glass on its side.

Cleared, he stared at the table unsure of what to do next.  Before, everything had been so fast that it was automatic.  Slowing down meant thinking, and that got in the way.

The patrons at this table had been prim eaters so the absence of crumbs and stains added to his momentary lapse.  ‘The wipe!’  He whisked the cloth across the top like in days of old, then caught himself, and slowed his motion to a turtles pace.

All that was left was to return the tub to the dish room and re-set the table.  The walk back was more challenging, with a full tub he didn’t dare shift for fear of chattering the contents.  Finally, free of the old, he gathered the new. 

Napkins.  One, two, three, four.

Spoons.  One, two, three, four.

Knives.  One, two, three, four.

Forks.  One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.

An odd tickling in the back of his brain caused him a moment of doubt.  The count, was it right?  In the past, if after setting the table he discovered that he was shy by one spoon, he had just ran back and retrieved another one. 

But that wasn’t the issue, nor the answer.  He became obsessed with the need for the count to be verified.  Right here.  Right now.    In his
mind’s
eye came an image of The Count from Sesame Street.  ‘Four spoons!  I see four spoons!’  The Count would laugh maniacally, "Ah Ah Ah Ah Ahhhh!" accompanied by thunder and lightning flashes.

‘Four spoons’ he whispered.  The obsession tugged at his brain like a fishhook, but finally he moved to the next step.

Table 24.  ‘You will
not
scatter silverware on the table, you shall
set
the silverware on the table.’  And set he did, deliberately and precisely; each piece carefully aligned with its mates.