Mozart is standing over a deep sink with a hose that looks like a showerhead. His blond hair hangs over his eyes as I walk through the kitchen door with a plate in each hand. Each plate is splattered with the remains of a meal: bits of fat, a stray potato, lots of peas. I place the plates down and he looks up from his sink to nod at me.
'Hallo,' he says.
Ant calls at me, his body half obscured by the lights that keep the plates warm. (The plates themselves are lined up sitting there, waiting for me to take them out to their tables.)
'When you wear a black bra I can see it perfectly through your white blouse, you know?'
I pick up the plates, taciturn. I don't stop for a second.
'What are you anyway, an A cup?' He laughs. I walk out the kitchen, pushing the door open with my backside. I don't acknoweldge him.
I think it's been like this since I started. I can't remember it being any different. Now that I think about it Ant could have said something similar on my first day. I never respond.
I walk out of the kitchen and into a restaurant drowned in Jazz. The restaurant has a collection of 16 Jazz CDs that play on rotation non-stop. Despite this wide selection available, I am now familiar with every song. I used to hear them in my head before I went to sleep sometimes, when I first started working here. Now they are no less annoying than the sound of forks scraping on plates.
I stand by the bar and wait for customers to come in. A middle-aged man in a suit comes in and orders a pint of bitter. He sits at a table on his own reading the paper. A group of four men come in and one of them orders for all of them. They sit down and start talking about county cricket. In the evening we get a fair amount of people coming in for food. I show these people to a table and then let them get settled before taking their order.
I go back to the kitchen to give orders to Ant. He makes a comment about my breasts or my white skin or something. I feel like a Scaletrix car going round a figure 8 continually – never going fast enough to filp and fly off the rail.
'Hallo,' he says.
Ant calls at me, his body half obscured by the lights that keep the plates warm. (The plates themselves are lined up sitting there, waiting for me to take them out to their tables.)
'When you wear a black bra I can see it perfectly through your white blouse, you know?'
I pick up the plates, taciturn. I don't stop for a second.
'What are you anyway, an A cup?' He laughs. I walk out the kitchen, pushing the door open with my backside. I don't acknoweldge him.
I think it's been like this since I started. I can't remember it being any different. Now that I think about it Ant could have said something similar on my first day. I never respond.
I walk out of the kitchen and into a restaurant drowned in Jazz. The restaurant has a collection of 16 Jazz CDs that play on rotation non-stop. Despite this wide selection available, I am now familiar with every song. I used to hear them in my head before I went to sleep sometimes, when I first started working here. Now they are no less annoying than the sound of forks scraping on plates.
I stand by the bar and wait for customers to come in. A middle-aged man in a suit comes in and orders a pint of bitter. He sits at a table on his own reading the paper. A group of four men come in and one of them orders for all of them. They sit down and start talking about county cricket. In the evening we get a fair amount of people coming in for food. I show these people to a table and then let them get settled before taking their order.
I go back to the kitchen to give orders to Ant. He makes a comment about my breasts or my white skin or something. I feel like a Scaletrix car going round a figure 8 continually – never going fast enough to filp and fly off the rail.
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