Roxana's Waiter

Roxana’s Waiter

1 Roxana hired a new waiter on Monday. She hired him from a pool. A pool is a thing where lots of people, all kinds of people who are unemployed, hang around waiting for employment. The pool where Roxana found her waiter was nothing special. There were no physicists in it for example. No ‘landscape artists’. It was not an executive pool. But Roxana had this thing about giving people a shot, so that didn’t bother her too much. She went out looking for a waiter. And she found one. She’d done this kind of thing before.

2 Roxana’s restaurant is a seafood place. They serve a full range. Roxana herself favours shellfish, but you can’t build a successful restaurant like Roxana’s around shellfish. For one thing, shellfish have a seasonal element. You can’t, for example, catch blue crab in the Spring. The kittens are just hatching and taking their parents upsets the balance of the

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slough. You can’t serve a May lobster on bed of July sapphire weed. It’s not just a fancy problem; that fact is, something goes wrong with the mix. The stridency of the thing is Hell. You might as well serve a quince in salt. So Roxana played it smart. She made her restaurant a general seafood restaurant. She cooks sea bass with fennel; does a great Calamares en su Tinta; has a range of panfish and wahoo, several kinds of mornay, a terrific kid’s menu, both rock and bay oysters, does a monkfish with saffron sauce. On Wednesdays she serves serviche and sushi. The serviche is done mostly in mandarin. The sushi is faux Shikoku Island. On Saturdays she puts on a seafood banquet, includes shark and skate in it, and has a guy playing guitar in an acoustic rock fashion. The guy looks remarkably like guitar supremo Eric Clapton. Frankly, that doesn’t surprise me; Roxana has a way of falling on her feet.

3 When Roxana hired her new waiter she had no great expectations. If you hire a guy from a pool you take your chances, I guess. Roxana has a calm, methodical approach to these kind of things. She’s that cool woodchuck type who can put out a great big pan fire in the kitchen and still be singing ‘Stoned Soul Picnic’ when she’s finished doing it. Which probably, come to think of it, explains her general and long-lasting good health. Roxana is no stress-queen.

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4 On his first night, Roxana’s new waiter turned up in a neat cheap suit and a tie. The suit was black velour; like something some Chicano kid might wear to his cousin Alfonso’s funeral. He looked eager but uncomfortable. The tie was a subdued thing, some noveau shade of aqua to be precise. That tie said straight out: ‘I am a guy who appreciates being given a shot and I am not going to cause you no trouble’. It gave the impression that he might have been an ex-convict or something. That he might have once been a real tough guy around his neighbourhood in his teens, who got into trouble and, while he was locked up in one of those youth prisons, saw the error of his ways and decided he wanted to go into the restaurant business. These things happen; many of the most successful guys made big mistakes in their teens. The Head of Parthian Pictures on Drinkwater Street, for example, was a youth offender. Which probably explains why they made all those films about gang warfare.

5 Roxana’s new waiter started work. He worked like a Trojan. He worked smiling, like nothing and no one could stop him. You’d think he just won the Irish Sweepstakes or something. Like he’d just found a major seam of diamonds in his sock drawer. At first she put him on the tables out on the terrace. She had him do numbers 7 through 24 where the traffic is low and the customers aren’t regulars, and she watched him wheel and swoop plates onto those neat bamboo mats of hers with that brand of professional bemusement that announced she was waiting for something to hit the floor

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and, when it did, not to be disappointed. Only it didn’t. That is, nothing hit the floor. He whirled those plates like he was Houdini and they were his assistants. He was relentless. And when the rush was on, soon afterwards, and he came out back into the tub room, draped the napkin on his arm over the boiler pipe yonder, and started scrubbing the big steaming baskets, the sauteuse and the stockpots, that pretty much set the agenda. The guy could run up a Crème Nantua in no time flat. He was great with a piping bag and a parmesan knife. When the slicer broke down, and threatened to nix the sushi night, he fixed it. He was a whiz with a balloon whisk. He knew a terrific way to make annatto oil a deeper, richer shade of orange (add a pinch of salt and use peanut oil instead of corn oil, apparently). The guy was a dream.

6 When Roxana mentioned the whole business to Leon Bernano, who runs the Bernano Cookware Company (steaming baskets, stainless steel mixing bowls and so on) and was making a courtesy call, he had one thing to say. He said: ‘You know, a guy like that is probably not going to hang around very long.’ That threw Roxana a little more than she expected. Roxana was a pro. She had a successful business to run. But she felt like you do when you’ve just found a really first class photograph, on a park bench during your lunch break, of the Rolling Stones in Chicago in 1983 at the height of their Restless Nights tour, and then some guy in a mock leather parka walks up to you and says that he took that photo you’re holding and he wants it back.

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‘So what do you think I should do?’ she asked. ‘Variety is important,’ said Leon, drinking one of Roxana’s excellent Kenyan Peaberry laits. ‘A guy needs variety. Mix it up a bit. You get the drift? I’ll talk to him if you want.’ That seemed like a generous offer, so she thanked him for it. Incidentally, Leon also tried the Mysore Mocha expresso while he was visiting, and it was while he was drinking it that he sold Roxana a whole new set of Dreisack oyster knives. Those Dreisacks don’t come cheap. Cookware sure is a practical business.

7 Before that first night was out Roxana’s new waiter was doing the kinds of jobs that ordinary waiters mostly never get near. For starters, she gave him the window tables, 1 through 6, which traditionally should have been the preserve of her longest standing waiter. That is, Marc. But she didn’t care about how it might look and just sent her new waiter out there. Marc, naturally, was none too pleased. He’d been with Roxana’s since he left Pirmasens, that French place at the corner of Houwer and Aitkin which isn’t as good now as it once was, but he was still lugging around a fair sized chip. He could silver serve. He could recognise by bouquet alone the vintages of several major producers from Burgeffs to the Quarts de Chaume. He could mix a Flame Thrower or a Santa Cruz Fizz. He knew how to recommend a dessert without making it sound like you wanted bed down your kid sister. He’d gone to a whole pile of those waiter conferences and trade events which are part and parcel of being in the industry these days. He was no slouch. So it took Roxana a

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while to explain what she was doing. Even then, I think it is something that has come between them ever since.

8 When Roxana’s best friend, Caddie, who works at Millicents the department store and met Roxana at a barn sale a few years ago, dropped by she was knocked out to see an ordinary waiter doing a maitre’d’s job and asked Roxana what was going on. ‘Reasonable question!’ admitted Roxana. She went on to explain how she’d found her new waiter in an employment pool, reading one of those National Geographic ‘Remote and Dangerous’ specials as it happened, and how he was so totally unbelievable and how she’d spoken to Leon Bernano about ways in which she might keep the guy and that Leon was going to talk to him. Caddie thought Leon was probably right about variety, but she was worried that a guy like Roxana’s new waiter was only doing the job while he was looking for something else anyway and, if that was the case, maybe she could get him fixed up for work during the day in a manner that made it easy for him to work at Roxana’s place during the night. ‘Make him feel at home,’ Caddie suggested. She had an idea.

9 Millicents is, by any real measure, a pretty good department store. You couldn’t describe it as large; so it is no ‘mega-store’. And the prices aren’t cheap; so it is no ‘discount

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warehouse’. But Millicents has a following, and it comes about because of one thing, and one thing alone. Its service. If you buy from Millicents, you can get gift-wrapping for free. At any of its plentiful pay-stations an assistant is waiting to carry your purchases to your vehicle. You can use your Millicents card to pay off debts at other stores, and Millicents will carry your debt, interest free, for a period of six months. All of Millicents 3 floors are serviced by elevator and escalator. Push-chairs are very welcome. There are no restrictions on the use of Millicents’ rest-rooms and, even if you have not made a purchase on this occasion, you are welcome to use them freely. Millicents will mail-shot you in plenty of time to alert you to forthcoming bargain offers; they will not, however, regularly send junk mail (that goes against firm company policy). At Millicents if a customer’s request cannot be dealt with within ten minutes that customer is entitled to a discount of 15% on their next purchase. All Millicents staff are trained in public speaking and speak plain English. Any number of garments can be taken into the change rooms at Millicents. No one will ask you for your passport number when you are setting up a charge account. There is a first aid room on the basement floor, beside Millicents cloak room and parcel storage, and a doctor on call. Customers are invited to make use of this. The management wants everyone to know: ‘You’re Safe and Sound Shopping at Millicents’.

10 Caddie’s idea turned out to be simple. She works in Millicents Head Office, mostly in the area of health care and staff insurance. She knows a thing or two about how Millicents make service their speciality. She knows that Head Office is thinking about improving the

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quality of service in the Staff Canteen, which opens for lunch two hours daily between 12.00 and 2.00, and that this improvement is intended to reflect the general emphasis of the store itself. They are looking for someone who might assist their Service Manager in carrying this through. . . . You can see where this was going. Roxana planned to pass the word on to her new waiter the next night.

11 It’s one of the problems of running a great seafood restaurant that you are at the mercy of nature. If there’s a particularly bad season, a season with heavy seas and long unlit nights then, for starters, you might as well take your pippi soup right off the menu. You can remove your King Prawn dishes too; though maybe, if you are lucky, you can replace them with the cheaper but overly soft Royal Reds. You can forget anything special with amberjack or snook. Neither of these fish will be caught at an adequate size during a bad season. A seafood restaurant can’t survive for too long under this kind of pressure. The word gets out. Reputation, in the seafood restaurant business, is everything.

12 Roxana is panicking. She knows her new waiter is going to be great for her reputation, but she doesn’t know how to keep him. She’s spoken again to Leon Bernano and he says (maybe because he’s already sold her those Dreisacks and figures he can sell her something else while

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he’s on with it) that he is coming through in the early evening and will stop in and talk to the guy like he promised. Caddie’s coming over as well. She’s spoken to her line manager and he says that if Roxana’s new waiter is as great as she says then he’d be keen to meet him. This seems positive. Meanwhile, Mrs Filipo, who always books a table for a Tuesday night, comes in early with her friends from the Jai-Alai Fronton, and favours the crabes farcies, has been talking about getting Roxana’s new waiter to cater for a party she’s having on the weekend and, as Roxana would be the first to tell you, she couldn’t be more pleased. Marc thinks Roxana’s new waiter should do a short course in wine appreciation; maybe a week at the Rutebeuf Institute studying sauces, preserves and condiments. He’s told him that. He’s told him he admires what he does, but that there’s a big difference between the talented amateur and the dedicated, trained professional. Good point, Marc.

13 A waiter has a strange job. To do it well you have to be a master of many trades. A waiter can’t be a specialist. Not if he wants his talent to travel. A waiter needs vision and insight. He needs to let the tide of other people’s lives wash over him. He can’t get too caught up in one thing or another in case he forgets the maltaise sauce or brings out the fruit fool before the vinaigrette. A waiter’s job is no piece of cake.

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Leon arrived around 6.00 and called out for Roxana, who was out the back filleting some good-sized spotted sea trout with a Freres flexible filleting knife, to tell her that he had come to talk to her new waiter, and where was he, and could she tell him he’d arrived. . . .

15 Meanwhile, Caddie was on the way over, weaving through the last of the shoppers, the shop assistants, the office workers, going home between Millicents and the restaurant, Millicents being on Grantham Street and Roxana’s restaurant being down near the water, on Wharfdale. She had a pleased and settled look, as if she’d just worked out the final clue on one of those giant summer supplement cross-words and wanted to tell someone about it.

16 Mrs Filipo was planning that her party might start in the mid-afternoon, perhaps with a light, cold selection of chutneys, tempura, salt cod, satays and relishes; then turn in the early evening into a Bain-Marie thing with whole sea bass and scallops and courgettes with prawns, and coconut milk and monkfish with dill and . . . followed by, three or maybe four hours later, some carrot-gazpacho cocktails, some poached meringues, a sweet egg custard. She thought she might like a folklorist, a folk singer, to be playing. She wondered what they might serve with blue grouper and how likely it was that they could get triggerfish at this time of the year. What was the best way to cook whiting? And is there any rule about serving a brandade de morue before the mulled wine?

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17 ‘A month at the Le Pentole factory, studying the methods of blending copper and silver alloy to make saucepans of distinction,’ Marc suggested, ‘might benefit the guy.’ ‘He might get a lot out of that,’ he said.

18 It was Caddie who found him, hanging there in the restaurant freezer like a marlin too long on a spike. All stiff and iced over. His skin so milky it could have been steamed. He’d spread his suit out on the tiled floor in a perfect flat rendition of a real man stretching out there, as if he could fall rigid and straight into it and come back to life. His shoes polished and placed at the upturned trouser cuffs. His shirt tucked neatly into that cheap suit’s waistband. That aqua coloured tie of his smoothed out inside the jacket’s lapel.

19 When he saw what had happened, Leon said he thought that maybe the guy had been deranged from the start. You know the kind of thing: the frantic energy of the possessed or something, that complete disregard for the real world that eventually drove him to be both a genius and crazy. Leon’s logical way of thinking wins again. Caddie’s thoughts were close to this; but, also, she figured (being a little shaken, I have to say) that the ex-convict theory seemed about right. And maybe, she thought, he had a whole criminal fraternity searching for him.

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‘Better to do it himself, than wait for them to do it to him,’ she said, and then collapsed on one of the sofas in Roxana’s foyer, drinking a Blueberry Rumba. Caddie, incidentally, is a really big Police Squad fan. Mrs Filipo, on the other hand, was livid. I mean, she’d already thought through her party and the idea that Roxana’s great new waiter was now frozen solid in the freezer was the last straw for her. She gathered up her Jai-Alai team and left.

20 Roxana, meanwhile, has gone down to the pool. She goes every day now. She’s pretty sure she’ll never find another like him, so it’s not that she’s looking for that. But she has this feeling, maybe you’d call it a sense, that she might one day stumble on a guy who wants to go into the restaurant business; a guy who maybe can run up a Crème Nantua in no time flat, who is great with a piping bag or a parmesan knife, who can fix a slicer or is a whiz with a balloon whisk, who knows how to make annatto oil a deeper, richer shade of orange, who’ll get her through the bad reasons when there’s no snook and no amberjack and the prawns are soft and she can put no soup on the menu. That’s Roxana’s dream. A waiter who is fearless.

Brooke Biaz ©

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