What do we owe the ones we love?
Undying loyalty? The best of our ability? The warmest comfort in our arsenal? An even half of our property? It’s one of those questions we all think we know the answer to but the responses we come up with are just our best idea of romantic sentiment, what we’d hope to say if we were accidentally thrown into a Hugh Grant movie; pretty but with no real thought behind the implications.
It’s 7.40 pm when she checks in at reception.
Immediately you can see that this sharply dressed young lady is nerve-wrecked and honestly, long as my day’s been, I’m silently praying that she’s not placed in my section but of course it’s my luck that that ass-turd, Stevie, is on duty tonight and he hates my guts cos of a stupid impression of him he caught me doing out back a couple weeks ago.
“Waiter!” the douchebag signals at me, acting too cool to just use my name. “You will see to this madam’s needs this evening.”
Her “needs”? I’m tempted to ask but I bow silently and escort the distracted lady over to the delicately lit table 08, closest to the bar but 2nd furthest from the kitchen; she’s a small lady, probably won’t be too many trips back and forth. Fuckin Stevie, that grinning asshole.
“Good evening, madam, welcome to our humble bistro” I recite obediently, “I’ll be your waiter this evening and-”
“-you’ll see to my needs?” she quips, laughing nervously as she slides into the velvet cushioned seats.
Yay, a fun one! “Aw that’s just our manager trying to sound sophisticated,” I smile back, handing her the wine list. “Can I start you off with something to drink?”
She skims through then hands it back saying, “Just give me the strongest thing you’ve got.”
“Sadly we only serve hard liquor at the bar.”
She looks up at me desperately and seeing her for the first time in full light, I’m a little taken aback that I hadn’t noticed how pretty she was before. “Please… do the best you can for me,” then staring at the empty seat opposite her she adds, “I’m going to need something strong.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” that’s the best I can come up with, silently hoping Christina’s started her shift at the bar. She’s a lot easier to deal with than Leon, that other fudge-bucket. As I lay down the menu and upturn the soup bowls, it occurs to me that I should put a little more effort into getting along with the rest of the staff but then I look up and catch a glance of that ape Stevie, picking his teeth with one of the takeout menus at reception and the self-satisfied smugness on his face just makes me wanna punch the sense out of him-
The lady’s hand grips mine suddenly but when I turn to her, she’s flushed and her gaze is locked on reception, a large gentleman in an undersized coat being pointed in our direction. She’s so still it’s like she’s not breathing for a second then her grip loosens as her awareness returns.
Acting completely nonchalant, I excuse myself saying, “I’ll go see about that drink.”
She smiles eternal gratitude my way, standing up to meet her gigantic date’s bearhug; for a moment it looks very much like he’s swallowed her before she re-emerges, uneaten.
“Babe,” the date rumbles with a surprisingly gentle look in his eyes.
“Do you want something to drink?” she signals at me to hold on.
“Yes, do you have Novida Pineapple?” he asks me humbly.
“What?” she asks but that’s exactly what I’m thinking too. How can this dude who’s gotta be 6 ft 4 at the very least, this bouncer-looking American football type guy, how can HE drink Novida?
But that’s not an answer I’ll get tonight for his attention returns to his date. “Babe,” he repeats, now a tinge of desperation in his voice.
“Guy,” she responds and I head to the bar wondering if that’s actually the dude’s name or is she that unimaginative with her pet names? I’m barely through the swinging doors and can already see Leon’s dreadlocks waving around behind the bar… goddammit! I can’t catch a break tonight! Just gotta play it cool and hope he’s too distracted.
“Hey, brother, can I get a Novida and a Jack Daniels and coke pronto and make sure it’s Novida pineapple not that lemon hit rubbish,” I’m proud of myself for throwing in the “brother” bit; sounded authentic enough.
But Judge Dread’s onto me, popping, pouring and extending me the Novida in a split second then crossing his arms, “No hard liquor at tables. You know this.”
“Yeah of course man but Stevie’s given me the exception for this one-”
“Is policy,” Leon reaffirms, turning away from me like he’s “done”.
“Hey man you can call reception and ask Stevie,” I bluff.
“I call him,” he threatens, reaching for the phone.
Shit.
“Why are you even still here, man? Isn’t your shift over?”
“I call him now,” the bartender insists, staring me down but I cant back out now. “Is ringing.”
“Isn’t Christina supposed to be on? Where is she anyways?”
“Right here,” the angel of mercy swoops in patting my shoulder, then ducks into the bar area, shucking off her boyfriend’s coat and slipping on her apron.
“Jack and coke,” I smile triumphantly at Dread-head but he’s already dropped the phone and shifted into off-duty mode.
Pouring my drink, Christina shakes her head at me, “Why do you keep sticking your neck out for people who don’t care if you lose your job?”
“Hey,” I puff myself up, “some things are BIGGER than this job.”
“Yeah right,” Christina laughs after me as I back out through the swinging doors into the dining area, “I bet she’s pretty!”
Her bet’s pretty spot on; too bad my charge has also got this gentle, Novida drinking giant of a boyfriend who when I get back to their table, is cooking up in his fancy coat and hunched forward like he’s preparing to dive onto his date.
I’ve barely placed the drinks on the table when he does just that!
“I miss you!” he erupts, engulfing her hand in his ginormous palm. “I do… I’ve been bursting to tell you.”
“Guy,” the lady avoids his gaze and takes a generous hit of her drink.
“Babe, it’s me,” he pleads, “this is ‘us’, I mean… what the hell?
“What the hell what?” she snaps suddenly and the giant shirks back a little.
“I mean, what are we doing? I love you,” he presses on. “You know that.”
She relents somewhat, sighing in response. “I know, Guy.”
“And you love me too, I know you do, you love me,” okay, the giant’s getting a little cocky now, I think.
But she nods; she actually nods and seems to surrender… then catches herself. “But love… love is just an idea, Guy, it’s not tangible; it’s not measurable and it’s not dependable.”
“Don’t give me that, babe, that’s not you,” he shakes his head. “You don’t believe that anymore than you believe in… in the moon landing!”
“That happened Guy!” she laughs, easing the tension, “You need to get over that.”
“Whatever,” he laughs with her, sipping his Novida (through a straw!), “I know you just say that to fuck with me. We both know that shit was staged.”
Moon landing? What the hell are you talking about the moon landing for? Get the straw out of your mouth you big truck and get back to the juicy stuff! I’m stewing in the shadows, shamelessly eavesdropping; hey, this job is exhausting and the pay is almost insulting. I gotta cash in on the perks wherever I can get ‘em.
She unclasps her hand and buries her head in the menu, remembering I’m there. “I don’t know what I want to eat.”
“Honestly, babe,” he chuckles wide-eyed, “I don’t know what half the stuff on here even is!”
“You picked this restaurant,” she sounds more guilt-ridden than accusing.
“I remembered you always saying how you loved the icecream here when your dad took you out after your grad…”
That visibly scores him points but he’s too busy trying to decipher the menu to notice the look of adoration on her face and I can barely contain myself, mentally willing the stupid bear to look up!
“How about the number 14?” I offer. “It’s a house favorite.”
“Mmm, bacon bits… mushroom cream sauce… comes with fries?”
“Can I have mine with rice instead?” the giant seems to be asking her permission.
“No 14 with rice,” I dictate to myself. “And for the madam?”
“Do you have a salad with maybe bits of chicken and bacon-”
“-and some beef maybe?” he laughs, handing me his menu. “A beef salad perhaps?”
Now they’re both laughing it up; clearly some private joke cos I’ve totally missed it. I hate private jokes and especially hate having to wait for the laughter to die down so I can get their actual order. I’m just counting the seconds off my clock.
“So… the Mediterranean chicken salad?” I suggest.
“Mmm… that sounds good,” she decides at last, surrendering her menu. “I’ll have that.”
“Any starters?” I inquire.
“No starters!” they reply in unison, then start giggling again. Brilliant! Another inside joke!
“Perfect choices then,” I gather up the soup bowls. “It’ll be about 15 minutes' wait for your main course.”
“No garlic!” he remembers as I walk off.
“Excuse me?”
“In the salad; don’t put any garlic,” the giant finally slides his gigantic coat off and hangs it over the back of his seat. “She doesn’t like garlic.”
I don’t even need to look over at her to feel the rays of admiration pouring out of her in the giant’s direction and truth be told, I’m kinda happy for him. As I weave my way through the maze of mostly unoccupied tables, I wonder how long they’ve been together. She looks about 23 or 24 and he’s probably 30 so I’m ruling out high school sweet hearts. As I slam my order on the counter and whiz off to the bar, my guess is they met when she was on campus, he’s maybe one of her older brother’s friends, they got to talking at a kasiiki, had a dance or two and hit it off.
“Kwanjula,” Christina weighs in. “The guy who’s drinking a Novida, right? No way he’d go to a kasiiki if he’s drinking a Novida!”
“Good call,” I concede. “So they’ve been together maybe 18 months, 2 years or so.”
“What does she do?” Christina multitasks, handing off some halfdrunk guy’s advances at the other end of the bar. “No, sir, I don’t LIVE at this bar.”
“So where DO you live?” the drunko thinks he’s being slick.
“At home,” Christina finishes him off, sliding his drink in front of him with an amused grin, “Enjoy your drink, sir.”
“I don’t yet know what she does,” I continue when she works her way back to my end of the bar, “but if I had to guess from the way she’s dressed, probably a bank?”
“Heels or no heels?” Christina inquires.
“Ummm, fuck if I know… What’s the difference?”
“Check when you get back… bank chicks don’t wear heels unless they’re in corporate and 23’s too young for corporate.”
“Damn, you’re really good at this.”
“Leave it to the pros,” she poses.
“Sure thing,” I smile deviously, “and I’ll leave you to that too.”
“Bartender…” the drunk at the other end of the bar calls out. “Bartender, come and say hello to me.”
Christina rolls her eyes at me but we all know it’s just part of the job as is the guessing game… hey, whatever it takes to knock those hours off the clock. Back through the swinging doors, I have to wait only a minute and my order’s up. Just 3 plates which is a relief cos that means it’ll only be one trip; it took me a bit longer than everyone in the training but I finally mastered the 4-plate hold: one in the palm, one on the forearm and one at the elbow joint, the fourth in your other hand. It’s not really a skill you can apply to any other part of your life but it’s invaluable in the culinary industry.
Things are heating up back at table 08.
“Stuff?” the giant’s growling across the table. “Stuff?”
“It’s not just ‘stuff’, Guy!” she’s on the defensive. “You don’t even have a flat iron!”
“Hey you were there when that iron blew so don’t act like you don’t know the inside story.”
“It’s not just the iron,” she rolls on, “A car. You don’t have a car.”
“You hate cars more than I do… The traffic!”
“Furniture,” she fires.
“Makes the place too crowded!”
“A kettle…a… a broom… A spare towel, spare toothbrush-”
“It’s not a hotel!”
“Curtains! A dustbin! A toilet seat…” she lowers her voice, suddenly aware she’s in a restaurant again. “You don’t have a *seat on your toilet*… How many times do I have to fall in before you get a toilet seat?”
“What are you doing going to the bathroom in the dark?”
“There’s no lightbulb in your bathroom, Guy!” she erupts again.
This seems as good a time as any to slip their orders onto the table for the giant’s clearly stumped at this point. I have to be careful not to make eye contact with him in this very lowest of low moments for him; just lay the plates on the table and retreat to the shadows, that’s all I have to do but like a car pile up on Masaka Road, no matter how gruesome, I can’t help but sneak a glance at him.
This guy is shattered; at first I think he’s as appalled as I am by the length of that list of missing household items (even I have a spare toothbrush, dude) but when he speaks, broken and absent, it’s clear that his disbelief has a more contemplative origin.
“But… but… it’s just… stuff, babe… It’s things!” He tries to meet her eyeline but he can’t catch it. “What we have, what we are is more than ‘things’… isn’t it? I mean I can GET things, if that’s what you really need, I can go out there and get things… but this… you and me… THIS isn’t out there on the shelf of some supermarket or furniture shop.”
He reaches for her hand, not roughly but firm. “They don’t sell THIS anywhere. I love you.”
But she’s not giving in. “It’s not that you don’t have those things, Guy; it’s that you won’t ever care about them.”
“I care about YOU!” Is that frustration in his voice? Clearly he senses it too and backs down. “You’ve never cared about that stuff. I don’t believe that’s what this is all about.”
“I didn’t care maybe when we met and I was still in 3rd year. I ignored it when I was interning and didn’t bring it up when I got the job at Samsung but it’s because I believed at some point you’d wake up and…”
“And what?” he’s almost venomous now.
“And grow up! C’mon, Guy! You still work for your father who doesn’t even pay you an actual salary-”
“I make more than most guys I know!”
“-and spend it on cartoons!”
“Manga! And don’t act like you don’t watch Bleach with me!”
“You still wear jean shorts to work. I mean, you only have a single pair of dress shoes, black pants, maybe 2 dress shirts you only wear a couple of times a year…”
“I get it, stuff, stuff, STUFF! Everything’s about stuff!” seems the giant’s hit his quota too. “When did you get like this?”
“When I grew up.”
“Ah, so this is grown up. You think cos you have your own business cards, a business line and… all that other shit… you think that makes you more important than me?”
“Who’s said anything about being important?”
“You’re BREAKING UP WITH ME! That means you’ve made yourself more important than what we have and I know you don’t believe any of this crap. It’s your family talking, not you.”
“It’s not my family-”
“Babe, I know you… I KNOW you… I’ve known you a long time and I know everything about you, things no one else knows, things no one else sees… And I know them… I know your family and I understand why they don’t like me… They don’t think I deserve you and the truth is they’re right cos you ARE amazing and you deserve someone amazing but I can try… I mean, I’m trying, maybe not as hard as I should be but please don’t take this for granted.”
“I’m not taking anything…” she’s fighting tears back now. “You think this is easy?”
“I know it’s not and that’s cos you know what I’m saying is the truth!” the giant’s voice is angry and scared and tender and deep at the same time. “Babe listen… listen: people, most of them, they don’t ever get to feel like this about another person and even fewer still get to feel this way about someone who feels the same way about them… I won’t ever feel this way about another person… Ever again… This is it for me… You’re it… You’re who I wanna better myself for and build my world around and try harder for and I promise I’ll try harder to be all those things you once believed I could be… Just please… Please, don’t shut me out…Don’t let it end like this.”
Shit.
This guy’s gone all out; I know I shouldn’t be here but they can’t see me in the shadows and honestly, I can’t bring myself to leave. Not with the decks stacked so high; man I wish Christina was here to bet on this with me right now. Maybe I can run to the bar and back- no… Text! But what to text? Where do I even begin? I mean, this guy just laid it all out over his rapidly cooling Fungi Chicken with fried potatoes and bacon bits, poured his fucking heart out and she hasn’t said a thing, hasn’t moved a finger, the tears just streaming down her face without any real destination, her gaze as unfocused and uncertain as her feelings in this moment and the cards in front of her so uncomfortably daunting they’re practically tangible and it all hangs on her final answer. She’s at this point where she’s gotta choose between who she hoped she’d be and what she feels she can stay-
“Is that a mobile phone?” Fuck! Stevie's snuck up on me from reception!
“What? Oh, it was an emergency,” I try and cover up, carefully shifting the watchdog away from the consciousness of the drama playing out at table 08.
“You know the policy,” Stevie’s relishing this. “That’s going to be another 15,000 shs out of your pay.”
“Dammit, Stevie, I had a family emergency!”
“Well I hope your family will be able to reimburse that 15,000 shs and you shouldn’t hover around the customers like that. It’s creepy.”
“You’d know, wouldn’t you?” I mutter under my breath, trying to make out what’s happening at table 08 but the giant’s gotten up. Did I miss it? What did she say? Where's he going? The bathroom- what the hell? He's heading towards- us.
“You have a pen and paper?” he rumbles looking through me for there’s no one behind his eyes, just the 6 ft 4 frame of a man that used to be.
“This way, sir,” Stevie busy-bodies, ushering the incredible hulk to reception, “and I hope you’re enjoying your delicacy this evening.”
Stevie, that douche.
The giant scribbles something down, something brief, and then without a glance back on pain of turning into a pillar of salt, that gentle Novida drinking bear shuffles himself out into the cold night, a shadow of the hopeful, ill-fitting coat wearing hulk that bounced in a half hour ago. Stevie snaps his fingers, summoning me to reception and hands me the folded note to deliver to the customer at table 08, the tiny women awkwardly coiled into herself, staring into the candle burning away at her table.
Never before has my section of this restaurant seemed so far from reception but I know I’m carrying in my hands, in that tiny folded note on our restaurant’s elegantly designed letterhead, I’m carrying not only the broken pieces of a man’s life, but the instrument to shatter another’s.
“I’m sorry, madam, but it appears your date has left.” She doesn't seem surprised, if anything relieved. “He asked me to deliver this to you.”
I hand her the note and retreat to the shadows, endlessly curious as to its contents but even as morally depraved as I am, I recognise that this moment has nothing to do with my curiosity.
She stares at the note for what feels like 5 or 6 minutes yet I’m sure the giant couldn’t have scribbled more than a line or 2. It’s strange cos I was expecting some sort of reaction from her after all that’s gone before; is it sinister of me to be… disappointed?
But then she lets loose.
It’s a shrill yelp into the night, like a dog that’s been backed into on accident while backing the Ipsum out of the garage, then she just seems to collapse into herself and sob without any actual tears flowing. It really is one of the strangest sights I’ve ever seen; at first I’m thinking the best thing is to leave her alone to just let it out but she goes on like this for 10, 15 minutes and no matter how much Stevie tries to assuage her, she’s seemingly beyond coherence and we literally end up having to call a special hire to get her home. I’ve had a lot of dramatic shifts at our restaurant but tonight’s has got to be up there!
It’s only when I’m clearing the untouched plates another 20 minutes later that I stumble upon that folded piece of paper, the note that sent that pretty young go-getter into an almost comatose state of shock, the note with our elegant letterhead at the top and beneath it in the handwriting of a ghost, one single line:
“Had I the heavens embroidered cloths... Love Always.”
Wait, what cloths?
Dammit!
I really hate inside jokes.
