His wife probably didn’t even want eggplant parmesean to begin with. Mitzi looked at her and wished he could ask her what she wanted, but that would send him right out of the restaurant on his ass without a job, and Mitzi simply couldn’t afford that. Waiting long enough, he interrupted the man’s gaze:
“Tonight for soups we have our ever-famous pasta Fagioule, a chicken noodle soup, a rather spicy fish chowder, or the popular minestrone. As for salads, we offer a wide selection of different vinegrettes ranging from balsamic to raspberry.”
“I will have the chicken chowder.” Mitzi again tried not to wince – the insolence! Follow my words, you fool, he wanted to tell the man.
“Sir – do you mean the fish chowder or the chicken noodle?”
The man looked confused. Mitzi turned to look over his other four tables quickly: the stringy man sitting to his left in the next booth needed a refill of water, the booth to his right held a man who was eying Mitzi and pointing his finger to the empty bread basket on the table. His eyebrows formed two pointed arches above his puny, deep set- eyes, saying, I thought you knew how to do your job. Mitzi became extremely impatient and tapped his foot beneath the booth while keeping up with that pseudo-smile. What could he do? This idiot old man was taking forever, taking for what seemed like fifteen minutes, completely unaware of how busy his server was, and –
“George,” said his wife unexpectedly, “I think this young man is busy enough. Can you move it along, please?”
“Yes, honey.” He looked up at Mitzi with angry, contemptuous eyes, “We’ll” – he looked at his wife, half-heartedly, “have the chicken noodle and those wonderful mashed potatoes as our side. Oh, and don’t forget a little more bread.” The man smiled, feeling that he had fully punished Mitzi by needing more bread; his wife does not just yell at him without the punishment being adhered to the source.
“Yes, Sir. And more iced-tea, Sir?”
“Please.”
Mitzi calmly took the menus from them and walked with his hands forced straight down right beside his Dickies pants, for fear that he might sock the man. Right, Mitzi though, Next: I have to get bread for table sixty-four, water for table sixty-two, and more bread and iced-tea for this asshole at table sixty-three. Oh – and I must not forget to spit in that man’s drink. An enormous smile broke out on Mitzi’s face, revealing large pearly wake-boards.
“Hey, Matt. What’s the big smile for?” asked Ryan as he whisked past carrying one too many frothy sodas on a cocktail tray.
Mitzi smiled on past Squirley and walked quickly with a little extra pizzazz: iced-tea, bread, water…
Meanwhile, Squirley balanced the dangerous sodas, veering this way and that out of other servers’ pathways. One turn around the corner could be impending doom, and Squirley could imagine the sodas flying all over the place. A coke might land squarely on a woman’s newly coiffed wig, might ruin a man’s freshly bought but nevertheless hideous silk tie, might spoil the leather penny loafers a regular customer just bought as he made his way to the little boy’s room. Yes, it was a risky operation but the fruits of Squirley’s risk would measure up if he succeeded. And so, he waved in and out, his plump buttox moving fluidly with his chunkier hips in some sort of aerodynamic phenomenon. He rounded his way beyond the bathrooms – what he called a high-risk, no fly zone because of the customer traffic – and made it past the first obstacle. Past the bar he waddled, where he had to raise the sodas above his head as a petite elderly woman flew by beneath. Mayhem, total mayhem. Not a drop spilt, though.
With a twist of his body, a pick and roll past the women and men waiting to be seated, he made it to the first of his tables, dropping of a 100% iced coke and a water, on to the next table where he dropped off two iced-teas, and on to the next where a snotty-little girl with perfect blonde ringlets cried until she grasped the Italian soda that Squirley had pined over in the back of the house preparing. He looked around, after a job well performed, not a black man in the restaurant. Just another Friday night.
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