Chapter 1 #2
And I had to be honest with myself. My face wasn’t up to model/movie star standards and neither was my body.
I was more of an “oh, she’s fine” kind of person, not someone who would draw a crowd but not the type to make anyone cover his eyes and run, either.
I was normal, but that was all…and if I waited to meet them at the restaurant, there was another problem.
I would be wearing my uniform: a hat that resembled the one worn by Popeye, a scratchy black scarf tied in a fat square knot, and white polyester pants.
“Normal” and “fine” were not the words to describe that look.
“Pitiful” and “ridiculous” were better ones.
I sighed again, just like my mom kept doing, but then I told myself to focus.
If it wasn’t going to be here, then how would I connect with a Woodsmen player?
Maybe I could move and live next door to one of them?
We would naturally meet that way and it would have been easy to force more interactions, too.
Maybe I could get a job at Woodsmen Stadium?
Those were hard to come by, though, because the team paid well and treated their employees great, so they didn’t often leave and create openings.
After my graduation, I would need to find a job outside of this cinderblock building.
That was something I hadn’t yet disclosed to my mom, and she was going to get very upset.
She told us (a lot) that this restaurant was a family business, emphasis on family.
It was a problem. There were a lot of problems—
Damn. A pickup had just pulled into our parking lot and that could have been the first sign that the Junior Woodsmen, the minor league players, were heading over here to eat.
The clock on the wall indicated that it was a little early for their arrival but as I watched, a man who looked football player-sized got out of the driver’s seat and walked toward our door.
I didn’t recognize him as one of the Junior Woodsmen, but those guys came and went a lot.
They either quit football, moved laterally to another low-level team or, in the case of one of the players from last year, they moved up to be actual Woodsmen…
and that was something for me to keep in mind.
Junior Woodsmen didn’t have to stay junior, so I watched the guy walking in.
He stood for a moment in front of our menu, which had been painted on the same wall since the day we’d opened (the prices had changed a lot and we no longer offered Dagwood sandwiches, liver sausage, or sliced pineapple as a burger topping).
I waited and while I did, I quietly removed the dixie cup hat from my head.
“Welcome to Walter’s,” I said as he finally approached the counter. “What can I get you?”
He turned to look again at the wall, instead of at me. “I’m going to be kind of a jackoff.”
“Oh,” I said. “Thanks for letting me know. What would you like?”
I understood the jackoff comment when he started his order.
It was long and complicated, with lots of special requests.
Did we have goat cheese? No? What about Swiss?
What varieties of lettuce? Could he have a burger with no bun, and use the…
was there really only iceberg? Ok, could he replace the bun with iceberg lettuce?
What type of oil did we use for our fries? Were they all salted? And on, and on.
I did the best I could with his special requests, carefully noting everything. “Will that be all?” I asked as I glanced at the line forming behind him. During the time that he’d taken to ponder and ask all his questions, more football players had come in and they were waiting none-too patiently.
“Yeah, that’s it.” He finally looked away from the wall and smiled. “You took it easy on me. I usually get a lot more pushback and I appreciate your help. Thank you.”
He had a nice smile. I wasn’t model- or actress-like, but I had worked at this counter since I was a teenager and I had encountered flirting before.
“Sure,” I said, smiling back. I had to admit that the attention was kind of nice, even from one of the Junior Woodsmen.
I passed back the ticket to my dad, the cook, and got this guy’s drink (he hadn’t wanted anything with corn syrup, so he was having iced tea and yes, it was made from black tea which was caffeinated).
While he’d been staring at the menu and asking me questions, I’d been sizing him up.
Each football position had a standard body type and I had tried to peg where he played.
He wasn’t massive with tons of girth like a linebacker, and he didn’t seem compact enough for a running back.
Tall, strong…wide receiver? No, quarterback, I decided, and that was too bad for him.
The Woodsmen already had a star QB named Everett Ford, and he had a backup and that backup had a backup.
If this guy was hoping to move up from the Junior Woodsmen to the real team, it wasn’t going to work out for him.
“Here you go.” I handed over his cup. “Take a seat and we’ll be out with your tray in a sec.”
He didn’t move. “Don’t you have to give me a number?”
“No, I’ll remember.” So would my dad, I thought. I would hear him talking about this customer later because we always heard all the details of his shitty days of standing over the grill and about all the whiny SOBs who bothered him about their prissy food.
I looked again over the QB’s broad shoulder. “Next!”
I took a few more orders before my mom returned, and it was lucky that she did because trays were in the pass-through window to the kitchen, ready to go.
She glanced at my hatless head as she took over the register and I took over serving—and yes, I did remember who had ordered what and I delivered the food to the correct tables.
I also noticed that my father was taking his sweet time to finish our first order of the lunch rush, the one for the Junior Woodsmen QB.
Dad got passive-aggressive with diners whom he found to be annoying, but he didn’t hesitate to step into the aggressive-aggressive realm, either.
I saw that when I grabbed the next tray.
“Dad, this is supposed to be no-salt fries,” I called through the pass into the kitchen.
“Also, no bun, extra tomatoes…” I continued to read off all the things that had gone wrong with the ticket.
I heard him swear and I knew that my mom had, too, because I saw her back stiffen.
This order was trash, which was where it went.
I asked him to please hurry up with the refire and then I went over to the picky quarterback customer.
The tables were full of Junior Woodsmen now and they were all talking to each other, sometimes yelling across the room to make jokes and discuss their practice.
It didn’t bother any other diners, since they were the only ones here, but I had noticed that this guy wasn’t joining in.
He wasn’t talking to any of them or even looking around—his eyes were glued to a tablet and he didn’t seem bothered by the volume of his teammates.
I cleared my throat. “Excuse me, I just wanted to let you know that your food is going to take a little longer.”
He glanced at the other tables. They were filled with customers who had arrived behind him but were already eating. “What’s the problem?”
“Your order was complicated and there were mistakes,” I explained. “It’s being remade.”
“I told you that I was going to be a jackoff.”
My dad was going to call him a lot of worse names than that when he got home tonight. “We want to make sure you’re happy with what you paid for,” I said. There was a big crash in the kitchen, which I heard even over all the other noise. “Or I could give you a refund,” I suggested.
“I’m in no hurry,” he said, and returned to looking at his tablet.
That was lucky, because it took ten times longer than it should have for his food to come up.
My mom had already gone back twice to check on it and she had been staring at the QB and his tablet.
“Comp him,” she told me before she went back for a third time.
When she returned, she had his food on a tray, and it was finally right.
She carried it over to him and he still didn’t seem mad, even though the other patrons were already leaving.
The rush was over. We weren’t taking in any more orders and I could hear that things in the kitchen had settled down, with no more crashing or swearing.
My mom disappeared into the office, closing the door behind herself and leaving me to deal with refills and sudden hankerings for a milkshake.
I cleaned up a fry spill, wiped the empty tabletops, and moved chairs back around.
The biggest Junior Woodsmen players had taken up four-tops just by themselves.
“This was an offensive lineman sitting here, right?” I asked the QB as I adjusted a table back into its spot.
“Huh?” He looked up from the tablet. “Uh, I think so.”
“You don’t know the team very well.” I bent and grabbed a few napkins from the floor.
“No,” he said. “I’m learning.”
“One way to learn about people is to interact with them,” I mentioned. “Most of the other guys seemed friendly.”
“They seem like a good group,” he agreed. “They get along ok. Does that show up in how they play?”
“Don’t you know?” I asked.
“Don’t you? Their field is practically in shouting distance of this restaurant,” he said. “Haven’t you seen them?”
“No, but you should have, since you’re the quarterback,” I prompted, but he shook his head. “You’re a tight end? Special teams?”
“No, I’m not connected to the Junior Woodsmen at all. I did play, but it was a few years ago.”
I continued to pick up trash—oh, great. “Ugh,” I muttered as red liquid smeared across the table. Why would someone have hidden a giant pile of ketchup under a cup? I hadn’t noticed any ten-year-olds eating here today.
“I heard them laughing about something,” he noted. “Funny trick.”