An Unforseen Banquet for Ungrateful Guests

A story that takes place in a bar that is not so far from the biblical one about the loaves and fishes.

Hey all, sorry this is late. Some stories take more time. I don’t know why. Hope you enjoy this one.

Your parents didn’t celebrate when the acceptance letter from the private university arrived. They were concerned about the cost and the fact that you would be moving three states away. The scholarship attached to the acceptance letter wouldn’t even cover a semester and they hadn’t forgotten how you got kicked out of your first school. Your desire to pursue a creative writing degree seemed unlikely to pay off in the job market, a fact you didn’t care about. The school’s highly regarded writing program was the reason you applied. You were more mature now. You would immediately get a job. You were determined to better yourself.

Yet, by the end of the first month, you were beginning to rethink your decision. You lived in a cold hovel of a dorm room, with an alcholic roommate who shoved your typewriter to the floor during one of her hangovers. Your writing teacher and fellow students seem to think critiquing each other’s work was a blood sport. You were friendless and broke. A job off-campus seemed like a sane idea.

An ad in the city’s newspaper led you to walk through a scruffy park and passed the abandoned hulk of the Remington Arms Munition Factory to the Connecticut Sound. At the end of the wharf was a low slung wooden building that had seen better days. The heavy front door needed some heft to open into a narrow room occupied by a long bar. The men inside turned around when the door closed behind you. You would have been more apprehensive if the place didn’t remind you of all the bars you drank and worked in back home. Was the waitress job still open, you asked the man behind the bar. Maybe, he replied. Come back on Friday night at 5:30 and he’d decide then.

You returned on Friday exactly at 5:30, appropriately attired for work in a bar—jeans and a kind of clean tee-shirt. It was a relief to tie on the white apron the bar owner handed you. His name was Henry. His dad, Big Henry, sat at the end of the bar reading the newspaper. Henry led you to a large back room with a wide stage and dance space at one end. Small rickey tables and chairs packed the rest of the room. Strobe lights raked across the stage where the evening’s band was rehearsing screeching chords. All of this is yours every Friday and Saturday night, Henry said almost kindly. Your one help would be Pete, a chemistry graduate student, who was stationed behind a small bar near the stage. He was too busy stocking the beer case to acknowledge you. His lanky studious look didn’t give you much confidence he’d be much help if things got a little out of hand but then you noticed the metal baseball bat resting beside the tap handles and felt a little safer.

Pretty much how it was except more packed.

Waitressing in a ruckus bar requires speed. Speed to keep the customers drinking, speed to dislodge hands lingering on your body. It was also an asset if you could be polite and funny while telling someone to back off. Pete had a bottomless supply of hilarious observations and an unerring sense of when a shot of whiskey would revive your flagging energy. The weekends became the only time you felt in charge and confident. You were wired at the end of the night. When the roommate went home on the weekends, you stayed up until dawn writing, often badly, but sometimes not.

Half way through a particularly busy Saturday night in November, Henry called you over. He had a problem and nodded toward six men and three women who had pushed several tables together in the corner. Henry pinned them as well-heeled students. You were sure you never saw them before. After two pitchers of beer and a round of shots, they began to ask for food from a menu on a board above the bar that was only available during the summer.

“Tell them we’re all out,” Big Henry said but Henry thought that he should at least see what might be left in the freezer. He was charging the group top dollar for the beer pitchers. Maybe he could earn a lot more for food he had to get rid of anyway.

He brought Pete over to take care of the bar while he and you went to the kitchen. Cleanliness didn’t seem to be a priority. Large scorched pots and big skillets were piled on the stove and grill. The mixing bowls on the counter and the stacks of plates above the serving table seemed to be in better shape. Henry opened the walk-in freezer and came out again with a box each of stuffed clams and breaded oysters. He balanced a large bag of French fries on top. Unfortunately, the hamburger meat wasn’t salvageable.

“Go tell them what we have,” Henry said and produced an actual order pad to give you.

“What do we have?” you asked.

“Everything but hamburgers. Maybe there’s some spaghetti in the store room and tomato sauce.

You walked over to the table, pencil and pad in hand, and told the men what was left. They were not happy to hear about the hamburgers. You quickly came up with a cover story, blaming the university’s soccer team celebrating their big division win the previous night. You knew they won because your roommate had entertained a team member in her bed until almost dawn.

“They cleaned us out,” you smiled.

The man nearest to you turned around in his chair in such a way that his elbow pressed hard into your hip. When you shifted away he just extended his arm further to attack your hip again.

You grinned, “I suggest the spaghetti in clam sauce. It’s our speciality. Our other speciality is smacking people’s elbows off my hip.”

His friends let out a loud laughing “woooooooo” sound as one of them drummed on the table.

The woman at the end of the table squirmed out of her chair. “I want to dance,” she said.

“Here?” the man beside her said.

The other women thought that was a great idea and followed her. You and the men watched them ping-pong their way through the older men on their way to the younger men in the back.

Five of the men went with the spaghetti in clam sauce. The last one signaled that a full beer pitcher was enough for him.

Order had been established in the kitchen when you returned. A large pot of tomato sauce simmered on one burner and on another a larger pot of water boiled. Henry was scooping slightly defrosted breaded clams out of their shells and into the sauce. Big Henry was pretty proud of himself for thinking about arranging celery sticks reserved for Blood Marys in high-ball glasses. He had found an open jar of ranch dressing in the refrigerator and decided it would make a pretty decent dipping sauce for the fried oysters. You carried out plates and silverware and left them at the head of the table because the men wouldn’t move for you to set it properly. The celery glasses and the fried oysters in two paper-lined bread baskets with saucers of ranch dressing balanced on top were successfully slid down the center of the table. Out came an enormous bowl of spaghetti heavily dressed with tomato sauce thickened with a huge number of breaded clams.

The diners were amused when you mispronounced “bon appetit.”

You would have been embarrassed if you were back at the university but standing there at the top of the table, you smiled and said “good luck.” Then you left to retrieve your tray and return to the back room.

Eventually everyone was kicked out and the tables all washed down, the chairs stacked on top, the floors kind of mopped. Henry made sure no one remained in the bathrooms and parking lot. It was time to sit at the bar and fold your once white apron, now stained brown and red with beer and clam sauce, into a neat square.

“Here you go,” Henry said and slid two twenty dollar bills beside your shot of Wild Turkey.

“Don’t think it was from them,” Big Henry said.

“Fuckin’ douchebags,” Henry said.

Pete said he was driving you home and you finally accepted because you couldn’t feel your feet.

“Get her home safe,” Henry called behind you.

Neither you or Pete had anything to say in his small car on the way to your dorm. The university’s campus was deserted, the pathways illuminated with brilliant cold lights, everyone tucked in somewhere for the night.