er table. "Is something wrong?" she asked Jack. What a question. And women (not only Claudia) gave Jack a hard time when he said he wasn't ready to be a parent!
"You forgot something," Jack said to the young, arty mom. "You left Lucy in the car." The woman just stared at him, but Lucy held out her arms and her mother took her from Jack--teddy bear and blanket and all.
Jack hoped that would be the end of it, but Donald, the headwaiter from Hell, wouldn't let him leave. "There is no St. Hilda's, hotel or restaurant, in Toronto," he hissed. "There is no Mail-Order Bride--"
"So you're from Toronto," Jack interrupted him. The way Donald had said, "T'ronto," had given him away. Jack should have known. Donald was another undiscovered Canadian working as a waiter in L.A.
Naturally, the young, arty husband and bad father wouldn't let Jack leave Stan's without giving him his two cents' worth. "I'm gonna get you fired, pretty boy," the guy said.
"It's a good job to lose," Jack told him, making note of the line.
Giorgio or Guido was hovering around, to the extent that a bodybuilder who can bench-press three hundred pounds can hover. "You better get outta here, Jack," he was saying.
"I'm trying to get out of here," Jack said.
He was abreast of the reservation desk when he spotted the telephone; it occurred to him to call 911 and report a clear case of child neglect, but he thought better of it. Jack didn't know the license plate of the silver Audi. He would have to write it down if he wanted to remember it--damn numbers again.
But the bad father was too angry to let Jack go. He stepped in front of Jack and blocked his way; he was a medium-tall young man, and his chin was level to Jack's eyes. Jack waited for the guy to touch him. When he grabbed Jack's shoulders, Jack stepped back a little and the young man pulled Jack toward him. Jack let him pull, head-butting him in the lips. Jack didn't butt him all that hard, but the guy was a big bleeder.
"I'm calling nine-one-one the second I'm home," Jack said to Giorgio or Guido. "Tell Donald."
"Donald says you're fired, Jack," the bodybuilder said.
"It's a good job to lose," Jack repeated. (He knew that line would have legs.)
Out on the sidewalk, Roberto was still holding the keys to the silver Audi. That's when Jack remembered he had the parking chit in his shirt pocket; he'd already written down the license-plate numbers. "You'll have to write out a new chit for the Audi," he told Roberto.
"No problem," Roberto said.
Jack walked along Main to Windward. It was a nice evening, only now growing dark. (When you've grown up in Toronto, Maine, and New Hampshire, when isn't it a nice evening in L.A.?)
Emma was writing away when Jack got home, but she overheard his 911 call. "What did you do with the kid?" she asked him, after he'd hung up.
"Gave her to her parents."
"What's that on your forehead?" Emma asked.
"A little ketchup, maybe--I've been in a food fight."
"It's blood, baby cakes--I can see the teeth-marks."
"You should've seen the fucker's lips," he told her.
"Ha!" Emma said. (Shades of Mrs. Machado--that exclamation always gave Jack the shivers.)
They went out to Hama Sushi. You could talk about anything at Hama Sushi--it was so noisy. Jack really liked the place, but it was partly what Emma called "l'eau de Dumpster" (her Montreal French) that eventually drove them away from their Windward Avenue duplex.
"So what did you learn from your brief experience as a parking valet, honey pie?"
"I got one good line out of it," Jack said.
What convinced Emma that Jack should be a waiter at American Pacific, a restaurant in Santa Monica not far from the beach, was neither the location nor the menu. She went there on a date one night and liked what the waiters were wearing--blue Oxford cloth button-down shirts with solid burgundy ties, khakis with dark-brown belts, and dark-brown loafers. "It's very Exeter, baby cakes--you'll fit right in. I stole a dinner menu for you. Just think of it as an acting opportunity, as Mr. Ramsey would say."
Emma meant that memorizing the menu was an acting opportunity. It took Jack the better part of a morning. Counting the salads and other starters together with the main courses, there were about twenty items.
Jack then called Mr. Ramsey in Toronto and alerted him to the modifications Emma had made in Mr. Ramsey's recommendation for Jack; just in case someone phoned Mr. Ramsey to verify Jack's credentials as a waiter, Jack wanted his beloved mentor to know that Mail-Order Bride was supposed to be a fabulous bistro.
"You have to make reservations a month in advance!" Mr. Ramsey responded, with his usual enthusiasm. "Jack Burns, I know you'll go far!" (Maybe, Jack thought--if only as a waiter.)