All around, silence clung to the walls as thickly and tenaciously as gluten skin over dough. Everyone had left, Mauro’s last bottle of wine was still standing on the small round table, lit only by the wan glow of the kitchen. It was just me and her, but all I could see in my mind’s eye was the dinner for the mayor at the Verve the following week and the vagaries of life. She was the result of my first try at interviewing candidates for the weekend dining staff: the food runners, the workers you need on really hectic days.
I had to choose my own personal food runner, who would be picking up my main courses. There were two girls: one was a pint-size brunette, good figure, amazing tits, a slight overbite, a bit of a scatterbrain, and about as useful as an origami flower in the rain. No experience as a waitress. The other was a pocketsize Sardinian with short, wiry hair, a flat ass, no boobs to speak of, and a lot of restaurant experience, on the ball. Food runners don’t do much. They set tables, serve meals, and clean up afterward, no responsibility and nothing much to worry about. At most, you can ask them to try to carry more than two plates at a time. The brunette could carry only two plates at a time. I can teach her, I said to myself. And I chose her.
This was her second weekend. The concert had finished earlier than usual that night, and the rest of the staff had somewhere to go. Worse, Patrizio had left, and when he was gone and the bar was closed, the buzz subsided dramatically. While I was mulling things over in my head, I realized that she was about a foot away from me, saying that men always feel they have to make promises. She doesn’t believe their promises and says that women promise things only if they’re in love. I imagined her brain like a still, shallow Swiss mountain lake and tried to concentrate on her nipples, which were just visible through her top. I politely took over the conversation, hoping to steer it anywhere but into the differences between men and women. When you talk about things in general, it’s impossible not to be reasonable. That’s the path we go down when we’re looking for safe, run-of-the-mill banter that lets us make a show of our boring and banal common sense. I ask her if she wants some wine, but no, she doesn’t drink. I jabber on about photography and college, confident that my clichés are less clichéd than everyone else’s. She’s wearing her hair up, exposing the curve of the nape of her neck and her perfectly round head. I’ve just finished rolling a joint and pass it to her to light it. She comes closer and lays her head on my shoulder. She’s saying something about travel and luck, and dreams and aspirations, and something about virtue, in the classical sense, perhaps.
I was no longer listening, all I could feel was her warmth, her breast resting on my arm. My heartbeat started accelerating out of control. Was it her or the joint? I wondered. And then I saw her lips part and felt my mouth on hers. That’s the way it’s supposed to go, isn’t it? I was riveted by this precise moment, the instant at the beginning of a kiss and the landslide that immediately follows. A kiss is the green light, the checkered flag that is suddenly waved, the feeble excuse for my hands to make a beeline for her boobs and all the rest. Everything that a moment before was out-of-bounds, after a kiss is fair game.
“I liked you right away, d’you know? When I came for the interview. I sensed that you lived in your own secret world, all ready to be discovered.”
“Do you have a secret world?”
“Sure I do, but not everyone does. I’d love to see your photos.”
“I’m not really a photographer, I’m a chef.”
“You know what I think? That in this life we have to have courage. I believe you should be what you dream, not what you do …”
She was turning serious. Then she came closer again, purring like a cat. I decided I’d had enough of the kissing and clichés. The price for screwing this girl was getting way too high and, besides, I was dead tired.
“I think what you do is exactly who you are, that’s the only way to survive and keep your dreams tucked away where they’re supposed to be,” I replied.
You’re a jerk who thinks with his dick, I told myself. I regretted not hiring the plain Sardinian girl who could carry five plates at a time. I thought about how hard I’d worked today to get every meal out in the correct order, and what challenges lay ahead of me tomorrow. It’s not the brunette’s fault I can’t stand her; it’s my fault. I told her I was calling it a night. She frowned and said she was going to bed too — by herself.
Walking home, Matteo texted me.
“Coming home?”
“On my way.”
“Alone?”
“Alone. What about you?”
“No. Be quiet when you get back, she’s shy.”
I put my phone back in my pocket. It rang again, another message from Matteo.
Long story short, Mauro stopped calling the brunette, to everyone’s great relief. (This is how shift workers are fired: First you don’t get the roster for the following week and then the restaurant’s number stops coming up on your phone.) He’d kept the Sardinian girl’s contact details, and by the end of June, she’d become my food runner. The kitchen was running more smoothly now, and that’s what really mattered. And yes, I am getting soooo old.