Lunch

There is a guy who is a waiter at the cafe where I eat lunch, with short hair and a baby face. He wears an apron tied around his waist. He wears his black pants so low on his hips that they only barely cover half his arse. With his white shirt tucked into his low hung pants, the soft white cotton covers the top of his cheeks, clinging like Lycra, like arse cleavage. 

I’m not complaining, such things don’t bother me. I imagine it might bother some people, people with kids, of course, old people who have forgotten life, too old to remember biting into a ripe peach when the juice runs down over your chin.

“What would you like?” he asks.

“Shouldn’t that be ‘are you ready to order’?” I reply. I’m not sure why I was antagonistic.

“Sure, if you like,” he says.

“Well, go on, say it,” I say. I know why I was being antagonistic, I was a bit pissed.

I can hear him breath in. I watch his surprising taught chest expand. “Are you ready to order? Sir?”

“Because, I know what I’d like?”

“Well, that’s a good start. What can I get you?”

“I am pretty sure it’s not on the menu?”

“I’m not following?”

“That is a shame.”

“Because I can only help you with things that are, actually, on the menu?”

“Are you sure about that?”

He pulled his eye brows into a furrow. “I’m… pretty sure.”

“Because I would dispute that…”

“Would you?”

“Yes, if there was anyone who could help me to what I’d really like, it would be you.”

He tilted his head and squinted his eye, his expression said I have no idea what you are talking about, which was a great shame. If I was really honest, his expression also said, I wish this guy would get on with it, I have other customers to get to.

I had a brunch meeting with Cinnamon and we’d ordered pastries and wine and Cinnamon and I had ordered a bottle because it was cheaper than by the glass and, of course, we’d drunk the bottle, you know because it was there. We’d already done the work we needed to do and we’d got onto the younger generation and how they thought they knew everything, unquestioningly, and how annoying that was. We both just wanted to do their heads in, you know, just once.

Cinnamon wanted to take the guys and put them over her knee. “Oh, I’d like to…” She swept her hand through the air.

I wanted to baffle them with words so much so they’d realise for themselves they didn’t know everything.

“No, it has to be physical,” Cinnamon said. “Skin on skin.” She looked far more excited than she should have been.

“No, it has to be cerebral, it’s the only way you can get them to change.”

My waiter cleared his throat.

I came back into the moment and found myself staring directly at his trousers, my gaze had wandered as my mind thought of the earlier meeting in the day.

I instantly raised my eyes up to his, just as he self consciously shuffled from one foot to the other. He was blushing just a little, so maybe he had some idea to what I was drawing attention.

“Oh, I… I’ll have coffee, thanks,” I said.

“Coffee is on the menu.”

“Yes, of course,” I said. I smiled as if I didn't know what he meant.

He held my gaze. I assume he was waiting for my special order.

I smiled and tilted my head. I wondered if he was putting himself through uni?

“Coffee?” he repeated.

“Yes,” I said. “Coffee.” I was light and breezy personified.

He furrowed his brows as if in question? He turned and walked away, and there it was, the arse cleavage walking away.

I could hear Cinnamon say. “Youth, it’s lost on the young.”

“Humour is too, apparently,” I’d say.

“Oh, darling you are asking too much of them.” 

“I thought he’d be amused, at the very least, dare I imagine him being flattered.”

“Not, if you are not in his demographic, he’s not going to be.”

“Oh yes, I forget.”

“He’d think a 28 year old is ancient.”

I laughed at the thought.

The white coffee cup was put down in front of me at that moment. I was still laughing when my eyes met the humourless waiter’s eyes. He gave me the strangest look, somewhere between confusion and fear. I was tempted to extend my tongue completely out of my face and cross my eyes at him, maybe stick my thumbs in my ears, which kind of made me laugh more.

He backed away from me as if he thought I was nuts. I could see it written all across his blemish free face.

“Anything else?” He asked. You know, kind of contractually obliged.

“No,” I said joyously. I pursed my lips and flicked my head, kind of carefree. I felt free, I suddenly didn’t care, really about anything.