What is it?

   "Are you blind, dumb or just plain stupid?"  The chef yells at Val through the waiter’s pass.

   "I'm upstairs tonight!" Val says.

   "I don't give a fuck, you see a meal, you take it," bellows the chef.

   "Okay, okay, which table?"

   "Read the docket!"

   Val shrivels inside. Then arcs his head over to the pile of dockets and reads the one on top, “table outside 8”.  He feels himself gracefully take hold of the white china full of Salmon Linguine.    The white rim singes his forefinger and thumb.

     Val looks toward the centre of the plate. 

     A delicate pink sauce, thin strips of pinker salmon and Italian linguine style pasta, the type of pasta that when slurped grazes your tongue and leaves a residue of semolina, like white powder on your lips.

    As he swiftly transports the dish, through the wooden cave of the front entrance and outside the glass doors, he feels the chef burning a hole through his back. Val imagines the chef with a smile.

     The chef, Frank, glaring outside the waiter’s pass at Val, tucks his dark brown hands under his arm pits and with a grin talks to his apprentice through the corner of his mouth. "Fuckin stupid waiters, why does Francesca hire ‘em?"

     While Val routinely smiles, places the pasta, a bottle of water and a glass on Outside 8, he thinks about how Frank’s scrunched round orange face appears to have sat in a solarium and how it’s topped with a thick layer of oil. He knows Frank occasionally smiles; he only ever does when he believes a waiter has done something stupid; a forceful, desperate, crackled-lip stretch that only basks in the misfortunes of others. It usually stretches wide and sweat gets forced out through the crevasses of his skin and trickles off the thin hairs below his deep brown eyes; the type of brown eyes that have no pupils.

     After cracking some pepper and sprinkling fluffy parmesan cheese over the patron’s meal Val uses his foot to kick open the glass door to come back in. He sees Frank’s eyes gravitate towards Francesca sitting with other waiters and he knows Frank wants to tell her to hire some new staff; but she's his manager and she's too beautiful.

     Val freezes in awe and marvels at how Francesca gets up and takes an order.    

The atmosphere of the restaurant conspires in a way to make Francesca languidly glide about the tables. The gravitational pull in her body is perfection and it makes her stance firm. It’s so perfect in fact it has the ability to influences the eyes of men to follow her every move and then gape in her direction. She has a doll head and it just lightly balances on soft broad shoulders and her arms dangle in their own space. Whenever they move it's gently controlled like a ballerina. Her nimble balance is always delicate and when she’s standing her feet always seem ready to pirouette. Francesca’s eyes are dark chocolate and her skin is caramel to match.

    She floats back into her seat. 

    "Val, could you get me some unbuttered bread?" Francesca whines, lifting her chin, exposing a circular mole that appears drawn on with charcoal. He thinks her whine is pleasant. Val feels himself nodding sporadically like a puppy with a great gaping beam. His wispy black fringe bounces over bright green eyes. His firm milky white arm extends out in one swift shift and pokes a stack of buttered bread squashed in a basket that's lined with green, red and white tartan towels. Francesca politely sips her lentil soup and fixes her eyes on Val. He notices. She snaps back to looking at lentils and politely sipping. 

     He then takes a step back and rests one hand on his waist. He softly bites the top of his fore-finger, resting the nail on his tooth, clicking it several times and bobs down really quick. Under the bench holding the buttered bread and other condiments he finds: a wooden pepper grinder; which he loves to crack over meals, flakes of chilli in a brass bowl, parmesan cheese and Baci chocolate, transparent takeaway pasta containers, bags of Lavazza coffee, folded towels; and veiled in more tartan towels; another basket of bread. His smile widens as he anxiously tears away tartan, then drops when he sees pale yellow clumps of butter glistening atop thick white slices of crusty Vienna bread. He slowly moves up to peek at Francesca. She can tell.  He then scurries away past the unbuttered stuff by the phone - on another bench-top - and pulls out a container full of bread, not buttered, yet it’s already toasted, for quick bruschetta service. Her lips purse tight and eyebrows move closer together.

     "Val, what’s wrong with you! Every shift you work, you forget where everything is. Maybe you should see a doctor." Francesca whines again with fingers clasped in the shape of a dome and her thumb bending in impossible measures.

     "Not many people ask for unbuttered bread." Val replies under his breath from a distance with an awkward smile and pink cheeks. Francesca instantly rolls her eyes and with a cheeky smile says, "Get me the bread" and nonchalantly flings her arm exposing her wrist to flick her finger toward the bread by the phone. "Sure," Val says with his latest devilish expression hoping she likes it.

    He removes himself from the gaze and gets lost in the sounds of the restaurant.

     Kind Of Blue delicately spills out the stereo. The soft throb of Miles Davis' trumpet resonates and creates a wave, blanketing the chic people eating their pasta. A couple giggle lovingly, sipping house white and slurping homemade spaghetti covered in fluffy egg Carbonara.  A gang of business suits talk over lattes and a cappuccino that’s covered in dark chocolate powder. 

     Val swings back with ‘So What’ to an E flat and then an F, places Francesca's un-buttered bread on a small white plate, glides around a cloudy marble bench set with a frozen overcast and pushes it on her table. Her face reminds him of satin pearl and he wonders why she constantly glows.

     Val is a painter. He likes to capture moments with his hand. He wants to hold this one. Burn it in his mind. Create it, touch it, and feel it.

     He wants to stroke different shades of brown mixed with white: use chocolate dabs, coffee, russet, brunette and auburn. Capture her cheeks, hair and the shades of her face. Press the colours together, mesh them about, push and blend them in like clay on the coarse canvas; Give in to the desire and brush scarlet rose petals with swift circular motion and see her lips shining in front of him. Relive her beauty with raw colour. Show it to the world. Show it to her. Sink a thin long fur brush in thinned black paint and stroke lashes, flicking his wrist around egg shell white eyes.  Make two round circles for each iris. Step back and with his thumb line up the eye brows. Then move in to paint them.  Stand back again, tripping over a chair in excitement and admire the making of this moment.  Rush toward the moment and sculpt the final tones with his finger.  Bring her to life with two tiny white dabs in each eye, creating the reflection of a distant sun. A sun he wishes they shared. Then, immediately after painting her run into that sweet Italian restaurant on the very same day, stretch the painting out in front of her and allow her fall into his arms.     

   "You coming Cherry bar tonight?" Francesca asks.

   "Really, ah, yes, cool." Val stammers with brightly wide eyes. His words spray out suffocating the significance of a smooth, comfortable mood. His face frozen like ice, hers perplexed.  A definite cue to disappear: take an order, wipe some tables, clear some tables, and rinse some glasses. Just disappear. "Great" Val thinks to himself; the couple near Francesca start to wobble their seats. They stand up and self-consciously shuffle to the marble bench and the well-set boyfriend digs his brick-layer hands into tight Levi pockets. Val strides over tapping his Romanian leather boot heels on the varnished floor board then onto the rusty painted concrete behind the bench and stands at the 1980s money register: The kind that has large, cube, numeric buttons, a big plus and a big equals button; a register that clunks instead of clinks when a sale goes through.

   "Did you have the white wine and the Carbona...?”

   "Yeah."

   "That’s 43.90. Credit or cash?"

   "Credit. You take Amex?"

   "Sorry."

   "How about this?" The chiselled man flips out a new pineapple.

   "Thanks. That’s 6.10. Sorry ‘bout the change." Val throws him six dollars worth of 50 cent coins and a 10 cent piece.

   "Ding ding...ding ding...ding ding ding...ding ding ding ding."

   Val snaps his head in the direction of the kitchen. 

    Frank's orange face is an exploding jacaranda. Veins pumped like chartreuse tubes he clutches the bell and throws it at a wooden staircase outside the waiter’s pass yowling, "Up stairs. Two dings is fuckin UP STAIRS!"

    “Frank shut up!” shouts Francesca. Val lovingly smiles.

     Frank turns and gets lost in some steam. Francesca stretches out and clasps dainty fingers on a warm-rimmed plate of macaroni della zia – home made pasta and home made meat balls in blobs of tasty tomato sauce with thick cuts of eggplant – ands starts to run upstairs.  Val runs past the kitchen, stops her half way up the stairs and places his conjuring hand around her arm. She smiles. He pauses.  

  “You going Cherry?”  Val stammers.

  “Man you really can be dumb sometimes Val,” says Francesca.

  “Oh…I’ll take that.” Val takes hold of the warm plate of della zia from the other side of the rim and gently pulls. Francesca releases.    

   Val stares at a Betty Davis picture on the wall and mulls over something definitive he should say to Francesca next time he bumps into her. He arrives upstairs and looks left. Fab, another waiter, is polishing glasses at the bar, insanely scrutinizing the crystal for any specks or suds. 

   Val chuckles, “Clean enough Fab?”

   Fab’s creamy face and olive eyes, speckled with lime, light up and his cheeks tighten with joy, as he places a blown wine glass on the bar and humbly pours Chianti.

   “How’s Francesca?”  rags Fab.

   “What?” Val says diverting the question.

   “Nothing. Table 6,” says Fab, with a smirk and points at the Chianti with his nose. 

   Val grasps the stem of the glass and balances the red wine to stay in the bowl. With the other hand still holding, a now hot plate of della zia, he drifts over to 6, situates the Chianti near a chubby hand attached to a regular and coasts to the centre of the room.

He stands stationary like the statue of David holding a plate of steaming meat ball pasta. Dean Martin cries ‘Amore’ over the patrons. The tune reminds Val of red wine, cigarettes and Francesca.

   “Table 10” yells Fab in a boisterous tone.

   With gratitude Val spins right and plonks the plate on the table, causing a clunk, spilling a drab on the table.

   “Sorry, hot plate. Be careful.” Val politely announces and rocks back near the wooden framed window.

   “Bells will ring tring-a-ling-a-ling, tring-a-ling-a-ling and you'll sing Vita bella,” cries Dean Martin.

The night sky shines bright and catches Val’s eye and he thinks the moon really does look like a big pizza pie. 

  The warm summer night breeze brushes through the window. Val’s cheeks absorb the slight chill in the muggy air. He closes his eyes. Van Gogh’s Starry Night comes into mind. He knows the piece by heart: the plum-blue mountains in the background; the swirling vibrant yellow stars, like glowing spirals of fairy floss that illuminate the spinning deep-blue sapphire night sky. A starry night that moves in circular motion with the moon; the moon that fights against the night and an oversized gust of wind, the heart of it all, churning a heavy breeze and swaying an obscure dim tree in the foreground.

“Excuse me, excuse me, anymore bread?” enquires the regular, expecting a quick yes, with surprise that his table hasn’t been topped up.

The muffled sound of conversation and Dean Martin’s next track, ‘Your Nobody Till Some Body Loves You’, come flooding back to Val. With great dexterity he points his finger to the roof and wiggles it about.

   “One moment sir.” Says Val as he speeds off to the bar following his finger.

   While in a skilful wave toward the bar Val decides the time has come.  The time has come to tell Francesca.

 There’s no bread at the bar. He runs to the stairs. They meet halfway down; Francesca and Val.  He pauses and pauses and pauses.  

  “What is it?” She asks.

Image courtesy of Creative Commons