Page 62 of On His Mind

Stanley: Mon Petit Percy.

Four hundred messages in that chat since September, and one of them is mine.

I put the phone in my pocket and go to work.

The Camerie takes me for six doubles in seven days, and Marco is so glad to see me, he shakes my hand.

“My guy,” he says. “My guy stayed.”

Everybody else who works here is somebody’s kid at the college, and they’re all gone, so it’s me, two line cooks, and a bartender who’s been here nine years. Twelve-hour days. I’m on the floor by ten-thirty in the morning, and I’m mopping myself out the back door at midnight.

I didn’t expect to be good at this or to somewhat enjoy it. I know which tables turn fast and which ones sit for two hours over one bottle of wine. I know to fill a water glass from the right when the guest is talking and never to let a woman see me looking at her plate to judge whether she’s finished. I clear a four-top in one trip, forearm and palm, and I’ve never dropped anything. Marco tells the bartender I’ve got hands like a magician. It’s always about the hands.

It takes a slow afternoon when I notice that it’s a beautiful restaurant. The ceiling comes down low over the tables so the whole place feels held in a hand. The lamps are set at the heightwhere they light your plate and not your face. The plaster’s old, and it’s been left old on purpose. There’s a run of small windows high on the wall, above the bar, that put a stripe of evening light across the ceiling around seven o’clock every night that nobody in this restaurant has ever once looked up at. Clerestory. I look at it every night while I’m rolling silverware.

My feet ache in a way that follows me out the door and all the way home. I count my tips when I get in. The whole walk I keep a hand on them inside my pocket. It’s not much. Every day it’s a little more.

On Tuesday, my phone goes off in my apron pocket while I’m bussing table nine. It buzzes again. When I’m around the corner, I pull it out.

Penelope: The airport in Chicago has a Calder in it, and everyone walks right past it.

Penelope: I hate it here.

Chicago.

She went back. She sat on my floor in December and told me there’s nothing for her there except expectations and playing pretend, and she never wants to go back. But it’s Spring Break, and she’s texting me from Chicago.

Mike Deveroux broke my arm when I was seven years old, and I went back to him twice. They took me out, and I went back, and the second time I asked to go back. Because the alternative was a house with adults I didn’t know. So I get it. I’m not confused about why she’s in Chicago.

Me: What’s a Calder?

Penelope: I’ll show you when I’m back.

I put the phone in my apron and get back to work.

On Wednesday night, Oliver Whitmore comes in with four people at seven-fifteen. I know him from the Christmas Eve dinner. I know exactly what he looks like, how he sat, and I knowhe ate slow. He watched Penelope across the table like a patient man waiting for his opening.

He doesn’t glance at me once. I fill his water twice. I clear the appetizers. I stand two feet from his shoulder with a plate in my hand while he tells a story about a zoning board and everybody at the table laughs at the right time. I take his plate away, and his eyes never leave the woman across from him.

I’m not offended by it. That would be stupid. I’m the busboy. He’s a man having dinner. But I stand there while he talks about a building, and I understand something with my whole body that I already understood with my head, which is that there is not a single circumstance in this life in which Oliver Whitmore would look up and see me as a person who exists in the same world he does.

And she’s in Chicago right now, in a room with people like him, wearing something I’ve never seen, being somebody I’ve never met.

I clear his table. I wipe it down. I reset it with clean linen and turn the water glasses right side up.

Penelope texts me on Thursday morning, but I’m at work, so my phone’s in my apron and I don’t read it for a few hours. I finally get to it while I’m folding napkins, but someone calls my name, so I put it back in my apron and forget about it. She texts me that afternoon, but I’m still at work, so I don’t answer it until that night. By then I don’t even know what to say. She’s saying she’s back in town. Ivory’s in Cabo. I give her a simple reply.

Whenever my phone buzzes, something in my chest goes up like it always does, and then I don’t lean into it. The next day, I don’t even check it until I’m on break.

Penelope: Are you okay?

Me: Yeah.

That’s what I sent. One word.

There was more I could have put there. I didn’t, because this was always going to end. I’ve known since the first night I stood in her apartment and understood what rich looks like from the inside — the furniture, the smell, the coat. She has a whole life in airports, men in suits, and a two-year plan. It’s a life that doesn’t include someone like me. So I don’t grab at it. I answer slow.

That night, I’m the last one out of the Camerie. Marco locks up behind me, calls me a beast, and drives off.