Battleground Country Club

Battleground Country Club What the customers didn’t know was that there are two kinds of busboys. To them, the busboy in his black and white uniform was an oblique figure who faded into the background, blending with the dull glow of the dinner candles and the soft shadows on the crisp linen tablecloths. But beyond the delicate clink of glasses and the murmur of conversation, the world of the kitchen steamed and breathed. Beyond the swinging doors were shouts, barked orders, and a haze of other sounds which crashed and grated across each--the bristling sound of the faucet, the rattle of trays, and the sizzling of boiling sauces. The doors barred those sounds from the dining room. Out there, silk and satin whispered, jewelry jangled, and above the undulating rhythm of the jazz trio, above it all, the smooth whisk of bills and the clack of credit cards could always be heard. I remember that some busboys are like Mike Ferrios, poured into black vest and cuffs, his tie dangling effortlessly at his tanned throat as he leans against the counter to wolf down a dinner roll. As four waitresses carrying trays hurry past him, Mike turns to watch them pause at the door to the dining room where they smooth their dresses with one hand. He grins, the last round end of crust poised before his parted lips. Other busboys are like Frank, who slings trays and dishes with a sort of subdued fury, and hoists mountains of silverware, his shoulders rippling underneath the worn and greasy fabric of his black vest. I knew when he was behind me by his odor. He was a wrestler, and smelled of alcohol and smoke, of strength and death. Not long after I quit, I heard he’d gotten in a car accident, ran off the road driving drunk. I tried to imagine him struggling underneath twisted metal and broken glass, his legs mangled, his massive shoulders pinned by the steering column. All the busboys got high on whippets during the lulls between courses. Most times I stayed at the dish stations, where the waitresses brought back buttery saucers and glasses smudged with lipstick, and then stood smoking and chatting in small groups, hands on hips. In the back by the dumpsters, Frank and Dan, and Neil, and even Mike would crouch around the carton of half empty whip cream cans. Pinching the nozzle at the top just enough released the compressed gas with only a few flecks of whip cream. White and black uniforms blended in the gray twilight as I squinted to watch them from the doorway. Their faces looked ashen in the glare of the fluorescent freezer lights. With the thump and whine of the party music behind me, I could only hear the hiss of the nozzles, coughing, and an occasional muffled word as they rubbed at their noses and passed on the can. Only the waitresses could carry liquor to the customers, but they were too lazy to get it from the storage closets. Melinda, the blond bartender would saunter up to us, lean over, and bat her eyes, and we would carry cases of beer like packhorses out to the bar. In the closets, Frank ripped into a six-pack with zest, and after the third trip he sat down amidst the empty bottles and cardboard. If Mike wasn’t around Frank would talk expansively about Melinda’s ass, cupping the air and gesturing with his bottle. I thought of how powerful I felt when she looked at me, and how the men slouched and jostled

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around the bar, talking earnestly to her as their hands stole around her waist. I was jittery with soda and fatigue, and I paced the length of the closet, stepping over Frank’s legs at each pass. I hated Mike for possessing Melinda, but loved him for it as well. Perhaps I was fascinated by his ability to make her love him without effort, and with obvious diffidence. When he leaned forward, dipping her smoothly in time to the winding rhythm of the jazz trio, I watched the flex of their bodies and the way she hung in his arms, trusting her body to him completely as they danced between the stoves in the kitchen. I shivered every time her blond hair swept through the air above the surface of grill. Mike’s movements were fluid and savage reminding me of my first night working, when I looked up from the assembly line preparation of the meal to see him dash through the narrow passageway to the banquet hall, lofting a tray piled with dishes. Without checking momentum he dodged a knot of waitresses, who flicked at him with hand towels as he passed. The motion of his hips is frozen in my memory, as he sidesteps the towels like a matador, and dips momentarily, suggestively, sliding past the eyes of those women with brazen grace. I wondered later whether I would ever understand that movement, that familiarity with a woman, like the easy touch of a hand on a soft shoulder, drawing her in. The jazz trio played in an alcove by the dining area, just outside the doors to the kitchen. Each night the lanky bassist with the somber expression and the graying hair toted his battered leather case through the room where I was setting the silverware. We nodded to each other. Once the low rumblings of his tuning began, the drummer would arrive, a wiry little guy, whose body seemed always to be caught in a cross-current of rhythms. Different pianists fronted the rhythm section every night; the waitresses called them “penises.” Wiping their hands on their white aprons, they would hover in a bleachblond group by the swinging doors to the kitchen, watching. On my first night working, a man with shoulder length gray hair and a wrinkled tuxedo swayed over the piano with eyes closed. Look at him making love to the piano, the waitresses said, laughing. Look at the old penis, stroking the keys. For the first hour on the next night they confined themselves to the kitchen, gasping and giggling over the chubby little man in the white suit who had stumped in and begun playing with energetic fury. Even Melinda came and leaned around the doors to laugh at “the angry little penis,” and the busboys had to bring out all the entrees. Frank complained loudly, but I didn’t mind. Notes danced and jangled underneath the stubby fingers of the little pianist, and the diners turned appreciatively, nodding their heads from time to time. In the dishroom, I heard Frank discussing Melinda’s ass with the immigrant dishwashers who got paid two dollars an hour under the table. Muy bueno, right amigo? he would say, and he and all the amigos standing in the steam and suds would laugh, imitating the same gesture again and again. How much experience went into those motions I didn’t know, but when Mike caught them thrusting, and punching each other on

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the arm he went straight for Frank. Slamming him up against the shelves full of silverware, he shook Frank by his shirt collar, and the amigos retreated as knives and spoons clattered to the floor in a cascade of silver. Mike seized one of the big pie servers with the serrated edges and held it in the narrow space between his face and Frank’s, waving it slowly back and forth. Keep your mouth shut you drunken fuck, he said, quietly. But his eyes were hard, and he tightened his grip on Frank’s collar, forcing him back against the half empty shelf which tipped upward with his weight. Keep your mouth shut or you know what I’ll do. He slid the server down Frank’s torso towards his crotch, and the shelf collapsed as Frank strained backward. Dropping him onto the scattered silverware, Mike slung the pie server into one of the pitted and greasy metal washtubs, making us all flinch. Clean this shit up, he said as he walked past me towards the grills. I sank to the floor, scrabbling for a handful of spoons and replacing them in the blue wire baskets that rolled idly across the slick tile floor. I avoided Mike for the rest of the night after the episode in the dishroom. But as the last group of customers drained their glasses and stumbled out to the parking lot, shrugging into their long coats, the two of us had to break down the dining room. The jazz trio had already left and we worked in silence broken only by the rattle of the silverware drawers and the muffled rustling of tablecloths. After we finished bringing in the last of the hot-plates and the sterno cans from the buffet dinner, Mike motioned to me, and I followed him hesitantly out into the bare dining room. In the empty alcove, we sat down at the piano. He fingered the keys, then picked out the melody of the slow number he and Melinda had danced to, leaning close over the keyboard. Mixalydian, he said, and began to play the song, awkwardly at first, then with more confidence. You just gotta find the right keys, he said, stopping abruptly and leaning back. Just run your fingers over them the right way and they come to you. He put his hand on my shoulder, and cocked his head to one side. You ever do that before? he asked. I shook my head. As she came out of the kitchen, pausing in the doorway to punch her time-card, I saw that Melinda had changed out of her uniform into black jeans and a white blouse. Standing up from the piano, Mike sauntered over as she looked away from him down the hallway, and catching her quickly around the waist he swung her behind the door. I heard her shriek of laughter and then silence, then finally the sound of a time-card being punched. Mike had one hand around Melinda’s waist when they reappeared, and in his other he was holding his vest, its creases relaxed into crumpled blackness. As they headed for the door to the parking lot, he shot me a wink. When they were gone, I rested my fingers on the cool ivory of the piano keys, slid them across the expanse of the keyboard. After a few minutes, I got up, punched my time-card, and went to wash my hands.

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