Nowadays though he’s happy to be invisible. Sometimes when he’s clearing a table even though the waiters and waitresses wear black tuxedo-style jackets and the busboys are in white a diner mistakes him for a waiter and asks him to bring another menu or more bread or the check but he just pretends he doesn’t speak English and turns his back.
Table seven is a large round VIP table over by a floor-to-ceiling window with a view of the beach and crashing waves and the turquoise ocean beyond. It’s usually bused by the pretty little Mexican girl who wants to be promoted to waitress so she does a lot of smiling and leaves the top two buttons of her jacket unbuttoned. But she called in sick today so as soon as the Kid comes into the kitchen ready for work Dario the manager assigns it to him.
Hurry the fuck up and clear seven, they’ve already ordered dessert.
Dario is Italian from Philly in his late thirties, dainty as a dancer with little hands and tiny wedge-shaped feet but hard-bodied, a man who works out regularly and dresses the same way every day like a prosperous gangster or an actor playing one in a black silk T-shirt, black Armani suit, sockless black Bally loafers, and a large faux-diamond pinkie ring. He has straight black hair in a ponytail and keeps a fresh carnation in his lapel and likes to be seen sniffing it. He reminds the Kid of Al Pacino in Scarface only without the scar.
Dude, it’s only noon. What is it, a late breakfast? Brunch? We haven’t started serving brunch, have we?
Don’t fuck with me, Kid. I let ’em in early. They got a golf game or something and needed to eat now.
Must be big cheeses.
Never mind that. Just get out there and clear the fucking table.
There are four large beefy men at table seven, a thick-necked black guy with his back to the Kid facing the window and three white guys with barrel-bellies, all of them in pastel-colored golf clothes. Mob friends of Dario down from Philly, the Kid decides although he’s pretty sure Dario isn’t a real mobster, only a guy who likes to be regarded as one. He goes all smarmy and overhospitable whenever the real thing shows up at the restaurant. One of the white guys at the table looks Spanish and has a bad dye job on his black pencil-thin mustache and comb-over. The big black guy wears a baseball cap and even from behind looks familiar to the Kid. Usually he avoids looking at the diners’ faces when he clears the table but this time as he goes for the black guy’s plate and silverware he glances up and recognizes him.
His legs go all watery and his breathing turns shallow and fast. O. J. Simpson is in the house! How weird is that? the Kid says to himself. More than weird, it’s a little scary because to his knowledge at least the Kid has never been this close to a real cold-blooded killer before. He somehow hadn’t realized O. J. Simpson was a real person and not just a famous killer who existed only on TV since nothing you know only from TV is real. Not even the news. Not even the president. He wonders what O. J. would do if the Kid accidentally knocked over his half-filled glass of red wine and it splashed into his large lap or dropped his plate of half-eaten ketchup-covered fries onto the floor and got ketchup all over O. J.’s spotless pale green slacks and white shoes.
He sets the tray onto the folding stand beside the table and very carefully removes first O. J.’s knife, then the dishes and the rest of the silverware and the empty glasses. When he nervously reaches for O. J.’s wineglass the man places his brown football-size hand over it and shakes his head no and the Kid quickly backs off.
Sorry sorry. Very sorry.
I’ll have another glass of the Rhône.
Yessir. I’ll tell your waiter.
The man the Kid thinks is Spanish says, Bring me half a pear.
O. J. laughs and says, Fucking half a pear! Why do you want only half a fucking pear? Get a whole one, for chrissakes, and eat half if you only want half a fucking pear.
I only want half a pear. I wanted a whole fucking pear I’d order a whole fucking pear.
O. J. says to the Kid, Bring my fastidious friend here half a fucking pear.
Yessir.
Dario is standing at the headwaiter’s desk by the door going over lunch reservations. As the Kid passes with his tray of dishes and silver and glassware from table seven he stops for a second and says, O. J. wants another glass of wine. Rhône. Want me to bring him his wine?
I’ll take care of it. Fucking guy never buys a decent fucking bottle himself unless somebody else’s paying. Like he expects to get comped his whole fucking life.
And there’s an asshole over there who wants half a fucking pear.
At that moment the asshole — the Spanish-looking guy with the bad hair — passes behind the Kid on his way to the men’s room. The Kid realizes he’s been overheard.
Oh yeah and this gentleman wants the other half!
The gentleman nods, smiles, and moves on to the men’s room.
Dario places a hand on the Kid’s shoulder. That “gentleman” is the Nicaraguan consul.
No shit? The guy with O. J.?
No shit.
I thought in Nicaragua everyone was a soccer player or a hooker.
Dario gives the Kid a cold look. Then he turns his attention back to the lunch reservations. In a low voice he says, You some kinda wiseguy? My wife’s from Nicaragua. You know that. Everybody works here knows that.
Jeez, Dario, I didn’t even know you were married. What team’d she play for?
Dario takes a step back and squints at the Kid. Is he serious? Is he putting me on? Is he insulting my wife? Or me? The Kid confuses Dario. He’s confused him since the day he walked in and asked for a job that almost always went to a Honduran or a dry-footed Cuban off the boat or a wet-footed Haitian with phony papers. A normal-looking little white American guy in his twenties with a high school diploma, a type that almost never wants to bus dishes except temporarily as a way to become a waiter. He took the Kid’s application anyhow and ran the usual background check. It turned out the Kid was a listed sex offender on parole and was wearing an electronic ankle bracelet. Dario got the picture. But the Kid didn’t seem mentally retarded and he spoke decent English and a little Spanish so he went ahead and hired him anyhow. He figured because of his record and the risk of being sent back to jail he wasn’t likely to cause trouble or steal anything.
He called the Kid in and told him he knew about his past. The Kid said it was all a stupid mistake, he was innocent of everything, he was set up. It looked like he was going to break into tears right there in Dario’s office and Dario felt sorry for him which he rarely felt for anyone especially someone he was interviewing for a job. In the past he’d hired ex-cons, recovering alcoholics, and addicts just out of rehab, men and women he knew were illegals with doctored documents and they usually made good dishwashers, pot scrubbers, and busboys at least for a few months or a season until they fell off the wagon or reverted to their old petty criminal habits or got busted by the INS or Homeland Security and deported or locked up. He figured the shadow hanging over the Kid would keep him in line. Which it has.