Servers Secrets

The ticket printer screamed twice before I even got my apron tied.

I knew from the sound of it. Two tables, both in Abryana's section, which meant both were hers to seat and mine to suffer. Saturday night at Clementine, six-forty-five, and the dining room was already three deep at the bar with people who'd made reservations and still stood there nursing twenty-dollar cocktails because the kitchen was running behind and the kitchen was always running behind on Saturdays.

I pushed through the swinging door and the noise hit me like weather. Silverware, laughter, the low thrum of the wine fridge. Somewhere near the back, Chef was yelling about scallops.

"Eliza." Abryana caught my elbow before I made it past the host stand. She had the reservation book open in one hand and a pen tucked behind her ear, and she looked at me the way she always looked at me lately, which was like I was a dog she'd found on the side of the road and wasn't sure she could keep.

"What."

"Table nine and table fourteen. Nine is the wine guy, the one who comes in every other Thursday. Fourteen is a birthday, four top, they want the tasting menu."

"I know how to do my job."

"Do you?" She said it flat, no meanness in it, which was worse than if there'd been some. "Because Matt's been watching you all week."

Let him watch. I tied my apron and pulled the pen out of my hair, where I'd stuck it twenty minutes ago after the pre-shift meeting. Matthew Vance could watch me all he wanted. He was forty-one years old and ran a restaurant that had a six-week waitlist, and he still looked at me like I was the one thing in his life he couldn't figure out how to fire.

Which, to be fair, was true. He couldn't. Not without cause, and I hadn't given him cause yet. Not on paper.

I took table nine first because the wine guy tipped like he was trying to buy his way into heaven. He was already halfway through a bottle of something red and expensive when I got there, and he smiled up at me with that soft, lonely look that men his age get when they've decided you're the reason they drove across town.

"Eliza," he said. "I was hoping you'd be here."

"I'm always here." I poured the last of his bottle into his glass and put my hand on his shoulder for exactly one second, which was long enough. "What are we eating tonight?"

He ordered the duck. I wrote it down even though I didn't need to, because Matt was standing at the pass with his arms crossed, watching me, and I wanted him to see me write it down.

That was the thing about Matthew Vance. He noticed everything. Every refill, every smile, every minute you spent at a table that wasn't yours. He'd built Clementine out of nothing, some piece of shit corner space in a neighborhood that used to be dangerous and now had a cheese shop, and he ran it like a man who'd never once in his life been handed anything. Which meant he had zero patience for people who were waiting to be handed things.

People like me.

Table fourteen wanted the tasting menu and a round of champagne, and the birthday girl wanted her picture taken, and by the time I got back to the pass to run my own food, the kitchen had gone from behind to underwater. Chef was plating with both hands and not looking up. I grabbed my two plates and moved.

I was good at this part. The moving. I could carry four plates on two arms and never spill a drop, and I could read a table in three seconds flat, who wanted to be talked to and who wanted to be left alone, who was going to tip twenty percent and who was going to find something to complain about so they could feel like they'd earned the discount they were about to ask for. I'd been doing this since I was nineteen. Eleven years of other people's dinners.

And I was so tired of it.

Not the work, exactly. The work was fine. The work was easy. What I was tired of was the math. Rent, car, phone, the slow bleed of every paycheck into a life that never got any bigger. I wanted to wake up in a house I didn't pay for. I wanted to order off the left side of the menu without looking at the prices. I wanted someone else to do the math.

Was that so fucking terrible?

I set the plates down at table fourteen, smiled at the birthday girl, told her the duck was the best thing on the menu even though she hadn't ordered it, and made my way back toward the bar.

Matt was still at the pass. He wasn't watching me anymore. He was watching the dining room, the whole room, the way he did every night around seven, like a captain checking the horizon for weather. He had his sleeves rolled to the elbow and a dish towel over his shoulder and a glass of water he never drank from sitting on the shelf beside him. Dark hair, going gray at the temples. Jaw like a door. He looked like a man who'd been handsome ten years ago and had only gotten more interesting since.

I hated how much I noticed that.

"Eliza." He said it without turning around. "My office. Ten minutes."

"I've got four tables."

"Abryana's got them."

I looked over at the host stand. Abryana was already moving, grabbing a notepad, heading for my section without a word. She didn't look at me. That was how I knew it was bad.

I finished my round anyway. I wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of watching me run. I checked on nine and fourteen and the two-top by the window that had been nursing the same bottle of white for an hour, and then I walked to the back of the restaurant, past the kitchen, past the walk-in, to the door with the frosted glass that had his name on it in gold letters.

I knocked. He didn't answer. I opened it anyway.

His office was small and neat and smelled like cedar and coffee. A desk, two chairs, a wall of cookbooks he'd actually read, a window that looked out on the alley where the line cooks smoked. He was sitting behind the desk with his laptop open and a stack of invoices beside it, and he didn't look up when I came in.

"Close the door."

I closed it.

"Sit down."

"I'd rather stand."

He looked up then. That was the thing about Matt. He didn't get loud. He didn't get red in the face. He just looked at you, and you felt about two inches tall, and you couldn't even be mad about it because he wasn't wrong.

"Sit down, Eliza."

I sat.

He closed the laptop and folded his hands on top of it and looked at me for a long moment, and I looked back, and neither of us said anything. The restaurant hummed on the other side of the door. Someone dropped a tray. Someone laughed.

"You've been late four times this month," he said.

"Three."

"Four. Last Tuesday you clocked in at five-eighteen. Shift starts at five."

"Traffic."

"You live six blocks away."

I didn't have an answer for that one, so I gave him a look instead. The look that usually worked on men. The one that said, come on, we both know you're not really going to do anything about this.

It didn't work. It never worked on him.

"You've been on your phone during service," he said. "You've comped three desserts you didn't have permission to comp. You've given away at least two bottles of wine that I know about, and probably more that I don't. You've been late, you've been sloppy, and you've been standing at table nine for fifteen minutes a night flirting with a man who tips you because he thinks you're going to sleep with him."

"He tips me because I'm good at my job."

"He tips you because he's lonely and you're pretty." He said it without heat, like a fact. Like the weather. "That's not a job skill."

"Everything's a job skill if you use it right."

He almost smiled. Almost. It flickered at the corner of his mouth and then it was gone, and he leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands, and for a second he just looked tired. Tired like I was tired. Tired like everyone in this city was tired.

"I'm going to fire you," he said.

The words landed in my chest like a dropped plate.

"You can't."

"I can. I've got the documentation. Four lates, three unauthorized comps, the phone thing, and that's before we get into the fact that you've been skating for six months. I've been patient. I've been more patient than I should've been, because you're good when you want to be, and because Abryana vouches for you every time I bring it up."

"Abryana."

"She's the only reason you still have a job." He said it flat. "And she's running out of reasons."

I sat there and felt something hot and ugly climb up the back of my throat. Not tears. I don't cry. I hadn't cried since I was sixteen and my mother told me I was on my own, and I wasn't about to start in Matthew Vance's office with the invoices and the cookbooks and the window looking out on the alley.

"You can't fire me," I said again. "I need this job."

"Then you should've acted like it."

"I do need it. I need it, Matt. I've got rent, I've got..."

"I know what you've got." He cut me off. "I know what you've got because I've been paying you for two years and I know exactly what you make and I know it's not enough for the life you want to live. That's not my problem. That's never been my problem."

"Then what is your problem?"

"You." He stood up. He was tall, taller than me, and I'm five-ten in bare feet, which is tall for a woman, tall enough that most men get weird about it. Matt never got weird about it. He just stood there and looked down at me like I was a problem he'd been trying to solve for two years and had finally decided to throw out.

"You come in here every night and you do half the work and you take none of the blame and you walk around like the world owes you something because you're pretty and you're smart and you figured out a long time ago that you can get away with things other people can't. And you're right. You can. For a while. But this is a restaurant, not a beauty pageant, and I've got a line cook who's been here four years and never once asked me for a favor, and I've got a dishwasher who shows up an hour early every shift because he's afraid of losing his job, and I've got Abryana, who's been covering for you since the day I hired you, and none of them get to skate. So why do you?"

I didn't have an answer for that one either.

"I don't know," I said.

"Neither do I." He sat back down. "You've got until the end of the week. Friday, close of shift. Clean out your locker, hand in your apron, and I'll write you a reference because I'm not a monster, but I want you out of my restaurant."

I stood up. My legs felt weird, like they belonged to someone else. I put my hand on the doorknob and then I stopped, because there was one thing I hadn't tried yet, and I was pretty sure it was the last thing I had.

"What if I changed?"

He looked up at me. "Changed how?"

"I don't know. I'll be on time. I'll stop comping things. I'll stop standing at table nine for fifteen minutes. I'll do whatever you want."

"Whatever I want."

"Whatever you want."

He was quiet for a long time. Long enough that I could hear the ticket printer going again, and Chef yelling something about a steak, and someone at the bar laughing at something someone else said. Long enough that I started to think he was actually considering it.

And then he said, "You think this is a negotiation."

"It's not?"

"It's not." He stood up again and walked around the desk and stopped about a foot away from me, close enough that I could smell the coffee on his breath and the cedar of whatever soap he used, close enough that I had to look up at him, just a little, and I didn't like how that felt.

"You think you can bat your eyes and say the right thing and I'll fold, because that's how it's always worked for you. That's how it works with the wine guy. That's how it works with the customers who tip you double because you remembered their name. That's how it works with Abryana, who loves you for reasons I will never understand. But it doesn't work with me. It's never worked with me. And you know that, which is why you've been trying to get under my skin since the day I hired you."

"I haven't been trying to get under your skin."

"You have." He said it soft. "You just didn't know you were doing it."

I opened the door and walked out.

The dining room was in full swing. Abryana was at table fourteen, doing the birthday thing, singing with the rest of them in her low, steady voice. She caught my eye across the room and raised her eyebrows, a question, and I shook my head and kept walking.

I made it to the back hallway before I had to stop. I put my hand on the wall and stood there and breathed. The wall was cool. The hallway smelled like bleach and onions. Somewhere behind me, the kitchen was still going, still yelling, still plating, still doing the thing it did every night whether I was there or not.

Friday. Close of shift.

I had four days.

I didn't go back out to the floor. I went to the bathroom and fixed my hair and looked at myself in the mirror for a while, and then I went back out and finished my shift like nothing had happened. Because that's what you do. You finish your shift. You smile at table nine and you pour the last of the bottle and you don't let anyone see you sweat.

At ten-forty, Abryana caught me by the back door.

"Hey."

"Hey."

"You okay?"

"Fine."

"You're not fine." She had her coat on already, and her bag over her shoulder, and she looked at me the way she always looked at me, like I was a dog she'd found on the side of the road. "He's firing you."

"He's firing me."

"Friday?"

"Friday."

She was quiet for a second. Then she said, "I'll talk to him."

"Don't."

"I'll talk to him."

"Abryana." I stopped walking and turned to face her. She was shorter than me, five-four maybe, with dark curly hair and a face that was always doing three things at once. Right now it was doing worried and determined and a little bit angry, all at the same time. "Don't. It won't help. He's made up his mind."

"Then I'll unmake it."

"You can't."

"I can try." She pulled her coat tighter around her. "You're my friend, Eliza. You've been my friend since I started here. And I know you're not... I know you don't always try. I know you think you've got a plan that doesn't involve any of this. But you're my friend, and I'm not going to just let him throw you out."

I didn't know what to say to that. So I said, "Okay."

"Okay?"

"Okay. Talk to him. But don't be surprised when it doesn't work."

She nodded and walked out into the night, and I stood in the doorway and watched her go, and then I went back inside and finished closing my section.

The dining room was empty by then. Just the barback wiping down the rail and the night porter starting on the floors. I stacked my last chair and turned off my last light and stood in the middle of the room for a minute, in the dark, listening to the hum of the wine fridge and the far-off clatter of the kitchen.

Four days.

I could do a lot in four days.

I could be perfect. I could be so perfect he'd have no choice but to keep me. I could show up early and stay late and never touch my phone and never comp a thing and never once look at table nine. I could be the best server he'd ever had, and I could do it for four days, and then I could figure out the rest.

Or I could find another way.

I walked out the back door and into the alley and stood there for a minute in the cold, and then I pulled out my phone and opened the dating app I'd been ignoring for two weeks, the one where the men had jobs and cars and houses and the kind of lives that didn't involve counting tips at the end of the night.

I'd been on it for six months. I'd been on all of them for six months. And I'd been on maybe forty dates in that time, and none of them had gone anywhere, because the men were either boring or married or broke, and the ones who weren't were the ones who wanted something I wasn't willing to give.

But I was running out of time.

I scrolled for a while. Swiped left, swiped left, swiped left. And then I stopped.

Because there he was.

Matthew Vance. Forty-one. Owner, Clementine. A picture of him in a kitchen somewhere, sleeves rolled up, looking at the camera like he'd rather be doing anything else.

I stared at it for a long time.

Then I closed the app and put my phone in my pocket and walked home.

Six blocks. Cold night. The city doing its city thing, sirens and taxis and the smell of someone's dinner cooking in an apartment above a laundromat. I walked it slow. I wasn't in a hurry to get anywhere.

When I got to my building, I stopped on the sidewalk and looked up at my window, dark on the third floor, and I thought about Friday. I thought about the reference he'd write me and the locker I'd clean out and the apron I'd hand in. I thought about Abryana, who was probably right now standing in her own apartment trying to figure out how to save me.

And then I thought about Matt. About the way he'd looked at me in his office. About the way he'd said you just didn't know you were doing it.

I went upstairs and unlocked my door and turned on the light.

Four days.

I had a plan. I always had a plan. It just wasn't the kind of plan you could put on a resume.

I sat down on my couch and opened my laptop and started typing.

The first thing I needed to know was everything. Everything about Matthew Vance that wasn't in the employee handbook or the restaurant's website or the interviews he'd done for the food magazines. Where he lived. Where he drank. Who he knew. What he wanted.

Because if I couldn't keep my job by being good, I'd keep it by being something else.

And I was very, very good at being something else.

The cursor blinked at me. I typed his name into the search bar and hit enter, and the screen filled with results, and I started reading.

Somewhere in the building, a neighbor's dog started barking. Somewhere outside, a car alarm went off and then stopped. I didn't look up. I just kept reading, and the night got longer, and Friday got closer, and somewhere in the back of my mind a small, quiet voice said, this is a bad idea.

I ignored it.

I was good at that too.