“Oh God, can you tell me that last one again?” Perry says, with a disgusting groan. “But do it like . . . have you heard of Marilyn Monroe?” And then Perry finally drops his hand from my butt and does an imitation of her singing “Happy Birthday, Mr. President,” all breathy and wriggling his shoulders and chest ridiculously, which, of course, makes his buddies roar.
“Do it,” he commands. “White chocolate mousse tower, Marilyn-style, but keep the Russian accent. Sing the whole menu!”
Everyone is staring—not just Perry and his loathsome friends, but most of my section, plus Brianna and Kyle, who’s standing nearby with a strangely blank look on his face.
This, of course, is awful. But Perry’s bill is up over two hundred dollars already. A twenty percent tip will be at least forty bucks, and the faster I do it the faster he’ll be gone.
And so I sing the whole damned dessert menu in a breathy voice, with a bad Russian accent, to the tune of “Happy Birthday,” skipping all the gross wiggling but finishing with what I hope is a cute tilt of my head.
There’s a short silence once I’m done, and then Perry, Douglas, and Garcia start clapping and hooting.
“Yes, yes, give it to me!” Perry shouts. “What’s your favorite, Lib?”
“The, uh, toffee pudding.”
“The sticky toffee pudding, you mean. We’ll alllllll have it.”
“Great,” I say, tone brisk and back-to-business. “Three toffee puddings.”
“And more sangria.”
“Sure.”
“And Libby?”
“Yes?”
“It better be the stickiest, best toffee pudding I’ve ever tasted,” he says, reaching out to give me a sideways squeeze, “otherwise I’m going to come after you with my mousse tower.”
Ugh. I might vomit. On purpose. On him.
But honestly I’m scared by the look in his eyes and so the best I can manage is to laugh, as if by laughing I can erase it. I laugh as if he’s hilarious and then wrench myself out of his grasp, and finally make a beeline for the service area.
My laugh turns into a strangled sound as soon as I’m out of view, and I come to a full stop just as Dev enters from the opposite side.
“What’s wrong?” he says, stopping short at the sight of me. “Are you sick?”
“No, it’s just Perry.”
“Still about the salad?”
“No, still about the being a disgusting, butt-grabbing pervert,” I say.
Poor Dev is very proper, so he nearly chokes. He’s probably never even said the word “butt” out loud. He’s also almost as new at running a restaurant as I am at serving in one.
“Did you mean to say . . . ?”
“That he grabbed my butt? Yes.”
“Gracious me,” Dev says.
“Honestly, that’s the least of it.”
I tell him the rest and he listens with a mounting horror and embarrassment that almost makes me feel guilty for putting him through this.
“I knew he was sometimes inappropriate, but I didn’t realize the extent of it. You should not have to deal with this type of behavior,” Dev says, with a flustered exhale. “I’m very sorry.”
“Thank you,” I say, so relieved that he’s listened and believed me, and feeling proud of myself for doing the thing everyone always says you should do—talk to someone who can help—and having it actually work out.
“What should we do?”
“Do?” Dev says.
“I’d rather not go back out there.”
The sudden change of expression on Dev’s face at this comment is almost comical—he looks totally panicked.
“Not go? We are understaffed and your section’s been a disaster all evening!”
“But . . .”
“Who is going to serve all of those tables? Yes, Perry is behaving poorly, but this is all jokes. He is not going to hurt you. He has a wife!”
“What? Wife? What’s that got to do with it?”
“If you’re truly worried, I can have Kyle walk you out after your shift, or even accompany you home.”
Have Kyle accompany me home.
Awesome.
“Don’t worry,” Dev says, in what he obviously thinks is a reassuring tone, “everything is fine.”
And then he leaves, and I stand there blinking.
Everything is fine.
Right.
Silly me.
Yes, my legs are shaking and I feel like I’ve been slimed, but there’s a job to do. I trudge back to the computer to put in the orders for the desserts and sangria.
When I get to the bar a couple of minutes later, Nita is quartering the oranges for the sangria. “We need to get Perry’s keys from him,” she says.
“You’re kidding, right?”
“Not at all. He shouldn’t be driving.”
“I am not playing ‘find-my-keys-they’re-in-my-pants’ with Perry.”
Nita lets out a choking laugh, and says, “Eww.”
“Seriously, no way. I’m not doing that.”
“Okay, relax. I’ll ask one of the guys to help. Just . . . tell them we’ll pay for a taxi,” she says, and sets the finished pitcher of sangria in front of me.
“Are we going to pay his mortgage, too? Maybe buy him a car? Will someone have to jerk him off to get him out of here?”
“Ew. Whoa. What’s the matter with you?”
“Nothing,” I say, taking the sangria. “Everything’s fine!”
And then . . . well, I’m not entirely clear about what happens then.
First I am marching with grim determination back to the patio, and Perry. And there is his face, and the other two faces, all of them flushed and leering as they greet me. The desserts have arrived in record time, and Perry is spooning the sticky toffee pudding into his mouth with relish. For a gross moment things go slow motion and all I can see is his tongue, lizarding out to the spoon, and I’m thinking that I’ll never be able to eat sticky toffee pudding again, and how, between that and the mousse tower comment, that’s two desserts Perry has ruined for me. And then he’s grinning, saying something about how I’m really lucky he likes it.
Meanwhile, I’m looking at his empty glass, trying to figure out how to refill it without getting too close to him because I’ve had just about enough of his hands on me for one night. Almost like he can read my mind, he smirks, then picks up his glass and places it farther away, where I’ll have to lean all the way over the table to reach it.