Quiet Room - Lori Schiller [49]
I had also overestimated my abilities. Whatever waitressing skills I had back in college had been lost in the chaos of the intervening years. Here I was a lousy waitress. I couldn't keep up with the work. I found the pace terrifying, and the world of the restaurant chaotic. Everything about the job was strange and difficult, everything seemed to slip out of my grasp. I wasn't fast enough dishing out cole slaw and pickles during setup. I was too fat to fit into my uniform. When the dinner hour began, I could handle couples, and the occasional single who came by for a solitary supper. But when four friends came in for an evening out, I panicked. My thoughts were so scattered that I couldn't remember orders. Who ordered the steak teriyaki, and was it a baked potato or French fries to go along? Not only could I not remember orders, I couldn't even read my own writing when I wrote them down. My hands shook, so I couldn't carry all those plates at one time, which meant I had to make extra trips. When it came time to total up, I was constantly making mistakes. The cash registers were computers, and I never could master them.
To make matters worse, the Voices in my head kept up a steady roar of commentary about everything I did. Between their shrieking, the pace of the work, the thundering din of the crowd talking all at once about the Mets, their Saturday night date, that jerk Rodgers in marketing, the last movie they saw and the next movie they were going to see, the last guy they dated and the next guy they wanted to ask them out, sometimes I would want to scream.
After a while, I switched to working downstairs in the cocktail lounge on Friday and Saturday nights. The pace was just as fast, but the job was a lot easier. There were fewer things to remember. With ice. Straight up. Frozen margarita, with salt, without salt. Nothing to it.
Still, there were a lot of creeps down there, and sometimes it was hard to keep my temper. Sometimes I came close to losing it. Once I actually did when a particularly rowdy group began to tease me and laugh at me and make fun of me. There were both men and women in the group, and they were all getting off on the wisecracks of one particularly obnoxious guy who was the ringleader.
As I tried to ignore the taunts, the Voices were taking over. They were yelling orders at me. They were telling me all kinds of vile and violent things to do to that jerk. I served the customers as quickly as possible, and tried to keep away. I was afraid of what I might do. But the restaurant was crowded, the tables nearby kept ordering, and those people themselves kept calling me over. There was no way I could escape their ridicule.
I took it as long as I could, long enough to get their orders, go away and fill them. But when I came back to pass out the orders, and this guy started in on me again, I decided it was time to strike back. I gave all his friends their drinks, saving his for last.
“Did you say that you wanted that on the rocks, sir?” I asked him demurely. Then I poured the whole thing into his lap.
I couldn't blame that one on the Voices. That was all me, and I loved doing it.
Still, despite the hassles, I stayed on. They apparently needed me. I needed the money. I liked the company. Before too long, there was another big attraction: It was here that I got turned on to coke.
I had dabbled in drugs in high school, smoking pot with some friends, sorting out the seeds from the leaves on the fold of an opened-out record album cover. In college, I had tried cocaine with friends at parties. And when I found myself really strung out I tried Quaaludes. I couldn't drink. Something about alcohol just didn't agree with me. Even when I just tried some beer at a fraternity keg party I'd always throw up. Those little pills or a quick snort on the other hand could make me feel incredibly relaxed