The Waiter's Lot

Of all the things I've seen waiting tables in Soho, I think I'll remember the panties best. A man can learn all sorts of things in the food service industry in downtown Manhattan. For instance, I now know what lolla rosa is. (It has nothing to do with the panties. It's a red, leafy lettuce with frilly edges.)

I worked at this new place on Houston St. Most of the time, it's so fucking predictable, especially the staff. The servers all fall into neat little patterns. There are the dude waiters who are uniformly rude to their coworkers because they can't mouth off to the diners. Conversely, there are the meek ones, quiet among the staff, whose shtick is to berate and jaw at their customers, who giggle conspiratorially at the attention. And the performers, the actors, the singers, who are never off, always talking in funny voices and quoting movies and complaining about their last gigs and bragging about the time they met Christopher Walken.

There are the busboys and food runners, funny kids every one. They are all kids, even the ones in their 30s, with multiple children of their own. This is the price they pay for having their own language. They are operators, all of them, without exception. They are not soft like us, they are not lazy like us, content to wallow in the idle dreams we're lucky enough to have. They're happy to play little brother to all of us and prosper quietly behind our backs.

There are the floor managers, there to watch us do our jobs. Inevitably, there is the Good Cop and the Bad Cop. Good Cop never talks unless he has something to say. This is a good thing. Bad Cop, a domineering Asian dominatrix type, fancies herself an avatar of cosmopolitan eating. She has us sit down with The New York Times "Dining Out" section in the morning and memorize the bylines. ("William Grimes is coming! William Grimes is coming!") Bad Cop stalks the floor in an amphetamine frenzy, guzzling bottles of mineral water the house sells at $6 a pop. She carries those bottles like a Marine lieutenant might wear his stripes. Everyone complains about her behind her back.

The kitchen is a tribe unto itself, the editorial side of the restaurant's church-state divide. They dress differently. They walk and talk differently. They move with an outward urgency while we are expected to maintain our facade of cool at all times. There is a mutual understanding that the servers and the cooks exist primarily to make one another's lives difficult. As far as I can tell, however, they are, interestingly, still human.

And they all smoke weed. Everybody on the staff. There's just no shame in talking about it. During slower moments, the busboys are bragging on their marijuana stash to the sous chefs and line cooks. The career bartenders and waiters head out after the late shift to relax with pipe hits in the side streets. It's a hardy band of freaks that hums the engine of this new restaurant.

And it's slowly becoming a minor phenomenon. If you're lucky enough to live in the few blocks that straddle the divide between Soho and the West Village, you can be demanding and discerning on your regular nights out to eat. The locals are starting to get hooked in, jazzed to the chic of their new neighborhood bistro, and starting to get used to the special handling.

But the regulars are just that?they come in, order their dinner, drink tap water and go on their way. It's easy to take them for granted. It's decided it needs to be a pretty place for the Mademoiselle and Vogue ladies, humping their overflowing Kenneth Cole shopping bags along with them to dinner. These are the ones we love, the not-yet-middle-aged ladies who hover about the place with cleavage showing and gold cards tucked in their wallets. They come in packs to see how the restaurant becomes them, to see how their looks come off in this renovated, understatedly hip dining room. They're trying it on for size, like another pair of clunky-soled knee-high boots.

For our part, we're begging to be loved?please, adopt us! Make us part of your wardrobe, a regular stop in your regimen of mean pleasures! We'll look at you appreciatively, make you feel good, look at the cleavage because you want to be seen, want to revel in the shy, furtive stare. If we make them feel sexy, they'll come back. You learn quickly that as a waiter, you can say anything to these women, anything short of propositioning them for a violent sexual act. It's guiltily easy to pump them full of liquor, to push on them these concoctions of vodka and fruit juice we serve in martini glasses, with outsized chunks of melon hanging off the edges for $12 a pop. Bat eyes and flirt. You want a cosmopolitan? Wait, have you tried our specialty cocktail? In two months everyone in New York will be drinking these. No, really, it's the new apple martini. Let me bring you your slice of in-the-know restaurant cool. They taste great, but they look even better.

And then, once we have them, we can practically order their dinner for them. We treat it as a game; if I decide you're getting the scallops, that's what you'll get. No complaining. (They're fantastic, by the way. Big as your fist.) If we flatter their figures, we'll convince them they can afford to indulge in dessert. Make them spend; for every five on the bill, we'll probably get one. Each of those fancy drinks gets us $2; every bottle of wine means your server just earned anywhere between $5 and $10, if our diners are honest.

And Manhattanites are generally above-average tippers. The shoppers and the men who support them like to look generous and most often will leave about 20 percent. It's foreigners we all dread, as far as tipping goes. There's nothing more disconcerting than trying to sell wine and food to a group that can't understand you, conversing among themselves in their native tongue all the while. Inevitably they will have detailed instructions, conveyed in broken English, to modify the dishes on the menu, and will change their minds at least once before they're through. And then they don't tip well. Nobody gives a shit about their cultural differences; here we rely on our pay, table by table. But then we occasionally have to pay for the universal distrust abroad?still?of all things American.

But it has its moments. I served one party of three at a corner banquette a few weeks back. It was a white guy in his 30s with a stunning Brazilian girlfriend. She was dark, skinny with long black hair, unashamedly affectionate and spoke very little English. A pleasant blonde chick rode third wheel, obviously there for conversation. She was thoroughly amused with her friend's budding relationship. I talked with her for a while; she had spent some time in my hometown on the Jersey shore and we compared notes on the local bar scene.

The mail-order girlfriend got up to leave for the restroom, and I left to attend to one of my various duties. I returned a few minutes later. The Brazilian girl was still gone. "Look at this!" the guy said. "Look what she left!" He was holding up a pair of skimpy pink panties. They had snaps that fastened on the sides?for easy removal, his friend explained, helpfully pointing them out. He was grinning, eyes twinkling, waving those panties out over the table, barely avoiding his plate of veal. I suggested he might, if he liked, be the first customer to get laid in our restrooms, if he followed her downstairs. But he just sat there in the dimly lit dining room, his broad smile reflecting the light from the flickering votive candle on his table. He was still holding them out when she returned and snuggled in next to him. She smiled playfully, took them back and placed them in her purse.