Two ladies in the next booth over were having a discussion about mastectomy. The larger one, in a Scottish brogue loud enough for the whole restaurant to hear, bellowed: “On me way home from me first fittin’ I’ve a new bosom there and I’m proud of it, but a police pulls me over, see. Well, I’ve put on muh seat belt — that was when they first passed the law, see — but he’s starin’ in at me like I’ve got three eyes. No one’s ever looked at me quite like that before, Viv. I thought for a minute he fancied me. Well, he leaves me finally with a warnin’ only. I was only five over the limit, see, and I think, well, I’ve blagged me way out of it. Only when he’s gone do I look over and notice that me new tit is flung back over me shoulder!”
The ladies howled. The one named Viv appreciatively clanked her dish with a fork.
“Later that year I gets a newer model,” she continued, “a bit more adherin’, ye might say, and I’m out golfin’ wi’ me mucker, Emma, and I takes a mighty swing, and the whole business cooms flyin’ out o’ me blouse and lands out o’ sight in the weeds. Well, Viv, we’re down there lookin’ about for the damn thing, see, and along come some old duffers to help. What are ye lookin’ for? Well, says me mucker, she’s lost her diddy. Oh, now shut up can ye a minute, Emma? I almost clubbed ’er, I did.”
The ladies were screeching now, crying, slapping the table.
“It was that same year this weegie veterinary bloke I brings me dog to has this mutt and when I bend over to pet ’im he snatches away muh falsie, yanks it right out o’ me brar and begins to shake it about. The bloody vet is in hysterics. It might be the fooniest thing he’s ever seen. The man’s a dobber, a bit of a boob ’imself, see? Gimme back me tit, ya daft beast, I says to him. I finally wrest it from him, but he’s put teeth marks all in it, worse than me first ’usband. That was me third boob of the year, Viv. But I’ll tell ye, only a month later, I’m in with me dog again, who snatches off the vet’s hairpiece and scarpers off wi’ it, shaking it about — ooh, well I never saw such a foony sight.”
A waitress was standing above me, her notepad raised. She looked to be in her late thirties. She had haughty eyelids, pale irises. She was firm-jawed, straight-shouldered, masculine in bearing. Despite the amusing tales of Scottish mastectomy, her face was sad. Over the years I had come to appreciate sad people. The sad don’t try to hustle you. They don’t put on airs. Their feet are squarely on the ground. Sad people know the great secret of life, that it’s not going to work out as you’d hoped. I noted there was no wedding ring. Her name tag read: RENEE.
“Good morning,” Renee said. She had a subdued way of presenting herself. Subdued waitresses were rare in my experience. Her eyes were also subdued, perhaps Slavic eyes. I had had a Slavic girlfriend once who was very cruel to me and I still missed her.
She was also faintly familiar, but I could not place her. “Good morning,” I returned.
“Are you ready to order?” she said.
I said, “Is there a waitress named Deborah employed here?”
Renee scrunched her brow. She wore bangs that shivered like Christmas tree tinsel. Her nose was not quite straight. She had that quick but lazy-tongued way of talking typical of southern Californians. “We had a Debbie, oh, I don’t know, a year or so ago, but she only worked here for like three or four weeks. No one called her Deborah.”
“You’ve been here a while.”
“Two years.” She blew upward out the side of her mouth and shivered the tinsel bangs.
“Two years is a long while.”
She rolled her eyes. “Tell me about it.”
“You didn’t happen to go to Hoover High School?”
“How did you know that?”
“Lucky guess.”
“Did you go to Hoover?”
“No, I went to Torrey Pines. We always said that Hoover sucked.”
Her bangs quivered. She studied me, tight lipped, trying to make a judgment about me. Her thoughts were bitter clear with the usual clutter of unspoken questions: Is he worth something or is he a crackpot? Is he giving or taking? Do high schools twenty miles apart in a big city truly count as common ground? And why does he look like a mangy penguin?
“Yes, I’ve heard all the Hoover jokes,” she said. “We never won State because nature abhors a vacuum. It wasn’t easy being a girl from Hoover.”
“Well, you can console yourself with the fact that we never even had a stadium. We had to play all our games at San Dieguito.”
She smiled at me, holding me in her sad gaze for a moment. Perhaps it was the sadness that seemed so familiar.
“I realize you’re busy,” I said. “I’ll take the cod with coleslaw and fries. Coffee.” I handed her the menu. “And a little bag for my dog.”
She had a boyish backside that barely moved as she walked away. Maybe this was the girl that Shelly liked, right age, smart, unhappy, aloof, a more practical version of Marvelle, the kind of crush he could contemplate and make declarations about and encounter physically on a regular basis (kind of like a courtship) without obligation. He’d changed her name for storytelling purposes. Well, I had nothing but empathy for him. He wanted someone pleasant and compatible to share his life with and it wasn’t going to happen. Sweets watched
