NO Quarter Read Free Page A

happened. I shrugged, “Parties get rowdy sometimes.”
    More cackles at that. Give them what they want. Right, right, it’s Mardi Gras every day of the year. Go buy yourselves some beads, join the fun.
    “Y’er real skinny.” She found it funnier this time, laughed longer.
    I am thin. Gaunt, if you must. Not due to dieting, not to exercise. I’ve got a junkie’s body, but I never have used junk and never will use it. What I do have is a persistent lack of appetite. I don’t normally get hungry, or I’m not aware of getting hungry, so I miss meals. I’m not anorexic and wouldn’t expect any sympathy if I was. I simply don’t understand food, why people make such a big deal out of it.
    Which makes being a waiter an odd job choice, I suppose. I’m good at it, though, as much as I well and truly loathe it. I stopped by the kitchen and rattled off the dessert orders for my last group, aware of the grumbles from the cooks.
    “Why can’t yuh just write it down like everybody else?” Joe moaned. A common complaint from him, but I didn’t take it seriously for a four-top. If I have a group of six or more, I usually speak nice and slow to give the kitchen time to make a list. I never write anything down unless the cook needs crib notes. My memory for detail makes me especially good during slam times. Unfortunately, numbers are not my thing. If I had any skill with math I could maybe count cards in the casinos instead of waiting tables.
    I kept my eye on my other two tables, aware of the other waiters and their tables. I heard the hurly-burly of the eight-top, a party of eight college-age yahoos that Nicki had got stuck with. Nicki was young, cute, sweet—too sweet, too nice—and judging by the hoots and grunts coming from her big table, the yahoos were hassling her. I was aware of football jerseys, meaty faces, pitchers of beer on the table—loudmouths, MTV-bred, hormonally overwrought. They were of a type. When they find out they can’t get laid, they start a fight.
    But it wasn’t my table. I had my own customers and my own hustles to work. My four tourists finally settled into eating, the two guys arguing. “It’s alla put-on, Harry, like Disneyland,” and, “Naw, the pahwty never stops, you heard ‘im.”
    I made my rounds. Cleared plates, poured coffee. I chatted with my two-tops, more sincerely than with my tourist feeders. I knew these folks, from the restaurant, from around the Quarter. We could talk about common things.
    I was getting twitchy for a smoke.
    Midnight had come and gone. I knew that much, as I slipped past the waiters’ station of cutlery, coffee pots, and menus, but was surprised, turning the corner and lighting a cigarette, to see the clock reading past one-thirty. It was Sunday, technically Monday, but it’s not the next day until you’ve been to sleep.
    A radio played from the kitchens, loud, drowning some of the chaos—steam and clatter and greasy smoke. Even when it runs smoothly, our restaurant—like any restaurant—is chaotic. There’s a kind of bored frenzy to it.
    I puffed fast and deep, knowing cigarette breaks never last. I felt the sweat sticking my black T-shirt to my back, despite the air-conditioning; felt my aching calves and sore lower back. I felt—probably more than anything—that sickly sense of indignity. I was at the end of my night, worn-out. Easy to feel lousy about spending these past hours of my life toadying and scraping and degrading myself, kowtowing like a goddamned manservant! Did I do good, boss, suh I live only to please, yessuh.
    Christ, Bone. Lighten up. You’re just a waiter.
    I sucked smoke into my lungs. I patted my apron pocket, feeling the bills there. My tips. All for the money, that’s why we humble ourselves. I wasn’t taking new tables. I was done for tonight, would finish up the ones I had, total my checks, cash out. Leave Nicki and the other kid, Otis, to handle the graveyard. Employees come and go: waiters, cooks, dishwashers.