John Irving - Until I Find You

Naturally, the young, arty husband and bad father wouldn’t let Jack leave Stan’s without giving him his two cents’ worth. “I’m gonna get you fired, pretty boy,” the guy said.

“It’s a good job to lose,” Jack told him, making note of the line.

Giorgio or Guido was hovering around, to the extent that a bodybuilder who can bench-press three hundred pounds can hover. “You better get outta here, Jack,” he was saying.

“I’m trying to get out of here,” Jack said.

He was abreast of the reservation desk when he spotted the telephone; it occurred to him to call 911 and report a clear case of child neglect, but he thought better of it. Jack didn’t know the license plate of the silver Audi. He would have to write it down if he wanted to remember it—damn numbers again.

But the bad father was too angry to let Jack go. He stepped in front of Jack and blocked his way; he was a medium-tall young man, and his chin was level to Jack’s eyes. Jack waited for the guy to touch him. When he grabbed Jack’s shoulders, Jack stepped back a little and the young man pulled Jack toward him. Jack let him pull, head-butting him in the lips. Jack didn’t butt him all that hard, but the guy was a big bleeder.

“I’m calling nine-one-one the second I’m home,” Jack said to Giorgio or Guido. “Tell Donald.”

“Donald says you’re fired, Jack,” the bodybuilder said.

“It’s a good job to lose,” Jack repeated. (He knew that line would have legs.)

Out on the sidewalk, Roberto was still holding the keys to the silver Audi. That’s when Jack remembered he had the parking chit in his shirt pocket; he’d already written down the license-plate numbers. “You’ll have to write out a new chit for the Audi,” he told Roberto.

“No problem,” Roberto said.

Jack walked along Main to Windward. It was a nice evening, only now growing dark. (When you’ve grown up in Toronto, Maine, and New Hampshire, when isn’t it a nice evening in L.A.?)

Emma was writing away when Jack got home, but she overheard his 911 call. “What did you do with the kid?” she asked him, after he’d hung up.

“Gave her to her parents.”

“What’s that on your forehead?” Emma asked.

“A little ketchup, maybe—I’ve been in a food fight.”

“It’s blood, baby cakes—I can see the teeth-marks.”

“You should’ve seen the fucker’s lips,” he told her.

“Ha!” Emma said. (Shades of Mrs. Machado—that exclamation always gave Jack the shivers.)

They went out to Hama Sushi. You could talk about anything at Hama Sushi—it was so noisy. Jack really liked the place, but it was partly what Emma called “ l’eau de Dumpster” (her Montreal French) that eventually drove them away from their Windward Avenue duplex.

“So what did you learn from your brief experience as a parking valet, honey pie?”

“I got one good line out of it,” Jack said.

What convinced Emma that Jack should be a waiter at American Pacific, a restaurant in Santa Monica not far from the beach, was neither the location nor the menu. She went there on a date one night and liked what the waiters were wearing—blue Oxford cloth button-down shirts with solid burgundy ties, khakis with dark-brown belts, and dark-brown loafers. “It’s very Exeter, baby cakes—you’ll fit right in. I stole a dinner menu for you. Just think of it as an acting opportunity, as Mr. Ramsey would say.”

Emma meant that memorizing the menu was an acting opportunity. It took Jack the better part of a morning. Counting the salads and other starters together with the main courses, there were about twenty items.

Jack then called Mr. Ramsey in Toronto and alerted him to the modifications Emma had made in Mr. Ramsey’s recommendation for Jack; just in case someone phoned Mr. Ramsey to verify Jack’s credentials as a waiter, Jack wanted his beloved mentor to know that Mail-Order Bride was supposed to be a fabulous bistro.

“You have to make reservations a month in advance!” Mr. Ramsey responded, with his usual enthusiasm. “Jack Burns, I know you’ll go far!” (Maybe, Jack thought—if only as a waiter.)

Jack showed up that afternoon at American Pacific; it still sounded more like a railroad than a restaurant to him, but the maître d’, a handsome fellow named Carlos, was a welcome sight. Jack knew at once that Carlos was no Canadian. When Carlos looked at Jack’s letter of recommendation, he nodded as if he’d eaten at Mail-Order Bride many times.

The specials were on a blackboard by the bar. “I’ll bet you can memorize them in a heartbeat,” Carlos said.

“I’ve already memorized the menu,” Jack told him. “You want to hear it?” That got the attention of the other waitstaff. It was only about five-thirty in the afternoon—no customers as yet—but Jack had his audience. He skipped the veal chop with the gorgonzola mashed potatoes, just to make them think he’d forgotten something—only to surprise them by mentioning the veal chop at the end of his recitation. He forgot nothing. He’d already dressed as if he had the job, and he knew he’d nailed the audition. Carlos didn’t ask him to recite the specials.

It was to be the first in a long line of auditions for Jack—not counting the aborted one with Donald—but all of Jack’s other auditions would be as an actor instead of a waiter; he was at American Pacific until he no longer needed a job waiting tables.

Emma had arranged for Jack’s head shots with a photographer she knew; they were ridiculously expensive. Emma carried them around with her. At the studio in West Hollywood, she occasionally met an agent or a casting director. But she was more likely to meet someone important on a date, or in any of several restaurants in West Hollywood and Beverly Hills.

Some young hotshot at Creative Artists wanted to bang Emma in the worst way. There wasn’t an agent at C.A.A. who would represent a nobody like Jack Burns, but the guy told Emma he would negotiate a contract for Jack—if Jack managed to get an acting job. (Just how Jack might do that without an agent wasn’t made clear.)

Emma took advantage of the young agent’s lust and brought him one night to American Pacific. His name was Lawrence. “Not Larry, ” he told Jack, with an arched eyebrow.

Not much came of that meeting, but Lawrence made a few calls on Jack’s behalf. These were calls to other agents, not at C.A.A. but on Lawrence’s personal B-list—or more likely his C- list.

Someone whose name Jack confused with Rottweiler (the dog) told him that his recommendations and college acting experiences were basically worthless. “Ditto the summer stock,” Rottweiler said, “except for Bruno Litkins.” Bruno had a Hollywood connection: casting directors occasionally consulted him on roles related to transvestism. “Or transvestitism,” Rottweiler said. “Whatever the fuck you call it.”

Jack’s toe in the door, albeit an odd one, was that he had found favor with Bruno Litkins for his creation of the gay transvestite Esmeralda in Bruno’s transformation of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. “Not what I’d call super-marketable,” Rottweiler informed Jack. (Not that Jack was at all sure he wanted to be marketed exclusively for roles related to transvestism or transvestitism.)

Another of the agents on Lawrence’s B- or C-list sent Jack to an audition for a movie in Van Nuys. The place looked like a private home, but doubled as a film set. When the woman who did hair or makeup told Jack the name of the movie, Muffy the Vampire Hooker 3, Jack thought it was a joke. He didn’t understand the situation until the producer introduced herself and asked to see his penis.