You’re on the top of a hill, wearing your black pants, black soft-soled shoes, black apron, and white shirt. You’re next to a station set up with a silver rectangular bucket of ice, plastic pitchers of water and iced tea, straws, sugar and artificial sweeteners, creamers, coffee warmers, stacked glasses, piles of napkins, and sliced lemons. You can’t squeeze the lemons into the water anymore because the juice stings the tiny cuts in your fingertips from opening twist-off beer bottles. Carefully, you balance seven waters and a plate of lemons on your tray for your new table, then you realize that your tables are no longer at a convenient distance but at the top of a neighboring hill. You try to remember how to walk downhill in such a way as to control your speed. You see your tables far away, occupied by thirsty, hungry customers, and try to smile and call (but not shout or yell), “I’m coming! I’m on my way!”
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Somebody’s turned the dishwasher spray nozzle so far that it can’t be shut off. The water is flooding the kitchen, and slowly spreading across the dining area’s hardwood floors. Your manager brings you a mop, then sits at the bar to watch you try to soak up the water, saying, “Those floors will splinter if you don’t work faster. You can’t go home until it’s scuff free, clean, dry, and polished, and ready for tomorrow’s breakfast.” Meanwhile, the only waiter you really can’t stand is clocking out, taking off his apron and saying good-bye, ha, ha, ha, throwing back his head, leaving, walking, laughing, swinging his arms beside his enormous belly. Your manager reminds you that you have to roll 60 silverwares and restock all the sugar caddies before you too can go home.
Your customer has an allergic reaction to the taro. His eyelids swell, his tongue fills his mouth, he has trouble breathing and gets rushed to the hospital.
The beautiful bartender stops flirting with all the women on the other side of the bar and asks you to go “somewhere warm” with him for the winter. You get discovered by a record producer while singing your R & B version of “Happy Birthday.” You make enough money to fly home. You sleep without remembering what happened to your tables. You go to the dentist. Your old customers see you on the street and stop saying hello to you by name. You throw away your black soft-soled shoes. Your feet aren’t swollen anymore and they have propellers, not blisters.
