Page 9 of Falling Backwards
Trusting her with that stuff had turned out to be a mistake I won’t make a second time.It’s not her business and not something I want tomakeher business.
Besides, no, it’s neither here nor there with us these days.
Thinking about her and my dad at once brings back how my current day with her started.I tried to go back to sleep after he called since I didn’t have to work until later, but I couldn’t.I stayed in a bleary mood up until it was time for the distraction of my job, to which I was late because a cop pulled me over for my more-pause-than-stop at a stop sign.And when I finally got clocked in, Maggie overheard me telling the assistant manager why I was late, so after Ronald walked away, she took the first opportunity to quietly mock me for not knowing the difference between stopping and yielding.
I hissed back at her, “I know what a fucking stop sign means.”
“Are you sure?”she countered.“Seems like if you do, you would’ve stopped at that one.”
That led to a short argument.She’s been a rule follower for as long as I’ve known her, and it didn’t always irritate me, but it does these days.There’s no way she obeys every traffic law to a T—there’s just no way.I refused to believe it.
Her response was that no one is perfect but that she tries hard to drive as carefully and respectfully as she can.And to be honest, I was more than ready to grill her about it, but then I remembered how she got the scars on her eyebrow and neck: she was in a close call of a wreck in the tenth grade.And…well, that’s why the argument was short.I let it fizzle because being cruel about an experience like that would’ve been heartless—even towards her—and that ain’t me.
I may have ended up flat-out telling my dad to go fuck himself this morning, but my apple fell far from the rotten half of the Bramhill family tree.
Anyway, for about an hour after that tussle, work was okay.Then the place got wild by Lucent standards, which doesn’t normally happen in a reservations-only restaurant.
It wasn’t fun.
It’s one thing to have a full book for the day, and it’s something else to have three big parties basically happening on top of each other, involving rich people using their celebrations as an excuse to get drunk and loud.
I’m not even quite sure how that happened.We’ve never accommodated so many gatherings so close togetherbecausewe don’t want anything to get out of hand.But both hostesses working at the time said they didn’t handle those reservations, so either it was the new girl who was off today or someone was lying to cover their ass.And since one of tonight’s two hostesses was Maggie, that narrows it down further, because I honestly believeshedidn’t do it.She hasn’t had her job as long as I’ve had mine, but she still knows it backwards and forwards and she respects the general rules too much to let something like that slip through the cracks.
So whoever did let it slip through really slammed us.The reservations had to be honored and Mr.Polk, the owner-slash-manager, is out of town until tomorrow and wasn’t around to keep things under control.The assistant manager is somewhere between a pushover and a douchebag, so unlike the big boss, he doesn’t often side with us employees or force customers to rein in their behavior.We all—even Maggie and the other hostess—were left wide open to the entitled attitudes that came with the boozy groups today.
To illustrate some of how it went….
One of the two brides-to-be threw a fit when her server chuckled at a joke someone made about the wedding colors being ugly.
Ronald cared most about pleasing the big money spenders, so my colleagues and I couldn’t offer many solutions to other patrons who were annoyed by the craziness.
And the only way my fellow bartender and I could convince Ronald to cut off people’s drinking was to bluntly remind him of the dire consequences and huge fines that could come of us overserving, and we all still got an earful from him afterhegot several earfuls from the partiers.
It was a long, tiring, aggravating shift.
The only bright spots were the tips we brought in and how funny Maggie looked when I rounded the corner to the bathrooms and surprised her.
She swears I snuck up on her, but I didn’t.I also have no idea how she stumbled and scraped her hand on the wall, since we hadn’t been avoiding a full-body crash or anything.The expression on her face got me good, though.That was the first time I had laughed in what seemed like forever.
Obviously, she wasn’t amused at all.
Anddamn,would I have appreciated the shoulder drop just then.Like, I can even imagine exactly where it would’ve gone in the sequence of events: I turned the corner and somehow spooked her from several feet away, and she jumped a mile and lost her balance and knocked her hand into the wall, and I laughed at the goofy deer-in-headlights look on her face, andright thereis where she could’ve dropped her shoulders and cocked out one hip and tilted her head and given me that certain stare like—
“What’s up?”Paxton says.
I look up and find he’s talking to me.I’ve been gazing unseeingly at the table.
With a shake of my head, I reply, “Nothing.”I trade my mixed drink for my glass of water and recall a conversation we started some time ago.“So your brother broke your PS4 again?”
“Oh myGod.”His frustration returns in full along with his frown.“He did!Why did I let him borrow this one after he broke the first one?Iknewnot to let him borrow it!I’m not sure if I’m more pissed at him or at myself!”
I shake my head again, just as confused as he is, because I warned him.His brother isn’t much younger than we are, but he’s bad about not taking care of nice things and even worse at paying back what he breaks.What he’sgoodat is making promises that sound solid, particularly when it comes to wanting Paxton to share his video game collection.
“Fuck, man.Kingdom Hearts 3….”One of his hands lifts to get our server’s attention while the other knocks back the rest of his beer.
I wince.“Yeah, ouch.”
It took him a while to replace the first broken console, and he only finally got into the latestKingdom Heartsgame a week ago.Now his PlayStation 4 is resting in peace (or, more accurately, in pieces) in gaming heaven.Again.
