And then there are the times when one tiny thing goes wrong, and it causes a cascade, and then sometimes an avalanche of more things going wrong, and you just can’t recover.
The tiny thing that goes wrong for me tonight is Perry’s salad—the one Nita told me to push. Thirty seconds after I deliver it I hear, “Libbyyyyyyy!” and then Perry is pointing at his bowl and saying he doesn’t like red onion.
I had told him there was onion in it, but saying so would be futile.
“I’ll get you a new one made right away,” I say, and then take the salad back to the line cook, Domenic.
Domenic frowns, but agrees to make me another one.
“Can you do it fast?” I say, giving him my most pathetic, pleading expression because he’s got a huge stack of orders to get out and this’ll put him behind. “Please? It’s for Perry.”
Domenic makes a show of grumbling, but he’s on it already.
I deliver two soups for Kat and a bread basket for Brianna, grab the new salad, thank Domenic profusely, make the delivery to Perry, and then go to deliver the orders of a family of six.
I’m carrying four heavy plates, one in each hand and two up my arm, and am arriving at their table when I hear, “Libbyyyyyyy!”
I glance over my shoulder and signal to Perry that I’ll be with him in a moment, set the plates down, then zoom back to the hot food window to grab the last two orders and deliver them, while Garcia and Douglas start chiming in.
“Libbyyyyyyy!” “LibbyLibbyLibbyyyyyyy!”
Charming.
More customers are trying to flag me down, someone wants their bill, I need to punch another order in quickly because people with small children hate having to wait, I can barely hear myself think, and I’m starting to sweat.
“This isn’t spicy,” Perry says, waving at the salad. “Isn’t this Indian stuff supposed to be spicy?”
Maya’s been very careful to introduce her South India–inspired menu items slowly—masala fries, a mild fish curry— nothing too hot for the average Pine Ridge (i.e., small town)palate.
“It’s not meant to be spicy!” Domenic shouts at me thirty seconds later when I return with the salad.
“I know. But can you just . . . add something to it?”
“Fine,” he says, rolling his eyes.
“Thank you,” I say, then I duck out to the computer to print a bill and input the dessert and coffee order for the family of six before returning to Domenic.
I take the salad, now with spicier dressing and conspicuously garnished with chili peppers, out to Perry, and wait to make sure he likes it.
He makes a big production of his first bite, whoops, and finally grins.
“Good?” I say.
“I dunno,” he drawls, “you’re so cute when you’re flustered, I almost want to send it back again.”
“Please don’t. Domenic would kill me.”
“But we’re enjoying watching you come and go,” Perry says.
I need to leave so I can deliver the bill I just printed and get caught up, but Perry grabs me by the wrist and trails his eyes blatantly down my body. My stomach clenches. I manage a weak chuckle and a playful swat to get him to let go of me, then walk away feeling like there’s a target on my butt.
Brianna swoops in to help me with my falling-apart section.
“You okay?” she asks as we slide into either side of a booth to clear and clean it.
I nod.
“A couple weeks ago Perry smacked me on the backside and said ‘giddyup’ after I took his order.”
“Gross!”
Dev has new customers ready to sit in the booth the moment we’re out of it, so that’s the end of the conversation.
When I arrive back at Perry’s table a few minutes later, he’s flushed and in the middle of retelling his favorite story: how he saved Pine Ridge.
“Bank closed down and nobody’d buy the building. People had lost their jobs. The bank jobs, plus around that time a lotta people lost their farming jobs, too. Everyone was starting to think they’d have to move somewhere else. And I looked at that big, fancy old building, with the pillars and the vaults, and thought: Beer!”
Garcia and Douglas, who have no doubt heard this story multiple times, nevertheless burst into raucous laughter.
All I want to do is quickly grab some of the dirty plates before moving on to my veritable horde of unsatisfied customers, but Perry turns the beam of his attention on me, trapping me at their table. “Nobody around here even knew the term ‘microbrewery’ and everyone thought I was crazy. Who’s crazy now, right?”
Perry presses on with grandiosity, chest puffing, and I almost expect him to start pounding it. “That’s right, I employed all those people, still employ them, and now we got tourists, and we got stores with stuff in them that nobody even knows what it is. Furniture made out of twigs and someone’ll pay a thousand dollars for it. I did that.”
Amid the next chorus of cheers, I start clearing the table.
There’s so much uneaten food I can’t imagine they’re going to want anything else, but then Perry informs me Dev is buying them dessert.
“Great,” I say, pausing, arms loaded with dishes. “I’ll bring dessert menus.”
“Don’t you have it memorized, doll?”
“Sure, but—”
“We want your sales pitch, Libby,” he says, with the pronounced enunciation of someone trying not to slur. “Everything sounds so much more delicious coming from your lips.”
“Okay,” I say, blowing out a breath. “Just let me drop off these plates.”
Luckily I only have to take three steps before Kyle is there with an empty bin, which means I can unload and go straight back to Perry.
“Make it good,” Perry says, with a leer. “Cause I’m still mad at you about the salad.”
“Right,” I say, pushing down the urge to point out that there was never anything wrong with the salad. “First we have the cheesecake with salted caramel—”
“No, no!” Perry puts a hand to my lower back. “Not like that. It’s what I’m always telling my staff: sell it to me. I want to feel the caramel on your tongue. I want to feel like I’m the caramel on your tongue.”
His buddies chortle and Perry’s hand slides lower. I try to shift discreetly away, but the hand comes with me.
I don’t know how to do what he’s asking, exactly, and I’m super distracted by the fact that his hand is now fully cupping my butt cheek, but I am not going through all of this crap only to lose my tip right at the end. So I just try to imagine I’m acting in a cheesy TV commercial. I slow down on words like “salted” and “caramel,” roll the “r” in “creamy,” try to look ecstatic about sticky toffee pudding, then finally throw on a bad Russian accent for white chocolate mousse tower.