Tonight they’ve put me on thirty men in The Private Room. The men are all white, fat, and over fifty. Sometimes parties like this will show up all at once on a hotel bus or in a drove of limos, if they’re in town for a convention and everything is organized. But these guys trickle in, and by the time the last few arrive some of them have already been drinking for two hours. DeMarcus, my partner on the party, got everything started—introduced us, went over the set menu, helped them pick out their wine.

I wonder if it’s a good thing that DeMarcus will be the face and I’ll be backwaiting. You get to know the look of new money and the look of old; you can call on sight, with near-perfect accuracy, whether a person is a martini, a red wine, a Stella, a Just water no ice extra lemon and a straw did I say no ice?; you know that certain European accents doom your take. You have an entire catalogue of these things in your head but still there will come that table, they’re wearing jeans and when you ask them what they want to drink they say two Diet Cokes and an iced tea and you think you know what you’re in for—an appetizer as an entrée, split three ways, ten percent on a tab that’s missing a couple digits. They’re making out at the table, he looks twice her age, you can’t figure out why the other one is with them. Low-class, you think, guess it’s not my night. Then you walk up with the second basket of bread they asked for and they say to bring out a bottle of Dom Rosé. After that they drink the 2000 Harlan Estate and order the big lobster tail. You start moving like you’ve got somewhere to be and when the bartender tries to play around with you instead of handing over the decanter you snap at him because if they come through you stand to make $500 off a three-top.