Today in a cafe two small incidents seemed to me to illustrate the forms of self-involvement that are more common to women, and to men.
A man walked in and ordered a coffee at the counter. He wanted a latte, he wanted it skinny. It was takeaway and he went over to a table in the window and sat down. He was wearing shorts, dusty boots, and no shirt. His belly sagged between his knees. I thought, this is not one of those seaside towns where people wander in and out of the ocean all day and stand in bikinis eating chips. Wherever a woman would not wear swimming gear, a man needs to put on his shirt.
The waitress barged in, late from having missed her bus. She flung down her bag and began telling the staff about her room, which had ‘nearly burned down’ overnight. She described it as the latest in a chain of events which made her wonder had someone put the evil eye on her. What she described was entirely self-generated. She left ‘my candles going’ but ‘only for a minute’, while she was out of the house at the shops. A poster fell down, into a flame.
‘My whole wall got burnt.’ Her housemate put the fire out. If not for that housemate, ‘my whole room would have burned down,’ not to mention the rest of the house. When I looked up, the man with no shirt had taken his coffee and his bare chest and belly out into the cool, breezy day and disappeared. I was reading the foreword to a recipe book, Indian Spice. Its author Pinky Leilani described the importance of recipes in that culture, that they are handed down and closely kept secret. To cook well is a form of power and a source of income in a difficult, impoverished land.
She described how long it took before the family cook, a man in his sixties, had learned to trust her and share with her his recipes. He taught her to cook. Now she has published those secret recipes to the world, they belong to all of us and have lost their power, the power belongs to her.
Tag: waitress
-
worldburn
-
always the waitress
I saw a couple come into the cafe out of the sun, I have seen them before. One woman has a sour aspect and it is difficult to get her to return a smile. Her smile, when it comes, has a difficult, painful quality as though vouchsafing it hurts her in some way. The other is blonde, plump, pliant and yielding. When the dominant woman sits down, the other goes up immediately to order, turning back to ask or ascertain some aspect of the other’s wishes. “You are always the waitress in your relationship,” I thought, watching the woman pay, collect her change, and sit smilingly down. Her partner, who had already had the opportunity to become absorbed in the paper, and whose choice of cafe, I imagine, this might be, got up to go to the bathroom and it was fascinating to watch the blonder partner change. She lost her smile and drew out her phone and became absorbed in something of her own choice, seeming altogether a more serious person. This is her moment with her feet up once they’ve all been fed. We both heard the bathroom door click and she glanced up quickly, putting her phone guiltily away. As the dourer partner reappeared her beloved was waiting, alert, already producing her wallet and opening it, saying something I couldn’t catch, ready as ever to cater to this grumpy child she has settled for to satisfy her cravings for love for the rest of her life.
-
trepanned
A confluence of kindness in the Sunday cafe this morning. People were slouched about, eating their brunch. A series of wan songwriters entertained us from the speakers. When we first walked in a classical guitarist had just done playing, and when he walked around the tables with his cupped hand outstretched, everybody gave. Then a commotion at the doorway. A very very drunk lady sloshed her way in. She shouldered her way between two quite closely placed tables and sat down. Oof. Began talking to the woman on her right, who clearly didn’t know her. It was a long bench seat along the wall so now all three women, ladies who brunch with a lady who lurches tucked between, were sat shoulder to shoulder like pigeons under the framed oil paintings of Karl Marx. The place is called Cafe Marx, been there for years apparently. The drunken one pulled off her filthy beanie, revealing sparse tufts of grease-darkened hair. She was loud. And she looked smelly. The woman she’d spoken to rose to the occasion like the Queen. “I know,” I could hear her saying agreeably, “it’s freezing outside.” The drunk one said something inaudible, affable. “Ja,” said her invaded neighbour, “gemütlich.” Gemütlich is a word like the Danish word hyggelig: cosy, it means; warm, comfortable, comforting. The kind of word you invent when you live in a climate where a person consistently turned away from every door can die just by sleeping in the park overnight. The waiter came over to reason with her. Her voice rose, she waved her beanie at him. At first he said, Can you go, please, and You will have to leave, and Do you want me to call the Police? “I am the Police,” she said grandly, settling her beanie back over her ears. But the women either side of her and their companions were wonderful. Unworried. Well, worried but cool. They started suggesting to her, Perhaps you’d be more comfortable in the corner there, that looks so cosy, wouldn’t you like to have a table to yourself? Why shouldn’t you have your own table? “Yeah,” she said, in tones of worn aggrief, “yeah, why indeed.” And as she staggered to her feet and lurched towards another table (ours) the waiter once again stepped in, more respectfully, more kindly this time. His customers had taught him that – or rather, reminded him, as we do for one another. Gently he took her arm. “Could I ask you to sit outside?” he said, in such courteous tones that she was able to pretend she had been given a choice, to deliberate a moment and then decide, “Also dann.” Ok then. He escorted her to the door, more like a nephew than a bouncer suddenly. The people on the bench seat shifted and laughed quietly, restive with relief. You know how belligerent you get when you feel like your humanness has been ignored. She was aggro. But lost. In the wind outside she sat down with some difficulty. I went over to the counter and spoke to the waiter in a low tone. “Das haben Sie so schoen gemacht,” I said, “so freundlich.” You did that so beautifully: so friendly. “Aw,” he said, looking down. He was putting something on a plate behind the high counter. I said, I would love to buy a coffee for that lady, if… you don’t mind providing one for her. (Thinking of the risk to his china). But by the time he brought the coffee, hot and rich with crema in a takeaway cup, she had gone. The overturned table and smashed ashtray on the ground were all she’d left behind. I walked up and down the square for a while looking for her but she had moved on. And would continue to be moved on, I imagine, all the rest of the winter. And would perhaps be picked up by the Winter Bus that goes around collecting people who have fallen asleep in the snow. And whose fire in the belly, lit and swollen from the magic bottle, might not be enough to keep them alive til morning, in the dark cold lonely treesung night.