The table of fifteen well-to-do French women all turned to look at me with cool, unblinking stares, the table strewn with empty wine glasses and crumpled napkins, remnants of a three and a half hour feast.
“We’d like to put this on 13 different cards,” one of them told me in clipped French, as she handed me the bill.
“Split thirteen ways?” I asked.
“Non, split individually.”
My fellow servers and manager at La Maison are watching the exchange with pained looks on their faces. The table is the last in the restaurant, it is a Friday night, and we cannot complete any further side-work until the table has left.
A half hour later, with the help of Marc, my manager, the tab has been settled (two women have attempted to pay by check) and the wives of the French Consulate sail out into the night. As they kiss each other’s cheeks and wave manicured hands goodbye, I scramble to count out my cash once more and swipe forgotten spoons and forks and emptied bowls of chocolate mousse off the long table.
This, my long-abandoned readers, is where I have been.
Almost four months! Four months since I have been here, a fact that I’m shocked and ashamed to be typing. Four months is a nice chunk of time for a lot of things; a full semester of school, a “serious” teenage relationship, and according to Yahoo Answers, twice the lifespan of the coral reef pygmy gobi fish, to name a few. For me, it was just enough time get a little too familiar with midnight bus rides home from the Shipyard and midnight mopping sessions at La Maison.
Well, I’m back, bitches, and I apologize, from the very bottom of my customer-servicey heart.
Business at La Maison has been hit or miss lately, mostly due to the hit or miss Boston weathercasts that have been denying our fair city any sign of summer sunshine. A few weeks ago however, things were moving along quite nicely, and we were seeing a full house by 6:30 p.m. most weekends.
One such night, I had a full section, and was in a pleasantly stressful place, keeping up with my customers and staying focused. The kitchen was on fire that night, things were running somewhat smoothly, and I recognized a table of regulars being sat at my corner table. They’re nice enough folks, and good tippers, but the world’s slowest talkers, and by default, decision-makers, so I give my specials spiel nice and quick and flit off to bring a bottle of wine to another table.
When I return, my book open and my pen at the ready, the three of them look up at me like a trio of turtles and smile apologetically.
“Well, we just...can’t decide…on one thing,” the man in the group, a stunning Truman Capote sound-a-like, says.
I play along and help inch their decision on drinks and appetizers forward, when I happen to catch a glimpse of my left ring finger, clutching the bottom of my book. It’s covered in blood.
The table doesn’t seem to notice, and I quietly panic, unable to remember slicing myself in the last ten minutes. I take a mental stock of my clothes, apron and notepad; no blood. Now I am stuck at the table, my drink orders for other tables are piling up somewhere at the bar, and Capote and friends haven’t made a choice of wine yet.
After what seems like an eternity, they decide on a simple carafe of house red. I dash to the computers, slam in the order, and turn desperately to another server, Ivan. I examine the cut; a clean, deep gash running the length of the pad of my finger.
“Can you run my drinks for me real quick?” I ask. His face is intently focused on the screen and he doesn’t look up, occupied with his own tables.
“I can’t,” he replies. “I’m sorry, I’m really busy—”
“Ivan!” I say abruptly and hold up my finger, which is now throbbing.
“Oh my god! Go, go, go!” he says, eyes wide as he takes in the blood, shooing me toward the back. “I got the drinks!”
I rifle through the First Aid kit tacked on the wall; nothing. I search out my manager Louis, a suave Frenchman working the host stand at the front of the restaurant. I explain the situation and hold out my finger, at which point he gives a small giggle and leads me to the office by my bleeding digit, fake lunging at members of the staff on the way.
We soon discover that there is not one Band-Aid, or anything similar, in the entire establishment. Finally, one of the cooks, Jose, a four-foot South American with diamond studs in each of his ears, shouts, “I know! I got it!” before running downstairs to his locker. He resurfaces with a large roll of gauze.
Louis giggles again and begins attempting to wrap my finger in gauze in the stairwell, without any way to fasten it. I can practically feel my tables fidgeting on the other side of the kitchen doors. “Wait! I ‘ave it!” he says suddenly, leaving me holding the tiny piece of surgical wrapping in place. He returns with a roll of masking tape.
Two minutes later I am back on the floor, with a ridiculously bulbous ring finger as I continue to tend to my tables. A few diners eye it curiously, but no one comments.
When it’s all over, we make good money—enough to buy a brand-new box of Band-Aids, which never leaves the pocket of my purse.
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