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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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She started last week, the new dishwasher, older, 40, but blonde, pretty, perfectly fit body and surgically enlarged breasts. It's a question they ask new employees, even dishwashers, and word leaks out to the rest of the staff...
"She has fake-a boobs, look at this, feel them...."
She's pleasant enough, friendly, a friend got her a job here while she waits until something comes up in her field. She's a beautician.
Now you know she's not going to last, no one in the kitchen ever does, and the added pressures of being harangued by a bunch of groping males will probably hurry her on her path to getting her career back on track.
But jobs are scarce and she keeps coming into work, she's broke and needs the money. After work, G., the other waiter, single, shorter than her, takes her for drinks. She can't pay, she's too broke, but he doesn't mind.
Now she's way out of his league. Pleasant, very attractive, but dumber than a sack of hammers, and even as such she's still out of his league, but he's trying.
We tease him mercilessly, and at first he enjoys it, but as they continue to go out, as he continues to pay and as she continually discovers new hidden reserves of untapped virtue he starts to get cranky.
The old ladies in the kitchen, they've noticed his new infatuation and mimic him following her around, ply him with questions, he gets defensive and irate. He's not getting anywhere, she's just a friend, and this friendship thing is winding him up.
Tonight she started as a hostess. And it's a curious night indeed, as the old (last weeks) girlfriend will be working with them as well, and while she's said a hundred times she doesn't want date G., to go out with G., somehow or another she's come to rely on his asking. And the new girl, the new dishwasher, she's delighted at the chance to go home and dress in a revealing outfit, high heels, get out of the dishpit, who wouldn't be?
The old hostess is assigned to the floor with Franco.
****
G's very helpful. And his ex professes her happiness for him, and I suggest they all go on a double date, her with her imaginary facebook boyfriend and G with his new hopeful, but no one finds me very funny.
****
I sing to G's ex to console her: "Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone..."
****
The old hostess hates her. Absolutely, with a passion, and doesn't give her the time of day. Previously she had been the sole object of sexual harassment, and while she complained about it incessantly the threat of losing her position is proving too much for her.
****
Sometime during the night the tip basket disappears. The hostess keeps it up by the coat check, it's her little bonus, in addition to what the waiters give her, and it's gone missing. G blames the old hostess, everyone else says the new hostess ditched it in hopes we'd up her tip out extra. She needs the money, after all. I've seen nothing, have no thoughts or opinions on the matter. G's mad as hell.
****
At the end of the night there's the cash out. It's only G, Franco, G's ex and me, the rest have gone home. There are words about the new hostess, they quickly escalate to shouting, G's ex gets in on the action, G suspects old hostess of stealing tip basket, G's ex is appalled at G's blind loyalty to a "New fucking piece of ass" and pretty soon everyone's screaming at the top of their lungs. G's ex isn't so happy either. There's no peace made, only a momentary truce while the money is thrown and divided, the new hostess gets half a cut, G's ex is angry she even got that much, "She did fucking nothing and she's getting how much!!" and the screaming match begins again, G defending her, Franco and his sister on the attack.
****
It's not a happy restaurant.
She's the fly in the ointment. It's not her fault that she's pretty, it probably is that she's stupid, and it's certainly her fault that she's been so misleading G. And no matter how you slice it there will be no happy endings.
But, then, here there never are.
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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The neighbors downstairs have moved out.
They only lived here a couple of months, a Somali couple, I met them once when the power repeatedly went out and back on, I could hear the clicking of the fuse back and forth, went downstairs to see what was up, he was in a rage, apparently the fuse would switch off whenever he tried to cook food and work on the computer.
He was going to move out, couldn't stand living in the basement, couldn't live like that, unable to cook and work on the computer at the same time, he'd be gone at the end of the month...
I find that Middle Eastern people are frequently like that, taking offense at trifles and yet somehow ignoring really big things; it was the details that annoy them, imagined slights or insults in the wiring of the house.
I wasn't home enough to notice them, not much, sometimes you'd hear their music, curious and haunting, had they stayed I might have inquired what they were listening to. And everyday when I'd return from work there would be the smell of their cooking, delicious, and while I'd been fed at work it would make me hungry and want to eat again...the sound of children (heard but never seen), parties of taxi drivers gathering in the basement.
Now the flat is empty again, and I wonder who the next tenant will be. Were there any chance of the landlords listening I'd have some suggestions.
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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He stops me as I walk past his stall.
"You have a practiced eye" he says. "A man of discriminating taste....
I like him. I stop and give his table a look over - nothing really, he's by far and away the most interesting attraction, older, handsome in a decrepit, faded academic sort of way, wan smile, missing tooth, slight English accent with the charm you imagine English people to possess but so very few of them do.
"A connoisseur..." he continues, then lifts an item off of his table and passes it to me "Take a look at this snow globe.".
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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She's tall, my age, brunette, quite good looking. He's short, very nondescript, a bit stout.
I don't know if they're a couple or it's a business meeting. We get all sorts of odd, mismatched couples in the restaurant so it wouldn't surprise me.
She want's a glass of Amarone. We don't have Amarone by the glass but I can open a bottle for her if she'd like, "it'd probably come to" (and here some mental math, Amarone's around $85.00 a bottle, so per glass would be around...) "$20 - $25 per glass" I tell her.
"That's too much. I'll have the Ripassa."
He's not drinking.
I bring her a few glasses. She's definitely the alpha female, always talking, he's quiet, meek almost, listening. And I overhear:
"He shouldna fuckin made that trade. What does he fucking know?" and the meek man mildly contesting "But he's in oil and gas...." and more such from her mouth, turning quickly to a brisk politeness as she orders her next drink...
It would make Tony the Gansta proud.
She's a stockbroker.
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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It's a crazy night at the restaurant. By the book, looking at it yesterday, we shouldn't have been so busy. But by tonight we had filled up with some interesting characters...
Tonight, one, a middle aged man, large, overweight, loud Hawaiian print shirt, bad comb-over with 2 ladies. He beckons me over, he doesn't want anything, just wants to introduce himself. I must be Rupert Everett he says.
Probably it's the way I've done (or not) my hair, I play along and say yes, yes I am, I'm just researching my next role as a waiter in my next film about a waiter in a busy Italian restaurant...and I ask him not to blow my cover.
While not necessarily a fan I appreciate the gesture, it's a damned sight nicer that noting I look like Lyle Lovett.
He's Harry the Psychologist. I notice that he's brought his own candle and a vase full of flowers.
He tells me that he's quite intuitive, the roses are for strangers that he meets, he can tell when they need a flower. He'd been for dinner once recently and he saw an older Chinese lady, about 85 years old, with her son and daughter, and by looking at her he could just tell and so he went and placed one of his flowers in her hands and said "SOMETHING IN CHINESE AND I DON'T SPEAK CHINESE" which meant, in perfect Mandarin, "this is for the beauty within your soul" and she was moved to tears and said to him "SOMETHING ELSE IN CHINESE" which meant "Please take me home" and he knew he had chosen the right person because her children were abusive towards her.
He likes to hand them out to people in need.
Harry's a psychologist.
He's intuited that I'm an introvert with many gifts, that I have been blessed by God and if I have a moment I should stop at their table and discuss them with him.
Sadly we're pretty busy and I don't have a moment. But Harry, he's a sport, he understands.
Later, when I do have a moment I stop by and he tells me about how at 22 years of age he had his masters of psychology and some time to kill and so he went to Montreal, worked his way on a tramp steamer over to Iceland, worked a few months as a fisherman, then another boat to France where he picked grapes and made Champagne, then on to Turkey where he dug up 10th Century Sufi ruins, then another boat to South America where he dug up Mayan Ruins, from there on various Banana boats through the Caribbean, and eventually back to North America...
Harry's lived an exciting life. I'd like to compete, but how can you compete with this? But, Harry reassures me, I have many gifts and I've been blessed by God with an uncanny resemblance to Rupert Everett and a voice to match and perhaps I sing? Harry plays the Harmonica and double Bass. I don't sing, or I do, but in a kind of monotone that makes Leonard Cohen seem like Sarah Brightman...
His guests the whole time haven't said a thing, they only smile apologetically.
Harry's a psychologist.