oxfords and being in charge of a table’s experience. She saw the way other young men and women went from table to table, bored, irritated, nervous. Mostly, she knew, they weren’t engaged. They were not present with the role they were performing. Because it was a role; as a server you were a master of ceremonies. You were the table’s liege, and you were your kitchen’s representative on the floor. Of course she liked the money, the numbers followed by dashes, whole, sweet numbers that were mathematical compliments on how well she’d performed. Or the cash tips, generally left by tables of all men, several twenties folded and tucked lasciviously under a rocks glass.
Sloane tried it, first, the correct way. She’d applied to and been accepted at Hampshire, she’d gotten a dorm room together, she’d worn riding boots as she walked on bridges past the icy ponds and sharp hedges of New England academia. She went on dates, pledged a sorority.
She dropped out of Hampshire, then she went back. Then she dropped out again. None of these moves was entirely painstaking. She was young and unsure. She had a brother, Gabe, who was like that, too, so while one of them was doing the right thing, the other one might be doing the wrong thing. Their parents could be mollified on one side, and concerned on the other.
Sloane took some classes while she was working in restaurants, but she would always feel restless. She looked at the other students in the room; the way they seemed to really be listening was exotic to her. It was a state of mind that seemed unavailable. She felt more comfortable on her feet. So she had always returned to the buzzing floors, the clinking glasses.
Even so, this night felt different. She felt drawn, as though by a magnet. It had been several years since she’d waitressed. She was back in school and looking at theaters downtown, thinking she might be good at producing shows. She knew how to talk to people, how to get the rich and boring interested in something new. Like her father’s friends, for example. She looked them in the eyes and told them they would be remiss not to get involved in this person’s art show, or that person’s golf wear. She used her hair and her smile and who she was in the world. She was not someone to overlook.
And now she was with Keith, the boss’s son. This was utterly what her father would have wanted. Her mother, too. Monogrammed sheets. Picnic baskets in the trunk of a Range Rover. Twins with Peter Pan collars. The word ecru. Saint John. Christmas in Aspen. Telluride.
If I ever worked in a restaurant again, it would be a place like this.
She may have said it loud enough for the manager to hear her.
The following week the manager called and offered Sloane a job, which she eagerly accepted. She hadn’t realized, until now, how much she’d missed the restaurant world, the thrum and noise and the relevance. It was nearly like politics.
Even though her position was at the front of the house, Sloane had to spend a day in the kitchen as part of her training. The idea was that all the employees should be well-rounded, so that a patron could ask a hostess how the sea bass was prepared and she would have intimate knowledge.
Normally the kitchen training involved the chef taking the new hire to each station—the cold station, the hot station, dessert prep, and so on. But on this occasion, the chef, Richard, was not interested in following the rubric.
He met her in the dining room. He was wiping his hands on a damp rag. He had a sharp, angular face and the sort of light eyes that could be warm or roguish.
Richard smiled and said, How about if we make matzoh balls?
Sloane laughed. Matzoh balls? She looked around at the French-Thai restaurant’s dining room. There was faint music in the background. She looked down at the rug, at its shapes and colors. It made her think of pyramids in sandy countries she’d never seen. Sometimes she felt that she was a nowhere girl, that whatever place she was in could be any other place. That nobody would miss her at home, at school. And yet she knew that she was often the life of a party. She knew that people would say, Where’s Sloane? if they had not see her by ten P.M., in a room she