Monkey Suits by Jim Provenzano

in long-term contacts. They were always so dependable.

    Philipe sipped his drink and scanned the list of the night’s waiters, making tiny check marks next to the names of those who had been caught munching or had arrived late.

    Fearing what he thought would be some sort of quiet dismissal, Lee felt nervous as he stood a few yards from Philipe’s table. Would he be fired tonight? Stripped of his bow tie? Detuxed? What humiliation awaited him? The back hall was relatively quiet, and for a moment, Lee stood waiting for an ounce of bravery. He watched Philipe take a small silver case, half the size of a cigarette box, from his inside breast pocket. He dutifully withdrew and swallowed three pills.

    To Lee they merely looked like vitamins, but as he approached, he realized they must have been AIDS drugs. Lee made a motion, Philipe turned, startled, quickly put the pill box away and invited Lee to sit.

    “Now, Mistah Wyndam, let us see.” Philipe became immediately officious and scanned his checklist.

    “You have been late several times, and I have noticed a few discrepancies in your work.”

    “I’m sorry about that, I mean to ...”

    “Tut, tut.” A single finger gesture silenced him. “You don’t like ziss work, do you?”

    “Well, it is a bit difficult sometimes.”

    “Yes, but just remember that it is only work, yes? It is difficult. Ze people can be so fussy. You don’ know how fussy. I have advize for you if you want to keep working for us. Set your call a half hour earlier than ze call we give you. Yes? It makes you show up on time.”

    “It’s the trains, sir–”

    “Also, ze people. Zey seem to frighten you.”

    “Well, I’m just so worried about doing something wrong.”

    “Just pretend you’re serving your grandparents. Over and over again, your grandparents. Yes? You try it.”

    “Okay.”

    “Now be gone,” he said, the single wave of his hand jolting Lee up to standing.

    “Thank you, sir.”

    As he walked away, greatly relieved and surprised, Lee reached for his service napkin. Although his fear now seemed silly, he’d broken out in a light sweat.

    As the last guests departed, the swift deconstruction of the elegant tables began. Plastic tubs and ice tins were hauled from table to table, becoming blood-colored like a Guyana Koolaid mix. Candles were snuffed out and silverware tossed into trays with a tinny clatter. Glasses were dropped into plastic racks and stacked to the side like small skyscrapers. Tablecloths were ripped away and stuffed into garbage bags for laundering the next day by unseen crews of Chinese women whose efforts reaped less than four dollars an hour. In the rest rooms, a few waiters took silent pleasure in pissing on the piles of unused ice cubes that were poured into the men’s room toilets.

    While Lenny barked orders to the waiters taking down the three dozen round wooden tables, others crawled or crouched on the carpet, picking up tiny bits of crud where his roaring vacuum cleaner failed. His cigarette smoke trailed around the dining room, now bare and ugly in the fluorescent light.

    The majority of waiters were herded to the back stairwell where they lined up in a sort of bucket brigade, passing the wooden rental chairs down hand over hand while half a dozen others raced to pull worn plastic and nylon coverings over the seats. Neil Pynchon and two other captains (who made ten dollars more per hour than the waiters) gave orders with a polite primness. They did not assist.

    Out on the street at the freight entrance, the chairs were passed up to the Latino workers (who made half as much as the waiters). They stacked them jigsaw-like in the darkness of their truck. A security guard in a sagging blue uniform, (who made ten more dollars per hour than the waiters), smoked a cigarette while his walkie-talkie crackled. Painted on the side of the truck and grinning down joyfully at the exhausted workers was the rental company’s logo, a huge cartoon pink