Page 3 of Tempted By the Safety

“Nothing.”

“Uh-huh.” She sets the phone down. “You’ve got your trouble face.”

“I don’t have a trouble face.”

“You have an entire wardrobe of faces and I have a catalog. That one’s trouble.”

I ignore her, picking my fork back up and addressing the halibut, which has gone cold. After a moment she shrugs and lets it go, and I keep eating the cold fish.

Six minutes later, our waiter is back on the floor with his apron retied and a dessert tray riding his shoulder. His face carries no sign of what just happened.

He hits the big table by the window and says something that makes the grandfather laugh, and then he presents the kid’s tart, lowering it in front of him the way you’d hand over a trophy. The kid’s whole face changes. Milo says something else, taps the edge of the plate like he’s sharing a secret, and then he’s spinning away with the tray balanced up on his fingertips, weaving between tables, scanning for the next thing.

What I can’t stop watching isn’t even his smile. It’s how fast it came back. I’ve taken hits that put me on the ground with the stadium spinning, and I know exactly what it takes to get up. There’s always a beat, a breath on the turf. Even the toughest guys I’ve played with take the beat.

Milo didn’t take it. He walked out of that alcove and back onto the floor, and the smile was already installed, no seams. Nobody comes back up that fast, which means that’s a route he’s run a thousand times: hit, up, smile, go, drilled so deep it doesn’t need his permission anymore. I’m doing math on how many hits it takes before popping up smiling becomes muscle memory, and not liking the answer.

“Okay, why are you staring at the waiter?” Amanda asks.

“He just got fired.”

“He what?”

“I overheard it in the hallway. They’re cutting floor staff and they cut him, and he asked to finish the dinner rush anyway.” Inod toward the window. “That’s a guy working a shift he’s not getting paid for.”

Amanda turns, not subtle about it, and watches him.

“Huh,” she says finally. “Well, we can leave him a bigger tip.”

The itch under my skin, the one that started in the bathroom, becomes unbearable.

“I’m going to hire him,” I say.

Amanda blinks at me. Then she glances over her shoulder, then back at me. “Hire… the waiter? You’re talking about the waiter.”

“Yeah, him. I’ll hire him as my PA. Calendar, meetings, errands. Your pitch. I’m taking it.”

“My pitch was a professional.” She’s leaning forward now, voice down, both hands flat on the table like she’s bracing for a battle. “My pitch was an agency, references, a background check, someone who has been an assistant before at least once, not a waiter you’ve known for the duration of one meal.”

“You watch a guy’s tape, you know what you’re getting.”

“He doesn’t have tape, Spencer, he has a tray.”

“I’ve been watching him for an hour. That’s good enough for me.” I sit back. “Effort shows up when nobody’s grading you. Everything else is just numbers on paper.”

Amanda looks at me for a long moment, and I can see her flipping through that catalog of my faces she mentioned.

“Okay,” she says finally. “I’m going to name the thing you’re doing, and you’re going to hate it. I’ve spent months telling you to hire someone to take care of you. And the first thing you do,the very first thing, is find a charity case. Someone else for you to take care of.”

“It’s not like that.”

“It is,” she says flatly. “It is the exact opposite of what you need right now, and it’s the most impulsive thing I have ever watched you do. And I want you to sit with that, because I was there when you bought an entire house because of the driveway.”

“It’s a good driveway,” I counter and raise two fingers for the check.

***

There are two ways to describe what happens after Amanda leaves. One: a reasonable businessman waits to speak with a potential hire. Two: a grown man sits in his car outside a restaurant for the better part of three hours stalking his waiter like a creep.