Maria comes over. “Hi, I’m Maria. Have you worked in hospitality before?”
“Yes,” Basil and Hayden both reply.
I’ve eaten at a million restaurants in my life. How hard could it be? “Yes,” I lie.
“Great.” She smiles as she looks around. “Do any of you have bar experience?”
“I do,” Basil replies.
“Okay, you’re on the bar,” she says to him. “And you two wait tables.”
“Sure.”
“Put these on, and . . .” She looks at me. “What’s your name?” she asks me.
“Christo,” I reply.
“What’s your name?” she asks Hayden.
“Hayden.”
“Okay. Put these on.” She hands us both black-and-white-striped aprons.
“Cosmo, you do the front level, and Helga, you do the back corner.” She turns her back to get out some notepads.
“Helga,” I mouth to Hayden. She widens her eyes and tries not to laugh.
“When you hear a bell, it means order up, and you take it to the table.”
“Okay.” We both nod. That sounds easy enough.
“Call me if you need anything.” She walks off.
“Helga,” I whisper as we walk to the kitchen.
She hits me on the leg. “Shut up, Cosmo.”
The bell dings. “Order up,” a guy calls.
The food is laid out on a high bench with heat lamps over it to keep it warm. Staff are buzzing around everywhere.
“Hi.” Hayden smiles to the chef. “I’m new, so . . .”
The chef nods, too busy to care. “This, this, and this to table forty.” He slides over three plates. Hayden picks up two of them, and I go to pick up the other. “One person, three plates,” he yells.
“Calm down,” I mutter.
Hayden does some kind of juggling act and carries two plates with one hand and one in the other. She toddles off, out into the restaurant.
The bell dings again. “What are you ringing the bell for? I’m right here,” I say.
“No talking,” the chef yells.
I screw up my face. “I wasn’t making conversation.”
He slides over three plates. “Table forty.”
I pick up two of the plates.
“Three at a time,” he yells.
“I’m not an octopus,” I snap. “I’ll be back for the other.”
“Not good enough,” he calls after me.
My blood begins to simmer. Fuckwit.
I walk out to the restaurant and look for Hayden. She’s over in the corner, delivering the plates to the table. How the hell did she know what number each table is? I walk over. The table has ten men sitting at it, who are all very tipsy. “Pasta?” I ask as I look around the table.
“What pasta is it?”
I look in the bowl. Hmm . . . I have no idea. “Spaghetti.”
“What spaghetti?”
“I don’t fucking know, you ordered it.”
Hayden gives me a subtle shake of her head.
“What kind of pasta is it?” the guy barks.