The Date

I’m working the dinner shift. The last to leave is a couple on a date, lingering in the candlelight over an antique bottle of wine. She is no more than twenty-three with silky black hair and an astonishing body in a tight black dress. Though she rarely uses it, she has a smile that could destroy worlds. He is a hulking man in a work fleece, khakis, and sneakers and he hasn’t shaved in a week. He is nearly sixty.

He walks to the bathroom and as I clear the table, I want to ask her if it’s worth it. I want to wink and say, “Let’s get out of here,” and she would smile which she rarely does, and leap up and we would walk into the night and live on the road like Bonny & Clyde. 

But I keep my mouth shut and keep my job because this is not a movie. This is real life and you do what you have to do, not what you want. 

I wonder how it feels. To sell your body for a candlelit dinner. To know you are desired for a beauty you did not earn and that will not last. I wonder how it feels to know she only dresses like this for you and listens to you and touches you because you have money and she doesn’t. To be with someone because of what they have rather than who they are and to know they are with you for the same reason. To be so greedy or lustful, that you would accept a purely transactional relationship. I wonder how it feels to be a whore and for everyone around you to see you and silently judge you. 

While they dine, I take out the garbage, dozens of sagging dripping trash bags. I want to believe I chose this because it’s honest work and I will sleep well in the Tolstoyan purity of my labor. But I’m breaking my body for a job with little money and no future, and it doesn’t feel noble. She could have chosen this too, but she didn’t. I can’t tell if it’s because she has less integrity or more brains. 

Maybe we all just do what we have to do, to live and to live with ourselves. 

It’s hard working at the restaurant and not just because of the work. It’s hard to avoid envy. I wish I had money so I could be with the girls who come here. As it is, they don’t see me. I’m invisible and unwanted. I imagine myself born into money on the upper east side. Or selling out for a master’s degree and a corporate job. Then she would see me and I could be with her. 

It’s hard to avoid cynicism. Because I hate him and I hate her for being with him, and I want her, but not on those terms. Why should I even want her for her beauty? Everyone’s chasing money and beauty, and selling themselves body and soul to get it. Let them. Maybe this couple deserves each other. Maybe I deserve to be alone. 

There are too many half-formed thoughts and counter thoughts, but I’m tired and I have to work tomorrow, so I stop trying to sort them out. 

The couple gets up from the table and they kiss. She doesn’t recoil and she doesn’t smile. He guides her to the door, his hand on her lower back. I clear the table and blow out the candles.

J.

Sept. 11, 2024