Love Me Back

by Merritt Tierce

  I leave the room to ring up my half of the table and while I’m at the POS my friend Asami comes up behind me. I’ve got some fucking Martians tonight, she says. I know, I say, they’re everywhere, and I debrief her about The Private Room. She’s telling me these stupid Botoxies at her table are doing the Sandra Oh thing to her again. It always goes down the same way. The ladies see her and she’s taking their cocktail order and one of them says to another, Oh you know who she reminds me of? and then turns to Asami and says You know who you look just like? and Asami usually gives them this big gorgeous grin and says I bet I know exactly what you’re thinking, or No! I have no idea, who’s that? but she’s telling me that tonight instead she kind of lost it and she said to them, I don’t look anything like Sandra Oh, she’s Korean! But I don’t look anything like her anyway!

  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!

  I catch DeMarcus’s eye across the table and I can see the laugh he’s stifling pulling at the corners of his mouth. He gives me a look like What are you gonna do? It’s funny, and I shake my head like he’s a traitor. I wonder, if he and EEOC weren’t here, would the boss be telling nigger jokes too. The boss continues with the jokes and the room is getting stuffy. I tell DeMarcus I’m going out to get Danny to check the thermostat. It’s hot as fucking hell in here, I say. The har-har-haring is so loud I don’t even have to whisper.

  When I come back I’m moving around the table, setting out steak knives and crumbing, and when I get to the boss he puts his hand on my elbow and says affably, We’re not offending you with any of this, are we? Ha! I say to the boss. You think I haven’t heard this before? I give him a matronly smile with this but he’s already patting my elbow and turning away.

  The air conditioner must have gone out again. It’s a chronic problem in this room, and I notice that jackets are off and collars unbuttoned. EEOC is the only one who doesn’t seem to notice the heat, or else he’s deliberately resistant to shedding any layers around these guys. The building is really old, it was built in the forties, and though the owner is a millionaire he’s notoriously cheap. It might cost $15,000 to replace the A/C but he won’t do it. He made his money in the seventies by investing in the development of the first heart stent. He keeps demand up, feeding all these people meat slathered in butter.

  I corner Danny in the bar. Danny, you got to do something about the A/C, I plead, I really don’t need to see these guys take off any more clothing. Danny says All right all right sista I’m on it and I know that means I don’t give a fuck if they get heatstroke and die in there. At least I’ve made the gesture of looking out for them, at least if one of them bitches to him on the way out about how hot it was it won’t be news to Danny and I’m covered. He’ll be ready to say I know brother I know, we had our man working on it all night, I can’t fucking believe it went out while you got all your guys here, you of all people, I know it was a big night for you, how was everything else? But when I get back in the room I think maybe the heat has sobered them up some because in the din I hear the boss say But I can’t tell this one in mixed company. They’ve killed our last four cases of the ’99 vintage and we’ve had to move on to the 2000, so when he says this I’m facing into the corner of the room, opening another bottle. I roll my eyes, looking down at the landscape on the Joseph Phelps label, but I don’t leave and I hear him mutter something about he’ll tell it later so I go ahead and pour around the table and take a coffee order. I say Would you care for cognac or espresso with dessert? I never say cappuccino or latte even though we can do it.

  I learned that from Nic Martinez, in this room. I was assigned to be his bitch and he resented having to split the take with me because it was a preset and he could have done it on his own. I didn’t fuck up anything on the first three courses but at the end he heard me say coffee cappuccino and he pinched the back of my elbow hard. In the corner of the room he said Do you want him to like you? nodding at our busser. I didn’t know what to say so I said What do you mean? It’s not a trick question, he said. You put him in the mother foaming milk for twenty minutes he’s gonna hate you, and I am too. And don’t say coffee it’s free on a preset. I thought he was off me forever because of that but later the same week I walked past the Private and he asked me if I partied. I didn’t know what he meant then either but I said yes and that was the beginning of something. He was resetting the table with his partner just like he’d done with me. I went home with him that night and he made me some microwaved apple-cinnamon oatmeal and told me he loved my big juicy ass. In his bed when he said Are you gonna get it I lied and said yes and when he asked me if I got it I lied again.

  The Private Room is where Lou Ambrogetti bent me over in the dark, over there where the wine bucket is now. The room where the expo Estéban kissed me one night, walked up to me with all kinds of purpose and kissed me. I kissed him back for no reason.

  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?

  No sir, I say, I’m sorry, there’s no smoking in the building, it’s a city ordinance. I tug away from his arm and notice that one of the others seems to be asking DeMarcus the same question at the other end of the table, he’s gesturing with his cigar and when DeMarcus shakes his head he looks just as disappointed as the one who called me Sunshine. That guy sticks his cigar in his mouth anyway and starts chewing on it.

  Everything is winding down and DeMarcus says he’s going to go put the check together, which can take a while on these parties. I say I’ll stay in the room to watch over them till he gets back but I feel like I need to get out for a minute and everybody’s topped off except Lushie. I can’t keep up with him and I’m not worrying about it any longer, so I step into the hall and lean against the wall in the dark space between two stacks of chairs.

  Benito, one of the bussers, comes around the corner into the hall and pulls a stack of the chairs away from the wall. When he sees me he jumps a little and says ¡Maestra! ¡Me has asustado!

  Sorry, Papi, I say. Benito is probably close to sixty but quite spry and often he’ll help me out on my tables even when he hasn’t been assigned to my station. I’ll be holding a stack of cleared plates away from my body, leaning down over a table to answer someone’s question, and suddenly I’ll feel the weight of the plates being
lifted from me. By the time I can turn to look he’ll already be halfway to the dishroom. One of his sons, also named Benito though we call him Sanchez, is the barback; another, Orlando called Magic, works the salad line; and his youngest, whose given name I don’t know because everyone calls him Niño, is also a busser. The sons all have their father’s work ethic and Danny will joke with Benito that he needs to bring his other sons over too. Papi, you got any more where these came from? he’ll say. Benito does, actually, and he’ll say Sí, jefe, sí.

  Good peoples? he asks me, with a nod toward the wall behind me, referring to my party on the other side of it. This question is strictly economic—it never means Do you like them? It means only Are they spending money?

  Sí, Papi, I say, muchísimo vino.

  Es bueno, es bueno, he clucks as he disappears around the corner with the chairs.

  When I open the door this time I step into a thick quiet, the sleepy quiet of the overstuffed and oversoused. If they were younger they’d be boisterous and obnoxious, they’d be cranking up at this point, but those days are behind them and many of them seem calmed by the cigars they’re holding in their teeth. The boss is standing up at the end of the table opposite me, and at my entrance he pauses in the middle of another joke. He looks at me and says Hi. Everyone else turns to look at me. I’m surprised at this late acknowledgment and I say hi back and stand still. In this job you learn to give them what they want and not take anything personally but I’ve got Asami’s frisky defiant burr up in my skin and I say You’re gonna stop now? This is the one I want to hear!

  No one laughs at my joke. I’m like Lushie earlier, talking about aortal aneurisms. I turn around to get the hell out and I nearly knock down DeMarcus with the door. Whoa, he says, what got into you?

  I am sitting on an upturned glass rack, vigorously working the spots off spoons still hot from the washer, when DeMarcus comes to tell me they’re leaving. Cal thinks it’s bad form to let your guests leave without telling them good night and if he caught me sitting here doing my sidework instead of seeing them off he’d call me out. Just gonna let your people walk out like that, huh? How much money did that spoon pay you tonight? Make sure you give that spoon your card: Hey, Spoon, ask for me next time you bring in Knife and Fork; I’ll take great care of you. DeMarcus, remind me not to have dinner at Marie’s house, she one of those Don’t let the door hit you on the way out hosts. Classy.

  I leave the silverware half-finished and walk with DeMarcus back to The Private Room. We stand in the doorway while the men file out, shaking their hands like two pastors after a church service. Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you so much, sir. Thanks for coming in tonight. Appreciate your business. Congratulations, hope you enjoyed everything. How’d we do tonight? Everybody happy?

  After we get out DeMarcus and I hang in the employee parking lot, waiting for Asami, who promised to share some of her stash with us. We have half a bottle of the party’s cab and a full bottle of the chardonnay they left in the ice bucket untouched, and we drink both of them, pouring tall into Styrofoam cups, one white and one red, sharing. I make sure to leave a glass in the chard bottle in case Asami wants some. Other servers and bussers shoot out the back door like pinballs, letting the door crash against the side of the building and stripping off pieces of their uniform as they head toward their cars, calling Good night and other more exultant things like Home fucking free! to us as they leave.

  Niño must have been the first busser out, because he’s driving back into the parking lot from a beer run—whichever of the cooks or bussers gets out first takes his turn to buy a case of Modelo Especial or Bud Light before the stores stop selling at midnight. He lets down the tailgate of his pickup and offers DeMarcus and me a beer. There’s something about the way Niño’s navy work shirt is always starched stiff, and something about the way his hair is always trim and gelled, and something about the way he makes eye contact with you when he’s taking plates from you as if to say, Give me all that. I’ll take care of it for you, no problem. Sometimes he actually says things just like this. If you’re female he might say I got it, baby, but you never feel condescended to, only happy he’s in league with you.

  He’s so young, only nineteen, but his wife had twins in San Luis Potosí. He got the call after work one night a couple months ago, standing about where he is now. He was overjoyed, he started to cry, and everyone started hugging him and saying Congratulations Papa! and ¡Felicidades! and we all went over to the bar next door and bought him and everyone else in the place a shot of Patrón. He talks about how he’s saving all his money to bring them over so they can be raised in America, he tells me he gave each of them one English and one Spanish name: Thomas José and Michael Alonzo.

  I tip him more than I tip the other bussers, because he works so hard and I like his attitude. It pays to hustle, it pays to bend over, we both know this. You keep your standards high and your work strong but these are necessary for success; you keep your dignity separate, somewhere else, attached to different things.

  When Asami finally comes out the back door I say Hey Sandra, how you living?

  Dirty, fucking dirty, she says. I pop a Modelo and hold it out to her. Here, honey, just wash it all away, I say.

  Thanks, but I think some of it’s gonna stick, she says.

  Nah, says DeMarcus. Only if you let it.

  That right, De? I ask. He shrugs, then says to Niño, What do you think, Francisco?

  When DeMarcus says his name, which I repeat in my head several times for safekeeping, Niño suddenly seems older to me, but he doesn’t have any more wisdom on the matter than the rest of us. All he says is, No sé, Marco. Es mi job, ¿sabes?

  DeMarcus has fantastic teeth and tight waves. He’s tall and lanky and he smells good. He keeps taking care of me in the parking lot, passing me the green hit when Asami refreshes the bowl, lighting my cigarettes, opening beers for me. The two of us are having a good time—it’s easier on the nights you make money. On the low-scoring nights you feel depressed as hell even if you tell yourself that’s the way it is, inconsistent. You can’t look at the money on the night, you have to wait for the week or even the month to look at it, and you can’t start going home when they overschedule. You have to work it like a nine-to-five even though it’s anything but. Asami is hustling hard-core right now, she’s the speech teacher at an inner-city public high school in Fort Worth but three nights a week she drives over here too. She can’t stay out late like she used to. In the old times we’d wake up together at somebody’s apartment and she’d give me a ride back to my car at the restaurant, the day looking gray as an old sock through our hangovers. I offer her the last of the chard but she says she has to go now or she’ll be hurting too bad tomorrow.

  You can tell she really loves her kids at the school and that’s the job she takes seriously. Not that you can blow this one off—turnover at The Restaurant is ridiculous because new people don’t realize quick enough they’re in the army now and they’d better step up, Chef isn’t kidding when he expects you to know all fifteen ingredients in the hoisin sauce that goes with the fried lobster. I’ve hung in long enough now that they’ve asked me to sub for a manager on occasion, wear a sexy little dress suit and heels and help out when we’re short-staffed. So far I’ve said no. I know they see you in the suit and you do a good job and before you know it that’s where they want you all the time, and then everybody else’s fuckups are on you instead of just your own. Plus I’d never see my kid if I started managing and I hardly see her anyway. All right, I’m out, love you guys see you Thursday, Asami says, putting her bowl back where it lives in the glovebox of her car. Peace, Mama, says DeMarcus, and I tell her to be careful driving all that way home. Niño and the cooks and bussers have cleared out so when she’s gone it’s just me and De, we get into my car and he cranks up my Erykah. Push up the fader / Bust the meter / Shake the tweeter / Bump it he sings along, grooving in his seat. I saw her in Whole Foods the other day, he says, damn, woman is a woman. Talk to he
r? I ask. Naw, he says, I’m gonna say Excuse me Miss Badu, got me a fine position of employment as a servant, can I take you out sometime? Whole Foods guy probably has a better shot than me.

  Whole Foods guy didn’t make three bucks tonight like you did, I say. Hey, partna, it was smooth, smooth tonight, he says, offering his fist for a bump. I work with you whenever you want, anytime, he adds. Likewise, baby, I say, and then, I wish Asami had left us some. There’s a long high pause while we listen to Erykah rock it and I feel him thinking something through. Got some at the house, he says finally. Is that an invitation? I ask. It is if you want it to be, he says.