You Wait

You sat at the table waiting for me. When the candlelight in front of you blew out from a wayward gust of wind through the window, you weren’t mad. The white overhead lights filled the room enough that the candle of faint scent hadn’t mattered. You were mad that I was late. 

The waiter came over to you for the second time. And he said, “You should-a move, I-a swear. Or at least-a order.” So you stared at him. After processing the fake accent, you looked around. You knew that there was no one to take the table if you left, the only other couple in the restaurant jointly wore so much fur that you could swear they were growling at each other. You looked back at the waiter and asked if he would wait a moment longer. He didn’t even try to look happy as he walked away, peering at you over his shoulder. For a moment you stared at the plastic, silver painted, cutlery and considered leaving. Leaving the stale bread and tangy olive oil. Leaving the whole place and me behind. But you didn’t. Why didn’t you?

You brought the bread from the basket to your plate again. It was almost halfway gone. You took again to breaking the bread apart, leaving snowflakes of wheat to plunge down onto the surface of your plate, decorating it for the holiday season that was so far away. Pushing these threads and crumbs into a pile, you noticed again that mark on the plate. Off-white plate - light yellow mark. If any semblance of desire to finally consummate the union of the bread with your mouth had been around before, it was gone now. And so you pushed the bread together, and apart. And then you spread it, made it into a snowman that resembled me. You stared at it briefly until the head chef came in through the front door smoking an unfiltered cigarette, and the wind snaked inside to break bread me apart. 

You looked over at the couple present. The man dug his fingers into steak cooked very rare and ripped it to shreds, baring his teeth. The woman stuck her fingers down her cocktail, which was green, to retrieve an old cherry from the glass cave. As you watched them you couldn’t help feeling like you should climb a tree, away as far as possible from the two who may wear you on their backs. This trance was broken by the turning on a radio in the kitchen. You listened in:

… back again everyone. So nice to have you. This is the Reno #1 hits station, thank you for being supporters. To all you skanks and hoo-haws, you know where to find me. And this one’s for you.

And so a song started to play. One that your foot couldn’t find the rhythm of, but one that compelled you to keep on trying:

I stole my way back to my mother’s great house

Hoping to make it by Christmas

The sheriff stopped me and brought me to church

He told me all of God’s great wishes:

Penitence, no pestilence, no parricide.

Turned out to be the old man’s weakness

That in thinking he could turn me good

He didn’t realize I’d rather be Gestas. 

The song wasn’t good. The chefs cackled in a way that made you shiver just a bit, and for the first time not just because of the cold creeping in. You anxiously picked at the plate, your eyes making their ways over it and that stain again. You looked another time at the menu, took in the appetizers and mains. None of it sounded good. But they had marinara. The smell of skunk pervaded the restaurant while you weighed your options. When you looked into the mirror hung on the other wall you could see yourself in its cracked edges. In the reflection of its old gold frame even more so maybe, as the smudged mirror lacked the brilliance and charm of the frame which might have been the only thing of value in the restaurant. In its reflections you could see your eyes and the doubt in them. The doubt I would come, the worry I would make us even. But you shoved that doubt down your throat so far that your appetite started creeping in. The lanky waiter made his way back to you and greeted you. His mustache was rustic but splotchy, and the rest of his face appeared poorly shaven. He had lost the tie and over-sized blazer from when you’d first come in, now his white collared shirt just seemed too tight and wrinkled. He reached down and with his bony fingers did a little rattatta on the menu, as if to say, now or get out. 

So you looked at him, and for the first time in the three conversations, your eyes connected. Yours were red on the verge of tears, a sorrow and uncertainty that can only be brought on by things like carpeted kitchens, fake fur coats, and the feeling I had of growing a mustache for a whole summer, just to be told I looked “rat-ish.” His eyes peered back at you, flat. They too were red. Maybe that was because he smelled like skunk. Whatever, you looked down at your menu and ordered the marinara. You did so smilingly, like spitting in his face to say that you really were a customer. And so he giggled and walked away.

You waited and looked out the door, maybe you’d see me. You didn’t. Instead you saw a grandma swing her broom out of her window at a perched cat, and a large truck backing up into the desolate alleyway. The driver had dreams. He had been a fan of Ionesco, Beckett, and wanted to put on productions like theirs. Out of college, he’d tried. Entitled: “Lonely Mister #3” it was a hit with the audiences. The audiences consisted of broke twenty-something year old students. They did not come to his shows often. And so reluctantly, he abandoned the absurd and returned to daily living, which he saw as Sisyphean - more out of a coping mechanism than anything else. The boulder of his job in the shipping industry was delivered by his dad, a used car salesman who he had always scoffed at. And that reality was, instead of long productions and living in Pari’, he was dragging old meat out of his truck and into the restaurant he would never eat at. Never. And you knew all this. Or so you could imagine. 

As he made his way into the kitchen, your eyes followed his hateful gait. He meandered in with spiteful boredom, balancing linked sausages and steaks that had traveled from the cheapest farm in the country. The smell of these meats, and the aspiring playwright, who hadn’t showered in a week because that’s what aspiring artists do, filled the room, finally overtaking the creeping skunk smell from the kitchen. The smell must have reached into the far expanses of the whole place because a rat ran out from under the swinging Wild West style doors that led into the kitchen, and made its way slowly, calmly, out to the front door. It passed the playwright turned realist in the middle of the restaurant floor, right next to your faded table, and the two made eye contact. For a moment, no one made a sound, not the radio, not the chefs, not the meat-man, not the people animals, not the actual animal. Then everything went back to how it was before, and the rat left the front door in search of a grosser restaurant to steal from. You knew it wouldn’t find one, so it would be back.

You returned your gaze to the restaurant, to the maroon carpet floors, to the overhead lighting that cast your shadow onto the table as if daring you to smash your head against it. And then your eyes made their ways to the kitchen, where Reno’s #1 hits station kept playing, and the chefs giggled. Like little schoolgirls they giggled full of joy, and played with each other, dropping your pasta into the dirty pan, leaving out the back door to come back a little more red-eyed, and microwaving the pasta sauce that they had bought at the corner store earlier that week. And your eyes followed from them to the couple, who roared, and gulped, and tossed their food around. On their dirty plates and onto the ratty floor, their food exploded in joy. They were all the predators of this establishment and you decided too early on you were the prey. To whom? To me, I imagine. But I guess I can’t know. 

So when the microwave went off, and your still-cold pasta sauce sat in it, the noise didn’t bother you. You let it merge with the sound of the truck backing up, the man with absurdist dreams, piloting the ship that harmonized with the kitchen. You let it drown away into the sounds of the giggles of high chefs and the sound of the couple laughing together madly in animal love. And you smiled a little bit. You smiled, knowing you would never see me again.