Worked with Angie Last Night (part two)

7:00 PM: we walk around with appetizers.

The house was amazing.

Sure, it was fancy, and all that, but the thing that I loved was that the walls were covered in framed art. Like way more dense than it should be, and completely crazy shit.

These people were collectors.

I eavesdrop on the conversations.

I check out the art in the house.

There seems to be a lot of people with a lot of money, and they're getting courted by people that want that money.

Are the words cover for darker, more elitist thoughts? Are their ideas just hydra heads, so to speak?

On the drive over, Angie explained how she didn't want us waiters engaging the guests at all. She said it isn't like at the restaurant. We need to be anonymous, nearly invisible. This is pretty much my style when I work in restaurants already, and so this suited me.

I listened to the same guy tell three different people the exact same line... how their support is particularly valuable since they're a role model in the community.

I listen to a few more of this guy's lines. He is really good at what he is doing. I realize that even his bashful, reluctant, hesitant demeanor that was so disarming is an act. A very well rehearsed monolog. I wonder if he practices different phrases in front of the mirror while he shaves in the morning.

Or maybe he tries out different variations with people and tracks what worked. Does he have a notebook? Does he modify it based on the audience?

Angie said not to chit chat with the folks, but at one point this guy point blank asked me if I was going to college. I guess I was going to be the person that resolves a bet.

This is awkward because somebody is about to lose money or whatever and they're going to blame me for it. It's a no-win situation.

They asked me what he is studying, or if he is studying.

I should describe the guys. They were likely honestly the age of my father. Except these guys were really dessed fashionably well. I remember one guy had white longish hair that was clearly very well maintained.

I told the three men how I studied economics at the local university. It's mostly a commuter school though for people that are on a nontraditional track.

I nodded along when one asked, "Why didn't I go to somewhere else?" And then he realized the blatant insult, and then said, "I meant why did you pick there?"

I said how I was accepted to University of T. Then I said, "I planend to, but a family issue came up. My little sister is having a hard time, and I want to be close to home."

I could see on the guy with the white 70s chick hair how it had never occurred to him that somebody could have their own lives derailed like that.

I read it on his eyes: it baffled him to imagine that situation. He would not sacrifice his own maximum career potential to comfort someone else.

The other guy said something even more offensive now that I write it out here: "You must be bored there. There can't possibly be the same kind of discussion there. Why, college is the only time in life you can focus so much on nothing but ideas and parties and art, and not worry for a moment about bills."

Now that I think about it, he was saying that he thought the quality of conversations in classes and outside classes too at my school vs U of T were different, and U of T was better.

First off, conversations aren't really a sport where you can compare them. But second, why did he think this? Is it because the U of T kids made better grades?

Is it because they're most middle class kids? There's kids from a lot of different backgrounds, but it isn't proportionate. It skews white and upper middle class at U of T.

While half my classes are international students, people that are going back to school after maybe having young children, or getting out of the military. And the other half of the students are regular age college kids.

That group of regular age college kids has a lot of students that often got in to other, fancier, more expensive schools, but they're scholarship students in the honors program.

In my mind I imagined he was saying that he didn't think the people I go to school with have as deep thoughts.

I aimed to modulate from sounding like the vanguard of the working class more toward a much less threatening character -- a guy with lots of school spirit.

I realized I could make my point pretty easily. I said how in my government class, there was a conversation between a guy that was a combat veteran and several students from Nigeria.

I said how we were talking foreign aid in Africa and how it never is given without strings attached.

There's no way that conversation would have happened anywhere else.

I could tell they were impressed with that point.

It worked. They relaxed.

But another part of that line actually got through and hurt me. I nearly physically winced when I thought about Penny at that party. Maybe this is what she was talking about.

Here's what scares me about what that guy said. What if he's right, and people that spend years just having fun and making friends and reading cool books and going to parties... what if people that do all that... what if it makes those people better somehow, like funnier, or more patient, more energetic, so they can go out and just do amazing things, and it becomes almost a self-perpetuating cycle?

Well that means Penny she'll grow so much. And what caused me to almost flinch visibly was me imagining her in the future, pitying me, but seeing me almost like an insect or disfigured and deranged person.

I'd be so hideous in her eyes she'd avoid me. Because while she spent years becoming her best self, I'd become this bitter warped person that was getting too old to be so poor.

Then another guy said, "And I take it you don't live on campus either..." and I don't know exactly what he meant. Maybe he was pointing out another way that I wasn't having a typical college experience.

I nodded to the other waiters that I saw in the room. I said I have some brilliant friends.

And I told them how my old girlfriend goes to H U in Boston. She and I are both taking the same class this semester. Intermediate macroeconomics. It's the class that causes a lot of folks to change their major away from economics.

We both are using the same textbook. The main difference is that her lecturer is the guy that wrote the textbook.

So, the question is then, Is there getting a better education than me really? In practice, she's not, because I'm studying way more than she is.

She's decided that economics is the rules to a crooked casino game and she's not going to play. She's a history major and she plans to teach. And she's like the third history major that I've met that said something like that... like how they know that economics is a waste of time to study.

Then I said, since we're on the subject, I wanted them to know there are a lot of students like me. Seriously bright people but external factors prevent them from going to elite or even first-tier schools. But they're hanging on by a thread. Cutting student loan budgets have clear negative effects on enrollment, and people often defer and then ultimately drop out.

When I said all this, I tried to say it as blandly as possible, but I kept thinking about how really true it was.

I made up the bullshit about my sister a while ago. This was the second time I tried it. I think it really worked.

The plan for how to lay it out is to not give all the details. The next detail to share is that she was in a really bad car accident. A drunk driver hit her and her friend.

Now the listener wants to know about my sister and about her friend.

Never mind that. I'll tell you why I went down this path of making shit up rather than just saying the truth, or even, "I'd rather not say."

It's because I'm in the business of charming people out of their money. And I've tried all those out, and it seems like telling the truth drives people away. And so does politely deferring.

And tonight, mentioning to a bunch of conservatives how I got caught in the web of our laughably cruel and inefficient criminal justice system might have forced them psychologically to see me as an enemy.

I feel like I'm a casualty in the war on drugs. But Maybe I'm a prisoner of war. I don't know. the war metaphor isn't perfect. But that's not my problem, because they chose it.

What am I? I'm a citizen, I made some bad choices, at least according to that side, but I didn't do anything violent? Do they (the people running the show) really see young people getting high as the same kind of threat as if were actively conspiring with an enemy?

If the war on drugs is an actual war, what's the analog for a pot smoker? Was I a spy behind enemy lines? Maybe that's why they have so much contempt.

Like I said I felt myself getting almost angry at how many bright kids are probably never gonna get their shot because of some accident of birth.

Is the tax cut savings really worth it to them?

I guess it must be. Do they not know how bad it is for people at the bottom, or do they know, but they don't care?

9 PM: presentation begins and we get a break.

Angie and I stood on the back porch so she could smoke She talked about how she is going home this weekend for some family event. In a weird coincidence, Angie is from the same place I'm from. She's a few years older than me, and I never knew her growing up.

While we were standing in the backyard, I remembered how Jake got hurt this summer.

It was toward the end of the dinner rush. He was carrying another tray of salads from the walk-in and the floor mat over there had a partial rip. When he stepped on it, that last piece ripped completely off and slid forward right out from under him. Since Jake had his hands full, he couldn't grab onto anything and I saw his foot come up to waist high.

I saw the whole thing but of course this was during the dinner rush and I saw it while heading back out, hearing the crash of a tray of ceramic plates shattering across the floor.

I didn't think about it much at that moment. But then I saw Megan, the front house manager that night, taking over his tables. And later I saw Jake in the tiny office with an ice pack on his head the next few times I went to the kitchen. I stuck my head in to tease him but then I smelled vomit, and it took me a minute to realize Jake had been throwing up in the office. I realized he must have really gotten hurt.

Jake is a workhorse. I remember when he was training me, when I picked up a plate and then immediately yelped because it was so hot and then put it right back down, and he looked at me and then grabbed it, and he said something like "yeah i guess that's kinda warm... you'll get used to it though.".

But It wasn't kinda warm. The plate was so hot that it seared the skin of my forearm where it touched me. But Jake carried it effortlessly. And now I was seeing Jake holding an ice pack on the side of his head.

He took off the next two weeks. A bunch of us chipped in tips to help him out. He had tried to come back the next day, and that was just sad to see. You could tell he was in a lot of pain. Then during the shift, he kept screwing up orders, and he even got into an argument with a customer.

Jake is in that tier of waiters that seems infinitely capable. He's always at ease, always perfectly immaculate in appearance, never gets in the weeds, builds an instant rapport with anyone. But he was all kinds of messed up.

A few weeks later, he was back, and we all rallied around him. He got the smoking section, which is not very busy. But he handled it.

And now he's back to being head waiter.

Viv came out and grabbed Angie's cig.

Viv said something like how she needs a break from smiling for a minute.

It's her from last weekend. I'm sure of it. She does the stare again, where it seems like we all disappear for a moment.

Viv hands back the smoke. Asks Angie "who is your friend?" Meaning me.

She asks Angie questions about while I'm standing there. It dawned on me that this whole night had been about being not acknowledged even while standing in front of somebody.

At the end of the night, we are packing up.

• Later, she gives each of us an envelope of cash.

• I stare at her hand and it really looks broken. This is definitely the same woman.

• Viv says something like how she can spot a broken heart a mile away. Her words cut right through me, because she's right. I'm not over Penny.

• She disappears inside.

• And she says something like "they don't deserve us. They don't deserve how much we adore them. We're in love with a mirage."

I wanted to say "I was there when this happened" and touch her cast. But I didn't want her to worry that I was going to cause her trouble. She made up some other explanation for it, and it didn't feel right to say anything.

Viv's housekeeper interrupted us and says somebody keeps calling and asking for her and saying it is urgent.

On the way home I was really tired.

Angie said she thought about me for this because she figured I would wanna eavesdrop on the political people.

She was right. My brain was tingling all night.

I said how the whole thing kinda followed the same rules as working for tips. Like watching the guy build rapport and then hint about how their support would be useful.

Not that different than when I lay down the check and say how it has been a real joy to having you here. I spent a silly amount of time thinking about the phrases that said it right.

I didn't like saying "joy serving you" because there's weird s&m tones.

However I don't want to pretend that this is not a transaction. I did my part, as best I could, now here is their chance to express their gratitude or appreciation of my effort.

Anyhow I thought about it a ton.

Angie talked about her cousin more. "It's funny -- we are both from really modest backgrounds but she has made it up and out.

"She's a few years older than me. As a kid, I thought she was so cool."

I mean I heard Viv explain how her hand was in a bandage because of a completely different reason.

She must not want people to know the truth.

Maybe Angie already knew the truth though.

I said in a silly way, "Do you think your cousin has a secret life, away from all these old-money people? Like where she sneaks off and gets drunk in shitty bars and then gets in fights?"

Angie laughed, and said "What?" I said how Angie knows I have an active imagination, and that's just something that played in my mind.

Either Angie didn't know what I was hinting about or she didn't want to acknowledge that I was on the right track.