Merritt Tierce - Love Me Back

I leave the silverware half-finished and walk with DeMarcus back to The Private Room. We stand in the doorway while the men file out, shaking their hands like two pastors after a church service. Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you so much, sir. Thanks for coming in tonight. Appreciate your business. Congratulations, hope you enjoyed everything. How’d we do tonight? Everybody happy?

After we get out DeMarcus and I hang in the employee parking lot, waiting for Asami, who promised to share some of her stash with us. We have half a bottle of the party’s cab and a full bottle of the chardonnay they left in the ice bucket untouched, and we drink both of them, pouring tall into Styrofoam cups, one white and one red, sharing. I make sure to leave a glass in the chard bottle in case Asami wants some. Other servers and bussers shoot out the back door like pinballs, letting the door crash against the side of the building and stripping off pieces of their uniform as they head toward their cars, calling Good night and other more exultant things like Home fucking free! to us as they leave.

Niño must have been the first busser out, because he’s driving back into the parking lot from a beer run — whichever of the cooks or bussers gets out first takes his turn to buy a case of Modelo Especial or Bud Light before the stores stop selling at midnight. He lets down the tailgate of his pickup and offers DeMarcus and me a beer. There’s something about the way Niño’s navy work shirt is always starched stiff, and something about the way his hair is always trim and gelled, and something about the way he makes eye contact with you when he’s taking plates from you as if to say, Give me all that. I’ll take care of it for you, no problem . Sometimes he actually says things just like this. If you’re female he might say I got it, baby , but you never feel condescended to, only happy he’s in league with you.

He’s so young, only nineteen, but his wife had twins in San Luis Potosí. He got the call after work one night a couple months ago, standing about where he is now. He was overjoyed, he started to cry, and everyone started hugging him and saying Congratulations Papa! and ¡Felicidades! and we all went over to the bar next door and bought him and everyone else in the place a shot of Patrón. He talks about how he’s saving all his money to bring them over so they can be raised in America, he tells me he gave each of them one English and one Spanish name: Thomas José and Michael Alonzo.

I tip him more than I tip the other bussers, because he works so hard and I like his attitude. It pays to hustle, it pays to bend over, we both know this. You keep your standards high and your work strong but these are necessary for success; you keep your dignity separate, somewhere else, attached to different things.

When Asami finally comes out the back door I say Hey Sandra, how you living?

Dirty, fucking dirty, she says. I pop a Modelo and hold it out to her. Here, honey, just wash it all away, I say.

Thanks, but I think some of it’s gonna stick, she says.

Nah, says DeMarcus. Only if you let it.

That right, De? I ask. He shrugs, then says to Niño, What do you think, Francisco?

When DeMarcus says his name, which I repeat in my head several times for safekeeping, Niño suddenly seems older to me, but he doesn’t have any more wisdom on the matter than the rest of us. All he says is, No sé, Marco. Es mi job, ¿sabes?

DeMarcus has fantastic teeth and tight waves. He’s tall and lanky and he smells good. He keeps taking care of me in the parking lot, passing me the green hit when Asami refreshes the bowl, lighting my cigarettes, opening beers for me. The two of us are having a good time — it’s easier on the nights you make money. On the low-scoring nights you feel depressed as hell even if you tell yourself that’s the way it is, inconsistent. You can’t look at the money on the night, you have to wait for the week or even the month to look at it, and you can’t start going home when they overschedule. You have to work it like a nine-to-five even though it’s anything but. Asami is hustling hard-core right now, she’s the speech teacher at an inner-city public high school in Fort Worth but three nights a week she drives over here too. She can’t stay out late like she used to. In the old times we’d wake up together at somebody’s apartment and she’d give me a ride back to my car at the restaurant, the day looking gray as an old sock through our hangovers. I offer her the last of the chard but she says she has to go now or she’ll be hurting too bad tomorrow.

You can tell she really loves her kids at the school and that’s the job she takes seriously. Not that you can blow this one off — turnover at The Restaurant is ridiculous because new people don’t realize quick enough they’re in the army now and they’d better step up, Chef isn’t kidding when he expects you to know all fifteen ingredients in the hoisin sauce that goes with the fried lobster. I’ve hung in long enough now that they’ve asked me to sub for a manager on occasion, wear a sexy little dress suit and heels and help out when we’re short-staffed. So far I’ve said no. I know they see you in the suit and you do a good job and before you know it that’s where they want you all the time, and then everybody else’s fuckups are on you instead of just your own. Plus I’d never see my kid if I started managing and I hardly see her anyway. All right, I’m out, love you guys see you Thursday, Asami says, putting her bowl back where it lives in the glovebox of her car. Peace, Mama, says DeMarcus, and I tell her to be careful driving all that way home. Niño and the cooks and bussers have cleared out so when she’s gone it’s just me and De, we get into my car and he cranks up my Erykah. Push up the fader / Bust the meter / Shake the tweeter / Bump it he sings along, grooving in his seat. I saw her in Whole Foods the other day, he says, damn, woman is a woman . Talk to her? I ask. Naw, he says, I’m gonna say Excuse me Miss Badu, got me a fine position of employment as a servant, can I take you out sometime? Whole Foods guy probably has a better shot than me.

Whole Foods guy didn’t make three bucks tonight like you did, I say. Hey, partna, it was smooth, smooth tonight, he says, offering his fist for a bump. I work with you whenever you want, anytime, he adds. Likewise, baby, I say, and then, I wish Asami had left us some. There’s a long high pause while we listen to Erykah rock it and I feel him thinking something through. Got some at the house, he says finally. Is that an invitation? I ask. It is if you want it to be, he says.

His brother drops him off at The Restaurant and picks him up when’s it over, and when J — I’ve never heard DeMarcus call him anything else — pulls into the parking lot I’m drunk and stoned and I have no idea where they live or how I will get back to my car but I get into the cab of the truck between them on the bench seat. It’s an old green Ford, from before they started making everything on cars so round. It smells like smoke. J has the hip-hop station pounding and looks at me like he knew this would happen, his face still, absent. He nods, doesn’t speak. I can tell he’s on something that’s taken him up so far he can see me from above. Crack? I tried crack only once and it didn’t work and now I’m hoping I have some limits. He drives out of the parking lot and I feel DeMarcus relax next to me, he’s realizing I’m committed, realizing I’m down. He puts his hand on my thigh and then we’re making out, the cab of this truck is old-school huge and I swing myself into his lap, facing him, feeling him hard as glass through my thin dress pants. J turns up the music as he pulls onto the freeway. I am grinding on DeMarcus and it’s not enough, I feel like my body will do this without me if it has to. I feel nothing but his hands on my hips and his lips all over my collarbone and the 808 kicking out of the stereo, a primal rhythm I can’t resist any more than the blood pulsing in my cunt. She want it, observes J, looking over at us. He has gold teeth. Not solid gold, the kind with the gold edges.