Love Me Back (12 page)

The next time Gray and I were on the same shift was a few days later. He came up to me by the lockers and said Hey I’m sorry about the other night, that I didn’t—you know. He said it like it must have offended me. I was embarrassed for him, that he had been thinking about it. It’s fine, I said. No big deal.

There was the Cajun sous-chef I spent two or three nights with, who told me his fiancée had hung herself. He pointed to one of the rafters in his loft. Later we had an intern from the local culinary school—I think she was only eighteen. They started her on the dessert line with the Cajun sous-chef training her, and I watched him macking on her hard and I watched her buy it. She got pregnant and they fired the Cajun sous-chef and hired a new sous-chef who was part Inuit. His name was Reggie but everyone called him Eskimo. He even had Eskimo embroidered on his chef’s coat. One night I went to the Westin downtown with Eskimo. It was his suggestion and I’m not sure why he didn’t want to go back to his house, but I didn’t want to go back to my house either. He didn’t have money for the hotel room though so I paid for it. I took a long shower hoping he would fall asleep while I was in the bathroom but he didn’t. He was really heavy and graceless. When the culinary intern, who had continued to work at The Restaurant after the Cajun sous-chef was fired, had her baby
they hired a Salvadoran woman to do desserts. I watched Eskimo train her, putting his hands on hers to show her how to pipe the whipped cream onto the cheesecake. She had a daughter the same age as mine, and she always said How’s your niña? when she saw me. Eskimo got her pregnant—no lie. They didn’t fire him. Maybe they were afraid if they fired him it would just happen again with the next sous-chef. The Salvadoran woman had the baby and married Eskimo, and when she left The Restaurant to stay home with her baby they hired a man for the dessert line. Everyone told him to be careful not to get pregnant back there.

One rainy night in April Danny took me into the office—he had to kick another manager out with a look—and bent me over the desk. My head knocked the phone off its cradle. He said I think Lou’s waiting for you in The Private Room. I went into The Private Room and Lou bent me over. Lou went back to his date in the bar, and later she was so drunk she let him fuck her at the host stand. All the customers were gone, but Justin and I watched. Andy Vanderveer took a picture with his camera phone. That was one of my highest-grossing shifts, too—while I was getting fucked by the general manager and his best friend I had probably twenty-five covers running in the bar. I think I made around $700 that night. After Lou fucked his date I carried her out to the car. I’m not a big woman—I weigh about 115 pounds and I’m five-five. I was wearing a cocktail dress and heels, but I picked her up in my arms like a baby and put her in the front seat. Her name was Indica, a breed of marijuana plant.

When I’d puff it was so much easier to get down. I used to imagine a small tribe of aborigines living inside me, representative
en masse of my true identity, and I always knew they thought me reckless whenever I’d end up in some dark place with some feral soul. I liked to smoke them out, to puff and puff until I got them all up in the hills so I could do whatever I was doing and they’d be unaware. For example, the ex-pro who stood seven feet tall and came into the bar in May. His enormous cock was the size of a rolling pin and not nearly as domesticated. He measured me in the restaurant: when I delivered his salad he said Whyntcha sit here fo a minute and pulled me down on his lap. I guess he judged my ass adequate and we met later at the W, where I slammed the shots he bought me, to demonstrate that I was not afraid of whatever debasement awaited. He noted this and nodded to the bartender for another as he said Like a champ, huh? Baby have one more, it’ll help. In the corner of a dark parking lot we lit a blunt for more help. Eventually I felt that haze come between me and the natives, the little people inside, so I was separated from their judgments and they were protected from my actions for a while. He said What’s up. You okay? Ready? I’m’onna give it to you. Inside the truck he fucked me in the ass, and his cock took up so much room in me it seemed logistically impossible that he’d done it. Like if you heard a school bus drove into a pup tent.

That could have been the last. After that one I wanted to say to my indigenous selves
This is fine, here’s good, this is far enough. We’ll camp here for the night and make our ascent in the morning
. But I didn’t, and on June eighth at the bar next door Mickey, one of the senior servers, pimped me out. He told me to go outside with his friend James, who didn’t work at The Restaurant and whom I’d never seen before. We got into
my car and James told me to suck his dick. What reluctance I felt at the sight of his slack penis flopped over on his thigh. (By that time the natives didn’t linger. They just slipped out the back of me quick and let the fire door slam.) When it got hard he wanted to fuck, so I got in the passenger seat underneath him. There were servers and kitchen guys in the parking lot drinking after work and I’m sure they all saw the car rocking. I was thinking it might be over soon when the passenger door opened and Mickey stood there, watching his friend fuck me. He got right down in my face and poured a Modelo Especial all over my head and neck. He said That’s right you like it you’re such a slut. He’s fucking you good isn’t he. I said Shut the door, Mickey, and wiped beer out of my eyes while James continued to fuck as if he were oblivious. Mickey slapped my cheek and said Shut up shut the fuck up. I said Okay and stared at him impassively. James fucked. Mickey opened the back door of the car so he could reach me better because the seat was reclined. He poured beer on me and hit my face and called me a bitch and hit my face, and I thought about her sleeping in her dad’s living room half an hour away. I wondered which pajamas she was wearing and if he had found her missing favorite stuffed fox yet. After James got out of me and out of the car I quit using drugs and started parking in front of the restaurant so that when my shift was over I wouldn’t have to walk past anyone who might offer me a beer, a drag, or a bump, or tell me they wanted their duck sicked.

Yesterday Danny walked through the mother station—what we call the area in the back where we make tea and
coffee and prep bread baskets—singing
Fuckin shiiiiiiiiit, fuckin shiiiiiiiiiit
to the tune of the
Rocky
theme. He went into the employee bathroom, where he shaves every day before service while conferring with one or the other of his inner circle. When he came out he said, as he adjusted his tie, Fuckin suck my balls, bitches. I’m starvin.

He strides lankily through the main dining room around five p.m. every day, half-dressed in his suit trousers and a Yankees T-shirt. He sees everything. He can tell if you’re chewing gum from all the way across the cavernous dining room, which we keep so dark we have to give the guests flashlights to read the menu. He hates it when you don’t make sure there’s enough room to work around your tables—at the height of dinner service sometimes you have only six inches of space between chair backs, and the path from the kitchen line to the farthest tables becomes labyrinthine if not unnavigable. Danny will walk past your five-top and say Sister-love, would you please scoot this fucker a cunt hair to the right so we don’t dump mac ’n’ cheese all over the fat-ass in seat two?

Miguel Loera will be sending out the mac ’n’ cheese when dinner service starts, but right now he’s talking to one of the other servers about Chivas, the fútbol team favored and followed by most of our kitchen staff. Miguel runs the kitchen line for Chef. He is a magician, he never fucks up. He calls me Maestra, because I sometimes wear lentes that make me look bookish. I call him Miguelito or Maestro. He always leaves the second button on his chef’s coat unbuttoned, for luck. When I first see him in the afternoon as I
walk past the kitchen I’ll catch his eye and pat my heart, where that button rests on his coat, in a gesture of solidarity. Yesterday he asked me if I had a good time with my family for Easter. Did you find eggs? he asked. You kid look for the little huevos? I said, Yes, we looked for little huevos. Did you look for eggs? I asked. No, he said, I no look. Ah, I said, but did someone look for your little huevos? Yes, he said with a grin, someone find my little huevos and they eat them.

When he calls me to run food he always says Maestra, don’t hate me, you take one mash and one mush to twenty-three please. Or Maestra, ¿sabes que te amo, verdad? I do anything for you; just do this one poquito thing for me please. Sometimes he sneaks me a crab cocktail at the end of the night because he knows I love it, the tender jumbo lump crabmeat lightly dressed with lemon and parsley, a bit of cocktail sauce on the side.

Often the Mexicans ask me if I am enojada, or ¿Por qué estás triste, Mari? they wonder. ¿Que te molesta, Mariquita? It’s because I’m perpetually lost in thought and wear a sunken, anxious face. I say No, I’m not mad. I’m not sad either. Nothing’s bothering me. Miguel asks me Maestra, what are you thinking about? He doesn’t love you anymore? I say He never loved me, he just fucks me. Miguel tells me that last year the woman he loved was pregnant with twins, his first children. For reasons no sabemos she decided to have an abortion and she left him. He tells me he couldn’t work, he would cry while he was running the line every day, every night he would get so drunk. He kept trying to quit but Danny wouldn’t let him. He says to me And now, Maestra,
I’m fine. See? Look at me. I want to die then. But now—what can you do? Stop thinking about it, thinking is no good for you. I say Okay, Maestro, claro. No más thinking.

He’s right, it’s important to buck up every night and breathe deeply and be happy for the people so they’ll want to believe you when you call the $140 Kobe filet the best beef in the world and promise it will actually melt in their mouths. You have to stay bright to get them on a bottle of Caymus or Cakebread, you can’t be lurking in the back of your melancholy head. Sometimes I think this is why Danny says Suck my balls whenever I walk past him—it’s spoken with the utmost affection and the utmost defiance. When he says Suck it he’s saying It’s a circus, honey-love, so fuck those motherfuckers. And when my retort is Get it out I’m saying Here we are being hard and relentlessly dazzling in spite of whatever shit. We are saying to each other If you have an affliction, any remorse or anguish, eat it, drink it, snort it, fuck it, use it, suck it, kill it.

I work five shifts and I pay for your after-school care and your health insurance and I give your dad a third of the money I make. He brings you by the restaurant each Friday, because I have to come in to pick up my tips for the week and it’s closer to him than my apartment. Plus you like it, and I like showing you off. You’re just old enough to know we’ve been through something and young enough to not hold it against me. Your dad drives through the porte cochere around dusk, before many guests have arrived, and you get a kick out of how the valets open your door and call you ma’am. I wait for you in the lobby, enjoying the luxuries of sitting and street clothes. The maître d’ greets you with Good evening, miss, and a peppermint and you run to me.

One Friday Cal intercepts you, asking you where you’re going so fast, like you’re in trouble. When Cal is giving you all his mischievous attention like that you feel like you’re the one. To my mama, you say, laughing. No you stay with me, Cal says, stay with me until you tell me where you got those blue eyes. From God, you say. That’s right, Cal says, and then to me, You been takin this child to church? No sir, I say, it wasn’t me. Well Miss Mamalisa is it that time? Cal asks you.
Ana
-lisa, you laugh. That’s what I said, he says, is
it time, Mamalisa?
Ana
-lisa! you say, not laughing. That’s what I said! You got a hearing problem? He looks at me. Have you had her ears checked? I think it’s yours that are malfunctioning, I say to Cal, and I can tell you are happy I am on your side. What do you mean, says Cal, I’m just asking Mamalisa here if it’s Shirley Temple time or not! Mama, make him stop, you say to me, scrambling around Cal to come sit with me. I can’t make him do anything, I say, he does what he wants. I don’t like it when he calls me Mama, you say. She doesn’t like it when you call her Mama, I say to Cal. Okay ladies, Ana, I’m sorry, Marie, I apologize, shall we step into the bar? he says, offering us his arms. Ana, can I call your mama Mama? Is that okay with you? he asks you. Yes, you say, Mama’s Mama.