Earlier this week I wrote about meeting two girls in matching outfits at a concert in Ybor. The little black girl works at the HPR I've been training at, every morning, beginning at 9 a.m., memorizing menus, table numbers, tedious torture. But she's there suffering with me. I will call her BACK-UP SINGER RESTAURANT GIRL (BSRG), because she looks like a back-up singer for Prince.
For the past three mornings I've shaded my eyes from the dusty sunbeams coming in too strongly through the far away glass of the locked restaurant doors, and try to make BSRG laugh when the THE BULLY walks away to get a pen or something.
"Do you ever, when you're really out of it…and tired," I asked her almost timidly, not meeting her huge feminine eyes. Rubbing my own eyes to accent my fatigue. No irony or humor in my voice at all: I joke with sincerity, from the bottom of my soul, because joking is very important to me. "Do you ever just want to stab someone in the face with a pen in the morning."
"I think you're scaring me." She seemed to think it slightly funny.
"Well, that's the joke. It's the last thing on earth I'd do. I'd never hurt you."
Then the manager gets back to the table and we talk about appetizers again while good music (the morning prep cook's pick) pumps quietly from overhead speakers. "Let me show you the dessert tray," says THE BULLY, getting up from the table again to fetch the weird, plastic dessert samples. I look across at BSRG:
"Did you hear that song playing while he was talking about that shrimp thing?"
"What is it?"
I held back a shrimp joke. "It's Radiohead. Really beautiful, his voice is so beautiful. I like beauty. I was having a hard time listening to it: I love that song"
"Why don't you marry it?" She answered, laughing.
What a lame response. "Actually," putting my head down a little, "We were married for a short time, it didn't work out, which is why I have such a hard time listening to this song, it just brings it all back." She didn't laugh at all. Mine was twice as good as "why don't you marry it?". Yeah, real original.
THE BULLY sat back down and mentioned to BSRG that I was a writer, which is good, because I hate having to tell people myself, and I will, always. It's all I've got. When the manager got up from the booth again:
"Man, talking about food is making me hungry, but talking about serving it makes me loose my appetite again completely.(...her laughter like Godot)... I want to go to Sweet Tomatoes." I announced to her. (Sweet Tomatoes is a mostly vegetarian, buffet restaurant in Tampa).
"Is that your favorite restaurant?" She asks. At this point she has at least acknowledged that I'm being nice to her and has conceded to enjoy it. She seemed friendly. Not stand-offish. She continued. "I can't ever get any of my friends to go there with me." (translation in my hopeful mind: 'Are you the one to take me there? Take me there. Yes. Take - me - there.')
"Yeah, I want to invest money and open chains in other states."
"Can you do that?"
"Yeah, they have them in California, but they're called Soup Plantation there." My mouth opens to address the next obvious topic: my impending move to California. But if anyone at HPR knows I'm moving in four months, I will be fired. "I guess they just decided to re-name it Sweet Tomatoes for Florida because the allusion to plantation life wouldn't go over too well down here in the South."
She giggled. Getting warmer.
I continued, "But I was surprised Sweet Tomatoes hasn't taken over America like a cancer …(pregnant pause)…a benevolent cancer."
"Don't start busting out writer talk."
"You mean W.T." Split second comic timing.
"Huh?"
"W.T., writer talk, that's what we call it at the monthly meetings: W.T."
SHE LAUGHS. Acronym jokes rule. Then we are friends. Then she pays attention to me.
That night I stopped in HPR with MY DJ to have a drink. She was hostessing in sexy mall clothes. The restaurant was empty. She said a few friendly words to me as MY DJ and I continued on to the bar. We sat down and I noticed her staring out the front window of the restaurant.
After several minutes I left the bar to talk to her. She laughed and looked me up and down as we talked. The thought of actual mutual flirtation made me laugh an inordinate amount.
"Are you drunk?" She asked.
I blurted out clumsily, "No, I'm just different."
At that moment I thought, 'I should never say another word to her again, less I taint my perfectly cool response.' That is how I would like to be remembered. I wish I could, at any time, tap freely into the well that brought forth that response. Let me go on record and say: put on my tombstone,
'...then he said, "No, I'm just different"'.
So, maybe the race is on. At the end of this morning's at training, we walked to the front door together while waiting for THE BULLY to bring me an official HPR shirt, BSRG shook my hand, met my eyes, which are almost a foot higher than hers, and said, "Write a story about me."
She says 'write,' I say: "O.K. How long?" Immediately, without falter like I have my lines over-memorized.
She smiled at my enthusiasm. "About three pages."
"That's too long. I was thinking a page: a little quick one.
"Three pages."
"O.K.," not smiling, "When do you want it done by?"
"Friday, when we train again."
At the front door I shook her hand and left her behind as I walked out into the 10 a.m., 100 degree heat.
In the car I was already thinking of ideas. Just to be a freak. If I were to write a three page story for some girl I don't know, she'd be more apt to NOT-like me. Most women would think I was lonely and desperate. But I'm not desperate. I'm different. Three blocks away I realized I'd rushed out of the restaurant in so much googol eyed stupidity that I had left before THE BULLY brought out my shirt. So I had to drive back and go back into the restaurant. Uncool.
"I'll have it to you by Friday." I reaffirmed, pointing at her from across the restaurant with my rolled-up, new workshirt. She smiled.
I did however, promise myself I wouldn't put too much effort into it. The following story (ver batim, with qualifiers and closing stolen-Eggers-symbol gag): only I wrote out everyone's real name in her copy) has been printed out and placed in an envelope for this girl. It may be a big, stupid, wasteful undertaking, but least it'll be fun to dokument. Here i'tis: here is the story i wrote for her.
Let me qualify:
1) The story I'm telling is gross. I do not usually paint gross pictures, I try to write about
beauty and stuff. But since most good fiction stories spring from some real-life base, I've
placed your character in a situation the sort of happened during my short tenure at The Cactus Club. It was a gross situation, and not nearly as funny on the page as in real-life. Mostly it's just gross.
2) Since I do not know you, I feel uncomfortable writing dialog for your
character. I cannot telegraph what you would or wouldn't say in a given situation without fearing your reaction might be "I would never say that!". Thus, I have elected to symbolize all of your dialog with this: ""---''.
Here goes:
________________________________________________________________________
BSRG missed her clothes.
She loved wearing her favorite clothes to work when she was a hostess. Now she was saddled with the apron of a server, and every time she looked down at its stains she missed her short black skirts, her tight, ribbed shirts and even the stupid guys who'd come in and hit on her when she asked them their smoking preference.
"You're smoking.'' They'd answer. Or some such dumb shit.
And she would hate them for a brief, fun second. But now, in her unattractive polo shirt and damned apron, the unwanted advances had all but vanished and she kind of missed them, even though she made a lot more money now.
BSRG thought about all this as she stood staring out the little windows in the front of the restaurant. Through her own reflection in the glass, she could barely make out the outline of the Hyde Park yuppies walking the nighttime sidewalks outside. During her time as a hostess, she would stand and try to stare through her reflection for hours on slow nights like tonight.
"BSRG, do you smell something?'' BSRG's head spun around first to meet the voice, then her body turned to catch up. When her head and body were in line she raised her eyes in a quick arch like the trajectory of child's swingset on the upswing, but without the glee. It was THE BULLY, her manager. "Do you smell something?'' he repeated, holding BSRG's eyes.
"---'' said BSRG.
"Huh?'' said THE BULLY, ""I can't understand you.''
"---'' she repeated.
""I have no idea what you're saying.'' THE BULLY said snidely.
BSRG tilted her head a degree or two downward and looked up at THE BULLY through her top eyelashes. Her long, pretty neck curved back against the downward projection of her forehead: it was a combination of eyes and body language meant to put a motherfucker in his place. It usually worked. In her hostess days, the curve of her neck combined with her dark, sleek clothes, and the black hair that framed her head, made her look like a cobra about to hood up. No one at the restaurant had ever talked to her in the tone THE BULLY recently adopted when she switched over to the apron. She really missed her clothes.
"It smells like something died in the back and I was just wondering if you smelled it out here.'' THE BULLY continued in a whisper. ""I just don't want the guests to smell it.''
""---''. Said BSRG.
"I still can't understand you at all.'' THE BULLY repeated, confounded and irritated. She gave him the look again but he walked away. She felt powerless. THE BULLY yelled back to her over his shoulder, "If you're just standing around, you need to come back here and help us figure out where this smell is coming from.''
She let him disappear through the swinging kitchen doors before following him. Inside the back area the rest of the six-person staff stood in a circle staring toward the ceiling, smiling, mumbling jokes. Their jovial demeanors seemed in direct contrast to the powerful, horrible odor that made BSRG plug her nose.
"BSRG,'' said a smiley blonde waitress girl who was so boring and normal that her name didn't matter, "these guys said that since you're the new server, you have to go up and get the dead thing.''
"---?'' BSRG asked.
The crew stopped mumbling and, in synch, turned their heads quizzically together toward BSRG like a mass of confused pelicans.
"What?'' asked the boring blonde girl, wrinkling her nose, crows feet coming out around her eyes showing what she might look like if she continued waiting tables for another 3 years.
"She's been doing that since Michael started writing this story,'' said THE BULLY. ""It's like she's talking but nothing's coming out...just little symbolic dashes.''
"---!!!'' flared BSRG. They never patronized her like this when she wore her good
clothes.
"See, she did it again!'' THE BULLY said, taking time to meet each server's gaze individually. Everyone, except BSRG, laughed. The laughter died, THE BULLY continued, "So, one of you needs to go up there and get that thing out of the vent.''
One of the cooks came back into the room, ""What's going on?'' The cook said,
Immediately plugging his nose in answer to his own question.
"There's a dead rat or squirrel or something in the A/C vent,'' THE BULLY said, pointing up. The animal was hidden but a little tuft of hair poked out from one of the slats in the vent, giving away it's location. THE BULLY continued. "And someone else better get it because I have my good clothes on.''
Hearing BSRG say that would have made her hood go up if she really were a cobra.
"Actually,'' continued THE BULLY, smirking at BSRG, "You're not the newest server, Michael is.'' He turned to Michael. ""If you go up and get it you can go home...I'll cut you...no sidework...how
about that?''
The other servers didn't know what to make of Michael. And what they didn't understand, they didn't like. Michael knew that if he agreed to go up and get the dead animal out of the vent, that would be it, he would be permanently ostracized. None of the girls at work would ever let him touch them after touching the dead thing, no matter how many washes came between now and whenever. And the guys would most likely give him an intolerable, though uncreative, nickname.
But since Michael longed for nothing more than a life without bosses or work, he spun round, grabbed a stool, positioned it underneath the air conditioning vent and climbed up.
"---,'' said BSRG, handing Michael up a plastic glove she'd found on the rack behind her. Michael'd been so excited at the opportunity to go home early that he was willing to grab the dead smelly thing bare handed.
He looked at the flaccid surgical glove, pinched between her thumb and forefinger. She had long, soft looking fingers. He followed them up her arm to BSRG's big eyes. She looked like one of Prince's backup singers. He regretted not asking her out sooner because there was no way she'd go out with him once he was known around the restaurant as "dead rat guy' or whatever other tag he would henceforth be known by.
"Thanks BSRG.'' Michael said, taking the glove.
"---.'' BSRG replied.
"What?'' Michael asked, not understanding her.
She rolled her big eyes, shook her oval head and didn't utter another word. Or a dash.
Michael popped open the air vent and a waft of stink caused him to wobble on his stool. Five inches from his face was the back of a rat, looking as if it died while sleeping on it's side. When Michael plugged his nose with his gloved fingers, the boring blonde girl yelled out, "Ooooooooooh gross, you're touching your face!''
"I didn't even touch the rat yet, dumbass,'' said Michael, still disoriented by the stink. "It's not gross to touch my face with a clean surgical glove. It's actually a lot cleaner. Don't be so blonde."
"That's fucking racist, man." The blonde girl retorted. Dead serious.
Michael paused a second, waiting for someone to laugh, but no one did.
Slowly, Michael reached toward the rat as if it would run away. The smell was so strong Michael couldn't believe there was only one rat. He hoped there wasn't another dead rat on the other side of this one, in its arms, in some smelly death embrace. He wanted to leave work pretty badly, but he couldn't bare the sight of dead rats spooning. No way.
The stretch of his fingers toward the rat was so slow that his arm ached before he even touched it. When he did finally barely touch it, it dripped to the floor in a liquid. All seven people in the room squealed with varying degrees of disgust and morbid glee.
Except BSRG. BSRG concentrated on her reflection in a shiny stove pipe on the other side of the rat puddle that grew with every drip from the ceiling.
In the pipe she saw the reflection of her apron and the world froze up for a second like a painting: Michael with his gloved hand frozen in retreat from the liquefied rat in the vent; the boring blonde girl silent and frozen in a strange shade of red, covering her mouth in disgust; THE BULLY taxidermied in a maniacal laugh, looking like a bad guy wrestler who'd done something deliciously evil.
Before the world came back into motion, BSRG, in a moment of spiritual enlightenment, as if improvising a short but brilliantly concise eulogy to a fallen, irreplaceable friend, summed up the scene, her place within the work-a-day world, and her path for the future:
"---''. She said.
BSRG missed her clothes.
___________________________________________________________________
Symbol guide:
THE RAT: Work. Rotten stinking work.
THE BLONDE GIRL: The anonymous, boring worker bee person we all do not want to become.
REFLECTIONS: Who we are in relation to the worthless jobs that are forced upon us. Staring through one's own reflection symbolizes the danger of not being able to see oneself through the things we are forced to do in life.
CLOTHES: Who we choose to be as opposed to who we are expected to be.