don’t know who the hell you think you are,” I said, emphasizing hell, just for fun, thinking it a private little joke between the devil and me, “but I’m a paying customer. A regular customer. I will not be treated in this fashion.” I felt my face flushing; the red worked its way up my neck to the top of my head. I had never used this tone of voice on a stranger; but I liked it. Rage boiled up within me, and I simply let it go.
“Bring me the manager,” I demanded, throwing my napkin onto the table for good measure. The fellow’s name was Jerry; six of seven nights he worked this shift, overseeing things. He knew to see me, being a regular customer. And he knew I had money; there had been enough stories on the sales of my little books in the Trib and Sun Times for me to be on the radar screen, at least, for most of the locals. I tipped very well; I treated large numbers of people, at times.
Jerry appeared out of the kitchen, a puzzled look plastered on his face. He had heard the commotion and came out to investigate.
“A problem?” he asked, looking at me then giving the waiter the once-over.
“Yes,” I declared. “This waiter is simply too rude to put up with. Have I ever complained about the service here, or the food, in any way?”
Jerry allowed as how I had never done such a thing.
And then, something came over me. Maybe the images that had popped into my head had been too much, brought back too many bad memories. I blurted out, “Fire him!”
“What?” Jerry asked, not believing what he had just heard.
I took on the best dead-level tone I could muster, despite the fact that I was shaking inside. The rage had hold of me, and I thought my insides would explode. This was new territory for me, but I was determined to explore it as fully as possible.
“Fire him, or I never come back,” I demanded. “And I’ll tell all my friends never to come again.”
I could see Jerry considering it, but I couldn’t tell where he’d come down.
“I’ll write something,” I blurted out, “send it to the papers. Talk about the decline of ‘decorum’ in restaurants.” I stole a glance at the devil, and he gave me a little smile, obviously pleased I had picked up on his observation. Then I delivered the coup de grâce. “And Orly’s will be front and center,” I declared, “as a prime example of everything that’s wrong with restaurants today.”
That did it. Jerry was a manager, and a good one. He knew a business decision when he saw it. My stature as an author helped me here; actually, I probably couldn’t have broken into the Trib except on the obituary page, truth be told. But all Jerry knew was that I was a famous writer (which meant he didn’t know enough about the biz to recognize that “rich” didn’t necessarily mean “famous,” not in the sense of influence or appreciation), and so he turned to the now-wilting waiter and said, “Come in for your check tomorrow. You’re fired.”
The waiter began to babble a bit. “Leave now,” Jerry said, “or I call the cops.” Jerry turned to me and said, “I’ll get you a new waiter,” then turned to go back to the kitchen, without looking to see if the newly unemployed had left yet or not. His posture was clear—he fully expected him to be gone, or he would call the police.
The waiter turned and walked slowly out the door.
Maybe it was the adrenaline rush; I wasn’t really hungry anymore.
And so I looked at the devil to see what he was up to—mostly he had moved the salad around on his plate. “Let’s beat it,” I said to him, getting up without waiting for his agreement, slapping thirty bucks on the table for the bill. A waiter rushed out toward us, but I simply called back over my shoulder, “We’re done.”
The walk home was quiet. The devil hummed some song or another—maybe one of his operas, but I wasn’t sure—while I went over the scene again and again in my head. My stomach knotted up—I realized I was hungry. I’d have to order a pizza because I hadn’t eaten very much in several days. A weird feeling. Like what I had done was just right; I shouldn’t have had to take that waiter’s guff. I was the customer, for crying out loud. And it was like all the times in the past when I had let things slide; but seems they just slid right down into some place in my memory where the scoreboard flashed “zero” for my side, and I was tired of always being so far behind.
But it was wrong, too. Wrong for me. It wasn’t like me to yell at someone like that. I was a nice guy; in all the good ways that attribution can be meant, and all the bad ways. People did walk all over me, at least more than they should. But I also think some people’s lives were, at least for a little while in some place or another, a little more tolerable because I had been nice to them when I didn’t have to be. Why did the wrong sorts have to take advantage of that?
Before I knew it, we were back at the apartment. I called one of the multitude of pizza parlors in Hyde Park that serviced the academic community, which meant a whole lot of penny-pinching grad students who rarely had the money for a really good tip. I sat down to wait. Finally, the devil spoke.
“Write before you forget,” he said.
“Write what?” I asked, beginning now to feel a huge let-down after the little scene in the restaurant.
“What you were thinking before,” the devil said. “Use this. Don’t waste your writer’s eye, and don’t waste your experience.” As if reminding me ever so gently of things Jill had said, he exhorted, “Grow, Timothy, grow. Put this to good use. Remember the images from the restaurant, the ones that spurred you to do something you’ve never done in your whole Milquetoast life.” I started to object, but he simply threw up a hand and, rather gently, said, “Grow.”
And so I sat down at the computer. This time, I decided to give my writing more of a story form, complete with a title.
“The Slow Death of Nice People”
My fingers flew. The story opened with a clear-eyed analysis of a recent slight. I had been in McDonald’s, waiting forever for service. The line was six deep when I first walked in; after five minutes, it was still five deep. After fifteen minutes, one person still stood in front of me. I watched as every move of the server played as if in a slow-motion movie. I had an appointment, and now I was going to be very close to being late—I hated being late. And the entire McDonald’s staff acted as if intent on keeping me in their restaurant as long as possible.
Finally, another server came up and keyed in to the register. I started to step over, finally ready to give my order, when someone from behind me, who had just come in, sped around me to the register, rattling off his order before he had even taken his last step or two up to the counter.
I used all the pent-up anger I had writing the scene. A coherent story took shape. I barely realized the devil was there. He must have turned on the TV; at some point, I thought he must be watching some soap opera, because I heard about a guy who had just come home from losing his job, and before he could even explain to his wife what had happened and how unfair it had been, she scooped up their baby and left. Sounded like for good. But that’s all I caught. Too caught up by the muses.
As I typed the last word, I heard a familiar guitar riff, a sound from my past. I turned and saw the devil, guitar in hand, step up to the mike that now stood in the middle of my living room. Colored spotlights swirled about him as he sang “Taking care of business.” His hair had gone all permed, just like ol’ Turner used to wear it, and he played through the whole chorus, sounding for the world like Bachman Turner
