Frownie

True memory, yeah.

I’m a hostess. I don’t get tips. I’m not in the in-crowd and I have no seniority. The staff rotation is as frequent as there are smoking breaks. My job is to make people feel welcome when I’m feeling my worst. The worse I feel, the nicer I am. So for $7.25, I do the best I can. It just about pays for a total personality makeover. I can switch from morose eighteen-year-old to Leave It to Beaver in an iota of everyone’s time. I figure I’m just about pro now. As such a chameleon, working in a restaurant opens you up to a lot of personas—and a lot of specimens for study. Be it the dysfunctional families, the starving college kid, the celebrity look-a-like, or—even—yourself. When, y’know, you’re not flitting from table to table doing the busboy’s job for him. That doesn’t leave much time for philosophical discoveries.

            There is a man with a cane that comes in every time I’m working—and as the schedules are random as the shifts are lacking, I’ve narrowed it down that he lives in either the freezer or the dishwasher. He sits in the same spot every time. Right behind the hostess podium. So I’m there. All the time. When I’m not doing everyone else’s job. He wears the same thing every time and I really do wonder if he doesn’t live in the dishwasher. The restaurant where I work sells T-shirts and hats and over-produced merchandise promoting this crazy dessert we call, defiantly, The Frownie. Forgive me, but I’m tired of getting complaints about the darn thing. It’s negative, it’s anti-Smiley, but the man with the cane loves it. He wears the T-shirt, the hat, and even a special addition handbag that I swear I had never seen once in the time I’ve wasted—er, worked there.

            But I really wonder. Where does this man with the cane come from? Why does he insist on eating here? Is he just a fan or is there something deep there? Or is he senile. As I am running around, grabbing washcloths and collecting abandoned menus he smiles, attempts to trip me, but feints and smiles again. Sometimes he sits with another man, but mostly he sits by himself.

            Sometimes he talks to me, but I’m not sure what he’s saying so I smile back. It’s kind of garbled and from looking at him you could never tell it was him speaking. His voice is somewhat tinny, yet (I don’t know how he manages it) sounds like he’s underwater.

            Dishwasher.

            When he looks at me I think he can see through me. See through my smile. I was a majorette in high school and the first lesson of band camp was to smile, and convincingly. I thought I was golden, I thought I was free. But somehow that man with the cane knows, somehow he understands what it’s like to be something you’re utterly not.

It’s a destructive thing to change your personality every time someone walks through the double doors, but maybe it’s a well practiced defense. I don’t like working in restaurants.