Julia Jenkins
It’s going to be a quiet Thursday night, just Rosanna and me on the floor. We’re sitting in the gleamingly romantic but currently deserted restaurant eating bowls of shitty leftover pasta for dinner because Chef couldn’t be bothered making us a proper staff meal. He has pork belly trimmings and a slightly wonky potato galette and all the imperfect wild mushrooms, but apparently there is ‘not enough to share’.
‘You better hurry up and finish that, you have a one at 6.30,’ says Rosanna.
One-tops. Waste of a table. They eat light, barely drink and rarely, if ever, order dessert. And they’re so needy. They either need you to hold their hand the entire night to make sure they don’t get lonely or feel the dire need to impress upon you their knowledge of this wine or that scotch. Or worse, they shroud themselves in their anonymity and melt into the shadows the entire night. Waste of a table.
‘We’ll put him in the back, shall we?’
‘Her.’
‘Sorry?’
‘We’ll put her in the back,’ Rosanna says, her voice muffled through sticky spaghetti. ‘Sounded young on the phone.’
I’m already at the back of the restaurant removing one of my perfectly placed settings, shifting the table imperceptibly so that the remaining place will be exactly facing my station. All the better to swoop in at exactly the right moment to offer a glass of liqueur or a slice of tart that will no doubt be turned down.
At almost exactly 6.30 pm, a soft tinkle of the entrance bell announces the arrival of my one. She stands in the doorway, slightly unsure, hands clasped around her bag in front of her. She’s in a dark blue dress, knee length and low cut to a point just above immodesty, low heels, hair pulled back in a ponytail and a swipe of deep red lipstick. She could be dressed for a date but for the cloak of aloneness that she keeps firmly around her shoulders.
Walking beside me to the table, her ankles wobble slightly in her heels, but she catches herself quickly, nervously adjusting the neckline of her dress.
Once sitting she places her phone on the table in front of her and begins to intently read the menu. I can see her eyes widen slightly at the prices. It’s going to be one of those nights then, two light entrées and a glass of mineral water.
Her phone lights up and she grabs at it quickly. Reading whatever it says her eyes roll gently and suddenly she sits up a little straighter. Her cloak lifts a little as she pushes her phone away from her.
‘Something to drink to start off with perhaps? Campari? A glass of sparkling?’ I ask, floating over when she looks up from her menu again.
‘I’ll have a glass of champagne please.’
‘A glass of the blanc de blancs perhaps? The Victorian?’
‘No,’ she says, glancing up to meet my eyes. ‘Champagne. The French.’
Ah, she wears her cloak well. She sips at her champagne gratefully, keeping her hands busy with the glass and the menu. I serve the other customers, a table of suits just interested in scotch fillets and Bordeaux, keeping an eye on my one. I’m at her side before she even has a chance to glance around the room. Bang.
‘Are you ready to order?’
‘Yes …’ the drawing out of the word belying her answer.
‘May I suggest the cured salmon with beetroot? Or the roast quail? They’re very popular.’ Popular among women, I don’t say.
‘Hmmm,’ she says staring intently at the menu. ‘Hmmm,’ she says again. I wait, I hover, I smile expectantly.
‘I think I’ll have the sweetbreads with beurre blanc to start with,’ she says eventually, drawing out the French vowels just a little too far. ‘Then the hanger steak with bone marrow.’
‘And how would you like that cooked?’
‘Rare, please.’ I cross out the ‘m’ on my pad. ‘What would you recommend to drink with that?’
‘We have a lovely Sancerre, a sauvignon blanc, by the glass, or perhaps a pinot noir?’
‘Hmmm,’ she says again. ‘I’ll have a glass of the Chablis to begin, and did I hear you tell those guys you were pouring a Cotes du Rhone?’
‘Yes, but it is quite rare so it’s quite expensive.’
‘Hmmm,’ she says yet again, gaze flitting from her lifeless phone to my eyes. ‘Why not.’
In a moment of rare quiet I stand at the pass snacking on bread crusts and watching her eat. She daintily spears a sweetbread on her fork and allows a drip of butter sauce to fall to the plate before placing it between her teeth. Chew, chew, swallow, pause, another. The nubbly golden balls disappear in a flurry of movement. The cluster of watercress she leaves until last, pushing it moodily around her plate like a small child before eating it as well.
The steak’s centre is sensually pink, not a drop of blood on the plate, its crust burnished to a scorched brown. A sturdy trunk of bone sits alongside, its marrow hidden by a crown of golden crumbs. Chef has hidden a lick of mustardy remoulade underneath the meat. She sneaks a globule of glistening marrow and her eyes drift close, as if to sleep.
I muffle a smile. I know that look! That feeling of blissful sin as you roll a piece of something fatty and wonderful around your mouth. Bone marrow does it to me too.
‘You got any of that marrow spare?’ I ask Chef.
‘Fuck off and take the parfait to 602.’
So much for that fantasy.
Bone marrow long demolished and beef gone shortly after, she sips her wine. Her phone is in her bag, her shoulders have relaxed into the cushioned chair back and her eyes are lazily drifting around the room, checking out the other diners, the décor, the kitchen, me. Her glass doesn’t touch the table again until it is empty.
‘Some dessert for you ma’am?’
‘No thank you, I’m quite happy.’
What did I tell you? She signs her bill and totters out on her heels. Her ankles wobble slightly as she walks, but she straightens herself and glides out the door into the evening, leaving her cloak behind.