It’s funny, when I look back on when I first met Angie, I remember how she was crazy intimidating. She seems to know about everything cool and knows everybody everywhere.

I realized right away there was no point -- absolutely no point -- in trying to impress her with my worldly knowledge. I'd always feel like a kid around her.

For whatever reason, I decided just to embrace it. Like, give myself permission to not know everything when I'm around her. After I did that, I didn’t get intimidated. I didn't need to try to act cool.

It's nice to know now that I can always ask her what the hell a Tuscano sauce is, or how to present champagne again, or whatever.

And it was all in my head too. It wasn’t like she challenged me. She is totally approachable and unassuming.

At the same time that Angie is so relatable to me and to most anybody else, she's like Jake in the sense that she can switch personas.

And her other persona can be pretty scary.

I saw it one busy night when she was bartending. A pushy customer was acting like a real ass, trying to get her attention, despite the fact that the bar was crowded shoulder to shoulder.

I was there at the bar punching in orders from my tables and watched it all play out.

The guy didn't seem to realize he needed to wait his turn. He kept shouting his order. Other diners were even giving him dirty looks.

After a minute, she turned to him, asked him to repeat his order. Some wine. And then she said, loudly enough for his date and quite a few other nearby strangers to hear, "Oh, do you mean..." and she made it clear he wasn't pronouncing the name correctly.

It was savage to see how fast his face fell. He cowered like a scared puppy.

And then in an instant, Angie smiled really sweetly at the dude, erasing the malice from a moment before, and she turned to get his drink.

I watched this interaction from the side, and in the mirror I could see his face, while I could also directly see Angie's face.

The conclusion is Angie is really more savvy at handling people than I am. I don't know how I would have handled the situation if I were bartending that night. Probably just done my best to get to him when I could.

On second thought, I've been doing this for a while too, and I know actually I have my own style for dealing with unhappy diners too, and maybe, in some cases, my approach is better. Like tonight, Angie maybe belittled that guy, but I don't know if he would be very generous after that experience.

So, she got in the cutting remark, but if I were working there, I would have just squinted my eyes and clenched my fist around the towel on my apron.

Her way makes for a better story. My way earns more money. And really, I can take the stress. Sure, it sucks in the moment, but an hour or two later, I've forgotten about the asshole.

That's what it takes for me to survive at this job: blanking out my memory. Or in more positive terms, not getting hung up the unpleasant stuff. Minimize the amount of attention it gets.

I wonder though... is it secretly, silently eating me up inside? Maybe.

But hell, obnoxious customers are not the biggest stressor for me. So it's likely other stuff is eating me up more.

Tonight on the ride over to the place where we'd be working, I told Angie about a thing I remembered when I first started working at the restaurant.

She was still shadowing me and I was trying to open a bottle of Reisling at the table. We hardly ever sell those and the corks always dried out. I was trying to smoothly open the bottle, but the cork would not budge, and in fact, the glass bottle edge was chipping.

• Add more details about the customers, about the scene, about the fear of having everyon watch while I struggle to open the bottle.

It was really stressing me out. I was really melting down in front of the table. It was hell.

The corkscrew didn’t get a bite into the cork. Instead it just disintegrated a little with every twist, and at the same time, the glass lip started grinding and chipping.

My sanity was falling to pieces as well.

Angie said cheerfully how this happens sometimes, and we'd be right back with another bottle.

She came back and I watched as she opened this bottle flawlessly, the whole time talking about the region in Germany where this Riesling was produced and why it was such a great wine.

Later that night, we were rolling silverware, the two of us, I expected at any moment for her to tell me this job wasn’t for me.

I rehearsed how I would react; I rehearsed how I would try not to look as devastated as I already felt inside.

I began a list in my head of other places I could go apply. The waiting was killing me though. I decided to bring it up.

I said something like “I bet you could tell how nervous I was when I was opening that bottle.”

She said something like “yeah, it can be hard when the corks dry.”

I said maybe this isn’t a good job for me. It was so stressful. But then she replied, without even pausing. She said, “You can’t quit yet.”

I felt better after she said that. A lot better. Maybe this is something that is not that big of a deal.

I got the feeling then that she didn’t want to get into it. Didn’t want to talk about the details. I should just not fuck up any more.

Tonight I told her how bad I felt that night and how she really saved me by telling me not to quit.

And tonight, she said that was really sweet, and I am a good waiter.

But that night, when she said "you can’t quit tonight" she was really just covering her ass.

The restaurant is always understaffed and at that time, they really needed more people.

Angie said that when people quit after training, the GM gets annoyed at the trainer. The restaurant is perpetually understaffed. It's the trainer's job to get them ready to be on the floor, not discourage them, so when people quit during training, the trainers catch shit.

There's not a lot of people that are able and willing to do this work. You gotta smile while being verbally abused, and you gotta have a brain that can keep track of a whole bunch of shit happening simultaneously. Being a waiter in fine dining is like being in a beauty pageant mixed with being an air traffic controller.

Ironically I thought she was making a point about life and adversity and she literally meant something more mundane... if I quit that night, there wasn’t anyone to pick up my busboy shift the next day.

But then she said how bad stuff happens. Having a bad night... that’s just life.

On the way Angie explained how this is actually more than just a catering job. Angie runs her own business.

and her cousin is hooking her up with catering for this event. If guests enjoy it, maybe it will lead to more.

I got all self-conscious... why the hell would she risk this gig on me?

I wanted not to mess anything up.

Then I realized that the Reisling nightmare was like eight months ago. I only remember the fucked up experiences.

I prepped salads while Angie talked to the hosts.

Then the guests arrived.

Anyhow, I guess the family was somehow part of Conservative party and tonight's event was a fundraiser for their governor candidate.

Angie and I were in the kitchen together and the client, the woman who hired Angie, walks into the kitchen.

I didn’t want to stare but you know what? It was the same woman as I saw get into the fight.

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?

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.