Writers & Lovers(52)

‘But he’s ooful,’ Harry says to Thomas. ‘He’s supremely untalented. And he’s a petty, miserable troglodyte.’

‘It’s Gory’s decision,’ Thomas says. ‘I suggested others.’

On his last night I’m able to say my own goodbye to him in the walk-in. I’m getting a ramekin of butter florets, and he’s sitting on the crate I usually sit on.

‘Casey Kasem,’ he says, but kindly. We’ve always had an understanding. I’m not sure what we understand exactly. We’ve never spoken about anything but apps and entrées. But it’s there. At least for me.

‘I wish you weren’t leaving.’

He nods. ‘Thanks. It’s been a good run here.’

‘Good luck with your restaurant.’

‘Good luck with your book.’ He smiles at my expression. ‘Harry mentioned it.’

‘Thanks.’

At the end of the shift, his wife comes in and helps him take out the last of his stuff. She’s pregnant and carrying the baby way out in front. She balances a fat cookbook on top of the bump. ‘Look, Ma! No hands!’ she says, and Thomas rushes over and grabs the cookbook.

‘You’ll crush her.’

‘Feel this,’ she says, drumming on her belly. ‘She’s encased in steel.’

I didn’t know they were having a girl.

The next night Clark takes over. He brings some of his brunch guys with him and tells Angus and two other line cooks to come back at lunch. He appropriates one of Helene’s pastry counters for salads. He tells Dana to stop scowling, Tony to look him in the eye when he’s talking, and me to wear more makeup or something. ‘You look like a vampire. And not the sexy kind,’ he says.

When service begins he slaps my hand as I reach in the window for my first entrées.

‘Use a napkin.’

‘It’s not hot.’

‘Use a napkin. Every time. Customers do not want to see your filthy fingers on their plate.’

Once Clark starts working nights, more bees swarm into my work life. I start getting my customers confused, my orders mixed up. I have to take long breaks on the fire escape. My whole body feels like it’s a big iron bell that someone has struck, and it won’t stop ringing. It’s like not being able to catch my breath except that I can’t catch any part of me. Muriel tells me to take long slow breaths and scan my body from head to toe when this happens, but I end up gasping for air. Out on the fire escape I do some clenching. It’s the only thing that helps. I clench my fists or press my knees together or squeeze my stomach muscles all at once. Sometimes I start with my face and work down my whole body, tightening each muscle one by one for as long as I can stand it, then letting go and moving on to the next. It’s enough to get me back into the dining room. After a few nights of this Marcus figures out where I’m going and finds me there midclench and drags me back. Sometimes, standing over a six-top and reciting the specials, I feel like I’m breaking up in tiny fragments, and I don’t understand how phrases like ‘with a cranberry cognac glaze’ are still coming out of my mouth or why my customers watching me don’t signal to someone that I need help. There’s some thin covering over me that hides it all. If someone saw inside and called an ambulance, I would go off willingly. It’s my biggest fantasy at these terrifying moments, two EMTs in the doorway with a stretcher for me to lie down on.

The next Saturday night is particularly bad. When it’s over I tip out and settle up and leave as soon as I can. I don’t even say goodbye to Harry. My body is ringing. I can’t feel my fingers. The only way I know I’m still breathing is that I’m still moving. Outside the cold feels good. I want colder. I want ice and snow, something to numb the panic. Two Harvard boys in tuxes come out of the building across the street and go into another. A group of old people, crumpled and slow moving, get into a Volvo near my bike. I hate old people. I hate anyone older than my mother, who didn’t get to become old. At the top of the street there is a guy walking on Mass. Ave. toward Central Square, loping, hands in his pockets. It isn’t him. It isn’t Silas, but the slope from neck to base of the spine is similar. Something awful rises up in me, and I have to get out. I have to get out. I have to get out of this body right now.

I crouch down on the pavement and raw terror overtakes me. I don’t know if I’m making sounds. I’m like that boy in second grade who had an epileptic fit on the classroom floor, shuddering like a machine, only it’s all inside my head, everything in my mind juddering like a hydraulic drill that I cannot stop. There seems to be no way to survive it or to make it end.

I don’t know how long it lasts. Time frays. When the worst of it has passed I’m still crouched on the ground, my forehead pressed to my knee. I raise my head and see my backpack, house key, and wad of cash tips spread out all around me on the pavement. I stand up, worried that someone from Iris will come out and find me crumpled there. It takes me a while to unlock my bike. My body is still trembling, just like Toby Cadamonte’s after his seizure.

I pedal slowly home, spent, but when I lie down on the futon after a warm shower and some muscle squeezing I feel like my body has been plugged into an outlet. More slow breathing. More clenching.

I try to pray. I kiss my mother’s ring, and I pray for her, for her soul and for peace in her soul. I pray for my father and Ann and Caleb and Phil and Muriel and Harry. I pray for the earth and everyone on it. I pray we can all come together and live without fear. And at the end I pray for sleep. I beg to have back the ability to fall asleep. I was once so good at it. I pray hard and yet I’m aware that I have no sense of what or whom I am praying to. I went to church until my mother went to Phoenix, but I never believed the stories in church any more or less than I believed in Pinocchio or the Three Little Pigs.