Miss!
Perfectly nice people come into a restaurant and undergo a
personality change. They sit at their tables and shout,
wave their hands, click their fingers.
They don’t see that the cook is having a mental breakdown
in the kitchen, that we’ve run out of silverware, that the
hostess’ ex- husband is parked outside and he might have a
gun, that INS came in earlier and took away our
dishwashers. That the new dishwasher is in the bathroom
shooting up but he’s a white guy, he’s got a right to work,
nobody is going to come in and handcuff him. If they looked
around, they might notice that the couple at Table 5 is
headed for a divorce. That the little boy on 8 is being
tortured by his father, that the man at Table 1 is eating
alone again, and the fishermen on 3 have drunk too much and
are about to get in a fight.
They want to talk to management. People always assume there
is management. Hey, if there was management maybe someone
would be managing things. All they know is they’ve had to
wait too long. They are ready to order. They don’t see that
at every table, customers wave credit cards or empty beer
mugs. They can’t hear all the voices calling out, Miss!
Miss! People always call you miss.
If they stopped for a moment, they might notice these
things: they might notice also that they are sitting at the
best table in the restaurant, and that if they look up they
can see the ocean. They can see its blue waves and maybe,
if they are lucky, there might be a whale. They could
notice that earlier Susan put flowers on their table. There
are purple lupines and orange calendula, columbine, irises
and delphiniums. She grew these flowers in her garden and
then made this beautiful bouquet and she set it on their
table, where it is now, and she turned it back and forth
saying every bouquet has a front and a back and she turned
it until she was happy with the way it would look from
where they sat, if they looked at it, which they don’t.
If they weren’t so busy noticing that no one has taken
their order yet, they might see that they have menus and
water, they have comfortable chairs to sit in, a candle lit
in front of them, a bathroom if they need it. They might
see that everything here has been chosen with their
happiness in mind. In other places people might starve to
death, but here the kitchen is full of food for them.
People have been working all afternoon, cutting vegetables,
filleting fish, making bouillabaisse and soup. Last night
while they slept, the baker was here, baking pies.
Everything has been designed for their pleasure. Amelia has
given them bread. She should be in New York City dancing,
but instead she is here. It’s Saturday night and she is
here to give them bread, to take away their dirty plates,
to clean up their mess when they leave. But they don’t
notice any of this. Miss! They shout from across the room,
we’re ready to order!