2 Out 1-0! (2 weeks in October)

Week 2 of my job and I’ve fallen into a ritual and I miss parts of my training already. I would never admit to him that I enjoyed him drilling me about the stuffed peppers or boar rack. What ingredients came with which dish.

I write my life on order tabs. Imbibe the pace of the kitchen and all of its smells and smoke, inhale the spices, drink in the juices.

*

“That fucking pan roasted chicken breast.” Smoke escapes his lips as he exhales the answer in blue gray twines of breath. “Little bit of butter, chicken stock, tarragon…” He swells like a wave, his smile widening with his arms stretching over his head. “Fucking dank.” He kisses his thumb, index and middle finger in a short star burst motion. “Ugh so good!”

That sound he makes, that grunt of satisfaction like he knows what he creates is something of perfection.

*

I approach my tables with caution underscored by a blip of excited anticipation, an approach that says I’m there to take care of you, to accent your meal but not overpower it.

“Good evening! My name is Halle and I’m going to be taking care of you this evening.” I smile but not too wide, show a glint of teeth and cross my hands folded behind my back. Eye contact is something to always work on, I can't focus on anyone’s face, find a focal point on a stripe of a gentleman’s tie or the single misplaced curl of a woman’s hot-rollered hair. Sometimes its easiest to flick my gaze out the picture window, catch a glimpse of a passing hungry, stumbling man or ladies in heels and new pea coats. One of these days I’ll be able to lock eyes for a few moments with the patrons I begin a silent connection with for an hour or two before I never see them again. I try to imagine what it would be like to be on the other side, to have a waitress who can’t look you in the eye as she describes the spicy tomato soup with a garnish of sweet cornbread, pancetta and blue cheese crumble. Would I wonder why her words are so elegant but her eyes say nothing because I cannot see them? Would it matter?

But my name has, more so than not, appeared on their palates between bites of salmon or tiny bites of marrow and crostini, infused in the oil left on their lips. Maybe that will get me to look.

Table 24

“Josh this is Halle.” The middle aged man gestures his palm toward me as an older, balder one slides awkwardly into the booth next to him. He shakes my hand.

“I see the rest of your company has joined you gentleman.” When I smile I can feel the corner of my eyes crinkle.

Table 32

“See, Halle knows what she’s talking about!” Her face does not move with one iota of expression. I wonder if all that Botox will let her be able to chew. Joan Crawford enters my mind. I bite my tongue.

“The wine is divine love. Now. What shall we eat?” She holds the menu up for me to look at. I have it memorized.

“Well it depends on if you want meat, fish or something light? We do have soup and some fantastic salads. Or perhaps you’d rather just have a few appetizers? What do you think?”

“I think you should sit down and eat with us, Halle! You’ve made everything sound just too delicious.

*

It’s murky, off-red and orange dark in the restaurant. The lights are low, the crowd has died down and the wind outside the window blows rain against the glass. The weakness in my knees travels up my thighs, pushing me slightly into the expo. station behind me. To my left are abandoned booths hidden behind the bar. Table 19 is reserved for after hours, Joseph and Mary’s dinners and designated memory maker in my own world.

I’m on my own now, but a few weeks before I occupied that space, Joseph a crossed from me immersed in that same lava glow during a late night training session. Steaming plates of food before us, multiple glasses of red wine each holding only a slight pour of liquid. Hands on, palate like the nose of a dog, memorizing scents and flavors, the best way to understand the composition and the pairing, the philosophy was to let the palate discover and absorb all of it.

Those few minutes of tasting and talking, like the last drips of wine from a glass of impeccable Bordeaux. I liked that he asked me about the food, what did I taste, how would I describe it? Looking into me instead of at me. Intimidation comes in severities and types like the wine I drank. First, it was the watchful, judging eye of someone who was young, successful and knowledgeable, who walked with an air about him the way I wish I could, a wisdom I wanted to drink in but was too afraid to uncork.

I felt as if he wanted to wipe me away like the fingerprints or watermarks on a wine glass.

I felt like an impostor, or undeserving of his teaching because even the simplest tasks I could not grasp onto with my fingers.

“Through this process I will be nit picking through everything you do, I will be watching every move not because I’m looking for things you are doing wrong but because I want you to be the best you can be, I want all of the things I teach you to become automatic.” His eyes seared into me. “I’ll tell you a story. When I first started working as a waiter I had a pretty big head. I hated that someone was constantly coming up to me telling me every little thing I was doing wrong. At first I blew it off because I was young and thought I was the shit.”

“Joseph, you are young”

“No, YOU’RE young”

“Anyway so there was just one day where I decided I wanted to be the best, and that meant fixing a tweaking all of those little things, even if they seemed unimportant.”

Now my fingers burn and itch, my feet wont stand still because I want to, I will show him, just how extraordinary I am. Some day I want to be in his place, with someone acrossed from me at a perfectly set table, giving a speech all of my own, telling stories of how I’m slowly climbing rungs..

Expo. Trois

Fragments..more to come..no questions

*

It was one of those unexpected nights, those nights where I was expecting to clock out of the expo. system, change out of my kitchen infused jeans, white button up, chucks and apron climb into my car parked in the $5 lot across the street and drive the 15 minutes at 80 MPH on the highway back to Royal Oak. But tonight I’m pissed off and on an emotional high simultaneously. It’s not fair, I think, that while I’m ecstatic and happiest I’ve been in a while I’m also devastated and self-conscious.

Oil

And

Water

*

Rituals have become part of me, of my gestures, bent twisted carved burned into my existence, that once one ritual is changed I quickly must acclimate myself to a new one.

They sharpen their knives, spend time before us working long hours into their hands, chopping vegetables in prices shapes and configurations.

*

But my job isn’t easy either. F. asks how my night is going and I tell him the truth, I am tired and my feet hurt, and my eyes tell him I am tired, I have heavy heat and grease coating my brain today. Swallowing back tears and frustration, depression that comes seeping out of healing wounds of my soul is infesting and infecting my deliverance to my customers, I can feel it and it exhausts me. But he doesn’t get it.

“Oh you’re feet hurt? Oh you’re tired? I am SO sorry about that. What about you Dan? Do your feet hurt?

“Nah man I’m golden. You?”

“Perfect over here I feel GREAT. Only seared my hands a few times tonight. Only been on my feet since 6AM this morning. No way am I fucking tired.”

I can’t help but feel like the brunt of some immature joke.

I was already told tonight by a woman near my age that I didn’t have the experience to be working in a restaurant of this caliber yet. She was a customer, there with her boyfriend or pet on a leash, who demanded precise spacing between her courses so that the food before it didn’t “ruin the taste” of the next course.

She cut his filet.

She fed him wine.

She looked at me like I was some squished insect on the bottom of her red patent leather pump.

I smile. I get her what she wants. I space out the meal. I feel like smearing her lipstick across her face with my blistered fingers from hot plates.

*

“Sir…”

“Beer? Stella? Bam Noir?”

“Bam. Hit me”

I’m situated behind the expo screen, the sound of clinking glasses and shuffling feet, after hours again and I’m the last server to leave for the 4^th time this week.

I secretly love it.

It goes with the whole theme of being one of the boys. A throwback. Something comfortable and familiar like the shoes they wear, worn in clogs, scuffed and imprinted with infinite hours on foot from one burner to the next. It’s easier to be around people who love what you love, even more so when it isn’t women.

And its strange because in any other circumstance I would be nervous, forgetting sentences, stuttering, looking at my feet, wondering if I had enough lip-gloss or perfume on.

But here I am dressed androgynously, tie loose around my neck after I pull the knot while clocking out, white oxford sleeve rolled up to the elbow with fleck of various stains like pointillism on the cuffs, dark jeans and my black leather chucks. My face has a sheen like raw meat and the only makeup I wear is a swipe of mascara. I smell of sweat, salt and apple wood smoke. I am surrounded by men and have never been more confident.

Hey, did you call me?

Oh yeah? Is that what missed call means?

Ok sassy pants I was brushing my teeth what’s up?

We are at Loving Touch, what r U doin?

In my pajamas with my feet up writing

My phone illuminated in the darkened kitchen just beyond where Becca sleeps. She wakes up at 5 AM for her job. I don’t go in until 3.

“Hang on my roomie is asleep” Muffled Van Halen plays ambient noise on the other end.

“Dude you live like, 5 minutes from 9 mile. We just started a game. Come hang."

Well fuck. I had a mild attraction to him but was let down easily a few days before. I was trying to play it smooth, ignore him but not too much. Answer his questions but only in mild conversations that he began. And now he wants me to come play pool at 1 AM. Reading into this? You bet I am

“Alright alright give me 5 to clean up.”

“Dude we just got off work and we smell dank, who cares?”

“I do… I am a girl, you know.”

“See you in five.” Click. Dial Tone.

*

The rug underneath me hugs the curves of my back.

“What’s your favorite thing to cook?”

He inhales, ponders, his chest permanently risen filled with smoke and air then answers me, after a time, through slow exhales and whips of smoke

“Fuck…that pan roasted chicken.” His face explodes into a giant grin.

He sits up and open and closes his hands a few times.

“Damn my hands are sore today from choppin' all that cilantro and parsley."

He bends back his fingers a few times.

“Ew, Dan, stop that’s probably so bad for you. Here give me your hand.”

I don’t wait for him to stretch his arm out to me but instead guide his palm with my fingers toward me.

*

“So this lady at my table doesn’t eat meat. She hates olive oil and butter and she wants mushrooms on a piece of bread.:

Any looks at me with a blank, slightly annoyed stare.

“Jesus. She came to a MEAT HOUSE. He scratches his head, retrieves a plate of perfectly grilled and sliced filet from brad at the grill station and wipes the excess olive oil and fingerprints from the plate.

“Alright, tell her we can do steamed potatoes, crostini, some pickled onions and sautéed mushrooms if she gives us a little leeway on the olive oil. Tell her its better for you than butter at that we wont use a lot. Then come back here and talk to me.”

“Yes captain.”

“Punk”

“Thank you Andy!”

*

Ashley looks up at me from her 4”9 stature and throws a polished knife into the bin.

“People are assholes. Sometimes I go home, look at myself in the mirror and say all of the things I want to say to my reflection that I couldn’t to the customers earlier. It’s therapeutic, really.”

*

He scared me. Maybe because he is handsome in an awkward way or because he’s so damn good at his job and young enough to be my brother that, that kind of knowledge, passion and experience he secretes in subdued quantities. He is like a vintage wine, I bet, growing richer, deeper, more complex with age and his grapes were plucked, squeezed and bottled early on. There is a sheepish confidence to him that I almost wish I could claim for my own. Yes, people think he is pretentious, a little arrogant, bigheaded, and true he may be all of those things but what he is, to me, is a genuinely good person. A friend, he has become to me. Makes me smile in a way a girl smiles when everything has fallen into place. A smile that comes right before a collapse, a brief moment of euphoria.

When I first started he left a taste like tannins in my mouth. I hated how he seemed to treat me not like a child but a girl who couldn’t find her way around in the world, one who needed her hand held. I wanted so badly to tell him that I probably had more knowledge about food than he did about wine and beer, I wanted to show everyone that but the fear snobbery held me back. Not only did I have to suppress the knowledge that comes from passion but I had to do it in an atmosphere that fostered what I loved so much.

*

How to properly open and present a bottle of wine:

1. Show the bottle to your guests. Give the guest a chance to see the label of the bottle they will be drinking. In a restaurant, this has the added benefit of allowing the guest to verify that you will be opening the correct bottle. To present the bottle, support it on a linen napkin at a 45-degree angle with the label facing the guest and repeat vintage location and name.

I try that much and walk up to the table where Joseph is sitting, hands placed in front of him, legs crossed. I present the bottle and the black napkin slips out of my hand onto the floor. After retrieving it I regain my composure only to completely forget the information on the bottle. Joseph smirks then looks at me seriously. “No worries keep going.” My face is hot and I’m shaking

2. Wait for approval. As a restaurant server, always wait for the guest to give you the "go ahead" before you open the wine bottle.

Joseph nods. Approves of the wine, a red from Argentina, Dao it’s called. I remember the spice and tinge of pumpkin or other squash with a little cinnamon or allspice.