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We take the order, DeMarcus on one side of the table and I on the other. We have an unspoken rivalry about who can get from position one to position fifteen the fastest. The pros get the order taking down to a call-and-response that reads each guest’s mind and draws out his selections for three courses with all pertinent temperatures and modifications in forty-five seconds or less, without letting him feel the slightest bit rushed. You expand your intake words, like Certainly and Absolutely and That won’t be a problem, sir, you let them hang rich and pillowy in a smile and the guest thinks only of how accommodating and efficient you are, he doesn’t hear the ticking of the giant railroad clock in your head that is Chef, waiting on the line for this order because a big party will affect the cook times for everything in the house. I’m one position behind DeMarcus, since one of my guys takes forever to acknowledge me, even though I’m standing there next to him saying Sir? Sir? Have you had a chance to decide? At some point you have to give up and wait for the friends he’s talking to to advocate for you, give him a sign with their eyes that he’s being rude to you. [...]
That was the summer Cal would come over to my apartment after he got off from the bank, before we had to be in at The Restaurant. Those were warm afternoons, my apartment toasting the Texas sun through big old perfect windows. I moved into that place when I saw the money I was making at The Restaurant. I bought that car too. You can make good money—high fives if you really push, low sixes if you’re Cal—but you never lose the feeling that it’s fragile, your connection to the money. That place I lived in after I first got that connection, it was small and expensive but it was clean and bright and everything was nice. The carpet was thick and new and Cal and I would scuffle on it every afternoon. His kisses. His face—so soft—Your face! I’d say—I take care of myself, Mami, it’s what you got to do he’d murmur—his lips hot, fresh.
Back in the room I’m clearing the hors d’oeuvres and getting everybody cleaned up and ready for the salad course when the boss stands and starts telling jokes. The boss is the one DeMarcus spoke to at the beginning about the wine, the one who ordered the vegetables—he’ll be paying the tab and apparently the reason for this fête is some deal he signed with Lushie. I’d lent them my pen earlier when they set the contract down in front of him and he started patting his pockets. So two doctors are banging this nurse, he says. She gets pregnant but she doesn’t tell them till she’s seven months gone, so they send her to Florida to have the baby. They’re gonna figure out how to raise it and do right, and of course she’ll come back to work at a much higher salary than before because they both have wives and kids. So she delivers and one doc calls the other and says he has bad news. What’s that, says the other doc. Well, she had twins, says the first doc, and mine died!
Grinning, he lets the laughter die down and then he goes, Okay, how bout this one. So one doctor says to the other, Are you fucking the nurse? The other doctor says No, why? And the first doctor says, Good! You fire her!
Now he rides the laughter, shouting How do you know your wife is dead? Sex is the same but the dishes start to pile up!
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 his 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 beaming but he’s been here before, he keeps his words standing up as he asks, Sunshine, can we smoke our cigars in here?
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. 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 bow 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.
I eat a piece of vegetarian sausage while I stand in the kitchen drinking my perfect coffee and reading over the hand-sells. I look lean and I wear a digital sport watch on my left wrist so sometimes my guests will ask me if I run. I don’t say No I’m just snorting a lot of coke right now. I say that I do run and they say I bet you don’t eat much meat do you and I say No actually I’m vegetarian and they laugh at this because I have just shown them a tray of ten pounds of raw beef carved into the different cuts of steak we offer. I hype it, the tiny mystique of my being vegetarian and working there. I say Meat is my profession, which often leads someone at the table to say Well you’re certainly a professional. I don’t say I know, because I’ve made a hundred people before you say that same thing in this same situation, I’ve made you remember your charming professional vegetarian server when it’s time for you to put a number on the tip line, and I don’t say, I’m not vegetarian because of the animals; I’m vegetarian because I hate the way meat feels in my mouth.
I go swimming every day, I have a muscular back and shoulders, I have short hair that's brown with a bit of gray at the front, I have part of a Caravaggio tattooed on my left arm and delicate lettering on my stomach that says Son of a Bitch, I'm tall and slim, I have small breasts, I have a ring in my right ear, I wear jeans, canvas pants, black or white T-shirts, men's shirts in summer, an old leather jacket and Converse or Church's, I don't wear a bra, I sleep in men's gray Oxford boxers, I don't wear makeup, I brush my teeth three times a day, I don't use deodorant, I don't sweat a lot but sometimes I like to, the cologne I wear is called Habit Rouge, sometimes I feel like switching to something else but the girls like it, so I stick with it, I also smell of chlorine, what with all the swimming, I smoke Marlboro lights in the evening, I don't drink a lot, I don't take drugs, I live in Paris in a studio near Denfert Rochereau, I don't have any furniture apart from a double mattress I got from a discount store on rue Saint Maur and a plank of wood with trestles, 17.90 euro the set from Bricorama on Avenue Flandre, I don't like stuff, I don't have any pans, cutlery, or plates apart from a few disposable ones, so I don't have to do any washing up, I don't have any money because I don't give a shit, I'd rather write than work, I don't feel 47, I guess I'll wake up one day and suddenly be old, unless I die before then, like my mother did, apart from the fact that I don't see my son anymore, everything's going well, he's eight, my son, then he'll be nine, then ten, then eleven, his name is Paul, he's great.
[...] So I spit it out, I say, I've started seeing girls. Just in case there was any doubt in his mind, with the new short hair, the new tattoos, the look in general. It's basically the same as before, obviously just a bit more distinct. It's not as if he never had his doubts. We had a little chat about it, a good ten years ago. I said, Nope, no idea what you're talking about. I mean I'm dating girls, I say to him now. Fucking girls would be more accurate. He says, All I want is for you to be happy. This sounds like a lie but it suits me fine, I don't reply. He's barely touched his croque monsieur, he lights a cigarette, calls the waiter over, orders more champagne. That's what he's drinking these days, he says it agrees with him, that it makes him feel less shitty in the morning. The check comes, he pays, we leave. Instead of going his own way on Boulevard Saint-Germain, he walks me towards the Seine. When we get to my door, he goes to follow me upstairs, as if we hadn't been separated for three years, as if I hadn't just told him what I just told him. I say no, he says, Have it your way.
lmao
The next day he messages me, Yesterday was nice what are you doing tonight? I thought we'd settled things but maybe he's thought about it and wants to talk some more. We've hardly seen each other in three years, I liked it just fine that way. But I agree to meet him, I tell myself I probably owe him that much. He comes to pick me up outside my house in a taxi, it looks like he's made an effort, he's made reservations at a restaurant in another district, a fairly chic place in the courtyard of an hôtel particulier. He talks to the waiters like a regular, he orders a good wine like a connoisseur, he acts like some guy trying to impress his girlfriend. Maybe this is what he does now with girls, maybe he wants to show me, try out his techniques. He wanted to meet but he's not saying anything, he's not asking any questions, not a word about yesterday, nothing about him or me, we talk about holidays, foreign countries, books we've read, as though we're politely humoring each other on a date that's not going anywhere. He wants us to walk home together, I make sure there's enough space between our bodies, not too close, not too far, as if everything were normal. The Marais, the Seine, Notre-Dame, we're like a Chinese couple on honeymoon. Once again he walks me right to my door, once again he wants to come up with me, to kiss me, once again he seems surprised when I say no.
lmao
First there was Socrates, then Jesus, then Oscar Wilde, and now me. We're a select few. And while I'm at it, there was also Spinoza: “Cursed be he by day and cursed be he by night; cursed be he when he lies down and cursed be he when he rises up; The Lord will not spare him.” You just don't get that kind of writing from the Judicial Court of Paris these days. No great life is complete without a trial, you have to ruffle a few feathers, you can't just be a good little child all your life.