***
I burst through the TacoTown doors two minutes late for my Friday night shift. The rest of the crew was already dressed and taking their places around the kitchen. Wayne looked at me from behind the counter as I banged my way through the ladies’ room door. It wasn’t friendly but I couldn’t quite call his expression a scowl either. I hoped it meant things were improving between us. There was no way I could quit this job so we were going to have to learn to peacefully coexist, eventually.
I was still braiding my hair as I stood over the sinks full of dishes, ready for another night as the lowest of the low in the restaurant. Tom was at his usual post filling paper boats with French fries again. Through the window in front of him, I could see Wayne and Darren, standing by the counter where they practiced the mysterious art of high-speed yet drip-free burrito folding.
The twin cash registers at the front counter were staffed by Crystal and a fresh faced girl with shiny blue eyes and thick blonde hair that made mine look frizzy and muddy. If she’d plaited it into two braids instead of just binding it in a ponytail she would have looked like the pretty mascot for a certain brand of abrasive bathroom cleaner. Wayne’s improved mood was beginning to make sense – and it had nothing to do with me.
“Don’t tell me,” I remarked as I breezed by Tom on my way to clean up the dining room. “Heather V. is working here tonight.”
“Oo, you’re good,” he congratulated me. “It’s Heather V. indeed.”
The opening two hours of my first ever weekend shift were a blur of furious activity. Wayne’s voice called out instructions and reprimands but it lacked that hostile, angry edge it had when Heather V. wasn’t in the restaurant.
During the rush hours, the mess in the dining room was never ending. It seemed like I just went round and round the restaurant stacking, dumping, and wiping the same tables over and over again. I tried to remember what Tom told me about keeping an eye open for dental retainers accidentally abandoned on trays. By the time I made it back to the sinks, the dishes emptied during the suppertime rush were overflowing onto the floor. I grabbed the throttle of the large rinsing nozzle and started spraying away the mess.
“Hey,” someone called over racket of the water pounding against stainless steel pans and trays. “Try to keep some of the water in the sink, will ya.” It was Wayne, hockey-skating toward my work station over the wet tiles.
Naturally, Darren was right behind him, feeling his way along the wall to keep from slipping. “Whoa,” he said when he saw the cloud of water around me in the dish area.
“Sorry,” I replied, batting the nozzle on its spring-loaded mounting. “I’m still getting used to this thing. It’s pretty splashy. But look at what a good job I’m doing on the dishes.”
“Whatever. Listen,” Wayne began. “We need to change your name. It’s too confusing having two Heathers in the same restaurant all night.” He braced his jaws against each other, ready for my inevitable opposition.
But all I said was, “Suit yourselves. Names are meant to serve the needs and interests of the people and societies who give them more than the vanity of the individuals who receive them anyway.”
Tom looked up from the deep fryer. “I heard all those words but – what did she say?”
“She said we can call her whatever we want,” Darren interpreted.
Wayne didn’t flinch at my unexpected acquiescence. “Fine,” he said before he spun on the wet tile to face the rest of the crew. Crystal and Heather V. were standing in the doorway to the serving area, listening. “So what are we going to call this girl?”
“What does the M in your last name stand for?” Crystal asked.
“MacLean,” I answered.
“Oh, then it’s easy,” Heather V. chirped. “You can be Mack.”
I could tell Wayne hated the idea. There was nothing abusive about calling me Mack and that disappointed him. But it was Heather V.’s idea so he grinned past it.
“Mack sounds fine to me,” Darren seconded.
“All right, you’re Mack,” Wayne said, backing away a little deflated. “Tom,” he called, “Bring Mack a mop for all this water.”
Tom came charging into the dish area, brandishing a gray, mucky mop.
“Tom, slow down!”
It was Heather V. calling out a warning to him – but it was too late. Tom took two quick steps onto the wet tiles and slipped so fast we barely saw him falling before he crashed down on the hard floor. He lay stunned for a second before he began to roll from side to side in the grimy water. I think he was too shocked to speak but he could still moan, lolling on the floor like a big, sad walrus.
An involuntary squeal escaped me as Tom went down. “Are you okay?”
Heather V. was fussing over Tom with her own sympathy, on the floor beside me.
Wayne indulged us for a minute before he poked Tom with the toe of his shoe. ““Get up, dude. I need to see how many floor tiles you smashed to bits when you hit the ground.” He didn’t do much to hide the laugh in his voice.
At the same time, Crystal and Darren covered their faces and gagged on their own laughter.
“I’m so sorry, Tom. It’s really not funny,” Crystal said.
Tom finally pushed himself up into a sitting position on the wet floor.
“How can I help?” I asked him.
Wayne pointed a finger at me. “You can help by mopping up this water before you maim anyone else.”
He turned his finger away from me and reached his arm down toward Tom. The boys grabbed each other’s wrists and together they got Tom off the floor. He rose to his feet, still doubled over. “Go take a break, dude,” Wayne told him. “And try’n be more careful.”
Tom hobbled away to recuperate at the staff table while Wayne stayed behind in the vapours of the dish area with me. I didn’t look at him but I knew he watched me—probably with all kinds of contempt – as I leaned on the lever that wrung out the mop into a huge, wheeled bucket.
“Great squeak, by the way,” Wayne added when everyone else had gone. “You sound like you could do voice acting or something.”
I looked up from the mop bucket. “Seriously? Like, as a cartoon character?”
“Totally – that is, if this whole taco-slinger thing doesn’t work out for you.” He pulled his hat back down over his head and glided away on the slick floor.
Maybe someone else would have found his vague attempt at a compliment cute – but not me. The fact that Wayne was conventionally good looking just made it easier for me to dislike him. That big white smile and those Johnny Depp eyes didn’t touch me at all. On the contrary, they put me on my guard. They still filled me with all the resentment of those years of junior high school torment I had suffered at the hands of pretty boys like him. Maybe looking the way he did helped him get away with treating nobodies like Tom and me however he wanted – whether he was paying us ambivalent compliments or tapping his toes on us while we were down. There was definitely some power in good looks. Sandy seemed to do whatever Wayne wanted. Most of the night-time TacoTown staff was handpicked by Wayne himself. Obviously, that kind of charm worked on people like Sandy and Heather V. – but not on me. It would never work on me.
Crystal came back to talk to me after the floor had safely dried. “Hey, Mack, did you remember to bring that needle and thread we were talking about last time?” she asked.
I gasped. “No! I’m sorry. You know, I’m not really a screw-up.”
She laughed. “It would probably be pretty hard to sew my pants at work, while I’m wearing them anyway. I don’t think we know each other that well yet.” It was a great relief to see Crystal acting less shy than she had been during the first shift we’d worked together. Our sewing project, my new nickname, even Tom’s accident – it had all somehow broken the ice between us.
“When’s our next day off?” I asked. “You should come out to Upton so we can do a proper alteration using my mom’
s sewing machine and everything.”
She hummed uncertainly. “I’ve never been to Upton.”
I faked a shocked expression. “What? You haven’t? Well, it’s spectacular. You must see it.”
She was laughing again. “I’ll try to get Wayne to drive me out there.”
“How come he drives and you don’t?” I asked, feeling a little indignant on her behalf. Jeff had his license before me because he was older. There was no such reasoning when it came to the twins.
Crystal just shrugged. “Mom got him driving lessons because it reduces his car insurance premiums and girls don’t need the insurance discount as much and blah, blah, blah. It’s really just sexism. But he took driving lessons on the condition that he has to teach me everything he learned from them.”
“How’s that going for ya?”
Crystal wrinkled her nose. “You can imagine,” she said. “But at least it’s good leverage for forcing him to drive me places he’d rather not go.”
By the end of the shift, Tom was back on his feet as if he hadn’t been mightily wounded and Wayne had grudgingly agreed to drive Crystal to my house that Saturday afternoon.
“Saturday in Upton,” he spat. “Like I’d ever want to go to Upton.”
Crystal pushed him on the back of the head with the flat of her hand. “Then you should teach me so I can drive myself to Upton.”
“Crystal.”
“Wayne.”
“Hey, come on you guys,” Darren interrupted. “Not in front of the help.”