The couple sat at
table twenty-two, holding hands and leaning across the table, smiling,
giggling. They hadn't ordered dessert or after-dinner drinks, the closed
leatherette book having sat on the edge of the table, half the check poking
out, for forty-five minutes, the deuce apparently oblivious in the otherwise empty
restaurant. Duncan eventually approached them, smiled and used his standard
lie, "My manager needs to close-out my drawer," to get the couple to
pay. He quickly added, "But you're more than welcome to stay as long as
you like," hoping they understood he was simply being polite. They left a
standard fifteen percent tip.
Since day one table
fifty-four had served as an after-shift desk, littered with receipts, sodas, and
the occasional drink pilfered from the bar. The staff does their nightly
cash-outs; counting money, sorting checks, declaring their taxable income as
Glenn sips his after-shift bourbon in the back office, listening to Cuban jazz
until the servers bring him their paperwork.
Todd
had begged to be first cut. His band, Citizen Caned, is the opening band in a
show at the Metro and Todd had to be there by 8:00 to set up his drum kit for
the sound check. Each server had been handed a flyer functioning as a
half-price coupon. The other four bands on the flyer were Pimple, (which Todd
had tried out for a year earlier) Dillinger's Penis, (which Todd had been in
but quit around seven months ago), Tripping Mimes (from Champagne) and Farrah
Moans (an all-girl band from Newark).
They
collectively decided to let Todd go early, partly out of a sense of justice (no
one else had plans), marginally out of amity, and predominately because they
didn’t want to listen to him anymore. He’d recently developed the annoying
habit of trying to pattern his speech after what he perceived as urban cool.
His clothes had nearly doubled in size and every description – movies, parties,
women he saw on the street - started with “That shit was…” and ended in an array
dominated by, but not limited to: ill, whack, dope, def, fresh, down, and
righteous.
Raul rattles past
them, straining under the weight of plates and glasses on his shoulder, and
heavily lays the tray onto the bussing station, the servers flinching away from
the potential flying glass. “Sorry,” Raul declares sheepishly, rolling his
Rs.
Fifty-four is
infamously always the last table sat because of its proximity to the kitchen
and wait-station; a refinished wooden thrift-store table housing the point of
sale, menus, dessert and wine lists, and leatherette books to present checks
with embossed with the Italia logo. The bus station (glasses, plates,
coffee-maker) completes the Bermuda triangle of the restaurant where no
sophisticated diner would sit.
Scattered
haphazardly in front of George are fives mixed with tens. Stacks of unfolded
twenties lay next to piles of crumpled singles George had absentmindedly
stuffed into his pocket throughout the evening.
Lance keeps his
bills in his hands at all times, facing the same way, twenties on top, followed
by tens, fives, then singles, the largest bills on the inside when the stack is
folded in half.
Duncan’s habits
are an uneven balance between the two, depending on his mood.
Their checks
spread on the table like gambling slips, the ashtray filling quickly, the
servers huddle like gamblers in secret, smoky, back-room bars frequented by
gangsters or cops. "Look at this shit,” George demands, displaying a
credit-card receipt from one of his tables. The bill was $72.48. Written on the
line next to the word tip: $8.00. The total is filled in above the
customer’s flamboyant circular signature.
George and
Duncan’s friendship was cemented early when during their first conversation
(Duncan’s second night at Italia) they discovered their mutual fondness for
sports in general and the Cubs in particular, though neither had grown up in
Chicago, their weakness for (admittedly different) women, and their affection
for the evil weed, as they jokingly called it.
"Cheap
bitch,” George says, looking over his shoulder at the table the woman had been
seated at. Duncan had noticed her: auburn ponytail, red V-neck sweater hanging
loosely displaying her evenly tanned skin, her nose a little too small for her
face, her mouth a little too wide, eyes a dark green he had never seen before. She
had smiled at him, so he will remember her, maybe a week, then she’ll be gone.
"When will
women learn how to fucking tip?" George says.
"Maybe
she thought you gave her lousy service," Duncan says.
"Maybe
she saw you trying to look down her sweater," George accuses.
“You
saw that.” Duncan raises an eyebrow, impressed and embarrassed, not by his
actions, but getting caught.
“My
station. I see all.” They laugh.
Raul
clears the filling ashtrays (one for each waiter) and replaces them with clean
ones. “Gracias,” Duncan says, his
choppy but conversational Spanish, learned in high school and used often enough
to remain functional, serving him well during his time in the restaurant
business, winning him favor with the back-of-the-house staff everywhere he’s
worked. Raul knows Kilee has "tried it twice in high school and a few
times in college;" it being sex with a woman. He knows Lance has a
small tattoo on his right shoulder blade that reads Vince; Bits of gossip
offered by Duncan as a sign of friendship. Raul knows how much money George
spends on cocaine because Raul's cousin is George's source.
"What a lousy
night," George says.
"I’m
not gonna tip-out Brad." George says.
"You
never feel like tipping-out," Lance says, frowning.
"What?
He didn't do shit for me tonight."
Duncan shakes his
head, smirks disapprovingly.
"I'm serious.
What did he do for me tonight? Four lousy beers and two bottles of Pinot. I
could have done that."
"Fine
then. Don't tip him out." Lance says. Lance pulls the cigarette out of his
mouth, throws his head back like a life-sized Pez dispenser and blows smoke
straight up. "Keep the four dollars. By some lottery tickets." Lance
inhales deeply on his cigarette then blows the smoke at George. "Then when
you're rich you'll never have to tip-out anyone ever again."
George stares down
at the ninety-four dollars in his left hand, shaking his head. "Five hours
for this." He holds up the money for Duncan and Lance to examine. They
ignore him and his money.
Raul, reaching
around the servers, fills their glasses of water, smiles at George. "You
had good night, yes?" Raul asks, his accent contributing to his practiced
naïve tone.
"Not
really," George answers, still shaking his head.
"Ju
were vedy bissy."
"Yeah,
I guess so." George shrugs. "What's the point if you're not going to
break a hundred?"
"I
wish to be a waiter." Holding a tray in his left hand he places the
pitcher in the middle then grabs four glasses simultaneously, clacking them
together.
"Why
the hell would you want to be a waiter?"
"So much
money you make." Raul gestures toward the cash with his chin and an
arching of his eyebrows.
During Duncan’s
first week at the restaurant he had laughed at something Raul had told Hernando
in Spanish. “You understand,” Hernando had asked in Spanish.
“Um poco.”
Duncan spoke to
them in his rusty Spanish. They practiced their broken English, each politely
correcting the others’ mistakes, laughing at the unintentional jokes created by
bad usage. Duncan had asked Raul once to
clear the sapo from twenty, causing the busboy to practically blow water
out his nose. He had meant sopa.
Raul arrived in
Chicago directly from Toluca. Though Toluca is by no means small, “it is no
three million people,” he had said, Raul confessed that the only time he feels
comfortable is among the Spanish-speaking residents in his north-side
neighborhood. Even the Americans living nearby speak Spanglish.
Clark
Street, from Devon Avenue north to Touhy, has as many storefronts with signs in
Spanish as English. Duncan and George had taken many late-night excursions
north into Rogers Park for 2:00 a.m. burritos and six-packs of Tecate from the taquerias,
carnicerias, and markets along both sides of the street for almost a
mile selling multi-colored onions and peppers, frijoles, and tortillas packaged
by the dozen.
Throughout the
summer, cars maneuver through the neighborhood at all hours, giant green, red
and white Mexican flags flapping out of passenger windows and rising up through
sunroofs. The music fills the air in
volumes ranging from loud to painful, rattling windows, scraping eardrums and
setting off the occasional car alarm.
Though
hardly gentrified like chunks of Lakeview, Bucktown and especially the
over-priced Wicker Park (where empty lots sell for half-a-million dollars)
Rogers Park has seen more than its share of condo conversions in the recent
year. Every other three-flat and almost every courtyard building has sprouted
10-foot signs proclaiming amenities: granite countertops, 41-inch cabinets,
hardwood floors. In this formally “undesirable” neighborhood 25 year-old women
and Loyola University students in thick-braided ponytails are ogled by small
crowds of Mexican men congregating around one of the liquor stores. 30 year-old
men with MBAs and Jeep strollers now compete with stocky Mexican women, three
or four or even five children, tethered one to the other, swarming around her
carrying bags of groceries and holding their sibling’s hands.
Walking the street
in Rogers Park Raul had said he feels as close to comfortable as he can 1500
miles from home in a country where the best job he can find is as a busboy. As
awful as it is clearing plates with half-eaten food and lipstick-smeared
napkins, unclogging toilets, and hauling bags of garbage for customers and
coworkers who, at best, don't notice you and at worst treat you like an
indentured servant, it still pays ten times more than anything he could find
back home.
Raul picks up the
last of the glasses. Again, Duncan says, “gracias.” Raul kicks the
swinging door open and the sounds of what George calls salsa music, simply
because the lyrics are in Spanish, pour out of the kitchen. Nightly the
line-cooks turn up the volume on the radio after the last customer leaves,
singing often as they hose-off rubber floor mats crusted with spilled sauces
and fallen food. They scrub counter tops and charred grills with harsh soap and
scalding water, speaking quickly, loudly, happily, seemingly indifferent to the
work. Duncan’s expression reveals envy for their Zen-like ability to not equate
their jobs to their self-worth and do in the moment what needs to be done.
They’re all
married, even the one they call Nino who doesn’t look a day over fourteen. While the line-cooks and busboys cram
sometimes half-a-dozen in an apartment for a year or two at a time, their wives
and children wait for the young patriarchs to return, pockets filled with
American dollars.
George
looks at his money again. "Here's to being rich in Mexico," he says. He
holds the money up as if toasting with a glass of champagne. Lance and Duncan
humor him by casually lifting their own money in salute without looking up. Duncan
picks up his pack of cigarettes from the table and finds it empty.
“Did
you take my last smoke?” he asks Lance
Lance
nods, pointing at the cigarette he holds between his lips. In Mexico I would be
rich, Duncan thinks, but in Chicago I’m a waiter with ninety dollars in other
people’s money and no cigarettes.
