Starry Night

1:14 PM

July 19, 2002

The lights dim appreciably, the plucking of koto strings like cheap perfume in the air.  Florescent lights above glare down with a disfiguring gaze, too crisp and angular to be natural.  The employee clock ticks 5:58, two minutes early, two minutes before incurring the wrath of the manageress.  It's a family owned business, my work is; could explain the stubborn adherence to inefficient practices and constantly spouting ubiquitous trade secrets, sacred as religious dogmas.  'The customer is always right.'  The manageress, Barb, rules all, tyrant behind the cash register.  Her reddened lips speak with soft commands, impossibilities made to sound perfectly doable.  Perhaps, in her eyes, I have three hands, each capable of bearing twenty pounds worth of glasses and beer and water.  Or maybe my head seems insulated enough to let me carry a scalding teapot on it without fear of injury.  The first month was tiring, smiling in my simpering wish to be accommodating, nodding with the dignity of a doormat. 

Strolling, circling, a questioning glance, she stops, snatching the dishrag from my hands.  In her questionable English, "You're not doing this right.  Open.  Big, okay?"

Nodding, vacillating.  "Yes, sorry."

"You have to wipe harder; sticky teriyaki sauce."

"Yes, I know.  Okay."  And I do know, the nasty brown thing that cakes on, the oriental equivalent to gum under desks, nasty to clean.  Scrubbing, scrubbing, the place settings ready to be placed, Barb telling me she needs that table.  I look up with impatience, meeting the unsympathetic gaze of a customer, the need for something time consuming in his hard eyes.  I place the settings down, precision, restaurant name facing the customer, chairs tucked neatly under the tables like knees.

Refilling the water bins from the kitchen faucet, the heavy smoke of frying tempura and grilled chicken wafting around, a horrible mixture of artery clogging aromas.  Hefting the shifting bucket of water back outside to our little employee teahouse.  Teapots, water glasses, beer mugs, sake machine circling around me like some fantastic carousel out a Stanley Kubrick film.  A grease soaked curtain brushes against me as I go my rounds, no duty unfulfilled, water poured, warmed hand towels given out, fish flavoured crackers served.  'What would you like to drink?'

Bell ringing from above the doorway, a cult of formally dressed sorority and fraternity members enter.  A collective 'irasshaimase' comes from the employees, those who were willing to learn it anyway.  Tripping over her work kimono and flipflops, cigarette burned menus peeking out of her arms, the hostess leads them upstairs to the honour of stained, speckle-grey carpet and sardine can occupancy.  Reminds me of Madeleine, two pretty rows, identical people all in obedient order, only that these customers will be semi-wasted in a couple hours time and there isn't that lovable little scamp to lead me in a chase around Paris. 

My arms hurt, the cold and burdensome weight eight 22 oz. Sapporo beer cans in my grasp.  Back to the tea shack, past the dangling oil curtain, onto a plastic serving tray.  I reach up for the sake bottles, pink vessels with swollen bases, like liquor vases.  They get extremely hot when filled with that fiery rice wine, burning against your palm as you place them on the tables, burning even more when you drink it.  A matching pink porcelain cap is in place over the neck of the bottle, a protective helmet.  We know it's going into the brutal war against sobriety and common sense.  God have mercy on its soul.  I almost drop a bottle when Mini's hands poke at my sides from behind.  I glare at her, but she's unfazed, spitfire in a five six frame, small mighty senior. 

She has a tomboy voice of which is used extensively on the rudeness, cheapness and/or stupidity of the leaving customers.  You can't help but like her instantly.  "Out of the way."

It's been an adversarial work relationship from the beginning, an insult/meek connection, but as the months have moved on, we've rutted ourselves into short arguments where the bark is worse than the bite.  "Wait your turn."  She, of course, ignores my retort, pushing me away from the shelf.  In a bout of superiority (probably a defense mechanism developed against cleaning up sorority girl puke) I smirk to myself over the uselessness of her communications degree.  I mean really, a comm major?

But in the end, I gather the beers and sakes, taking them up the three steps that classify the restaurant as split-leveled.  Lovely, I say.  Tuxedos, ties, dresses, millions of sequins.  And they come to a college Japanese restaurant?  I set the alcohol on the table.  Before the night is over, I know I'll have accidentally spilled teriyaki sauce on someone, and I do.  I make no apologies.

Sometimes I can lean back against the counter and take a sip of cooling tap water, of course in the tea sanctuary ysheltered from customers' gaze.   Norm joins me shaking off the drudgery of being a busboy as he greets me with some curious accent, one I can't exactly pinpoint but am sure can be found in some fifties television variety program.  He is rather the norm, the English major, pre-law, internship-seeking senior.  But not quite when he sings little ditties, affects accents and instructs the Japanese headwaiter, Earnest, in some American words that may be better suited for the adult entertainment industry.  My respite isn't long before I'm called out again, the hostess peeking in to tell me that I'm need for another beer run.  I'm thoroughly convinced she came to investigate as certain porn words floated above customer chatter.  I wave haphazardly a farewell to Norm whose hands are otherwise busy being very evocative demonstration aids. 

My shift's always at least four hours, sometimes six.  Most of the time I stand around, without instructions watching the customers chew and half listening to the wait staff complain about this and that.   Today Surely tries to convince us of the sexiness of Jean Luc Picard.  I'll give you that 'The Next Generation' was the best of the Star Trek series, but I'm a bit skeptical of her theory.  But then again, Kirk was just so…greasy.  Ugh.

Marry snorts derisively with a friendly undertone, half copying orders into her checkbook, half checking out her newly painted nails.  "You're a trekkie?"

Surely defends, "So?"  Her pigtails jump as the semi-argument continues. 

I give a yawn, a common affliction I inwardly call 'occupational narcolepsy.'  It never strikes, this sapping of strength, until I arrive at work.  But it allows me to really consider everyone here and figure out their quirks.  Marry, for instance, has a strangely dependent mind, the reliance on others to bolster her self-confidence.  She once told me that her mother wanted her to get a nose job after college, to look more 'anglo.'  I bit my tongue and swallowed an appropriate allusion to Michael Jackson and demurred a hesitant 'no,no, it looks fine now.'  In a way we all walk on eggshells when we're around her, making no response when she complains she's chunky after winter or when she spouts off about her boyfriend being a jerk.  We all shut out the memory of seeing him with another girl last week.  Almost makes me feel guilty but she seems to need that other half, if only to say atrocious things about him.

Usually around six-thirty (though his shift starts at six) Bill joins us for work, just waltzing past Barb unscathed, tossing off his jacket and tying on the happy coat, a vertically striped confection of oranges and browns reserved for the wait staff.  He's a sophomore, studying architecture (God help him) and comes from a family that lives on Park Avenue, pretty much his license to be a complete prick.  I don't hate him really, just resent him a lot most of the time what with his joking and talking to Barb, leaving earlier than everyone else and having the nerve to sit down at the Sushi Bar as a customer and expect us to serve him.  I think of the word 'regicide' when he assumes his stately wicker throne, the panel of filleted seafood behind the glass paying postmortem homage.

I see it as a mutually parasitic relationship between Barb and him.  She puts up with his lateness and irresponsibility in return for his fraternity and sorority connections.  Delta what?  He takes her money and the tips, only to spend it all back on food while getting his buddies to drink their way out of the their college funds.  The credit card machine never gets a rest on Friday and Saturday nights.  Add another skill to my resume; I can now operate a credit card swiping machine.  Yay me!  From the register area I can see into the window section, a screened off region farthest from the kitchen of four two people tables.  It includes the dreaded window seats, an intimate table tucked behind the window to serve as human window shopping, in the style of Amsterdam's red light district without the raunchiness.  The perfect window dressing for a restaurant, a couple going through the motions of courtship (while feasting on lots of tasty Japanese cuisine) for any passing, possibly hungry, love starved, potential customer to watch.  It's clever in the subliminal suggestion department, saying that love is something that can be ordered amidst the sashimi.  Who knows maybe it is.  I'd take the bento box; it's more of a value.

Every night I leave the restaurant, the moon high in the sky or behind gray cloud cover.  A rolled up wad of money lumps in my pocket, the reeking smell of grease hanging around like an aura.  I'm filthy and sticky and oily and utterly tired of being ordered around and humbling myself to customers who see nothing past their noses or mouths whichever is longer.  And as I trudge home aching all over and hungry, I think almost morbidly, I'd like to work there again next semester.

Author's Notes:  It's mid-summer and I'm in a really good mood so I thought I'd like to talk about my job at as a busboy at a Japanese restaurant.  Had to put in different names for my co-workers but I've chosen them that pretty much match their personalities.