Page 11 of Yield to Me

Chapter 6

I applied dark gold shadow to the corners of my eye. It might have been too much for an evening shift at Chez Tonton, but it had been over a week since I had seen Owen, and I had a feeling I would see him tonight. I didn’t usually put this much care into my makeup for work; most days, it was black eyeliner and mascara, blush if I wanted to do a little extra. But with the uniform from the restaurant—button up shirt, a beige vest, black slacks—I wanted to dress up more, especially if there was a chance I’d see Owen.

Black and white photographs laid on the bed behind me. A shirtless man with a black eye lying on a couch in the dungeon at Surrender, watching a couple out of frame. A woman standing on the corner of Broadway and Columbus, her makeup wet but not running, staring at the lens. Michael looking at me, while I stirred a tumbler of melting ice. All of the photographs were part of the copycat project. After a lot of fuss, I had drawn Nan Goldin. It was perfect; candid portraiture and sexual themes. I immediately thought of Surrender, found Owen’s contact information and asked if I could get permission from the visitors at his club to photograph them. He told me that many of the members were private, and would be resistant to an outsider. Most declined the offer, even Owen. But he offered to introduce me to some couples that would be more receptive to the idea, some of the more exhibitionist type, and they had agreed.

Owen had scheduled the photographs to be taken during daylight hours when the club was closed, so as to have the most privacy possible. A triad met us at Surrender, and two of them played while the other watched, sitting on the couch next to them. By the time I was halfway through photographing the couple, I had almost forgotten Owen was there. He stood off to the side. An hour into the photoshoot, I caught him staring and I blushed. I wondered why he thought it was more interesting to watch me work than to watch the couple play, and my arms were suddenly stiff after that. I rolled the hair out of my face, wanting to appear as my most confident self because I knew he was watching me now, and it felt like I was performing for him. And after a while, I forgot about him again, absorbed in the best way to capture the mood of the scene playing out in front of me. After the triad had gone upstairs, Owen stepped closer, told me how much he enjoyed seeing me in my element. His mouth was smooth, and his eyes stared down at me like he could see through me, into my core, knowing everything that I wanted and wished I could say. The distance between us was palpable, I felt like I could taste it, and I parted my lips in anticipation, begging him silently to kiss me again, feeling it in my stomach, but he didn’t. I wondered if it was because of the close proximity of the others.

I straightened my vest, looking at myself in the mirror. I didn’t know why I wanted to impress Owen so much. I don’t like him like that, I told myself, Even if his kiss made me ache for him. I honestly wanted to make a good impression, to make up for any awkwardness from the first two times we met. And the only reason why I looked up his dating preferences online was to see if he had a girlfriend I could photograph, At least that’s what I tried to convince myself. But the tabloids had said that he had been single for several years, though the message boards stated that he slept around, which didn’t surprise me, with the way he talked about his sexual preferences that night in the dungeon. But the disappointment I felt when he didn’t kiss me after the photo shoot was because I couldn’t photograph him. It didn’t matter that he was single and had told me no anyway. It was purely selfish, an artistic interest.

And there was another lie I told myself: the disappointment had nothing to do with him.

Chez Tonton was in full swing by the time I got there. I worked the late night shift, which meant the end of the dinner crowd and the beginning of the business types that did their best deals at night, over copious amounts of wine. At the server station, I clocked in and took over half of the tables in Salle à Diner, the dining room. There were only four servers on the clock at any given time and a limited amount of tables, hence the extremely competitive nature of getting a serving position there.

Right before ten, two hours into my shift, the hostess seated a group of four in my section. I waited a few minutes before approaching them, and suddenly I was nervous, like I knew something was coming. I wondered if it was Owen. I wanted to thank him for getting me the interview, but I told myself I would pretend not to know him unless he initiated familiar conversation. I didn’t know how private he liked to be.

As I got closer to the table, one of them, a man, caught my eye. I saw blond hair and an angular jaw poking out of a blazer slightly too big hanging off of the man’s shoulders, then those familiar plump lips. I smiled at Michael, but he was looking at the woman next to him. Her A-line haircut was perfectly arranged, with a nose that turned up at the end like a ski jump, and blue-gray eyes, duller than Michael’s, but pretty enough. The woman noticed me staring and wrinkled her nose. Michael followed her gaze and met eyes with me. He did not return the smile.

“Bonsoir, I’m Riley, and I’ll be taking care of you tonight. What can I—”

“A bottle of your finest,” Michael said. I forced my jaw closed, then forced an equally fake smile. It was not a big deal that Michael had cut me off mid-sentence; many of the customers at Chez Tonton thought themselves too grandiose for proper manners. I didn’t feel like going through the whole explanation of our wines. He ought to know our selection if he was demanding the best.

“Red or white?” I simply asked.

The woman next to Michael looked at me like I was stupid, her jaw hanging open. Michael put his arm around the woman and the man across from him chuckled.

“Red.”

I hurried back to the wine cellar. I wondered why I was surprised that Michael pretended not to know me. After the class had drawn photographers from the list, I had refused yet another date offer with Michael, explaining that I wanted to be friends. You’re not a friend; you’re a user and a tease, Michael had said hotly before walking away. I hadn’t thought much of it at first; Michael occasionally had a bad attitude, especially when he had been drinking, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if it was part of how he flirted sometimes. But now I knew something had changed him.

I flipped through the guide by the door and settled on the Pastourelle De Clerc Milon Pauillac. I didn’t know about his financial situation, but I knew he didn’t want to buy the two thousand dollar bottle of wine; the five hundred dollar bottle was the next best choice. I brought it back to the table, and as I felt my pants pocket, I realized I didn’t have my corkscrew. I had forgotten it while putting on makeup.

“Aren’t you going to open it for us?” the woman asked.

“Excuse me for a minute,” I said.

As I walked away, I heard one of them say, “I bet she’s new.” My face grew hot with angry embarrassment. I found an extra corkscrew, and after two deep breaths, I walked back slowly to the table. I presented the bottle to Michael, removed the cork, poured him a taste. He swished it around, sipped it, then kissed the woman next to him on the lips. When their lips broke apart, he looked at me and rolled his eyes.

“What do you want now?” he asked.

The heat came rushing to my cheeks again. I had been waiting for his approval of the wine, but he obviously knew that and wanted to mess with me. “I’ll be back in a minute to take your orders,” I said coolly.

Throughout the dinner, they took their time. The other couple with them referred to me as ‘the help,’ though at one point, I overheard Michael use my name.

“How do you know her?” asked the ski jump nose.

“She said it at the beginning.”

Michael clearly wanted nothing to do with me, though a truthful explanation of Oh, she’s a student of mine or I’ve seen her at the gallery, would have been easy enough to accept and dismiss as No One Special. Make up your damn mind, I thought to myself. Did it bother me that he practically begged me to date him one afternoon, then pretended like I was scum on the bottom of his shoe the next day? It infuriated me. I didn’t know what I would say to him at our next class if I said anything at all, but it wasn’t going to be pretty.

When I came by to clear their dessert plates, the ski jump nosed woman spilled her glass of wine all over the tablecloth, the carpet, and me. “Oopsy,” she said, watching down the sides of her nose as I got on my hands and knees to soak as much of the red liquid out of the carpet as possible. “Silly me,” she said. Luckily, the wine was only on my button up shirt, and I knew I could find an extra in the back. But with all of those small interactions, it seemed to set the tone for my entire shift; each of my parties seemed unhappy with my service.

“It happens to all of us,” a coworker said sympathetically. “My day was yesterday.”

Lucky me, I thought.

“Men don’t know what they want,” Regina said. Her glass of wine tilted at a dangerous angle, making me cringe at the thought of cleaning up even more wine that evening. I didn’t know why my mother was wide awake at one a.m.; she was usually fast asleep in a drunken haze by now. “This Michael fellow might be trying to impress you. Is that what it is? He wants you to think he belongs to that crowd. Like he has money.”

“How is that supposed to be impressive?” I asked.

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