Chapter Four Grace
The dinner shift is half full when he walks in.
I'm at the POS entering a drink order for table seven; two glasses of the house red, a gin and tonic, and a sparkling water, and I don't see him come through the door.
I hear it. Not him, specifically. The door.
The sound of the street noise rising for a second and then cutting off, and the draft of cold air that pushes through the dining room when someone opens the front entrance.
Then the particular quality of quiet that follows when a room full of people adjusts to someone new.
I look up and he's there.
He's standing just inside the door, taking in the room, not nervous, or looking for a friend or checking if a table is ready.
He's reading the room. I've worked in restaurants long enough to know the difference between a customer looking for a seat and a person assessing a space, and this man is assessing.
His eyes move from the door to the bar to the kitchen pass to the emergency exit by the restrooms, and he does all of it in about three seconds, and then he picks a table.
Table four. Against the wall. Facing the front door and the kitchen entrance both.
He sits down and the chair disappears under him.
He's the biggest person I've ever served, and I've served a lot of people.
Not just tall… wide, thick through the chest and shoulders and arms, the kind of build that doesn't come from a gym.
His head is shaved close to the scalp, dark stubble, and his face is…
I don't know. His face is hard to describe.
The bones are too heavy, and the jaw is too wide and his brow sits low over his eyes and none of it works together in any way that adds up to handsome, but I'm looking at him and I'm still looking at him, and I don't know why I'm still looking at him.
I finish entering the drink order and grab a menu and a water glass and walk to table four.
"Evening. Can I get you something to drink while you look at the menu?"
He doesn't take the menu. He doesn't look at it.
He looks at me, not up and down, not evaluating, not the way men sometimes look at women in restaurants where the look is about the body and the face or the assessment of whether you're worth their attention.
He just looks at me. My face. My eyes. For two full seconds that feel longer than two seconds should feel.
"Coffee," he says. "Black."
"Sure. You want to hear the specials?"
"No."
I wait for more. Nothing comes. His voice is low and doesn't carry beyond the table and the word "no" is all he's offering, so I go get his coffee.
At the bar, I pour from the pot we keep for the dining room, not the good stuff Javi makes for the bar customers, and I set it on a saucer and carry it back to table four.
He hasn't moved. His hands are on the table, both of them, and they're the biggest hands I've ever seen.
Tattoos across the knuckles and up the forearms, I can see them disappear into his rolled sleeves.
Saints. I recognize a few of the images from the churches I walked past as a kid.
A Madonna on the left forearm. Something with a halo and a sword on the right.
The ink is old, most of it, faded and settled deep.
And there's a knife on his belt. Not hidden. Not displayed. Just there, clipped to his belt on the right side, the handle dark. I've never seen a customer wearing a knife in the restaurant before.
I set the coffee down. "Ready to order?"
He hasn't opened the menu. I left it on the table, but he pushed it to the side.
"The branzino," he says.
"Good choice. Comes with roasted potatoes and broccolini. Any allergies I should know about?"
"No."
"Okay. I'll get that in for you."
I walk to the kitchen and put the order in, and the entire interaction was maybe forty-five seconds and twenty words and I don't know why my hands feel different than they did before I walked to his table.
Not shaky though. I'm aware of my hands in a way that somehow makes me feel like I need to wring them to stop the beating in my chest. Tapping a quick rhythm on the POS, I straighten my back and smooth my apron before smiling and turning back to my tables.
The branzino comes up in twelve minutes because Marco is running a tight ship tonight and the fish was prepped and ready.
I carry it to table four and set it down as his hands move to make room for the plate.
He handles the knife and fork, left hand dominant, the fork in his right and the knife in his left, and the grip on the knife is natural and relaxed, the angle is specific and practiced.
He's held a lot of knives. I notice it without understanding why I notice it.
"Can I get you anything else?"
He looks up from the plate and studies me again, a shiver rolling down my spine at the rapt attention in his gaze.
"No," he says, and then after a pause, “thank you."
The "thank you" catches me. Not because it's unusual — plenty of customers say thank you. Because of the way he says it, without inflection, without pomp, just a simple, rough acknowledgement.
I go back to my other tables and work the rest of the shift.
I don't go back to table four unless he needs something, which he doesn't. He eats the branzino.
He drinks the coffee. He sits with the empty plate for a few minutes after he's done and his right hand drops to the knife on his belt and his thumb runs along the handle in a motion that looks automatic.
I know about those kinds of things. I have one.
Mine involves my index finger and whatever surface is closest.
He pays cash. Exact amount plus thirty percent, which is a good tip for a single entrée and a coffee.
He leaves the cash on the table under the saucer and stands up.
The room adjusts again because his body takes up a different amount of space when he's standing, and I'm at the bar refilling a water pitcher and I watch him walk to the door.
He doesn't look back at me, he doesn't look at anyone, he simply walks out into the cold.
The door slams behind him and the draft hits the dining room one more time and then he's gone.
I put the water pitcher down and walk to table four and bus the plate and the cup and the saucer with the cash underneath and I stack them on my tray and I stand there.
I stand there for too long.
His chair is pushed in. The table is empty.
He left nothing behind except the money and the faint impression of coffee on the saucer.
I'm standing at an empty four-top in the middle of a Thursday dinner shift and I don't know why I'm not moving.
My finger taps the edge of his plate three times, and the tapping isn't anxiety and it isn't my usual idle habit.
It’s a curiosity.
A stirring, unsettling curiosity that asks the question: who was that and why did he make my stomach flip?
Pushing aside the feeling, I pick up the tray and go back to work.
Closing takes forty-five minutes. Javi handles the bar and I handle the floor. Devon handles the kitchen and we move through the routine fast and quiet because by this point in the night none of us want to talk.
Except tonight Javi wants to talk.
"So," he says, polishing a glass. "The big guy."
"What big guy."
"The guy at four. The one you couldn't stop looking at."
"I wasn't looking at him."
"Grace. You stood at his table for ten seconds after he left. I timed it."
"You did not time it."
"I have a clock right there." He points at the bar clock, which is a neon thing Danny bought at an estate sale that hasn't kept accurate time since 2019. "Okay, I didn't time it, but it was a long time. For you."
I roll a set of silverware into a napkin and place it in the bin. "He was a customer. He ordered the branzino. He tipped thirty percent. He left."
"And you stood at his empty table and stared at his plate."
"I was busing the table."
"You were busing the table for ten seconds with nothing in your hands."
I throw a napkin at him. It hits his shoulder and falls to the bar. He grins, the full-face grin that takes up all his features, and I can't help the fact that my mouth moves toward a smile even though I don't want it to.
"He was big," Javi says.
"Yeah."
"Not, like, gym big. Big big. Like, did his parents feed him growth hormones big."
"I don't think that's how it works."
"I'm just saying, if he comes back, we might need to reinforce table four. The chair was making a sound."
"You could hear his chair from behind the bar."
"I have excellent hearing."
"You have excellent nosiness."
Javi puts the glass down and picks up another one and polishes it while looking at me sideways. "He was looking at you."
"He was eating."
"He was eating and looking at you. Literally staring at you. I'm a bartender, Grace. I watch people for a living. He watched you the entire time you were on the floor. Kinda creepy, honestly. He knew where you were in the room at all times."
"You're being weird," an unsteady laugh escapes me.
"No, I just care. What if he’s a serial killer?"
"For the love of Pete. That’s ridiculous. Stop judging people before you get to know them, it’s bad for your mental health."
Javi shrugs. "All I'm saying is, if he comes back, you should learn his name. Because right now I'm calling him The Rhino in my head and that's not sustainable."
"Please don't call him The Rhino."
"Too late. It's done. The Rhino ordered the branzino. The Rhino tipped thirty percent. The Rhino made Grace stand at an empty table for ten seconds looking at a plate."
"I hate you, asshole."
"You don't."
I don't, he’s right. I finish the silverware and wipe down the tables then check the reservation book for tomorrow.
Happy that everything is in order and the restaurant is clean and quiet and ready for the morning crew, I take off my apron and get ready to close the till out.
Devon leaves first. Then the prep cook locks the kitchen.
Then it's me and Javi and the neon clock and the last of the closing tasks.
We leave together. Javi locks the front door because Danny gave him a key two years ago and never asked for it back, and we walk the three blocks to my apartment. We don't talk.
I like this part the best.
The quiet after a full night, the sound of our shoes on the concrete, the street empty except for the parked cars and the glow of the bodega sign on the corner where Rosa's already gone home and the register light is the only thing still on.
At my door I get my key out and Javi stands on the sidewalk with his shoulders up around his ears because the wind is worse tonight.
"He had a knife," Javi says. "On his belt. Did you see that?"
"I saw it."
"That's not normal, right? Like, who wears a knife to a restaurant?"
"A chef."
"He wasn't a chef, Grace."
"Maybe he is?”
He stands there for a second, and the grin is gone and what's underneath it is the thing Javi doesn't talk about, which is the fact that he worries about me.
Not in the way bosses worry about employees or coworkers worry about colleagues but in the specific, personal way that a man worries about a woman he cares about when she lives alone.
"Lock the door," he says.
"I always lock the door."
"Lock it twice, take a picture and send it to me. He was creepy, Grace. What if he knows where you live."
“Oh my God, that’s obtuse. Goodnight, freak, I’m going inside. Get home safe.”
I go inside and I lock the door once, which is all the lock allows, and I hear Javi's footsteps on the sidewalk heading back toward the restaurant and then the street is quiet.
I brush my teeth, change into a t-shirt and shorts, and get into bed.
I definitely don't think about the man at table four.
I don't think about his hands or his face or the way he said "thank you".
I don't think about the way he held his knife, the table knife, with the ease of someone who has held thousands of knives.
I don't think about the fact that Javi said he tracked me across the dining room, or about the fact that when I stood at his empty table and tapped the edge of his plate, the tapping felt different than it usually feels. More like curiosity than anxiety.
I am definitely not thinking about any of this.
Oh God… I need to get laid.