Aftermath of Dreaming Page 7

  When I returned from my break, Seamus sent me down to the coat-check room, normally a prized position because there you could earn tips during your shift. Few to no people gave money for escorting them to their table or delivering a phone, and certainly not for writing down their reservation when they called, but coat-checking enabled us hosts and hostesses to dip into the pile of cash walking in the doors each night, from patrons whose monthly florist bills were the size of our monthly nuts.

  Even though we weren’t supposed to. The house got the tips, but the customers didn’t know that; they assumed we did. They’d watch us working hard to keep their coats and scarves from falling on the floor; saw us smiling nicely as we handed their garments over after (usually) quickly locating them, so they’d gladly put a dollar or two down. The tips were then swept into a small square hole that had been cut into the top of the counter, and shot straight to the pockets of the owners via a locked strongbox. Except for the ones that we hid in our hands and surreptitiously slid into our pants pockets, being sure to take them out later to neatly fold since a bulge under the jacket uniform was a dead giveaway.

  As was taking too much. We all went by a two-for-the-house, one-for-us rule of thumb mostly because of a notorious story about a former host who, on a freezing pre-Thanksgiving day in a burst of holiday-shopping need, took every single tip that graced the coat-room counter during an overflowingly full lunch shift. Unbeknownst to the host, the manager had emptied out the locked strongbox just that morning with the intention of doing a rare surprise check on it later that day. So when the manager found not even one lonely dime, he was forced to fire the host, as the thievery was too flagrant to ignore—which they did for the rest of us when we kept our take small. But that made it feel like the only ones who were really being duped were the customers, who kindly gave the tips thinking it was the hosts they were going to.

  Lydia, another hostess, had explained the system to me on a rainy June evening about a week after I started working there when we were sent down to the coat-check room to work the early-dinner shift, which consisted of customers in from New Jersey and Elsewhere who arrived at six to eat from the fixed-price (meant to be cheap, but who are we kidding?) menu, then ran out by seventy-thirty to catch a cab for a Broadway show. So it was two time slots of hell. Once when they arrived and decloaked, and again when they descended en masse to be reclothed. Lydia had told me that night that she had no intention of handling all those drippy umbrellas and slimy raincoats without taking tips just to preserve my ignorance until they were sure I’d be cool. She wore her thick, strawberry-blond hair over one eye à la Veronica Lake, and would peer out the other eye under a perfectly groomed brow. She had moved to Europe with her mother when she was a small child, I was never able to ascertain why, and at five, she was put in a kindergarten in Germany though she didn’t speak a word of the language. She said she’d always remember that year as bright shiny objects and finger paint smells mixed with harsh German sounds. I held out from taking tips for about a week, then joined in.

  But in August, the clanging iron mechanical rack was empty, so there was nothing to do in the coat room but stand and smile politely as customers came in from the street, then direct them up the stairs. Unceasingly, first-time guests would point a hand and say, “Right upstairs?” As if my presence, a coat-room clerk, prevented them from taking action without my consent. This was doubly odd because other than the restrooms, there was nowhere else for them to go. I wondered if they believed that if they just stayed down there long enough, the entire restaurant would descend to them. I’d smile and say, “Straight up the stairs,” and they would smile back as if they knew it all along, but had done me a favor by asking the way.

  That Saturday night, I got to the coat room at twenty after eight, a perfect time to read a book or a magazine. The eight o’clock tables had arrived, the sixes had come and gone, the sevens hadn’t left yet, and the nines still had forty minutes to arrive, so I was reading The New Yorker, a splurge of a subscription I had started the month before.

  I had grown up reading the magazine in a family that had read it from when it was first published. The spacious attic-playroom of my grandmother’s home in New Orleans was wallpapered with carefully cut and artfully applied covers of the magazine starting in 1925 and marching steadily along to 1953; then they stopped, but it was enough. I would stand for hours looking at them as a child. The different styles of the artists, each with their own separate worlds of the same universe, all on display for me to see. Rainy afternoons, of which New Orleans had plenty, found me with large drawing tablets and colored pencils, sketching my own versions of the scenes on the walls.

  I was standing in the coat room with the left side of my body visible from the window and the other side hidden behind the wall. The New Yorker was held in my right hand so I could occasionally look out, nod, and smile if someone came through, then easily return to my place. I was in the middle of a lengthy article about bee-keeping written by a woman who wore long dresses with no underwear when she tended her hives, which I found brave and lonely somehow, when suddenly the awareness that I wasn’t alone came over me. I averted my eyes from the page while lowering the magazine and looked up to find Andrew Madden standing in front of me with only the coat-check counter between us, as if he had been instantly dispatched from a celestial realm.

  “The men’s room is to the left.” My mind was on automode, though I knew directions were not what he was after. I surreptitiously slid the magazine onto a shelf.

  “Uh-huh, thank you. Are you Yvette Broussard?”

  “Yes.” The formal response came out on its own.

  “I’m Andrew Madden.”

  I thrust my hand out before I knew what I was doing and he took it, spurring on the combined shock and habitual behavior I felt locked in. I pumped a couple of times with a firm grip, an I’m-responsible-loyal-and-hardworking, interviewing-for-a-job handshake and maybe I was. His hand felt wintergreen, freshening mine from the work it had done. I let go first and he looked surprised that I hadn’t hung on.

  “Nice to meet you,” I said, finishing the routine and immediately understanding why it had been devised so long ago. I wanted to cling to formality like a dress whose straps had been cut to keep from being exposed.

  “Are you an actress?”

  “No.” I hadn’t lived in New York long enough at that point to know that that wasn’t a strange question, nor did I understand that the predicate noun signified predictable dreams and, usually, eventually dreadful plan Bs. “I’m not.”

  “Do you want to be?”

  It was palpable in that moment that he had given me a question legions craved from him. I watched his face after he offered it. An idol mask had slipped on and his features set themselves in a practiced, enigmatic openness.

  “No.” Then I smiled and shrugged. He clearly liked actresses, thought the profession a good job to have; I didn’t want to appear rude.

  “Oh.” This seemed to escape without his consent because he followed it with a small little laugh. “Well, what are you, then, besides beautiful?”

  Which made me blush. I didn’t feel beautiful in that polyester lime-green uniform, and I didn’t think of myself that way. With my father I had felt beautiful because he told me I was all the time, even though I figured he said it because I was his offspring, and with widow-man I had, but as a teenager around girls and boys my own age, I felt off, different, like my soul had been in a rush to get to earth, so had just grabbed the first face it saw, one left over from an earlier time, as if all the modern ones were off in a queue getting their magazine-styled, cheerleader-straight hair. “Porcelain” and “cameo” are words I’ve heard to describe me—not such stuff as high school boys’ dreams are made on.

  “I’m an artist, a sculptor.” I tried to ignore how absurd I felt saying this in Modern Art’s hometown, and as a coat-check clerk, no less, though it had been worse in Mississippi. Back home, I could see in people’s eyes the cute-kitten a
nd sweet-puppy paintings they decided a girl artist would create. “Sugar pie, that’s so nice,” they’d say, patting my hand as if making a physical prayer to Jesus for his light to shine through my work.

  One of Andrew’s eyebrows shot up, and he lowered his chin to examine my face. I felt he was seeing every piece I had ever done.

  “I’d like to help you.”

  He took no breath for a pause, but it existed nonetheless, disuniting everything preceding it and since.

  “Call me tomorrow. I’m at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel. Will you do that, will you call me tomorrow?”

  “Okay, but…What’s your room number?”

  Andrew smiled at me. Kindly. And it held me gently in place.

  “Just say my name, Yvette, they know me.”

  I never wanted his smile to stop.

  “Okay.”

  “Okay.”

  We looked at each other for a long moment, then he knocked on the counter between us twice with his forefinger crooked, like a substitute for the embrace that had begun.

  “So I’ll talk to you; we’ll talk; I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Right?”

  I nodded.

  “Bye, Yvette.” And he turned and disappeared into the men’s room just to the left.

  There was a gasp in the air and in me. A loud but silent, all-encompassing “Oh my God” inhaled into space and body and mind. I was too excited to stand still, so I started walking a tiny track in front of the racks. An entire year’s worth of experience had happened in that short exchange, and my mind was racing with its sounds and senses and smells. I noticed The New Yorker folded back to the article about bee-keeping. In that magazine, on that page, lay the sentence that was the point in time when Andrew Madden and I had met. I wanted to frame it. Every word I read henceforth would be infused with him. If I could read at all. My mind held only his words, a necklace of auditory pearls consisting of every syllable he had spoken, one I could listen to, look at, and hold.

  Then I remembered he was still in the men’s room. I immediately wished there was someplace else I could be, some option more elegant than being stuck in the coat-check room with the lime-green of my uniform vibrating off my body, a strong signal from the lighthouse of my nonexistent art career. I paced a bit more, than decided my only real choice was just to stand behind the counter as nonchalantly as I could.

  Andrew emerged from the men’s room, wagging his finger at me as he walked across the lobby’s marble floor. “Ritz-Carlton Hotel, tomorrow; don’t forget.”

  I smiled. A smile I had never smiled before. A smile attached to a retractable cord that he had installed inside me, that pulled out and grew more taut with each step he took up the stairs, only able to snap back and coil up by talking to him again.

  I wouldn’t forget. Was he kidding? I couldn’t wait.

  8

  The minute Andrew disappeared up the stairs, my body jumped in the air. Jumped and lit up, about to explode. Fireworks were inside me lighting up my internal sky. Andrew Madden spoke to me. Came up to me, knew my name, said my name, spoke my name in his voice, which only belonged to him, but now a little bit to me, as well. Andrew Madden spoke to me.

  I wanted to pretend he had intuited my name all on his own. Could tell just by looking at me the way he seemed to know me already so well, but it was Seamus, I was sure, who had told him. Then I wondered if any of the other hosts had been standing nearby when that information was exchanged. I didn’t want them to know, wanted to keep this between Andrew and me (and Seamus, unfortunately), not become fodder for the restaurant’s gossip mill. I started to go over in my head who was working that night and who might have been where, then I gave up. All I wanted to do was relive over and over Andrew’s voice in my ears, his eyes locked on mine, his body so near. When customers came in, I tore my thoughts away long enough to look at them. It was easy to smile, joy flowed out of me in waves. Then I’d start the reliving all over again: the moment I realized I wasn’t alone, the looking up and seeing him, my eyes drawn directly to his, his first words to me, and mine to him…

  And he wanted to help me. Oh, my God. I couldn’t even imagine what he wanted to do, how he meant to, but just that phrase—“I want to help you”—was so astonishing, so extraordinary, so giving me a ring. “I want to help you.” It was all I could do not to scream in exhilaration.

  Then I realized that Andrew would have to come through the lobby again to leave. He must have arrived while I was on break, so that would mean the end of his meal should be soon and I’d get to see him again! One more time until…Tomorrow, maybe? It felt like we had a date. Him telling me to call, but also something else. Oh, my God, just to see his face again looking at me and mine at him.

  But what if Lily Creed or that other woman was with him? Oh, no. Well, even so, they were probably just friends. They’d have to be or he wouldn’t have come down to see me. Okay, so it didn’t matter if they were with him or not. I hoped. I wished time would jump to either Sunday, when I could call him, or back to forty minutes ago, when he was standing there. Either one, but just me and him.

  After almost an hour of alternately wondering why Andrew hadn’t appeared and envisioning all kinds of dreamy scenarios between us, another host came downstairs to the coat room.

  “Seamus wants you up at the stand,” Tommy said. He was from Queens and was working his way through John Jay College studying criminal law. “Had a good time in here?” He nudged me hard on the arm as I tried to walk by.

  “No,” I said, pushing my way past. “It was boring, like it always is.”

  “Yeah, a certain someone boring into you,” he said, and leered at me.

  Oh, God, of all people to know about Andrew. Tommy was the weird little brother my parents thankfully never had. He was constantly making homoerotic jokes with two waiters from Yugoslavia, and I found that odd since his girlfriend waited for him every weekend night after work. I hoped he wouldn’t include this in his repertoire.

  Up the same stairs where Andrew had walked, I walked—if my body being propelled forward by sheer ecstasy could be called that—into the bar dining room where I took my place against the wall next to the maître d’ stand. Another hostess was there waiting to transport customers to their table like some benevolent version of the boat in that Greek myth, ferrying people to the Kingdom of the Dead. She was new and looked overwhelmed. It was her first Saturday night, and I remembered what it was like in the beginning, trying to quickly figure out the system and how it all worked. Seamus probably had her taking as many tables as possible to get her broken in, so maybe only Tommy might blab. But then again, even if he did, who cared? Surely none of them. Andrew was just some Hollywood actor, for Christ’s sake. What was I worrying about?

  But it was all I could do to stay still and not dance around the large room. It was as if a group of fourteen-year-old girls had taken over my insides. They were giggling, whispering, and screaming their swooning delight. Maybe Andrew was about to come through! Would he look at me again? Smile? Transmit a secret message to me with his eyes? Andrew, please walk by.

  The cavernous wood-paneled barroom was dimly lit, like a stage whose main spotlight had been left off. Seamus hadn’t looked at me once—just kept his head bowed, looking down. He was built like a boxer beyond his prime, with a face that wasn’t handsome but one you were glad to look at. Usually he was flirty in an avuncular way, so I figured he was having one of his wretched nights. Seamus would have Henry, the Scottish bartender, fix him “tea” in a glass that was mostly whiskey, then keep it just inside the kitchen door to sip on with a few fast puffs off a cigarette in between arriving customers. A wretched night was one that allowed little opportunity for that.

  Footsteps were approaching down the long marble hall that led from the main dining room to the bar. Maybe Andrew! I kept my head turned away so I wouldn’t be looking straight at him, but could turn, see him, and pretend to be surprised. Oh, you hadn’t left yet?

  Closer and closer the footsteps came until
the last tattooing on the hard marble floor was heard, then steps were taken on the barroom’s deep carpeted plush. I turned to look, ready to catch his eye, but an elderly couple had emerged into the shallow light. Goddammit. The fourteen-year-old girls inside me were silenced as the couple bid good night to Seamus, and he sputtered a goodbye to them with his Irish charm. So where was Andrew? He must still be in the dining room, having some marathon meal. Okay, at least he’s still near, still able to be seen again. I’ll just be sure to ferry the next party into the dining room so that I can.

  A party of four came up the stairs; the men in dark suits, the women wearing Chanel. It was clear that only one of the couples had eaten in the restaurant before. One of the women was looking around as the other kept a running commentary in her ear. The taller man walked with authority up to the maître d’ stand and gave Seamus his name, while the other stood back but away from the wives, who were admiring the large brass mobile hanging over the bar, a waterfall of shimmer dripping in the low light.

  I practically jumped forward to get in place to take them, almost bumped Seamus’s arm as he checked the slip of paper that was prepared for each party—table number, number of persons, if they were VIP, birthday cake, anything the captain needed to know—but Seamus deliberately handed the slip to the new hostess, signaling her to take the foursome away. My face openly fell, but Seamus was too busy heightening his accent to the realm of leprechauns (he got bigger tips that way), as he told the party to enjoy their meal, to notice my expression.