by TL Gehr
“If you can please go down the line and find out what everyone wants, I’ll pour coffee. That okay?” He’s looking at me.
I find my voice. “Um, yeah.”
“Malena, are you good calling orders?”
“Yessir, fine by me.”
“Okay, Uh—” He’s still looking at me and I realize he’s searching for my name.
“Brian.”
“Brian. When you’ve got the orders, bring the coffee ones to me and give the food ones to your mother. She’ll coordinate with the kitchen. Where’s Bonny?”
He calls for the other waitress, and he’s moving toward her at the other side of the room before I have the chance to agree.
Mom grins at me. “Guess you have a job.”
I’m not so sure. I don’t even know what just happened. Mom passes me a pen. “Kitchen’s through there.” She points to a swinging door, straight ahead. “That’s where you can find me.”
“Don’t I need a uniform or something?”
“Nah, you look fine. At this time of day, anything that’s not in a suit is staff. Clear enough. Go on, then.”
I start at the back of the banker line, where a bald man is looking impatiently at his Rolex. It takes me a few seconds to find a clean page in the order pad and what’s really super disconcerting is Mom’s handwriting looks nearly the same as mine.
By the time I find a page, the guy’s already rattled off a long set of instructions for his cup of joe, none of which I understand. When I ask him to repeat himself, he looks at me as if I just murdered someone. The next two in line are no better. I’m starting to feel the low hot thrum of panic.
It’s not that hard, Brian. What kind of idiot are you if you can’t even write down coffee orders?
When I ask the third guy in line to repeat himself a second time, I actually stammer. It’s been years since I’ve done that, but here, in this fancy-ass restaurant that’s calling itself a pub, I feel like I’m back at school with teachers snapping at me for not following instructions. And the worst part is, I’m trying. At school I gave up doing that so when I got yelled at at least I felt like I deserved it.
“No, I said flat white, what the hell is a frappe white? Repeat it again.” The redhead woman’s spittle flies in my face.
A hand lands on my shoulder. I stiffen. No one’s going to punch me here, but my senses are on high alert and it’s all I can do to stop myself from jerking away from the touch.
The hand rests there and a low voice says, “There’s no need for that.”
I think he’s speaking to me, but the woman rolls her shoulders back. “I’ve repeated my order three times.”
“I apologize for your frustration. We’re shorthanded today. I’d understand if you’d like to take your business elsewhere, but I’d ask you not to raise your voice at my staff.”
Only then do I realize that the voice must belong to Central Park Douche. Except, he’s not being a douche at all right now. He takes the order pad gently from my hand, and as he does I smell his aftershave. It’s fresh and light, like rolling hills.
The woman shifts and scowls. “I shouldn’t have lost my temper, but really. Is this line even moving?”
It’s not, because the person who’s supposed to be making the coffee is rescuing me from her. He steps away to read through her order, and I miss the reassuring warmth of his hand. It’s immediately clear that he can’t make heads or tails of what I’ve written. He looks up at me and when our eyes meet I know he’s figured it out.
I’m not exactly dyslexic, although many people think I am. What I have is called dyscalculia, but I only found that out a few years ago, and by then the knowledge was too late to be of much use. I’m not too bad at reading, if I can get myself to concentrate long enough. But numbers… numbers are oil and my brain is water. In this sort of situation, I didn’t think it would be much of a problem. Except this bizarre quirk of my physiology also doesn’t do well with lists. Or pressure.
The therapist who diagnosed me said I was like an old computer whose RAM was damaged. “Storage is fine,” he said. “You can remember things just fine in retrospect. But working memory, that’s where you have problems.”
Working memory, he said, was like temporary storage for information you needed to work with right now. It’s remembering directions, it’s following lists of instructions, it’s recognizing patterns, it’s figuring out how to spell cappuccino while someone is busy talking.
But the look in Central Park’s eyes says I definitely didn’t spell cappuccino right. In fact, I might have left it out completely and just put “with extra milk” across one corner of the page.
He tilts his head to indicate he wants to speak with me away from the angry line. I go over to him, dread coating the back of my throat.
I want to leave. I can’t be of any help here. I’m only making things worse. But I need him to dismiss me so I’m not the asshole walking out while he’s up to his neck in angry customers.
“I’m sorry.”
He waves off the apology. “New plan,” he ducks his head close to mine so no one else can hear us. “You have a cell?”
I blink, then nod.
“Good, okay. I want you to call me. No, wait, let me call you rather. I have unlimited talk.” He takes out his phone. “Hold your phone in your hand while you take the orders so I can hear them, okay? Get down what you can though.” He flashes a smile. “In case I forget anything. Oh, and look upset when you walk away so they think I was giving you a stern talking to. Then maybe they’ll go easier on you. What’s your number?”
I pull out my phone. My hand is shaking. I can’t believe the douche is being so considerate, that he’s come up with such an elaborate plan to make up for my disability, that he’s just asked for my number and my mind is blank. I shut my eyes, begging my brain to cooperate. Ten digits. In the right order. Just one small thing, that’s all he’s asking of me. Just ten numbers that I know. I know them really well. I’ve had the same number as long as I’ve had a cell.
He touches my hand. “Hey, you okay?”
Now his blue eyes don’t look icy. I can’t imagine how they ever looked icy. They’re warm, the warmest most concerned eyes I’ve ever seen.
I swallow. “I should call you. It’s fine. I want to help.”
I give him my phone. It’s an old model with a cracked screen and it looks like a banged-up piece of shit next to his sleek silver iPhone—the one that only came out a month ago. He calls himself from my cell and hands it back to me, with the order pad.
“Okay. Start by reading off the first few orders for me. Then carry on down the line. Take your time. If they get mad, just tell them to get screwed.” He gives me another bright white smile as he pops an AirPod in his ear. “You know, pretend they insulted a child.”
I don’t have it in me to laugh at that.
His brow puckers. “You don’t have to do this, you know? If you want to go, you can.”
I shake my head. “No, I want to help. You go… start the coffee.”
What I wanted to say was something clever referencing a zombie apocalypse and ravenous hordes, but that would involve working memory that’s being completely taken up by my humiliation.
As I walk back to the queue, I read him the first few orders I took down. The redhead has left to find her flat frappe or whatever elsewhere, and the line starts moving as Central Park—as Philip multitasks behind the bar.
He must have a surplus of working memory because he’s taking orders from the front of the queue, and from the phone, and he’s jotting notes as he goes. He doesn’t even seem fazed. His system works perfectly. The bankers rattle out their orders and I take down the important words—just enough to remind Philip what he heard, in case he needs it. He must have instructed the other waitress to take food orders because food keeps flowing out of the kitchen. Eventually, Philip serves the last Armani suit and the place is miraculously empty, but for a woman with a laptop at one of the tables and a guy with a newspaper in a booth.
Philip presses end call and smiles at me again. Mom’s still in the kitchen and the waitress is seeing to the remaining tables. It’s just Philip and I at the front by the bar.
“I, uh, wanted to apologize,” I say, keeping my eyes fixed on the phone he’s holding.
“That’s not necessary.”
“No, really. It is. I’ve been calling you Central Park Douche in my head all weekend. If you’d really been a douche, you would have thrown me out an hour ago. Charged me damages or something. Turns out, I’m the douche.”
I glance up and see he’s looking at me with a small smile. He has a nice mouth. I look down again before I can follow that thought anywhere.
“Why are you the douche?” he asks.
“Aside from the way I acted at the park?”
He folds his arms. “Actually, I conferred with my friend Jones and she agrees that I was, in fact, riding along like a stuck-up dickhead.”
“Jeez, with friends like those…”
“Right? Anyway, you weren’t wrong. That kid probably thinks you’re a hero.”
I sigh. “It’s not just that. I shouldn’t have been here. I thought… I guess when my mother suggested it, I thought it was worth a try. I didn’t think I could do damage, but now you’re probably going to get like a million negative Yelp reviews.”
“It’s fine. Maybe that will thin the crowds a bit until we find more staff.”
The bar is made from a chunk of solid wood. I trace the patterns absently. “How’d this place get so popular for breakfast anyway? I thought it was a pub? Do you offer free top-ups or something?”
“On the contrary, we actually serve very expensive premium, specialty coffee, imported from Africa. Fairtrade, of course. Which only adds to the price tag. Turns out, Wall Street enjoys paying for things. My father put up a fight when I suggested we open for breakfast, can you believe that? After seeing that mess? He said, ‘There’s a Starbucks around the corner, why the heck would people come to a pub?’ And I said: they’ll come to a pub because they can say they came to a pub for breakfast, and they’ll choose our coffee because we make them pay more for it.”
“That actually worked?”
“You saw it yourself. We can’t keep up.”
“Wow… that’s, um… I don’t even know what to say.” Seems to be the trend today.
“Exploitative?”
“Genius.”
He looks inordinately pleased by that, like it’s the first time his efforts are being acknowledged, like I’m the boss and he’s a nervous employee. I let myself look at his lips this time. They look soft, but there’s nothing particularly special about them. No, it’s the dimples that form at the corners when he smiles that are so appealing. They weren’t there in Central Park, because he was too busy pretending to be a dickhead.
“I’m not illiterate,” I blurt. “Or, uh, special needs.” Although I guess that’s not quite true. I hug myself, then realize I’m doing it and drop my arms. “It’s just—”
“It’s all right, you don’t have to explain.”
“I feel like I do. I don’t want you to think…” that I’m useless? It’s not just that I want the job. For some reason, I care what he thinks of me. “If I could study the menu and learn the names of the coffees, I’d be fine I think.”
I can’t read his expression. He’s listening, with his full focus on me.
“My brain’s a little broken. Not completely. Just a little. It’s mostly numbers. Shit, I guess you’d need a waiter to help behind the register, huh? Anyway, it’s mostly numbers, so that’s why I didn’t think it would be a problem, but my brain can get overwhelmed when there’s a lot of new information all at once. Which kind of sucks because it also gets bored when there’s no new information. It’s a fine information balance. Which is why I guess I’m not the ideal employee.”
He doesn’t respond at first. He moves to the register and starts counting out bills. “This morning was kind of a trial by fire. I shouldn’t have thrown you into the deep end like that.”
He holds out a stack of notes. I stare at them. I may not be good with numbers, but I’m not so terrible that I can’t tell that’s a shitload more than I earned in an hour. “Is this a test?”
“What? No. Why would it be a test?”
“Maybe you want to see if I can count change or something?”
“No! I’m paying you.”
“That’s too much.”
The dimples appear again and his eyes sparkle. I feel that look in my groin. Shit. “Your mother said you’re new in town and you need the money. I know you only worked an hour, but you helped us out of a tight spot despite obvious discomfort to yourself. Besides, it was a good morning. Profit-wise. We can afford it.”
I accept the cash. “So, this is like a Robin Hood thing. Take from the rich to give to the poor?”
He laughs. “If you like. Thanks for the help today, Brian.”
Well, that’s the nicest turndown for a job I’ve ever had. I can’t even feel bummed about it. I know what really happened. I was the damsel he needed to save, but he turned the narrative around to try make me feel like a hero. No one’s ever done anything like that for me before.
As I walk back towards the subway, I’m already trying to figure out when I can casually stop by to see Mom and happen to accidentally-on-purpose see Philip again. I know better than to hope for anything. He’s kind, good-looking, wealthy, and probably straight. Probably married. I didn’t pay attention to his hands, but men like him don’t stay single. And they certainly don’t fall for men like me.
9
Philip
I can’t stop thinking about him.
When Malena said she had a son who needed a job, I pictured a teen—someone fresh out of school, looking to make it big in the big city. I certainly never pictured him.
If I’m being totally honest with myself, I’ve been thinking about him ever since Central Park. Those expressive eyebrows, the way he went to bat for that kid… I told myself it was because I was embarrassed. My shoulder hasn’t forgotten the incident yet, so why would my pride?
But now, I’m not replaying that scene and coming up with a million different ways I could have handled it, I’m Googling “trouble with numbers”, I’m seeing his large, dark eyes and how terrified he looked when those customers were yelling at him. I’m remembering how he kept his cool, how he insisted on helping even though we hadn’t agreed on wages yet. I’m driven to distraction remembering the way his gaze dropped to my lips. I’ve half convinced myself I imagined it by the time I hand over to Imana for the night shift.
I decide to walk across town to clear my head rather than grabbing the 5:16 from Wall Street Station like I usually do. The flow of foot traffic carries me onto Broadway and I cut through the Trinity Churchyard. Some of the graves here are so old you can’t even read the names and I always try to picture what sorts of people they were—how different their lives were from mine. This church has been here since the 1800s and now it’s surrounded by skyscrapers, a single slice of nature completely boxed in by towering concrete on every side. Alexander Hamilton’s grave is here, but it’s on the other side of the church so I don’t have to negotiate my way around tourists. Instead, as I pass beneath the trees, I catch myself thinking about Brian again. He was so gentle-natured today. I must have really pissed him off on Friday to drive him to that rant. How badly was I terrorizing that kid?
My phone rings and for an inexplicable half second I think it might be him, but of course it’s not. He has no reason to call me. It’s my mother.
“Hristina’s making spanakopita, darling. Won’t you join us for dinner tonight?”
My muscles tense as I pause beneath a chestnut. “I can’t, Mom, I’m working tonight. It’s Monday.”
“Well yes, I know you usually work on Mondays but you so love her spanakopita I thought perhaps you might leave early, just for once. I’m sure they can manage without you.”
I draw a deep breath in throug
h my nose so she doesn’t hear it. The air here smells like moss. “We’ve had a really busy day and we’re short staffed.”
My mother clicks her tongue. I brace for further argument. If she presses, I’ll have to give in, otherwise I’ll suffer the consequences for weeks. No one can hold a grudge quite like my mother. I suppose when you’ve had people falling over themselves to be near you your whole life, you never learn how to accept rejection as anything other than a personal affront.
“Well, I’ll tell her to put some aside for you for when you get in, but honestly they’re never as good when they’ve been sitting around. I just didn’t want you to miss out, darling.”
“Thank you for thinking of me.”
“Of course I thought of you. Now you get back to your little restaurant and we’ll see you at breakfast.”
I take in another lungful of fresh air when she ends the call, but I don’t put my phone away. Instead, I thumb to the browser where I had a page open on “dyscalculia” and I read the rest of the article as I walk.
10
Brian
It’s been another night of insomnia, so I decided to go for a walk. I know now that was a mistake. I’m several blocks from anywhere familiar, the air is thick with the smell of baked concrete and refuse, and the craving hits me with near physical force, so strong that I have to stop mid-stride.
When it’s like this, it doesn’t even feel like it’s a part of me. It feels like an alien reaching into my body and wrestling me for control. Like I’m one of those cartoon characters being carried off by a good smell. I have a pocket full of bills. In a matter of minutes, I could be sitting on the bed in my new apartment getting high.
Neon lights spill promises onto the sidewalk: Beer, strippers, hot food. Anything your heart desires. Anything.
I can visualize it so clearly, it’s almost like it’s already happening. The hardest part—the only hard part—would be scoring some stuff I could trust. And even that won’t be too difficult in the city. I can duck into any one of the clubs along this street and make inquiries. Heck, I could probably just ask any bum to point me in the direction of a dealer.
