by Paul Mendez
Wear black shoes and trousers, Richard had said. Oxford Street, he’d heard, was the main shopping street, so he followed his A–Z down Regent Street, a beautiful curve of grand stone buildings and a Ferrari showroom, again, pestered by gaping tourists posing for pictures in front of the cars. He went into Topman at Oxford Circus, where, right on cue, the radio edit of “Freak Like Me” came on. Everywhere he looked, his eye fell on handsome, effeminate, immaculately dressed shop assistants who sized him up then turned away. He bought a pair of basic black trousers in a size twenty-eight and a pair of cheap, smart black shoes, then headed north to Tottenham Court Road, another famous London address he’d heard of, that turned out to mainly comprise of electrical shops, so he turned back straight down Charing Cross Road, hovering by a side street full of musical instrument shops and specialist record shops, finding on the main road a huge two-floor Internet café.
He ate a burger and chips at a window table in All Bar One and watched single-sex couples turn onto the street opposite and start holding hands, as if they had reached their safe place, which was a revelation to him; he wondered whether he would ever feel comfortable enough to be so publicly engaged with a man, and who that man might eventually turn out to be. Every few seconds a man walked past the window and made eye contact with him. He had never in his life seen a black man hold hands with another man, white or otherwise, and had barely even seen a black man hold hands with a woman. He tried to remember if he’d seen a black man kiss someone on a TV show or in a film.
He left All Bar One, crossed onto the street where the gay couples were headed—Old Compton Street, it was called. On the corner was a bar called Molly Moggs, where he could see through the windows a tall blond man with very thin eyebrows reading a magazine on the bar, while several retired-looking men sat on stools drinking pints. Opposite, Ed’s Easy Diner, styled after a classic American burger shack, was pumping the Four Tops’ “Reach Out (I’ll Be There)” as good-looking foreign people sat outside in their sunglasses. He watched through the window of an amusement arcade a teenage boy clattering loudly in his cheap shoes on a dance-step machine. The Prince Edward Theatre was showing The Full Monty. He stopped by a place with a big purple-and-gold front, called G-A-Y, which had piles of free gay magazines stacked up in its entrance. He took one of each to put in his rucksack. A line of fruity-looking men drinking coffee outside Caffè Nero watched him walk by.
The Admiral Duncan, another bar decked with a rainbow flag, was virtually empty; a ginger-haired man in a white vest was laughing and wiping his finger down the bar as if to check for dust. There was no one to tell him he couldn’t walk into a bar and order a half-pint on a Monday afternoon. He crossed the road and walked into Comptons of Soho, the most inviting-looking of the bars with its window boxes and proud flag, where a couple of men in jeans were drinking and smoking outside, just like at the Coleherne.
There were only a few in, mostly older men, one of them a middle-aged punk dressed in neon, with too many studs, piercings and tattoos; another, businesslike in his suit, was perhaps on a lunch break from his office. The same kind of soulful dance music was playing as at the Coleherne, but at a lower volume. It was dark coming in from the sunlight, and Jesse leaned on the sticky bar, again horseshoe-shaped. The best-looking man in there was tall and stocky, perhaps a construction worker, standing the other side of the bar in a red hoodie, drinking a pint of Guinness. They made eye contact. Jesse showed his ID to the bartender, ordered half a lager and flicked through one of the free magazines. The back pages had been reserved for classified listings, mostly men looking for men. It excited Jesse that he could meet a man, anywhere at any time, just by calling a number. Some of the men seemed to be advertising themselves in exchange for money. They showed their arses, or the sizes of their dicks, in jockstraps or leather trousers. They were upfront about what they did and did not do, and how much they would cost—a hundred pounds an hour here, five hundred a weekend, there. There was even a plumber, his face marked with God-knows-what, clutching a U-bend in one hand, the other stuffed down his overalls. Jesse thought to himself, could he be paid for sex, like the boys in the basement across the road from the hostel? What difference would it make, if he was already having sex for pleasure with random men, to be paid for it?
He and the man in the red hoodie looked up at each other again. There was one black man advertising in the magazine, with a ring through his nose, every single muscle defined and glistening, his enormous dick stuffed into a minuscule pouch, the whole thing resembling a tapir’s nose. It looked like, and possibly was, the man who had nodded at him in the Coleherne when he was about to leave with Rufus.
“Where are the toilets, please?” he asked the bartender, who pointed towards the back of the bar.
There was a bleachy smell on top of the decades of bodily fluids soaked into the walls and floors. The man with the red hoodie drinking Guinness at the bar followed him in and stood next to him at the damp dripping urinal, his thick pink lips hanging open, his dick already hard in his freckled hand. After the bland bitterness of the beer it tasted like melted butter. They crashed through a cubicle door and slammed it behind them. The man pulled down his cargo pants and turned to face the door, spat on his hand and reached behind himself. Jesse pushed inside him—with some of his own spit, viscous from the beer—and fucked his squashy arse up against the door, reaching up under his clothes to find a sexy nipple ring; when Jesse was finished, the man said nothing, merely pulled up his trousers and walked out. He’d already left by the time Jesse came back into the bar to finish his pint. Everyone turned round to look at him, admiringly.
Chapter 5
MAY 7, 2002
He was to be trained by Marion. She had dirty blond hair and wore little make-up, and stood with her hands on the back of a chair at what she called table four, which was set for five people. Jesse clasped his hands behind his back as the other waitresses, Élodie, Claudia, Jinny and Patrizia (the runner), chatted among themselves getting everything ready for service. Vitor was stocking up his bottles; Gemma was on the phone. Jesse was trying to catch Jinny’s eye but she was following Élodie around and wouldn’t look at him.
“Rishar say you don’t ave a lot of expérience so I ouill go froo everyfin wiv you,” Marion said, with a husky voice. “Ouen ve guest arrive”—she said guest instead of guests, as a Jamaican would—“Jhomma take vair coat and jackette and sit vem wiv ve menu and ouine list. She offair vem still, sparkling or ouatair from ve tap, and put froo ve till. You keep your eye on ve disponse bar, and if dair is ouatair dair, you fetch it and pour it at ve tâbl, alouays startin ouiv ve ouoman, clockouise, and ovair dair right shouldair.”
Jesse nodded, though he wasn’t sure how much of this he would remember.
“Aftair you pour all of ve ouatair, or at ve same time if you feel confidon, you discrètely try to get ve tâbl attontion to tell vem ve spécial of ve day, and anyfin on ve menu vat is atty-six.”
“That’s wha?” said Jesse, fretting that he’d missed something.
“Ouen somefin ouee don’t ave on ve menu, vat finish, in restaurant ouee say is atty-six.”
She drew the numbers 8 and 6 in the air in front of him with an index finger.
“Eighty-six? Why’s it called tha?”
She turned down the corners of her mouth and shrugged, holding out the palms of her hands and shaking her head.
“You offair ve tâbl an apéritif, but vey might not ave time to look at ve menu yet. Sometime vey ave a standard apéritif, for éxompl a Martini or a jhin and tonic, and ouee ave a lot of regulair customair so sometime you ouill learn ouat is vair fâvourite drink. You put ve apéritif ordair froo ve till, ven leave vem to contomplât ve menu until ve drink are ready at ve bar. You take a tré from ve bar and load ve drink ve ouay vey have been laid out on ve bar. Vat is vairy importon, because sometime vair is two drink on ve bar vat look exactly ve same and one of vem might be
vodka and ve ovair jhin and we sairve bof of vem ouiv limon so ve only ouay to tell ve différence is to put vem on ve tray exactly as vey ave been laid out on ve bar, ouich should be accordin to ve tickette. You ven serve ve drink, again ve ouoman first, clockouise, ovair dair right shouldair. Ouen you finish you put ve tré on ve shelf on ve stassion, ven come back ouiv your pad and pen, and you should already ave written down ve nombair of ve pairson in a column in ve middle of ve pâge, wiv a circle around it for ve ouoman.”
She looked at him.
“Ouee ouork ouiv posission nombair. You don’t ouork ouiv posission nombair before?”
* * *
—
“How you can be waiter if you can’t open bottow of wine?” Vitor asked Jesse, loudly, in front of the customers, as Richard came up the stairs and onto the restaurant floor to see how he was doing. Jesse hadn’t taken into account that this would be part of his job. He’d never even drunk wine; Graham drank lager, as did Jesse’s mother, but with blackcurrant. Wine was partaken by the anointed during the Passover. Vitor held up his hands in consternation.
“I thought you had hospitality experience,” said Richard.
“I have, in McDonald’s,” said Jesse, so Richard took him through how to open a bottle of house red, while Vitor paced up and down the bar with his jaw clenched. After Jesse crumbled one cork in half out of tentativeness, Vitor slammed a second bottle down on the bar, which Jesse popped clumsily and spilt all the way down his apron, cutting his thumb on the foil.
“Hahahai meu Deus!” Vitor turned away, shaking his head and laughing incredulously. Jesse had seen him topless in the changing room, and he was skinny, but ripped. He knew nothing of Portuguese, and so Vitor could’ve been saying anything, calling him a stupid nigger or a black bastard.
“Vitor, pipe down,” said Richard. “There’s a first-aid box behind the bar. I’ll get you another apron.”
There was a spell, for an hour or more, when it felt like the whole of London was coming in. Some of the customers reminded him of hunting dogs, trotting in with their noses in the air. Marion directed him with incessant tasks, many of which she ended up performing herself, though he insisted on opening all the wine so that he could learn. He was left-handed but it felt more natural to operate the corkscrew with his right. The first glass he poured was almost to the brim when the customer, an older woman with big blow-dried hair, put out her hand and said, Stopstopstopstopstop! Marion rolled her eyes and marked with the stub of her finger where to pour to. Her nails were bitten down almost to the quick. She and Élodie, who was training Jinny, glanced at each other across the room, but Jinny seemed to be doing well, and now and then, smiled at Jesse encouragingly.
Marion sent him to new tables with menus, which he handed out, taking it upon himself to say, Allo, and welcome to Gilbert’s; some of the customers appeared to find this funny. Every minute he was being asked to reset a table, and was then told off when, for example, the tablecloth was longer on one side than the other. He was thirsty, and needed a piss, so asked to go to the toilet, but was told No. He felt he was being pushed and pulled, asked questions and then immediately told to shut up, poked in the ribs then disciplined for laughing, but after Gemma passed a message round to say they were all in—as in, everyone who had booked was at their table—there seemed to be more time to spend with the customers, which in his mind was the whole point of the job. After all, this was a world of grace, conviviality and politeness. The customers seemed to like him; one or two asked him where his accent was from and what he was doing in London. A woman with blonde hair bleached to the roots, rouged cheeks, red lips and an enormous pink dress made a gasping face as she beheld him.
“So beautiful!” she said in a high, airy voice, in front of her guests, all men in suits, one or two of whom looked embarrassed, the others jealous. “Come here, my darling! Oh, isn’t he just like a young Michael Jackson! What is your name?” She took him by the hand, firmly pressing his fingers between hers.
“Jesse, madam.”
“Oh, just listen to his darling little accent! Where are you from?”
“The Black Country, madam.”
“Where are your parents from?” she said, closing her eyes and opening them again as if that was her original question.
“Me grandparents are from Jamaica, madam.”
“Of course, with your glowing skin and perfect teeth and”—she looked him up and down—“Oh, you’re just absolute perfection, aren’t you, darling! Are you studying something?”
“No, I’ve just moved here, madam, so I’m just settlin’ in.”
“I just want to put him in my handbag!” she said to her men, who laughed with her, mechanically. He thought he could detect a glint in the eye of one of them, whose smile and eye contact lingered. She let go of Jesse’s hand and turned away. Her handbag was next to her on the banquette. There was a dog in it, that he’d failed to notice before, a silent little terrier with a pink bow in its hair.
Marion shouted at him to run the drinks from the pass, more with her eyes than her voice. He didn’t want to just rip himself away from this lovely woman, so even that took a beat longer than it needed to. The table numbers, which he had learned quickly, now eluded him. A too-thin young American with a too-short bob, a brace in her mouth and two little white pills next to her water glass screamed, I didn’t order that! when he put a gin and tonic in front of her, and the whole room went quiet for a moment, the way it goes dark and still when the one cloud in the sky passes over the sun. The older man she was with scowled at Jesse as if he should be ashamed of himself, and put his hand on her shoulder to console her, but she flinched away. Marion redirected him with the drinks and told him not to go back to that table.
After two o’clock it slowed down a bit, as most of the suited customers had gone back to work, but Jesse was running, trying to win over the French girls, collecting glasses and clearing plates. Claudia told him off for taking away a man’s plate while his guest was still eating. The woman with the silent little terrier had gone without saying goodbye, after spending most of her lunch talking on her rose-gold flip phone, drinking champagne rosé and feeding the dog scraps of smoked salmon from her plate with her pinky nail. He was disappointed she didn’t seek him out before she left.
He went over to the service hatch to help Patrizia, who was swearing under her breath all the time in Italian, to run food but she told him, No, I am fine! You don’t understand, when you decide, you want to ’elp me, it make a problem for me! He wondered what he had done to upset her, but then a Nina Simone song his mother used to play sometimes came on over the Bose ceiling speakers, and he lip-synced and pirouetted around, allowing his apron to float up like a dress. Oh Lord, please don’t let me be misunderstooooooooooooood. The American with the too-short bob turned and looked out of the window, but Jinny was laughing quietly, and even the French girls, who had made his ears burn all service, looked briefly enchanted.
“You’re very much in your own little world, Jesse,” Richard said in the office after Jesse’s trial came to a close, “and you’ll have to speed up—a lot—but I’ve seen that you are intelligent enough to improve. You could be a breath of fresh air in here, but you need to learn when you can entertain the customers and when you need to knuckle down. Believe me, you don’t want to piss the Frenchies off.”
He saw Jinny on his way back to the changing room. She had been sent to fetch a roll of blue paper from the store cupboard.
“How was your trial? Did you get the job?” Her voice was high and childlike, and she spoke very quickly in her London accent.
“Well, I’ve been asked to come back tomorra at 11:30, so I suppose so,” he told her. She laughed. For the first time, with the light shining down on her from upstairs, he saw how pretty she was. She was very dark-skinned, with big white eyes, a flat little nose, full, round lips and a tiny, doll-like chin. Where he grew up, a
dults would say to children who pulled faces that if the wind changed, they would be stuck like that forever, and it was as if this had happened to Jinny while she was blowing someone a kiss.
“What ya laughing for?” he said, smiling.
“Nothing,” she said, still laughing, and covering her mouth. “Your accent’s really sweet.”
“Thanks,” he said, bashfully.
She composed herself. “Marion said to tell you if I saw you that you need to leave out of this door, because we’re not allowed to walk back through the restaurant,” she said.
“Okay, I will, thanks. See ya tomorra.”
“Bye.”
She did that weird thing girls sometimes do, waving at him when he was still there.
* * *
—
He woke up in a panic, his hair flat on one side. He’d forgotten to set his alarm, and the weather had changed. Sometimes he liked the rain—in the spring and summer it made everything greener—but not when he didn’t have protection, though if the city suit carrying the Dick Lovett–branded umbrella had offered theirs to him he wouldn’t have taken it. Wet and out of breath, he got to work half an hour late after having to wait for a bathroom at the hostel, then enduring severe delays to the Piccadilly line due to the alarming circumstance of a person under a train. Nobody else in the carriage seemed to bat an eyelid as they sat in the tunnel for five minutes between Hyde Park Corner and Green Park.
