"Evelyn!"
"What?"
"Could you come 'round back? I've got another shipment of crayfish and it's not going to carry itself."
In a muted murmur I say, "you have hands don't you. Why can't you just fucking do it."
Unbeknownst to me, there he stands. "Did you say something?"
"Nope, I was just saying to myself how absolutely delighted I am to help you," I sneered with a hint of a twang that's reserved for my most cuttingly sarcastic remarks.
"If you weren't so pretty I wouldn't let that shit slide, you know that Evvy?"
"Firstly, it's Evelyn. Secondly, I've got some crayfish that's pretty incapable of carrying itself as you pointed out only 2 minutes prior - so please if you don't mind, can I get to that?"
"Alright," he buffed as he moved out of my way, thankfully. I still have a smoke break to get to and this dude really wants me to be carrying freezer-burned crayfish? Like really man, really? I can't stand the fact that you bust my (imaginary) balls daily in the hope that I'm going to somehow cave into your (non-existent) charm and sex you into the sunset. It's just not going to happen and I wish you could get that through your receding hairline and into your brain, Jesus.
"Hey Brandon can I bum one of those, I left mine at home."
"Yeah sure."
I whip the cigarette between my lips and smoke it in silence. I'm not one to repay the cigarette favour with some half-arsed conversation about the weather or how shitty our job is. I mean hey, it's damn cold and our job sucks, what more do you need to elaborate on? Maybe I'm a bit of a douche for not just following the status quo of smoking somebody else's cigarette for free - whatever. Besides, anybody that smokes RG is undeserving of a conversation, because on God, it is the poorest cigarette on the market. I can feel the cancer growing on my lungs with each drag, it's literally that awful. I want to ask him why he smokes these, but I can already see the disdain on his face. He really wanted that conversation.
With a little bit of rose-sweet perfume and a smile that screams "please tip me well so that I can go to the casino later and con myself into chasing the jackpot over a couple of beers," I lead in a family of three to a table on the sun deck. The husband's eyes haven't left my chest from the moment they walked in... and his wife knows. I'd expect behaviour like that from the burly adolescent that was obviously roped into this lunch, but I don't think his eyes have left his phone screen once. He's smiling at his screen though, so he's not blatantly anti-social. He's got the look of somebody that's in love; in young love. Perhaps deep infatuation is the better way to describe it, because that's the type of love that burns out and dies. The type of love that ends as quickly as it began. A speck, a fleeting moment in reality, a lighthouse of ephemeral bliss.
"Hey guys, my name is Evelyn. I'll be serv-"
"Evelyn, right?"
"Yes si-"
"Beautiful name for a beautiful woman."
Wow man. Totally original. Remy's attracts the type of bourgeois guys that say shit like that. Besides, your wife is next to you for christ's sake. Do you not have the decency?
"Can I get everybody something to drink?"
"We'll have a bottle of wine for the table. Bring your most expensive merlot, a bucket of ice and 4 bottles of still water."
He didn't even bother to consult with his wife or loverboy across the. He does what he wants and the wife just couldn't be bothered to care. The pearls and lack of opinion might suggest that she's somewhat of a trophy wife, but a trophy wife that's since lost her sheen. The make-up sticks to her face unnaturally, as if she were coloured in with a crayon. And the clothes are expensive, but they're thrown in together so cheaply that it's no wonder why her husband's eyes haven't yet found their way off me. Her fucks to give have been given in excess in years gone by. She hasn't any left by the looks of things. And who can blame her with a husband like this?
