Busboys have always been my thing. I only hire the little ones. The petite ones. Friends tell me it’s maternal instinct. They’re wrong. It’s all about being bigger, stronger, and in command.
The new guy threw me for a loop. He showed up in a pair of filthy cutoffs and a raggedy T shirt. I watched him, standing out front, waiting for Andre, my maître d’, to usher him in.
My place, Jacqueline, is Michelin rated. Our meals are magnificent. Our presentation exemplary.
I wondered if there was a mixup. It had happened before. Andre hired a woman, Julianne was her name, she was somebody’s niece or something. The line chef chewed her up and spit her out like bad vinegar.
The new guy was scruffy, and bearded. Coarse, two-toned hair covered his chest. A dense, prickly, unibrow, spanned the width of his abnormally extended forehead.
I cornered him at the serving station. He smelled… earthy, like October leaves piled high. I asked him where he was from.
“The Meer,” he said, through oversized, protuberant teeth. He had a dark grey voice, deep, guttural.
Inwood. I’d been there. I pictured it. It’s untouched. Forest primeval. There’s a pond, a thick green pond, all nasty and stinky called The Meer.
“How nice,” I said, in my, let’s-get-things straight, I own the place voice.
He didn’t respond, just looked at me, then stashed his bag beneath the bar and wandered off toward the kitchen. The bag was a strange thing. It looked like skin, hairy skin. It was rough sewn, not with thread, but sinew, thick, animal sinew.
Andre made him change clothes. He emerged from the kitchen wearing a starched white serving shirt and black slacks. He walked half-bent over with his fists balled-up at his sides. There was something about him. Something gruff, animalistic. Something I liked.
He bussed Bertrand’s tables. Bertrand’s been serving for decades. He sniffed a pitcher of water, then grunted, like he’d never seen tap water before. Bertrand didn’t catch it, but I did.
He was attentive. Served from the proper side. He brushed crumbs off the table with a folded napkin between courses and made sure water goblets remained full.
When it came time to clear the table he carried the plates into the kitchen and devoured a half-eaten branzino, then chewed a rack of lamb. He returned to the table with a bladder tucked under his arm, collected the water glasses, and poured the half-empties into the bladder.
I invited him out for coffee. He ordered berries and a bowl of wheat. He ate with his hands. I was cool. I played along. Ate grits with my fingers. Squirted ketchup in my mouth. It was clearly some sort of TikTok thing, but when I looked him up he didn’t have an account. He didn’t even have a phone.
We went to the movies. I paid. We ordered a large bucket of popcorn and self-serve fountain drinks. He loved the click-whoosh sound of the soda dispenser. He pumped it repeatedly. Click-whoosh. Click-whoosh. Click-whoosh.
I cradled the popcorn in my lap. He touched it. Sniffed it, then doubled over and buried his face in it. I giggled. It was kinda sexy.
He didn’t much like the movie, granted, maybe rom coms weren’t his thing, but he was downright rude about it. He spent most of the movie looking over his shoulder studying the pattern of light spilling out of the projection window.
I splurged on a taxi for the ride home. We climbed in. He sat with his hip snugged up against mine. He hugged me as we pulled away from the curb. I thought it was romantic, until I realized he wasn’t hugging me, he was cowering in fear. The motion, and the lights rushing past, were freaking him out.
One day he left a note on my desk. It was a picture of us. He’d scratched it into a stone, a round grey stone about the size of my palm. We were naked. He was, apparently, well endowed.
I pressed the stone against my cheek. It was smooth and cool. I slipped it into my pocket, felt its weight, its heft, sitting there, until we closed up for the night.
He waited for me out front. It was late, the street was empty. I took his hand in mine and lead him home.
My apartment is tiny. I flipped the overhead light on. He turned it off. I thought it was his thing. Maybe he preferred his love making in the dark? He flipped the light back on. Then off. Then on. Off, on. Off, on. Again, and again.
His love making was extraordinary, brief, but extraordinary.
We spooned. We cuddled. He wrapped his arms around me. It was like being swaddled in a squiggly, scraggily, shag carpet.
“Shag,” I said in my husky, post-coital voice. “I’m going to call you Shag.”
I woke shivering in the night. Where was my carpet? My Shag?
He was sitting on the edge of the bed staring at the ceiling, watching the shadows thrown by passing cars below. I studied him. He was mesmerized.
I sat up, crossed my legs, and pressed my shins up against his flank. I wrapped my arms around his chest and stayed that way for the longest time, sharing shadows on the ceiling.
***
We rode the subway to The Museum of Natural History. The station escalator upset him. He froze and stared at the steps roiling beneath his feet. I turned and stepped backwards on the conveyor, took his hands in mine, and pulled him toward me. He bent awkwardly at the knees and stumbled forward. We rode the length of the escalator together, hand in hand, facing each other, until we reached the bottom.
I flashed my phone at the turnstile. He laughed at the high pitched beep that released the mechanism and let me pass through. I handed him my phone. He placed the phone on top of the reader and laughed again. I also laughed, until he worked his way down the line of turnstiles flashing my phone on each and every reader.
There was a man standing near the tracks. He had a long wooden pole in his hand. The pole was thick, and heavy. He tap-tap-tapped the butt end of the pole against the concrete platform. It was a sharp menacing sound.
Shag stiffened, and reached into his shorts pocket.
The man turned a mad circle and spun the pole up under his armpit, then lunged forward, threatening us with the sharpened end of the stick.
A rock bounced off his forehead. It was a smooth rock, grey, about the size of my fist. The man fell to the floor. Blood oozed out of a wide gash above his right eye.
Shag grunted, and pulled another rock from his shorts. He raised his arm, ready to fire, in case the pole-man got up off the platform.
The man was out cold.
People were pointing, and taking our picture with their phones. Shag retrieved his rock and slipped it back in his pocket. I grabbed his hand and led him quickly out of the station.
I love The Museum of Natural History. My favorite part is the box dioramas. I like the one where naked Masi warriors bleed the neck of a cow and mix her warm blood with milk to drink. I also love the one where the Lenape Indians greet the Dutch settlers. Everybody’s carrying clubs and trading wampum, for what, I don’t know.
Shag’s favorite is called “Evolution.” There’s a dead animal in the frame and a buzzard swooping down out of the sky. There’s also Early Man, and his mate. They have flat faces and extended jaw lines. They’re looking up at the buzzard. The buzzard wants their kill. The woman’s got a rock in her hand, she’s drawn it back, and she’s about to fire it at the bird.
Everybody’s frozen in place. Nobody is moving. That bothers me. The dioramas try so hard to be real, but nobody’s moving. Nobody.
Shag sat down on the floor. He was captivated by the woman, by her protruding brow and wide, extended lips. He pulled a rock out of his pocket and bounced it in the palm of his hand.
I panicked, thinking he was going to throw his rock at the buzzard, until he exhaled deeply, and slipped the rock back into his shorts.
I bought him some clothes and took him home to my parents. It was Christmas time. I’d never brought a boyfriend home for the holidays before. Shag gave them a gift. Another stone. This one flat, slate I think. He’d carved another image of us, this time with our clothes on. My mother tried to look appreciative.
By then I’d grown to expect his often childish ways. I knew the flashing lights and the sparkly tinsel would upset him. He grew agitated. We sat down on the couch. I played with the thick curly hair behind his ear to soothe him.
My father unplugged the tree.
I cradled him. His breathing grew deep. He rested his head on my shoulder.
My parents looked at me.
I knew it was wrong, babying a man like this. They knew it was wrong. I was supposed to be the brazen one, the strong one, the one who’d left them at an early age to prove herself the world’s finest restauranteur, yet here I sat, rocking a full grown man in ill-fitting pants and shirt, shushing and patting him like some sort of overgrown infant.
***
Every afternoon, after the tables were set and the line prep finished, we dined together as a family. Every day, one simple, communal meal. It was Jaqueline tradition. Andre made a point of sitting next to me. He had something on his mind, I could tell.
“Your boy there,” he said, nodding at Shag. “What’s going on?”
“Going on?” I said. “Nothing. Why?” But I knew what he meant. My boy was slipping. His nails weren’t clean. Bits of dried vegetation clung to his hair. He’d gone back to his ratty shorts and filthy T-shirt. He’d stopped spending nights at my place.
“Keep an eye on him,” Andre said.
I did. He was like a zombie, wandering around the kitchen, bumping into things. He stopped interacting with the customers. No more smiles. No more attention to their needs.
One day I couldn’t find him. I knew he’d reported in for work, but I couldn’t find him. The luncheon crowd came and went. I stepped outside for a bit of air. I found him squatting on his haunches at the base of the steps, curled up in a ball, resting against a potted boxwood.
I called his name. He didn’t respond. I sat down beside him and leaned my body into his. No response. Nothing. I took his hand and pressed it against my cheek.
***
We visited The Meer. It was just as I remembered it, a dip in the landscape littered with broken-down trees and a great stagnant pool. Cattails lined the shoreline. Waterbirds extended their long necks and stepped cautiously into the sickly green water. We clambered over rocks and scrabbled over hillocks, but there was nothing there. No house. No hut. No shelter.
Shag pushed his way through the rushes, snapping cattails and hurling them like darts into the water. He balled up a handful of mud and threw it against a tree. He crouched down and stuck his finger in the water.
I knew things were not right. We were not right. Who was I kidding? I knew he was wrong the first time I saw him standing outside the restaurant, the first time he sat down for group meal, the first time he left my bed to stare at the ceiling.
It was my fault. I could dress him up. I could show him off, but I couldn’t turn him into something he wasn’t, poor soul.
He was happy here, playing in the mud, pressing the flat of his palm against the surface of the silty sludge.
“I’m sorry,” I said, standing over him, over his shoulder. “Your place is not with me.”
He turned and looked at me.
I thought, I hoped, he would tell me I was wrong, that he wanted me, that we were made for each other, but no, it was only a clutch of pigeons diving and circling in unison that had caught his attention. He wasn’t looking at me. He wasn’t even listening to me.
He stood and placed his muddy hand dead-center of my chest, and rested it there, looking at me, studying me, until the moisture soaked through my shirt, and he pushed me, gently, silently away.
Image: by Drini Teta on Unsplash, licensed under CC 2.0.
