Unfortunately, the seating meant that we perpetually left a couple of Marines at the tables without food until returning a few minutes later, but they seemed to understand that we were doing the best we could.
If anything, it appeared that they enjoyed the additional opportunities to watch our asses strut along as we power-walked back and forth across the banquet hall.
Out of pure self-interest, I left Dalton’s table last in the dropping off of entrees for my section. I could deal with him ogling me after seeing to it that everyone else was satisfied.
“Is there anything else I can get you gentlemen for the moment?” I asked his table politely, sliding the final entrée plate to one of his seated companions.
“No, ma’am, I think we’re all good here,” the leader of the table smiled. “That’ll be all.”
“Actually, there’s something else you can do for me,” Dalton piped up.
I flashed him a smile, but my eyes said it all.
“Sure. What can I get for you, sir?”
Dalton’s whites showed. “Well, I’ve taken a few bites of this, and it’s quite good. It’s missing a little something, though…”
He patted his thighs under the table.
“Why don’t you come sit on my lap and give me a second opinion, hmm? Take a few bites. Tell me what can be done to give it a little kick.”
I’m about to give YOU a kick, you smug son of a bitch, I muttered in my head.
“That… won’t be possible, I’m afraid,” I hastily but cordially answered.
“Oh, go on, humor me. I don’t bite. Unless that’s your fetish, that is…”
I started to grow red.
“So, you like the biting, huh? Nice little nibble into your shoulder while you’re in the throes of love?”
The other Marines were snickering again, looking backwards and forwards between us. Only the leader was letting out a sigh, palming his face with his elbow against the table.
“Lieutenant Corporal Carlyle…”
“You can bite me too, if you’d like,” Dalton smiled wickedly. “But only if you’re being a bad little girl. And the thing about bad little girls is that, well… they get punished.”
I swallowed my anger and gave him a curt little smile. As much as I wanted to retort back… I couldn’t let him get to me, particularly not at work.
“Enjoy your meal,” I replied, turning on my heel and strolling back towards the kitchen. I was done with that jackass.
“Actually, I could use a little salt!” Dalton called after me.
With an exasperated sigh, I whipped around, snatched an unused shaker from a nearby table outside my section, and slammed it down beside his wrist. To my surprise, he actually flinched, and Marines at surrounding tables looked up from their meals.
“Your salt, Lieutenant Corporal Carlyle,” I muttered furiously between gritted teeth. “Will that be ALL for you now, SIR?”
He looked into my venomous eyes with his usual confidence, only tempered now by surprise. “Yes, I believe that will do nicely.”
“Very well then.”
I started to pull away when his voice piped up one last time.
“On second thought…”
I turned back, staring at his beautifully chiseled face. I didn’t know if I wanted to punch him or kiss him.
Probably both.
In that order.
“Pepper?”
Taking a second to get myself under control, I reached back out and grabbed a pepper shaker, setting it down calmly.
“That’s a good girl,” he said before smiling coyly, his hand just barely brushing mine as I stepped away from the table.
I hated to admit it to myself… but I enjoyed his antagonization. It was a break from the usual hum drum routine. He was effortlessly making my blood boil, but I had to concede that his hot body and total fucking arrogance was kind of exciting for me… what can I say?
Pissed me off, but it was working for me.
The rest of the night went off without much of a hitch. Dalton left me alone after my brief snap, although I could still feel his eyes on my back – or my ass, more accurately.
That’s why I was a little confused when I swung back by a little later on to pick up discarded dishes, only to find out that half the table had already left – including him.
Before I could focus on that, our serving team was whisked back away from the chamber so that they could have their little post-banquet award show, or whatever they were doing. All I knew was that the lights were dimmed, the stage was lit up, and we were banned from entering until afterwards.
We made use of our hour-and-a-half of free time by cleaning up the kitchen. We went ahead and started closing up everything in the hidden corridors – racking up the sodas, cleaning out the tea urns, breaking down refresher tables, cleaning and stacking the small, black, rounded drink trays, cleaning and breaking down our equipment, and generally just willing the night to finish out and let us all go home.
When the banquet was finally over, we were only barely notified. Most of the Marines disappeared without a word, and we were left with a huge room that needed to be disassembled and cleaned.
Luckily, the closing sidework went quickly. The other servers were apparently just as anxious to get out as I was, and we quickly scrambled around to rip up the tablecloths, help the couple of maintenance guys roll the closed tables backstage, and rack up all the glasses and silverware.
We still had an hour of polishing glasses and wiping and rolling silverware to look forward to, but hopefully that would go quickly enough.
“What a night, huh?” One of my coworkers, Beth, quietly asked. I didn’t know her all that well, but she was one of the friendlier, more down-to-earth servers on our little freelance brigade.
“Yeah,” I nodded, wiping the sweat from my brow. “That was way more trouble than I thought it would be.”
“You’re telling me. Seriously, he only scheduled ten of us? What the fuck was Arnold thinking? We’ve never handled more than ten people apiece, let alone three dozen…”
“He wasn’t thinking,” I grumbled, glancing around to ensure that our boss wasn’t around. “If Arnold’s going to keep stacking us with hotel work, he’s gonna have to figure out how to either pay us better, or put more people in the trenches…”
“No shit,” Beth nodded. “Tonight was not worth ten freaking dollars an hour. Twelve, maybe thirteen would have been a bit more acceptable…”
“Preaching to the choir.”
We shut up and focused on wiping down soaked, steaming drink trays as Arnold pushed through the swinging doors into the kitchen area. With his usual air of controlled dignity, he quickly summoned everyone’s attention and clasped his hands together.
“Excellent job, everybody. The event was apparently a hit, and we can look forward to additional jobs here in the future.”
Those of us in the room stifled a collective groan. We hated hotel gigs.
“I hope you’ll all forgive me for the short staff tonight. I had planned additional servers, but I needed to cut an operations costs deal with hotel management. Since we performed to our typical high standards, they’ve agreed to allow the morning staff to handle everything from here... an arrangement that will extend to all future events here. You’re all dismissed.”
A tired cheer rang out from us all. We had never left a gig early, and all of a sudden Arnold went from incompetent villain to heralded hero.
The servers began flocking to notify everyone else still in the banquet chamber. Before I could join them, Arnold threw me a meaningful glance, and I reluctantly dragged myself to his side.
“Clara, we need to talk about your performance for a moment,” my boss told me when all others were out of earshot.
“What’s the matter?” I tried to sound less exhausted than I was.
“There’s the matter of your tardiness tonight,” he replied coolly. “That, and I am led to believe that you engaged were in, uh, misplaced banter with on
e of the guests?”
“I’m… not following, sir.”
Was he talking about that ass-hat Marine?
Arnold sighed briefly. “I’m going to be frank with you for a moment. I don’t know why you were late earlier, and quite honestly, I don’t care. But it pains me when this happens…”
I braced myself.
Am I getting FIRED?
“I knew our crowd was going to be either incredibly polite and restrained, or a bunch of wild animals. Military types tend to go one way or the other. I have it on good authority that you comported yourself with grace tonight, and I wanted to commend you for your professionalism.”
“I’m afraid I’m still not following.”
What the hell is he talking about?
“One of your guests, the, ahem, other tardy party,” Arnold clarified. “A few members of his table apologized to me on his behalf, and another server clarified that he had been engaging in harassment against you. I wanted to tell you that I appreciate your care in representing us under that kind of attention. I hate to put you people in a room with crude animals like him.”
“Oh. Why, thank you,” I replied awkwardly. I’d already kind of moved past that, and didn’t honestly expect that it would wind up in his ear.
“Try to not be late again, Clara,” he told me, a sincere smile on his lips. “And thank you. I value your contributions to this team, and I want you to know that you have premiere call for future events. I’ll be adding you to the mailing list when I’m in my office tomorrow morning.”