They take their glasses over to the sofa, which is set against the short wall between dining table and bedroom that, in Z’s rental, passes as a salon. The waitress sits with her back against the sofa’s arm, and her legs stretched across Z’s lap.
“I can’t believe you’re in my apartment,” he says. “The beautiful waitress who brought me my lunch. And—if it’s not too creepy?” Z says, waiting for approval to potentially creep her out.
The waitress nods, magnanimous.
“When I walked into the restaurant you were at that front window, facing the street. I was already smitten before you turned around. Is that too weird to admit—the falling-for-your-back bit?”
“For my back? That’s the part of me you fell for?”
“It was all of you,” he says. “All your parts, fallen for equally.”
“I’m sure,” the waitress says, with a raised eyebrow and a good long drink of her wine. Then, remembering something, she sits up and swings her legs off Z’s lap. “Oh my God!” she says. “Speaking of . . .”
“Of your parts?”
“Of the restaurant. There was another new waiter trying out that day.”
“Yes,” Z says, his blood pressure—at mention of that waiter—already on the rise.
“You remember him?”
“I do, actually. I did not like the look of that guy.”
“Right?” she says. “Something was off with him. He kept saying he had a lot of experience, but he couldn’t balance a tray.” The waitress switches to a conspiratorial whisper. “I don’t think he’d waited tables before.”
“I guess he didn’t impress. Because he never came back either. They must have fired him after his audition too.”
“The opposite. He’s the one who turned them down. I was so much better, and they offered him the job.”
“How do you know? I thought you both only worked the one shift?”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. When I went to get the salt, I forgot to say. I bumped into that waiter.”
“You bumped into the Huguenot?” Z says. “Like a big, mean-looking waiter—a giant, handsome, mean-looking gay waiter? With sort of blondish hair, and an unnaturally strong chin. Like, maybe there is a horseshoe stuffed in there.”
“You don’t need to describe him,” she says. “That’s who we were already talking about.”
“I was confirming that we meant the same person,” Z says, really, really needing her to confirm that the man she just saw was, for sure, the same one he meant.
“Yes, of course, it was him. And yes, he is very handsome—even more handsome with that chin. It fits his face well.”
“Very handsome,” Z says. “And you’re saying he was also at the store?”
“He was on the corner, here, having a chat with that vagrant who always sits on the end of your block.”
“The bum? On the suitcase? They were chatting?”
“Yes,” she says. “And you know what?”
“No,” Z says. He does not know what. Not at all.
“He was very friendly today. You would think he was a different person from how he was at the restaurant. So cocky.”
“But was it a different person?”
“No. It was him.” The waitress fetches her phone from the table and hands it to Z. “He gave me his number and said we should get a drink.”
Z can feel his face twisting up, so distressing is her report.
“It isn’t like that,” the waitress says, standing over him. “It was so clearly friendly. He wasn’t starting. I promise you, he’s not interested that way.”
“Did you tell him you saw me?” Z hands her back the phone without even looking.
“Did I tell him that I was having dinner with a man from a table that he didn’t serve, from the place he worked for one day? No, I did not.”
“He remembers me, I promise. He saw me come in. I saw him see me! He made a call.”
“Yes, I’m sure your lunch meant a lot. I’m sure he was downstairs because he wants to thank you for eating in his presence. A great honor.”
“It’s not funny. I need to know, did he say anything about me at all?”
“You’re serious? Is he supposed to be a spy too? Is he your enemy, the waiter that you never met?”
“I am life-and-death serious.”
“This is why I never date the Jewish men. Not because there are too few in Rome. It’s because of this. Because of how you act right now. You all seem very cute for a day or two, and then end up being crazy. Crazy mama’s boys, every last one. It’s the Gentile girls that get raised thinking you make good husbands.”
“I’m really sorry,” Z says. “I’ll calm down,” he says, without calming at all. “Just tell me what he said, exactly. I wasn’t kidding about the trouble I’m in.”
She looks at him with hooded eyes and sits back down next to him, but, he notes, they no longer touch. The waitress reports the rest to Z, somewhat jokingly, though he can tell she is giving an accurate account.
“He said hello. He said, ‘Tiens, quelle surprise!’ Or maybe I said that—”
“Who said it?”
“Him,” the waitress says, reflecting. “Then I asked what he was doing around here. And he said, meeting a friend for a movie. Then he asked me—”
“Exactly what did he ask, and how did he ask it?”
“That’s what I’m telling you. He asked me if I lived here. I told him, no. I told him that I was having dinner with a friend—a friend who has no salt. Then I showed him the salt, because I didn’t take a bag at the shop, and the salt was in my hand, and because I guess I thought that it would be funny to present it right then.”
“That’s it?”
The waitress sighs, exasperated.
“He told me his friend lives on this block too. Then he asked me what building I was going to, because maybe it was the same one.”
“Was it?”
“It was. But on the other side.”
“At the back, the-other-side? Or the opposite entrance, at the front?”
“The front,” she says. “The other front stairs.”
“How do you know?”
“Seriously? I know because I told him I was in the front but on this side, when he asked me.”
“And you answered?”
“Is it a secret? He doesn’t even know I’m with you.”
“It kind of, sort of, was.”
Z gets up and starts pacing, because this somehow feels like it will help him think. “Where is he now?”
“Now? I assume not where I left him.”
“I’m saying, which way did he go?”
“No way. He went to his friend’s. They’re probably in some hot French movie theater watching balloons float across the screen.”
Z stops, frozen.
“He picked up his friend? In this building? Did he get buzzed up?”
“Of course not. I let him in. I just told you that we were going to the same place.”
Z shakes his head, fully disappointed. In her. In himself. His mind then split between dark scenarios unfurling at lightning speed, as well as a slow-motion remorse as he remembers the waitress picking up his keys on her way out for salt. He has added himself to the image so that, in recalling, he is also looking down upon his own dumb, doting smile.