My eyes scanned the restaurant for empty salad plates, but oh God, this was LA. No one ever finished anything on their plates, not even salad.
“Table seven, table seven,” I muttered to myself as I tried not to look aimless wandering through the restaurant. A waiter—I think his name was Scott—sidled up beside me.
“Which table do you need?” he asked, voice low.
I shot him a desperate look. “Seven.”
He put his hands on my waist and turned me around. “Two tables to the right,” he said into my ear. The tickle of his breath against the back of my neck sent a not unpleasant shiver down my spine.
“Thank you,” I said, forcing myself not to smile.
The stern expression on his face softened when he winked at me. “Anytime.”
“Stop flirting and put some speed on it,” Cristo hissed as he breezed past me. “Fiorella is watching.”
I lifted my head to see Fiorella glaring at me from behind the bar. Making eye contact with her was a mistake. She crossed her arms as if daring me to screw up again.
My resolve built as I headed toward table seven. No way was I going to fail at this. Not while Fiorella was rooting for it. As I noted that the salad plates looked like they’d barely been touched, my eye wandered back to the busy bar, two deep with people waiting for tables. I spied Rafe holding court at the end, circled by a group of women who all looked more or less the same—perfect hair, perfect makeup, perfect boobs, perfect asses. My ears heated while my brain calculated how I fell short of the cascade of perfection that surrounded him.
Rafe’s attention, however, was not on the beautiful women who made up his orbit. Instead, a measure of discontent was aimed at something across the restaurant. I followed his gaze and saw his scowl zeroed in on Scott.
Weird.
Whatever.
I swept over to table seven and cleared the salads, stacking one plate, the one that had more on it, on top of the other.
As soon as the bottom of one plate hit the top of the other, I realized my mistake. Fiorella was a staunch believer in vinaigrette dressing, therefore it was the only kind Parma served. It was heavy on the olive oil, and it made the plates slippery suckers. I just barely caught the top plate before it slid right off the oil slick of the lower. A piece of limp lettuce plopped on the pristine bamboo wood floor.
My head swung around to see if Cristo had caught my gaffe, but he was putting out new table settings on a just cleared table eighteen. Or maybe it was table twenty-two? Honestly, the table numbering system was a bit of a baffler. Tables would be better served by names. Like, the tables by the bar could carry pop star names like Lady Gaga or Sporty Spice. The tables that no one wanted by the bathrooms could be Milli Vanilli and Vanilla Ice. Celine Dion, J. Lo, and Madonna could rule the roost at the large, family-style center tables. Those were all about being seen and heard.
“Could we get more bread?”
A shrill voice pulled me out of my table renaming reverie. Ugh, that voice. It had the same effect as nails scraping a chalkboard, just sent every nerve on edge.
With a curt nod in her direction (table sixteen maybe?), I marched to the bucket, where I disposed of the dirty plates. It was overflowing and needed to go back to the dishwasher.
Right. Customers first. I hustled into the kitchen and grabbed a new plate of warm focaccia, then exchanged the empty bread plate with the fresh one.
Neither person at the table said thank you, I noted as I hustled my way back to the overflowing bucket. I dropped the plate in and heard the china shift under its weight. This sucker needed to go.
I put two hands on the black plastic bucket and… wait. Did they drop lead plates in the bottom of this thing or what? I removed my hands and, with a wince, wiped my greasy fingers along the thighs of my Armani pants. With a firmer grip, I tried again, this time lifting the bucket up with a grunt.
Shit. This thing was heavy.
I hiked up my knee and used it to rebalance the load. The plates at the top of the stack teetered forward, so I re-angled the bucket toward me. Then I moved. Well, if you could call it that. The weight of the bucket made my legs feel like I was moving through quicksand, fighting for every step. The plates and silverware clinked and clacked with each heavy footfall. Dirty plates piled up against my chest. I tried not to think about how my obscenely expensive top was getting coated in olive oil. I tried to ignore my stomach churning at the odor of stale Peroni and acidly sweet wine. I tried to pretend that my slim fingers had a firm grip on the curved plastic of the bus tub.
Reality, however, was a bitch.
Instead, I choked back a dry heave. This caused the heavy tub to buck back, spilling the contents of old food and liquid all over my chest while the china and silver clanged its way up and over the sides, landing around me in an earsplitting shatter.
All eyes were on me when a final, miraculously unbroken bread plate spun in a noisy circle around and around and around before clattering to a stop. Just as I was about to stoop down and pick up the mess, Fiorella stormed her way through the dining room toward me. She was pointing her finger, her mouth hinged open, and I braced for her wrath. That’s when the heel of her Manolo Blahnik hit the blob of oily lettuce from table seven’s salad plate. Before I could yell a warning, Fiorella’s feet swept out from under her. She went down with such force that she slid all the way from table seven, through the detritus that surrounded my feet, and landed in front of me like a runner on third stealing home plate.
“Shit,” I whispered when she skidded to a stop. I’d gotten so busy with clearing plates, the focaccia, and the bus tub that I forgot to clean up the lettuce that had fallen on the floor. It was a mistake, an error, but a bad one. It had caused a slip and fall. It had caused my boss to slip and fall.
“You’re fired!” she screamed at me while she was still on her back.
“Fiorella, let me explain…” I started.
“Get out,” she hissed. She pulled herself up using the leg of a nearby chair. Her hair had a blob of ricotta hanging near her shoulder.
“But if you just let me explain—” I tried again.
“Pamela put you up to this, didn’t she?”
I blinked at her. “My mom? What does she have to do with this?”
“I know all about Pamela Benson from my old Viper Room days. Wasn’t a man in a band that she didn’t open her legs for. We all knew it. The boys all knew it. How she snared Vince Davis into her web was something all us girls wondered back then.”
Oh. My. GOD.
Fiorella was a freaking groupie! And she knew my mom. My stiff back slumped in defeat. Pamela didn’t have any fans left over from her groupie days. My mother didn’t just burn bridges, she napalmed them.
No wonder Fiorella didn’t want to hire me.
“No one”—she shook her head and the blob of ricotta went flying—“and I mean no one, can be as incompetent as all this.” She swept her arms out to encompass the mess that surrounded me. “But this? This is exactly the kind of shit Pamela would pull.”
“Fiorella—”
“Get out!”
Her shriek made me jump, and I dropped the bus tub on the floor. Whatever dishware had remained intact before shattered on impact.
“Fiorella, please,” I pleaded. “It was an accident—”
She extended her hand, palm out, to shut me up. “I. Do. Not. Care. The spawn of Pamela Benson does not work in this restaurant. The spawn of Pamela Benson does not eat in this restaurant. And in about two seconds, I do not want to see the spawn of Pamela Benson in my restaurant ever again.”