I'd walked by the restaurant a dozen, 2 dozen times, looking for work, it was always empty and so I never thought of applying.
Finally, though, in the interests of being thorough and leaving no stone unturned I dropped off a resume.
A younger couple, waiter and waitress, South American, took my resume, promised to pass it on to the manager.
That night I got a call. Thick Spanish accent, Jose was his name, wanted to know if I'd applied at his restaurant, I had I told him, perhaps then I could drop round and have an interview? Great.
Now it's not going to be a hot job, I know that, but anything is better than nothing, so I swing round for the interview. The younger waiter and waitress are gone, Jose sits me down, gets my experience, he's a shorter, burly and swart Spaniard. Makes sense, it's a Spanish restaurant. He tells me the other 2 servers, they've been fired, he found my resume in the garbage, they'd thrown it in there without showing him so he fired them both, besides they were stealing and can I start right away and am I available to work days and nights?
Now I'm suspicious, I regret the firing of the 2 servers whom I'm to replace, I feel somewhat responsible, and something about Jose doesn't seem quite right...but I'm broke, and so far it's this or nothing, and so I take the job.
It's slow. And when we have tables, 2 or 3 at a time, Jose flings pots about and breaks into tears in the kitchen.
"Typical hot blooded Spaniard" I tell myself.
I've seen this before, lots, the chef who loses it in the kitchen, throws things, cries, curses, sadly it's pretty common in the industry.
After the rush, when the 2 or three tables have paid and left, all is forgiven. But during the rush he's all explicitives and tears, you wince as you approach the tables, they can hear him shouting and crying out in the kitchen..."My God... what is he doing? Is he trying to kill me? He's trying to kill me...."
I didn't time my orders. I put both of them into the kitchen together, after the rush he tells me I should stall the customers, tell them I'll be right with them, I'm killing the kitchen by putting 2 orders in together, he can't keep up.
Jose is the owner. And the head chef. And the prep cook, and the dishwasher, the janitor, and if it's really slow he's the waiter as well. He tells me about his years as a waiter, 30 years, all over the world, no waiter was ever better than him...
"What is this, Anthony? What is it? You know what they call it here? A wine bucket! It's not a wine bucket, it's a CHAMPAIGNAIRE!"
I've heard this before as well. But I need this job, and I take it as a challenge to get along with him.
When it's slow, which is almost always, we talk. About why it's so slow in the restaurant, he's received no less than 3 5 star reviews from the local papers, they love him, he's clipped their articles from the newspaper and framed them in the lobby. But the customers aren't there. He has a suggestion box by the front door, he checks it nightly, looking for clues, there are none. Some wit from one of the local radio stations has dropped in his card, recommended that he advertise on the radio, and so he calls them, works out a deal, free food for free advertising, but business doesn't improve. For a while we serve familiar voices who pay with business cards, and those rare customers that come in make sure to stop and tell him that they're there because they heard the advert on the radio, "it was excellent, thank you very much", but they don't come back....
He tells me about his dreams of opening a new restaurant, "United Nations of Food" or something...
"Anthony" he says to me.
He's misread the resume, Anthony is my middle name, but he's taken to calling me Anthony and I can't be bothered to correct him.
"Anthony" he says to me, "What if you were to go to dinner with a friend, and he wanted Italian food and you wanted Tacos. Where would you go?"
"I don't know", I tell him. "I'd probably settle for Italian".
"What if...." he continues "What if you wanted Steak, but your friend wanted Paella? Where would you go then?"
"I think I'd rather have Paella" I tell him..
"I have an Idea" he says..."Imagine a restaurant where you can get ALL foods from all over the world....'The United Nations of Food'...you could order anything from any country....Spaghetti, Tacos, Fish and Chips...We'd have it all....Everyone would come .... people would never be confused about where to go to eat, because we'd have it all...."
I hate it when he talks like this. I've heard this idea before, from him, and the "We" scares me, implies a level of commitment, of loyalty from me to him that I don't possess....
"We'll be so busy. I never should have opened a Spanish restaurant....'United Nations of Food'....We'll be rich....We can open one here in Calgary, one in Saskatoon, Regina...What do you think, Anthony?"
I'm hungry and so I'm not thinking so good. The rent is paid, but there's nothing left over for food. There's a filo pastry roll filled with cinnamon spiced apples sitting in the display case, it's got to be getting a little stale by now, maybe...?
He sees me looking at it. "Throw it out Anthony. It's stale. Not good enough for you. I'll make you one one day, you'll see, it'll be the best...I'll throw it out...." And he slides it into the trash.
***
Business isn't picking up. The radio advertising was a scam, what little improvement we saw in business turned out to be DJ's dining on Contra and their secretaries pretending to have heard the ad on the radio. He's getting frantic, his life savings are in this. One day, end of the night, he's going through the comments box and he finds a message:
"I loved your restaurant, the food was excellent and I loved the handsome Maitre D....I'm a professional published writer and I'd love to do a write up on this place...if you're interested give me a call...." Fine handwriting, almost Calligraphic, feminine...
There's a phone number and name. I can't place the customer, the Maitre'D? We don't have a Maitre'D? Jose is thrilled by the possibility of free publicity, secrets the form away, he's going to call her the next day.
***
She's short, round, almost perfectly spherical, perhaps late 30's or early 40's, it's hard to tell with fat people as they haven't the wrinkles. Long hair, down to her waist, that would be the envy of many a woman half her age. She meets with Jose for a coffee, Jose is the charming Maitre'D she was thinking of, she's much younger than him, she must have seen him in the Kitchen...
She's in love with him, and Jose knows it. But he makes a deal with her, he'll pay her to come into the restaurant every night of the week and write poems for the customers. "No other restaurant does that, eh Tony?" he says to me.
She shows up, a candle on a table beside the door, when it's slow, which is almost always, she talks to Jose. Sometimes I talk to her as well, but I'm a little skeptical of all this, don't want to get attached, I know he's playing her, know what she's hoping for, I keep quiet.
She shows me some of her published stuff. Poetry mostly, published in magazines like "True Romance" and "True Confessions". It's terrible stuff, but one poem catches my eye....
"Daddy....Why can't I meet someone like you...Daddy, so handsome, strong, gentle... your smell in my hair... Daddy... how I miss you....They'll never understand"
It's poetry by an incest survivor that somehow glamorizes her experiences... I'm uncomfortable and don't want to look at anymore, it explains a lot....I make the required admiration's, regret that I have no talent for poetry.....
When the customers are in the restaurant she sits at the table with the candle, and writes whatever drivel comes into her head, finely, in that neat, calligraphic hand, on expensive vellum or parchment, then rolls it into a scroll and ties it with ribbon before presenting it to the customer with a low bow. Sometimes they tip her. And I've gotta get out of here, my smile's gotten a bit thin, and I can't say anything because the restaurant's small and she'd hear, but I sometimes I catch the customer's eye......
She shows me what she's writing for them, generic love poetry: "True love, between a younger girl and an older man, must be seized while they can, in hidden spots so mommy doesn't find out...."
It's a gong show.
Jose, he knows it, knows why she's there, she's not there to write poetry to strangers, she has a separate journal of poems she's written for him, and he nods and winks at me, laughs callously behind her back, he's a girlfriend, a common law wife who lives with him, her, the poetess, she's just an amusing diversion....
One day he pushes it, his girlfriend, his wife, she comes in to pick him up from the restaurant. And the poetess, she had no idea, she sees her, and the next day is sick, and the next as well, and Jose asks me laughingly "Why do you think she's sick, huh Tony? What's the matter with her...she looked healthy to me...."
She stops calling in sick, we never see her again.
"Doesn't matter, Tony, I've got someone else, the poetry was good, but you wait and see...."
It's "Aphonso and his Magical Ukulele". And Alphonso shows up, perhaps 70 years old, another Spaniard, he and Jose go way back, dressed in a polyester purple leisure suit, a two tone toupee keeps him looking not a day over 65, and on weekend nights he plays to an empty restaurant, wandering from table to table strumming his magical Ukulele and singing songs, but there aren't any customers, and his promised commission works out to pennies an hour, and so Alphonso as well disappears.
***
I find another job, it's tough telling Jose, he's not too happy but he understands....
"Where are the customers? I should have opened the 'United Nations of Food'...."
***
It's amiable enough, and from time to time I'd run into Jose on the street, buy him a coffee. The restaurant closed down soon after I left, he couldn't make it work.
One day, perhaps a year after the restaurant closed, I'm buying him coffee on 4th Street. And he's telling me about his girlfriend, his wife, he's in trouble, has a court appearance. She's been sleeping around, a prostitute, sometimes fucking hundreds of Colombian drug lords in a day, her belly is swollen with the sperm of countless men, he was beating her for this when she came at him with a knife, "it was self defense" he tells me....
We meet a few more times. He gets me to draw up the pictures of the knife she attacked him with - "Sharper, Tony, bigger, that's it", he wants to use them as exhibits in his defense. And he insists I attend the trial, it's sad, I don't contradict him but I know where he's going. It's serious, the judge looks at the pictures, doesn't buy his explanations, they send him away for evaluation.
A few more months and we meet again, he's at the Alberta Hospital, he's not really sick, "ask the Doctors", but he's been busy, he's organized a soccer league, other various festivities for the inmates, he meets with the Doctors once in a while, they ask him how he's doing, "Never Better" he tells them "There's nothing wrong with me...", he asks them why he's there, and they return the question, he doesn't understand and they play along, "We think you're just fine, no one could be saner" they tell him, he's just out now while they go through his evaluations, another hearing, it's been maybe 13 years since I've seen him, probably he's still there....