Summer 2009
“Shut your fucking cock-hole, bitch,” laughed Nikki as she sprayed vinegar over the hot tray of cutlery, and picked up a soup spoon. Christine’s hands froze in the middle of polishing a handful of forks with a napkin, as her eyes went wide with shock and amusement. She looked around the kitchen, scandalized. It was the universal teenage girl code for “OMG, I can’t believe you just said that!”
Nikki was having none of it. “What, you’re worried these cocksuckers will get offended?” she said to Chris before raising her voice so it cut through the sounds of the kitchen activity. “YOU COCKSUCKERS DON’T MIND MY FUCKING LANGUAGE, RIGHT?”
A few waiters and waitresses shook their heads, but they’d long since gotten used to Nikki’s profanity. The sous-chef, cooks and dish-pigs couldn’t resist the challenge, though, and a chorus of fuck-yous were volleyed back from across the serving line.
The wait staff were mostly kids like me, trying to earn money over the summer for college in the fall. Probably half were going into their last year of high-school, and the rest of us were already finished our first-year at university. The kitchen staff were a more varied bunch. Most of them were somewhere on a work continuum that progressed from dishes, to prep cook, to line cook. Carl the sous-chef was a grizzled old bugger who leered at all the girls and seemed to have a shard of ice where his conscience was supposed to be. He’d been working in a kitchen long enough to know that sous-chef at a suburban golf club was as high as he was going to rise on the career ladder.
Nikki was the only one who didn’t fit neatly into either group. She was my age, but we couldn’t have been more different. Where I was a good student, just finished my first year of Commerce at U of T, she had dropped out of school at sixteen. In high-school, I’d been on the varsity soccer and swim teams. Nikki smoked close to a pack a day. I came from a middle-class family with two younger brothers, and she’d apparently bounced around foster homes until she was old enough to tell Child Services to go fuck themselves. I was a little shy and socially awkward, but Nikki could say anything to anyone.
She was short -- maybe 5’2” in the flats she and the other girls had to wear at work. She was skinny as well, like she’d never quite had enough to eat her whole life, and didn’t care to start now. The only thing that wasn’t tiny on her were her boobs. The girl had a chest on her that looked completely out of place. Shoulder length jet-black hair framed a pale face that could have been pretty if she wasn’t wearing too much eye makeup and snarling profanities at people all the time. She’d just had red streaks put in her hair the other day, and she’d caught shit from our supervisor over that. Ms. Sullivan wanted wait staff in the clubhouse to present a certain image, and she made Nikki remove all her piercings (other than the tongue stud) at the beginning of each shift. Nikki even tried to cover a tattoo on her wrist with a tensor bandage at Sullivan’s urging, but so many people asked her how she could carry trays of food with a sprained wrist, she quickly ditched that idea and silently dared our supervisor to call her on it. I don’t know why Sullivan hired Nikki in the first place.
Okay, maybe I did know: Nikki worked crazy hard every shift, and she worked all the hours Sullivan would give her. Split shifts, opening the coffee shop in the morning before the first tee-time, closing after a wedding or banquet at 2am, whatever. And the members seemed to like her. At least, the older guys did, the ones old enough to be her dad or grandpa. I would watch them look right down her uniform blouse when she was topping up their coffee or serving them lunch, and I’m pretty sure she knew it. She would flirt with them, laugh at a dirty joke and tell them another even filthier to get the table roaring with laughter. Gratuities were “included” on every chit the members signed, but Nikki got more cash at the table on top of that than anyone else on staff. She was certainly rough around the edges, but she was a good waitress.
We were different in one more way, one that made me a bit embarrassed and uncomfortable. While I was decent enough looking to have dated a bit -- and even fooled around with some of the girls who would do that in high-school -- I was still technically a virgin. To hear Nikki talk, she was getting as much dick as she wanted, whenever she wanted, no strings attached. She was more of a swordsman than any guy I’d ever known. It was intimidating and fascinating at the same time. Although I often pretended I was absorbed in stocking creamers, or cleaning the soup station, or some other crappy task in the kitchen, I’d use that as an excuse to hover around the edges of her bawdy conversations with the kitchen guys, listening intently to her stories of conquest.
“Cocksucker is it?” Carl asked with a sneer, peering through the serving line. “Takes one to know one, you skank,” he continued with a malicious grin.
Nikki looked back at him with an expression of exaggerated boredom plastered across her face. “Lick my dick-ditch, you fat old perv,” she replied. “On second thought, don’t,” she continued. “The last place you stuck that tongue was in Billy’s asshole, and I don’t need an infection down there.” The whole room let out a theatrical “ooooohhhh” at the comeback, and even Billy grinned shyly over at the dishwasher as he loaded another tray.
Before Carl could return fire, Ms. Sullivan burst through the swinging doors from the banquet hall.
“Okay, the last of the reception is clearing out now, so most of you can punch out. Nikki and...” Sullivan glanced around at the collected wait staff until her eyes fell on me. “...Jeff, you two will stay and clear tables, restock for the morning. Tracy will finish up at the bar and lock up.” She turned to the sous-chef. “Carl, you remember the payroll discussion with Tim this month: get as many of your guys out of here as quickly as possible.” He nodded and turned to direct his guys to finish their cleanup. She glanced at her watch. “I have to be back early tomorrow for that tournament, so I’m going to take off too. Don’t stay late,” she admonished me and Nikki, and then turned on her heel and walked out.
Within fifteen minutes, the only people left in the building were Tracy chatting with a couple of drunk wedding guests as she tried vainly to close up the bar in the main lobby, and me and Nikki clearing the aftermath of a wedding reception off tables in a dim banquet hall.
“You gonna keep looking down my top, dickwad?” Nikki asked calmly as she bent further over the table across from me to retrieve a half-full plate of dessert and put it on her tray. I started to stammer some excuse, but she stood up straight and cut me off. “Or do you just want me to pull the girls out and you can stand here and jack your little cock off while you get a good look?”
The truth was, I had been sneaking looks as we worked, but I was mortified that she’d noticed. That embarrassment quickly morphed to angry protest, which was piqued even further when I looked up from her cleavage and saw the self-satisfied smirk on her face.
