Rubidoux

“Hot food, hot food!”

Meghan peeked at me through the serving window, her red curly hair sticking out through the hair net and her brows furrowed in an irritated expression.

“What’s the matter with you?” she said. “Hot food’s getting cold!”

“Nothing,” I said as I grabbed the hot plates and placed them on a tray. “Got a lot on my mind. You don’t need to holler about it, I got it.”

“Yeah, but you’re slow today, poking around like you’re planting a garden or something.”

“Not slow today,” I said. “We’re just busier than usual.”

Meghan was all bark, no bite. She could be meaner than hell during her shifts, but afterwards she was your best friend. That’s just the way she was. I couldn’t blame her though. She couldn’t afford to lose this job anymore than I could, and we needed those good reviews on Google if we were going to keep the customers coming. It wouldn’t do anybody any good to serve up cold food. When I first started here, before I had gotten to know her, she had made me cry more times than I could remember, and I would take refuge in the walk-in cooler to wipe my tears. But I wasn’t wiping any tears today. After seven years of her barking at me, we were best friends. I hoisted the serving tray up on one shoulder, grabbed a tray stand and headed toward my table.

“Customer on 10 needs a refill,” Amy, another server, said as she passed me on the way to the kitchen. “Diet coke. Make sure it’s diet.” She raised her eyebrows at me, in a quick gesture, as if she too had noticed that I was distracted.

“Thanks,” I said.

At the end of my shift I was sitting down in one of the booths, wrapping silverware. Meghan approached me, put down a diet coke on the table, and huffed loudly as she squeezed herself into the booth. Sometimes, when I heard her huff and puff like that, I wondered how she managed to be on her feet all day long.

“What’s going on Rubidoux?” she said, took a sip of her soda, and stirred the ice with the straw. It made a delicate clinking sound against the edge of the glass.

“Don’t you have to get home?” I said as I folded one edge of the napkin over the other. “To your kids. Do you really have time to sit here and talk to me?”

“Izzy’s home,” she said. “She got it under control, for a few more minutes.”

“Good,” I said. and grabbed another set of silverware to wrap. “How old is she now?”

“Eighteen,” Meghan said. “Can’t believe it.”

She was sipping on the diet coke as she was eyeing me, the bags under her eyes growing larger by the minute. In twenty years, I thought. That will be me. By then I will be just as tired, and just as worn out as she is now.

“Boyfriend trouble?”

I shook my head, and pushed a stray blonde strand of hair out of my face.

“Nah,” I said. “He’s gone. “

“He’s gone,” she said. “And that’s not your trouble?”

“Nope,” I said as I kept folding napkins over the silverware.”He was trouble. He’s gone now. I kicked him out.”

“What for?”

Meghan slurped her soda through the straw, leaned her elbows on the table and let her brown eyes sort of search mine to see if I would spill the beans on my now ex boyfriend. In her mind there was nothing like a little gossip to brighten the day.

“I thought he would help me pay the rent, but…”

I shrugged my shoulders, and looked out the window. It was getting dark outside, and I could see our reflections in the window, like two dark shadows. The light in the restaurant was dim this time of day. Past our reflections I could discern the rugged edges of pine trees that looked like tall, dark, creatures. I almost expected them to come knocking on the glass. Meghan’s weighted stare didn’t leave me; they expected more information on the matter of my ex -boyfriend, but I had no interest in talking about him.

“My agent emailed me today,” I said and turned my gaze to Meghan. “Another rejection. So, I’m just a little disappointed.”

“Oh, honey,” she said and put her hand on mine in a comforting gesture. The rough tips of her fingers were warm, but they did nothing to soothe me.

“I’m sorry. You just need to be patient. Someone will like it.”

“I don’t think it’s that simple,” I said.

“Maybe you need a different agent,” Meghan said.

“Or maybe a different book,” I suggested.

“I still believe in you,” Meghan said and slurped the final soda out of the glass. I almost expected her to get up and get herself a refill, but she didn’t.

“I should have gone to college,” I said. “instead of trying to write a book. "

“So, why didn’t you?”

The weight of Meghan’s stare had lessened significantly. This conversation was, to her, not quite as interesting as some juicy details about an ex-boyfriend. Still, she was kind enough to listen, even though she had listened to the saga of my rejected manuscript many times before.

“Money,” I said. “I didn’t have the money, and…I was a good writer in high school, at least I thought I was. I figured I could just write my way out of here, and here I am…seven years later. ”

I could smell food as two of the other servers, Shana and Jeff, passed by our table on the way to their guests at the other end of the restaurant. Steak-burgers and fries, barbecued pork and coleslaw, the scent tickling my nostrils and making my stomach growl. Maybe I should order something to eat, before I left for the day.

“But you published some things…”

Meghan kept stirring the ice in the glass and I refrained from telling her to stop, although the noise annoyed me.

“I know. Some short stories. But it doesn’t pay the rent. I was hoping for this novel…I worked so hard on it… I should have done something different, been a nurse or something…”

“It’s not too late,” Meghan said.

When I had graduated high school, I had had this idea that I was going to write a book and that the book was going to be my ticket out of here. Not out of town, but out of a state of never having enough money, of having to scramble for tips and worry about the price of eggs. I had spent two years writing this book. Every day off had been spent in front of the computer and during every split shift for the past two years, I had spent the lull between the lunch rush and dinner, typing away on my Bluetooth keyboard that was attached to my phone; all the while my boss Ray, had sneered at me for writing.

“Writing that book again?” he would say as he found excuses to pass by my table, just to make a point. “So when you’re famous, can I tell people I used to know ya?”

He would smile at me with a grin that I couldn’t understand; maybe he thought he was being funny or maybe he was being condescending as if he thought, that I thought, I was better than him, which I didn’t. I just wanted something different in life. You can’t blame a person for wanting something different than being on your feet for eight hours a day, or ten, or more, smiling at people who think they can treat you however they please just because you’re taking their order. People have yelled at me because the butter on their stack of pancakes happened to melt before it reached the table, or because the fried eggs weren’t exactly the type of runny that they liked. Sometimes teens send food back to the chef just for sport ( I think they film it on their cellphones). You can’t blame a person for not wanting to deal with all that. But that’s not what I told my boss.

“Just a hobby,” I would say, as he snickered at me for writing. I didn’t want him to know, just how desperate I was to find a way out of this job.

Of course there were nice guests too. Lots of them. I liked the regulars. They often came in and hung out by the counter sipping coffee, and they didn’t buy much and they didn’t tip much, but they brightened my day with fun conversations. Some of them found their way into my writing, but in some sort of convoluted way, so they wouldn’t be recognized. And then there were the flirty ones who thought I owed them an extra smile if they asked for it, and who tipped a hundred dollars on a twenty dollar order, just to show off. The flirts could be annoying, but the extra tip was always welcome.

The desperation I felt to get out of this job, wasn’t because I hated it, but you don’t have to hate something to wish for something different. I feared what would happen when I wasn’t able to do this job anymore, when the physical strain of being on my feet all day, lifting heavy trays, and dealing with the stress of it all would become too much. I feared I would end up like Meghan, with bad knees and achy joints and no health insurance, at the age of forty five. She didn’t hate her job either and she was good at it. She could plate an order quicker than the blink of an eye, but I could tell by the way she moved that she wouldn’t be able to do this for much longer. That’s not where I wanted to be in twenty years; working here with pain in my knees and no backup plan. So the latest rejection of my book stung like a bee sting, but no amount of hydrocortisone, or sugar cubes or baking soda could take the edge off.

“Maybe it’s time,” I said to Meghan as I finished up the last few wraps of silverware, “to start applying for college. I just need to figure out what I’m going to study.”

“Why don’t you study creative writing,” Meghan said. “I mean, doesn’t that make sense?”

“And write another book I can’t sell?” I said. “Nah, I think I need to figure out something else.”

I was done wrapping the silverware and I pushed the tub of silverware aside.

“I’m going to tell Josh to make me a burger,” I said. “Thanks for sticking around.”

That was Meghan’s cue to leave, and she took it gracefully and squeezed herself out of the booth, using both hands to push herself to standing.

“I tell ya,” she said. “As soon as I sit down, I’m done for.”

I gave her a weak smile.

“Well, I’ll see ya,” she said, and I watched her as she walked towards the door, her purse slung over her shoulder, her back bent from too much stooping over a hot griddle.

I went back to the kitchen to talk to Josh, the other full time chef. He was busy, training someone else, and frying burgers, chicken and steaks on the grill.

“Hey, Rubidoux,” he said. “You need something?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Can I have a burger please? It’s for me. I’m done with my shift.”

“Okay,” he said. “Coming right up.”

The onion crunched between my teeth with a crackling sound, as I bit through my burger. I could feel the meat juice and the condiments spill out of the bun and dribble down my chin. I quickly wiped off the mess with a napkin. I needed to think. It’s hard enough to figure out what to do with your life the first time around, but even harder to figure out what to do when the one thing you really wanted to do, didn’t work out. I tried to envision “the rest of my life” in some kind of career besides writing, but I wasn’t able to. Ruby - the nurse, the firefighter, the business woman, the office associate, the teacher, the medical coder, but nothing I envisioned seemed to stick. Ruby- the life coach? I laughed dryly under my breath. I couldn’t even life coach my own life, never mind anyone else’s. I picked up a fry and distractedly bit it in half. I would need to reallocate all the time I had spent writing to researching other careers. It sounded boring, but it was time to make a change.

I slept well that night. I should have felt sad, but I didn’t. Instead I felt relieved that I had made a decision to take my life in a different direction, a decision that might not be perfect, but that was still better than working at the restaurant for the rest of my life. There was a slight bounce in my steps as I walked into work the next morning.

I was working the breakfast shift, and I was carrying pancakes and eggs to hungry customer and refilling coffee mugs, and glasses of orange juice. It was a busy morning, and I could feel the phone buzz in my pocket. I couldn’t answer it. Talking on the phone during work hours were frowned upon and it was reserved for emergencies only. I ignored it, and soon the phone buzzed again. After 3 consecutive phone calls, I began to worry that it was my mom calling to tell me that my grandmother was sick or something. I sneaked into the walk-in cooler, pretending that I needed to bring out an extra canister of whipping cream for our milkshakes. As I pulled out the phone I saw that I had three missed calls from my agent. She never called. The most contact I had with her were emails telling me that my novel had been rejected by yet another publisher. But never phone calls.

I couldn’t wait to call her, but I had no reception inside the walk-in cooler and I knew I had to wait, until the breakfast rush had calmed somewhat.

By the time the breakfast rush was over, I had a voicemail from her.

“Pick up the phone, dammit,” the message said. “A publisher is interested in your book. Call me!”

I smiled, and I could feel my shoulders slump with relief. The moment I had decided to give up on my writing, was the moment I finally succeeded. How odd!