Under the Table(8)

She wouldn’t admit to herself that she was trying to glean information about Tristan while she moved about the room, serving and cleaning. But she couldn’t get anything that she would define as helpful. Mostly because everyone else in the room would take note of her presence and promptly clam up. They seemed to resent her being there. Every glance she made in Tristan’s direction revealed little more than that he didn’t care if the rest of the party were uncomfortable. Whenever she entered to serve or quickly clear, the conversation would all but stop. The silence was strained, before someone would bring up the weather or where they had just been on vacation. Once she made eye contact with him and he gave her the smallest hint of a smirk. But the other times, he just let the members of his party sit there awkwardly fiddling with their forks or taking a sip of water and looked from one to the other, bemused. They seemed to tolerate it. None of the people acknowledged her when she cleared anything away from them. Tristan was the only one to thank her, and he did it for everything.

Except for one time, while she was serving dessert. Zoey had already made up her mind that she would do the final cleanup after all the guests had left. They had made it abundantly clear she wasn’t welcome. She knew how to take a hint. There was plenty to keep her busy. She tried to wash things as she used them, but there was still plenty of suds-dunking to do after it was over, no matter how big a dishwasher. When she brought out the little dishes of bread pudding with a scoop of fresh whipped cream infused with vanilla, the only woman in the group was in the middle of a sentence. Something about encrypting fees. Innocuous really, she was quoting something in Forbes, so it couldn’t have been classified material.

“I think what she’s trying to say is, she keeps up with current events. While on vacation. Where was it you went last month? Hawaii?” One of the men spoke up, shifting his eyes quickly to Zoey and then back to the woman, who stopped talking and now had pink tingeing her cheeks.

Zoey could also feel the heat start to rise. The guy she had pegged as the ringleader of the group had completed the classic slam dunk. With only the condescending tone of his voice, he was trying to put the woman in her place. And he was trying to make every man at the table take a moment to picture the attractive young blonde in a bikini. Zoey tried to place the dishes as fast as she could before she misbehaved and ruined Tristan’s whole evening.

“The truth of the matter is—” the man went on.

Then she heard Tristan’s voice.

“Doug, I’d like to let Kristin finish her thought. She makes a valid point. I read the article as well, and I agree with what she’s said so far.”

Zoey finished placing the dishes in the much more familiar silence. She beat it out of there to the safety of the kitchen. But she had to give props to Tristan for having the woman’s back.

She loaded the dishwasher, digging the jazz and thinking about how she was having way too much fun tonight. She played around a spectacular kitchen with all the freshest ingredients she didn’t have to buy. And the man footing the bill seemed like a genuinely nice guy. By midnight she’d be leaving the ball and her fairy tale would come to an end. And because she had been able to bite her tongue, maybe one of those bozos would want to throw a gig her way.

The party broke up soon after. It wasn’t long before he was pushing through the swinging door to the kitchen and found her up to her elbows in sudsy water.

“You don’t have to do this,” he began earnestly.

“Sure, I do. It’s part of the service,” she replied. “I leave the place exactly as I found it.”

“I’m certainly getting my money’s worth. And everything was delicious. You did a great job tonight, Zoey, thank you. And I see you didn’t bring a server.”

“Don’t worry”—she gave a relaxed laugh—“you still got billed for one. And normally I wouldn’t be so candid, but it was the right call. I don’t think your guests appreciated me being there. One more person serving would’ve made conversation next to impossible.”

Tristan pulled a dish towel out of a drawer before closing it with a hip check. He leaned against the counter, still keeping to his side of the room. His eyes were downcast so that she couldn’t see them. But his voice had a ring of boyish guilt.

“Since we’re being honest, I have a confession to make. And an apology. I used you as a decoy of sorts.”

Zoey wasn’t sure what her correct reaction should be.

“You did?”

“I’m the inventor of a computer software program that compiles data. Lots of it. It’s able to pull it out of multiple sources and combine them. I realized after I sold it, in the wrong hands, it’s capable of doing great harm. People who always want to meet in crowded restaurants have the ability to communicate with each other with their target unable to hear everything they say over the noise. I don’t want any distractions when I’m conducting business. And who doesn’t like a home field advantage, right? I had a hunch that I could also use an extra pair of eyes and ears in the room. You can tell a lot about people by how they behave toward those that have nothing to offer them.”

“Sort of like, you can tell a lot about a person’s character by how they treat the waitstaff?”

He looked like he might apologize again. Zoey wasn’t referring to the rude indifference of the guests who had just left; that was nothing more than an uncomfortable annoyance. Turned out, he was angry on her behalf.