Waiter Rant (20 page)

“Homeless?”

“Yes.”

“Where does he sleep?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why doesn’t he have a home?”

“That’s a good question, young lady,” I reply. “And the answer is very complicated.”

“Does he ever ask you guys for food?” the mother asks me.

“On occasion.”

The little girl looks at her father. He looks at her. Something passes between them.

“Listen,” the father says, looking uncomfortable, “give Claude dinner on me.”

“That’s very nice of you, sir,” I say, mildly surprised.

The father gazes at his rack of lamb. “It’s the least I can do,” he mumbles.

“Do you know what he likes to eat?” the girl asks me.

“I know what Claude likes, miss,” I reply. “Don’t worry.”

I go to the back and order some food for Claude. When it’s ready, I wrap it up and take it out to him.

“Hey, Claude,” I say, “one of the customers bought you dinner.”

“Oh boy,” he says.

“Your favorite dish,” I say, holding out the bag.

“Mmmmmm.”

I watch as Claude peers into the bag. He looks very happy.

“I’m set for life,” he says, grinning.

I smile at the irony of his statement. “Enjoy, Claude.”

Claude starts to walk away. Then he stops and turns around. “Thank those people for me,” he says, staring at a spot on the sidewalk.

“I will, Claude.”

He walks away, holding the bag to his chest, and I go back inside.

“The gentleman says thank you for dinner,” I tell the father.

“No problem,” he says sheepishly.

“Enjoy your dinner, sir.”

I walk back to the hostess stand. People in this country walk past guys like Claude every day and think he’s a loser—just another guy who lost out on life’s lottery. I know many people look at me and think the same thing. I see the looks. I’m thirty-eight years old and waiting tables. I can do the math. Every day I work among the successfully sleek and carnivorous beautiful people. Sometimes I wonder what these people have that I don’t have. Are
they better than me? Are they smarter than me? More ruthless? Was I out to lunch when the happiness and success genes were passed out? I’ll admit it—sometimes I’m envious of rich guys with their expensive suits, artificially brightened smiles, and fit-bodied Robo-babe girlfriends. Sometimes I feel that, if life’s a game of survival of the fittest, then I lost.

As I pause near the hostess stand, the image of the woman who suffered the stroke comes into my mind. I remember how frail and vulnerable she looked. I remember how cold those selfish table-conscious customers were. They didn’t care if that woman lived or died. Maybe they viewed her being sick as a form of weakness. Jesus, next thing you know, dying will be considered a personal failure. I remember again what Sartre said about hell being other people.

I look out the window and see Claude sitting on a bench eating his dinner. He’s having a hot meal because something in a little girl’s eyes moved a father to feed a hungry stranger. That something was probably a mishmash of self-serving motivations and noble impulses. Maybe that dad felt guilty; maybe he was shielding his daughter from the coldness of the world; maybe he wanted to be nice.

I stand there and try to figure out what that something was. After a while I give up. I don’t need to know. I content myself with something I read on a bishop’s coat of arms long ago—“Love is ingenious.” No matter how convoluted the motivations, love’s impulses often triumph over our more selfish instincts. Maybe that’s the very thing that makes life fit for living. With a start, I realize another great story has dropped into my lap.

And Sartre? I chuckle to myself. He was only
half
right. Heaven can be other people, too.

F
luvio has finally made good on his promise to open a new restaurant. After months of dickering over the financing, he signed the lease and took possession of the keys for the new place a few weeks ago. Since he’s been spending all his time prepping the new restaurant I’ve been working crazy hours at The Bistro. Because it’s the busy season, idiot customers are breeding like cockroaches. The pressure of the extended hours coupled with trying to complete the book proposal is taking its psychic toll. It’s Tuesday night. I feel burned out and lonely. Tomorrow’s going to be a busy Fourth of July. I beg Fluvio to let me go early so I can get some time for myself. Fluvio hears the exhaustion in my voice and cuts me loose. Louis can play manager tonight.

I end up having a post-shift drink at Café American. It’s a cozy restaurant housed in a Civil War–era building three blocks up from The Bistro. The café’s bar is situated in what used to be the front room of an old government building. A set of large French doors opening onto an outdoor patio stand in for the front wall, while a scuffed mahogany bar running underneath a heavy glass mirror takes up the left side of the old anteroom. Nestled against the right wall are four high-topped wooden tables with padded leather bar stools. A cutout doorway with damask curtains sepa
rates the bar area from the dining room. The subdued light playing off the embossed tin ceilings gives the place a relaxed, lived-in feel.

There are cheaper places to drink, but there’s nowhere I’d feel more welcome. Some high-end establishments don’t like waiters from other restaurants drinking in their place. They’d prefer wealthier rear ends warming their bar stools. I’ve gotten the cold shoulder from many snooty bartenders in my time. Café American’s owner, Rick, however, actually goes out of his way to be nice to waitstaff. He usually sends out free homemade desserts or mini pizzas, which are gratefully consumed by inebriated servers. After a hard night of waiting on entitled people the last thing I want is to feel unwelcome. Coming into Café American is like slipping into a comfortable pair of jeans.

I stare at my drink. A shallow pool of vodka and olive juice is all that remains of my martini. I drain it, place the empty glass back on the counter, and begin looking for Arthur, the bartender. He’s busy flirting with a blond woman at the other end of the bar. That’s okay. I’ve got plenty of time. I settle back in my chair and enjoy the feeling of 80-proof alcohol working through my system. I run my eyes across the bottles standing sentry on top of the bar’s underlit counter. Gleaming like understated rubies and sapphires, they glow patiently, waiting to be called into action.

“Another?” Arthur says, interrupting my contemplation.

“Yes,” I reply, pushing my empty glass toward him. “Please.”

“Tough night?”

“Yeah,” I reply, sighing. “Lots of assholes.”

“Same here,” Arthur says.

“I had plenty of bad tippers,” I say. “But at least I got to leave early.”

“Is the rest of the gang coming out tonight?”

“I think Beth and Dawn are coming later.”

“Is Dawn still single?” Arthur asks.

“Dude,” I reply, “how old’s your daughter?”

“Fifteen.”

“Dawn’s twenty-one.”

Arthur grins. “I know. That doesn’t make me a bad person, does it?”

“It doesn’t make you a good one.”

“So’d you hear about the waiter at Café Foo Foo?” Arthur asks.

“What happened?”

“Heroin overdose,” Arthur says. “Out cold on the bathroom floor.”

“Did he die?”

“No,” Arthur says. “But I heard the owner took his sweet time calling 911.”

“Figures.”

“I heard the needle was still in his arm,” Arthur says. “A customer found him.”

“Waiter!” I twitter in a falsetto voice. “There’s a junkie in my soup!”

“That’s cold, man,” Arthur laughs.

“Aw, c’mon,” I reply. “You know this business. Plenty of substance abusers. I’ll bet the other waiters stole his tables before they even called the ambulance.”

“You’re probably right.”

“You know I am.”

“Hey,” Arthur says, “do you remember when that chef in England started screaming that all the chefs were doing coke?”

“Jamie Oliver,” I reply, nodding. “When I heard that, I was like, ‘No shit, Sherlock.’”

“Did he just fucking wake up and notice there were drugs in the kitchen?”

“Blimey!” I yelp. “I don’t believe it! There’s cocaine here, mate! Help! Call me a news conference!”

“I’ll bet his publicist put him up to it.”

“Nothing like stating the obvious in the name of self-promotion.”

“You’re so young,” Arthur says, “yet so cynical.”

“I used to be in marketing.”

“So any druggies work at your place now?” Arthur asks.

“No,” I reply. “The usual potheads and drinkers, but no hardcore stuff.”

“Remember Crackhead Pete?” Arthur asks. “He used to work for you.”

“Oh my God,” I grunt. “How could I forget?”

Pete was a neighborhood waiter legendary for his substance abuse. If you had it, he’d snort it, smoke it, or inject it. Pete, when he was sober, was an excellent waiter. But when he was on one of his benders, he’d forget things like taking a shower and doing laundry. His customers would complain that he smelled bad. Needless to say, he had a hard time keeping a job. He worked every restaurant in the neighborhood and earned the dubious distinction of being fired from every one of them. The neighborhood snarks started calling him Crackhead Pete. Soon, that’s what everyone called him—even the children. If people assigned me the appellation “Crackhead” anything, I’d leave town. I guess I should be happy with “sad man in the window.”

“He worked here one day,” Arthur says, waxing nostalgically.

“What happened?”

“You know how we give employees a free drink at the end of their shift?”

“Sure.”

“Pete showed up at ten in the morning on his first day and asked if he could have his shift drink early.”

“That sounds like Pete.”

“Rick fired him on the spot.”

“You’re lucky,” I say. “Fluvio put up with him for a year and a half.”

“That’s crazy.”

“Fluvio has a soft spot for drunks.”

Substance abuse has always been a problem in restaurants. A recent study conducted by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration states that 17.4 percent of all restaurant workers use illegal substances. And we’re not even talking about the drinkers here. The combined number of coke fiends,
potheads, drunks, and pill poppers has to be, conservatively, 25 percent of the workforce. I often wonder, Does the restaurant lifestyle turn people into addicts, or are addicts drawn to the restaurant lifestyle? Plenty of sober people work in the industry, but there’s a healthy percentage of slackers who love partying into the night and sleeping in until noon. They’re waiting for lives that never quite happen, reminding me of the alcoholic characters in Eugene O’Neill’s play
The Iceman Cometh
.

Customers also drag their substance-abuse issues into restaurants every day. I once had a customer, Drunky Dave, who ate at The Bistro every week. I was always his waiter. Dave would always order two cocktails, drink a bottle of expensive red wine, and wash down his dessert with an Irish coffee and
two
grappa chasers. Grappa’s disgusting stuff. I call it Italian lighter fluid. When someone uncorks a bottle of the stuff, I can smell it from across the street.

When it was time for Drunky Dave to go home, he could barely regulate his breathing, much less stand up straight. Once, when he was in a drunken stupor, he started throwing up. As he bolted for the door, vomit dripping from between his fingers while he attempted to keep his dinner from projectiling out his mouth, he clipped an old lady on her way to the bathroom. I caught the old lady before she broke a hip. The bus people cleaned off the table, and I called Dave a cab. When I was satisfied the contents of his stomach had been deposited onto the curb, I walked outside and presented him the check.

“But I’m not finished!” Dave protested.

“Yes, you are,” I replied. “Come back when you’re sober.”

“Fuck you!” Drunky Dave screamed. “I eat here all the time. I drop a lot of money here.”

“You’re drunk,” I said as the cab pulled up. “And the beauty of all this is that you’re not going to remember a thing when you wake up.”

“You’re right,” Dave acknowledged, in a rare burst of self-awareness.

“Good night, Dave,” I said, pushing his head down as he got
inside the cab. I took his check inside and rang everything up. Of course I wrote in a 30 percent tip for myself.

Drunky Dave never said a thing.

Guys like Dave are just the tip of the iceberg. I’ve seen rich yuppie chicks pass out from overdosing on Special K; I’ve seen people snort heroin while waiting to get inside the restaurant; and I’ve caught sixty-year-olds smoking pot in the bathroom. I’ve had customers beg for napkins as they bled from deviated septums caused by cocaine abuse. From my vantage point, standing above the customers, I see track marks peeking out from under French cuffs. I notice the broken capillaries and the rheumy eyes. I see women rummaging through their purses looking for benzodiazepine candies. I notice the slightly jaundiced skin and detoxification tremors of men going mad as they try to space out their drinks in polite company. I know all the signs from having worked in a drug rehab. Sometimes I feel like I never left.

In addition to taking your order and delivering food, servers are often forced to play liquor cop. In the state of New York it is against the law to serve alcohol to a visibly intoxicated person. If you come into my place already drunk, I’m not going to serve you. But what if you get drunk inside my place? What if you’re noticeably pregnant and drinking like a sailor? Do I fatten your check and my tip with high-priced booze or cut you off? Ah, the moral dilemma begins.

Many of my customers are drunks. They shouldn’t be drinking. If they were members of my family, I’d give them AA literature, not booze. But they’re not family—they’re customers. They have a right to get fucked up if they want to. If I cut them off, they’ll likely just go drink themselves stupid at home. If I see customers who’ve had too much to drink, I’ll give them time and coffee until they sober up. If they’re not sober, I ask how they’re getting home and offer to call a cab. I’m sure some of my customers have gotten behind the wheel drunk. There’s no way for me to know what they’re going to do when they leave my restaurant.

Sometimes they go to another bar to drink. Late at night, on
my way home from work, I’ve seen people I served a few hours earlier fighting and arguing in the street like stew bums fighting over the last drop of Four Roses.

“Did Crackhead Pete steal from you?” Arthur asks, breaking my train of thought.

“No,” I reply. “He never took as much as a nickel. But he was always asking to borrow money.”

“I think he owes everyone in town twenty bucks. He even hit me up once.”

“You’ll never see it again.”

“I’ll consider it charity.”

“Talking about waiters and substance abuse,” I continue, “what’s the percentage of waiters who’ve gotten a DWI?”

“Oh, man,” Arthur says, looking up at the ceiling like he’s figuring a large sum. “We’ve got at least two waiters here who fit that bill. I’d say thirty percent.”

“That sounds about right,” I reply. “Ever notice a lot of waiters don’t drive?”

“Their licenses have been revoked.”

“Exactamundo.”

A customer walks up to the bar and asks for a cosmopolitan. Arthur slips away to prepare the drink. Dawn and Beth, getting off shift from The Bistro, walk in the front door and grab the bar stools next to me.

“Finally,” I say, looking at my watch. “You guys took your sweet time.”

“My last customers were assholes,” Beth says.

If you haven’t guessed it by now, “asshole” is a cherished customer descriptive.

“What bad behaviors were on display this evening?” I ask.

“The lady gave her date a hand job under the table,” Dawn says. “Can you believe that shit?”

Dawn’s a petite twenty-one-year-old blonde with a cute body and green eyes. Arthur’s in lust with her.

“I believe it,” I reply.

“They took forever,” Beth groans.

“The hand job took forever?” I ask.

“It took them forty-five minutes to order,” Beth says, ignoring me. “The lady took forever to eat.”

“Hard to eat with one hand,” I say. Dawn giggles.

“I wish you were their waiter,” Beth says. “With that stare of yours, they’d’ve cut it out immediately.”

“Yeah,” Dawn says. “Thanks for abandoning us.”

“Hey,” I shoot back, “how often do I get to leave before one
A.M.?”

Arthur comes over, says hello, and gets the girls’ drink orders. They both order mojitos.

“So,” I ask after Arthur walks away, “did the couple retire to the bathroom and, uh, finish the job?”

“Yeah,” Beth says, “but they took an awfully long time.”

“Probably doing drugs, too,” I say. “It’s amazing how many people need to have their consciousness altered before they have sex.”

“Whatever,” Beth says, shrugging. “The night’s over.”

I sip my drink. Beth and Dawn chug down their mojitos and order another round. I think all servers drink their first postshift drink quickly. A waiter’s first drink is medicinal, his second is relaxing, but his third is anesthesia.

“So you got ’em?” Beth says to Dawn, her voice dropping to a whisper.

Dawn fumbles in her purse and pulls out a medicine bottle.

“What’s that?” I ask.

“Xanax,” Dawn says.

“You’re not gonna take that now, are you?” I say.

“What are you,” Dawn says, “my father?”

“Xanax and mojitos don’t mix.”

“I have a prescription.”

Beth and Dawn take their pills and wash them down with a rum and mint chaser. In a few minutes the drugs will kick in and they’ll forget their own names. I’ve seen it happen before.

I shake my head and look down at my martini. It’s still half
full. I take another sip. The best advice I ever got about drinking was from my godfather. “Drink till you’re mellow,” he used to say. “After that it’s all downhill.” My father, never a big drinker, was another example. He’d have one beer every night, and that was it. I can count on the fingers of one hand how many times I’ve seen my dad tipsy.