half-light over the world
I worked very briefly as a coat check in a swanky restaurant in Boston. By briefly I mean less than two weeks. And by swanky I mean $22 cocktails, $30 appetizers, $60 entrees, and deserts that were made to order by a nationally revered pastry chef. My job was simple: I stood there, made topical jokes, made customers feel safe about handing over coats worth as much as cars, and gave them tickets. I had to dress in a three piece suit while at work--and my supervisor (who was actually the front of house manager and supervised basically everything) always had us take off our jackets to show that our shirts were 1) made of genuinely nice fabric and not cheap fabric that had been chemically enhanced to look more luxurious, 2) made correctly, pockets lined correctly, adequate give between cuff and collar and attaching material, 3) dry cleaned and pressed. My supervisor was the type of person the term high anxiety was invented to describe: shaking hands, twitching eyes, rambling word salad when trying to make simple points. She and I did not get along.
One day, during break, I was outside smoking and eating bacon wrapped filet mignon (which the cooks had made "on accident" for me). Juno (pronounced Who Knew) had just bummed a cigarette and was lighting it, and I was mid way through my second bite, when the supervisor came outside looking white like a ghost. I swallowed quickly and said, "something wrong?" She looked at me, opened her mouth like a fish a few times, and then took the cigarette from Juno's hand and started walking down the alley, toward the street.
"The fuck," Juno said.
"I don't know," I said.
A minute later one of the waitresses, Lisa, came out, crying. Quiet, body wrecking sobs. Expensive mascara's run down her face, and she hasn't bothered to put a coat on even though it was spitting snow and cold and she was only wearing the robin's egg blue shirt, thin skirt, matching robin's egg blue stockings, and black mary janes they all had to wear. "Holy shit," she said. "Just holy shit."
"What the hell's going on?" Juno asked.
"Vicky lost her shit and throw a bottle of wine at Marc, and Marc quit, so there's no one up front and there's a line out the front and no one's seating anyone and just holy shit."
"Yeah, we seen Vicky," Juno said.
Nothing else happened. Marc (who did not quit) turned everyone away, and people who were already seated or eating got their food, finished eating, finished their drinks. I dutifully replaced tickets with coats, and when the day was done we pooled and split our tips (10% for coat check, 90% for waitresses). After locking the doors we sat around at the bar. My girlfriend at the time came by with her girlfriend, and we laughed and had a good time. Juno was making dirty mojitos (dark rum and olive oil instead of white rum), and by the time we locked up for the night we were all feeling good. And I remember walking home in the snow with my girlfriend and her girlfriend, and being simply amazed by how much better the city looked under a few inches of unadulterated snow. When we got back to the apartment, my girlfriend and her girlfriend went to bed, and I sat up with an old smith corona portable typewriter on my lap, tapping away until the sun burned off the remaining snow clouds and lit up the city like a halogen bulb. After putting the typewriter away I went to the kitchen and started making coffee. The girlfriend's girlfriend walked out and smiled, and I smiled back. I thought she was going to hug me, that kind of brief, sustained moment of something-about-to-happen, but she didn't. I made two cups of coffee and handed her one, and we walked into the bedroom which doubled as the living room. She crawled under the covers with my girlfriend and they shared the cup of coffee, and I sat on the beaten up recliner, and we watched the News. Near the end of the program there was a report about a woman who hanged herself in her husband's closet. I wasn't surprised when Vicky"s named came on the screen.
And it's one of those things. I don't really remember what Vicky looked like, only that she was always on the verge of exploding into a thousand bits. I remember watching the report on Vicky and having to force myself to pay attention. The room was set up like this: TV against the north wall, bed in the middle, and recliner against the south wall. Throughout the report I found my attention wandering to anything else: the concavity of the girlfriend's girlfriend's collarbones, the pattern of the comforter on the bed, the sounds of them sipping coffee being drastically different, the curling and uncurling of the girlfriend's girlfriend's toes under the comforter, the wheezing cough of the girlfriend as she smoked her first joint of the day, the girlfriend's girlfriend's hair, how it sort of exploded out of her head in different colors, the trail of clothes leading to the bed, sneakers and boots on their sides, stockings like the discarded skin of a shedding snake, two bras hanging from the folding chair that we used to hold the TV, a dress perfectly flat on the floor, jeans and bright yellow socks seemingly taken off at the same time, the sound of the ice on the windows cracking as the sun starts to melt it, the rumbling of the radiator as the heat kicks in. And in the end I lost track of Vicky, of her story, on the news. Because it was something I knew would happen for so long the surprise had killed itself before she even lost her mind the night before.
"How's your head?" asked the girlfriend.
"Fine," I said. "Why?"
One day, during break, I was outside smoking and eating bacon wrapped filet mignon (which the cooks had made "on accident" for me). Juno (pronounced Who Knew) had just bummed a cigarette and was lighting it, and I was mid way through my second bite, when the supervisor came outside looking white like a ghost. I swallowed quickly and said, "something wrong?" She looked at me, opened her mouth like a fish a few times, and then took the cigarette from Juno's hand and started walking down the alley, toward the street.
"The fuck," Juno said.
"I don't know," I said.
A minute later one of the waitresses, Lisa, came out, crying. Quiet, body wrecking sobs. Expensive mascara's run down her face, and she hasn't bothered to put a coat on even though it was spitting snow and cold and she was only wearing the robin's egg blue shirt, thin skirt, matching robin's egg blue stockings, and black mary janes they all had to wear. "Holy shit," she said. "Just holy shit."
"What the hell's going on?" Juno asked.
"Vicky lost her shit and throw a bottle of wine at Marc, and Marc quit, so there's no one up front and there's a line out the front and no one's seating anyone and just holy shit."
"Yeah, we seen Vicky," Juno said.
Nothing else happened. Marc (who did not quit) turned everyone away, and people who were already seated or eating got their food, finished eating, finished their drinks. I dutifully replaced tickets with coats, and when the day was done we pooled and split our tips (10% for coat check, 90% for waitresses). After locking the doors we sat around at the bar. My girlfriend at the time came by with her girlfriend, and we laughed and had a good time. Juno was making dirty mojitos (dark rum and olive oil instead of white rum), and by the time we locked up for the night we were all feeling good. And I remember walking home in the snow with my girlfriend and her girlfriend, and being simply amazed by how much better the city looked under a few inches of unadulterated snow. When we got back to the apartment, my girlfriend and her girlfriend went to bed, and I sat up with an old smith corona portable typewriter on my lap, tapping away until the sun burned off the remaining snow clouds and lit up the city like a halogen bulb. After putting the typewriter away I went to the kitchen and started making coffee. The girlfriend's girlfriend walked out and smiled, and I smiled back. I thought she was going to hug me, that kind of brief, sustained moment of something-about-to-happen, but she didn't. I made two cups of coffee and handed her one, and we walked into the bedroom which doubled as the living room. She crawled under the covers with my girlfriend and they shared the cup of coffee, and I sat on the beaten up recliner, and we watched the News. Near the end of the program there was a report about a woman who hanged herself in her husband's closet. I wasn't surprised when Vicky"s named came on the screen.
And it's one of those things. I don't really remember what Vicky looked like, only that she was always on the verge of exploding into a thousand bits. I remember watching the report on Vicky and having to force myself to pay attention. The room was set up like this: TV against the north wall, bed in the middle, and recliner against the south wall. Throughout the report I found my attention wandering to anything else: the concavity of the girlfriend's girlfriend's collarbones, the pattern of the comforter on the bed, the sounds of them sipping coffee being drastically different, the curling and uncurling of the girlfriend's girlfriend's toes under the comforter, the wheezing cough of the girlfriend as she smoked her first joint of the day, the girlfriend's girlfriend's hair, how it sort of exploded out of her head in different colors, the trail of clothes leading to the bed, sneakers and boots on their sides, stockings like the discarded skin of a shedding snake, two bras hanging from the folding chair that we used to hold the TV, a dress perfectly flat on the floor, jeans and bright yellow socks seemingly taken off at the same time, the sound of the ice on the windows cracking as the sun starts to melt it, the rumbling of the radiator as the heat kicks in. And in the end I lost track of Vicky, of her story, on the news. Because it was something I knew would happen for so long the surprise had killed itself before she even lost her mind the night before.
"How's your head?" asked the girlfriend.
"Fine," I said. "Why?"