grumpy guests who waited too long for a drink or a table. they don't feel their server was solicitously attentive. yes, yes, you, mrs. greenberg, are the irresistable sun around which everybody's planets orbit, now aren't you? i take orders, run food, bus tables and muck plates. i barback. i make cappuccinos. (quite well, i might add.) occasionally, i open wine. i fend off complaints that the flounder is too salty, the ribeye too tough, and my favorite, "my husband hated his salad (salmon, whatever) even though he's eaten the whole thing," -- the inference then quite clear and tacky, what am i giving them for free? (no matter how many years i do this, i'd like to trade lives just for one day to see how these people fend for themselves in what constitutes their real world.)
i listen to waiters bitch about the crappy quality of saturday night tippers. i wait for the last lipstick-smeared sloppy cougars to slither out, after not having scored with the hunky bartenders. why are they drinking in a gay mecca and trying to get laid? no wonder they never do.
i add up the tens of thousands deposited into the owner's bank account. i hate the stink money makes on my hands and can't wait to wash them. i double-check the locks and lights, and almost always smell vomit in the loo. the chef is well down into his bottle of dewars and watching tv alone, simultaneously suspiciously eyeing everything i do.
stealth hailing and a battle royale to find a cab as the drunks weave all over, having spilled out of the neighborhood's last calls. recently, a halter-clad slurring blonde (cellphone in hand, of course) literally tried to crawl through my taxi's window while we waited at a red light. i was so frazzled from the night i nearly hit the ceiling with fright.
i get home at what most folks my age consider the middle of the night. so wired, it takes at least 90 minutes to wind down enough to approach the sheets -- pushing the end of my day ever closer to dawn. forcing myself to wake up at a remotely decent hour, i feel ravaged and empty. too brain-dead and body-weary for much besides tea and the times.
but yesterday...
a good friend and a matinee (he braved the box office pandemonium -- "flushed away", what? -- before i arrived) with well-behaved adults in the seats. not a single cellphone rang! a warm spicy zinfandel in a cushy hotel bar. jammy muscular shiraz and some small plates at a new spot well before the weekend crush made the place unbearable. friendly chit-chat with the bartender and happy owner before they got weeded and miserable.
home well ahead of the evening news and up this morning with the roosters. well, ok, seagulls. i was a little confused at what people do in the still-dark hours of sunday morning, church not being on my schedule. but i was breakfasted and showered, my paper perused well before i'm normally vertical.
i could get used to this.
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