"Those who can, do. Those who can’t, bitch about it on the Internet." -Simon, from The Book of Simon
Some bios list credentials, such as: Education BFA in Illustration, Massachusetts College of Art Occupation Former Production Slave, Ballantine Books Comics Credits Columnist, Writer, Artist, Editor Etc…
And some bios tell a story, such as: I can remember sitting in front of my television one morning, watching the old Batman show, when Julie Newmar appeared in that skintight black leather outfit as Catwoman. It was my first boy/girl thing. >A year later I was in kindergarten telling Katherine Burke that I loved her. It’s pretty much been a string of stupid mistakes ever since…
Still other bios state an intent, such as: This is a series of essays illustrating the life of one particular struggling artist as he plods through the world and occasionally bumps into some interesting shit.
But most bios just sit to the right of the column and are never looked at. So ignore this space and just read the damn column already…
Megan Sanchez was in her Subaru Impreza heading south down the highway, a pool accessories store to her right, a TGIFriday’s across the divide to her left. As they got closer and closer to their destination she found it harder to figure out how Greta had ever talked her into this whole thing. “We’re a family and we need to be there for each other,” her aunt had said just over an hour ago. When Megan gave an unconvinced look Greta admitted, “Look, they invited me to dinner and I would really appreciate having you there with me.” In all the time Megan was away from her family, Greta was the only one she remained in contact with. How could she possibly say no?
And so she found herself with Eddie and Greta in her car, following Shane’s Lincoln Navigator down Route 1 on the way to Hilltop. When she saw the tall fake cactus sign and the corral of fake cows in front she knew they had arrived.
It was a Friday night in the Massachusetts suburbs and that meant that everyone was out on the highway, packing into whatever franchise had the shortest wait. In the Kroeger family, Hilltop Steakhouse was associated with death. Whenever a family member died, the remaining members gathered at that particular restaurant, more out of tradition than anything else.
The parking lot was large but still near capacity. Shane’s SUV was so monstrous that he was forced to park in the farthest corner from the actual restaurant because that was the only place he would be able to take up four spaces. Megan, in her compact Japanese car, got a spot near the door. When she got out and looked across the parking lot at the far end where all the SUVs were parked she thought how they looked like grazing animals and was wondering if the owner would move the corral to keep them from getting back on the roads.
“Just make sure you sit next to me,” Megan told Greta as they watched Shane, Hazel and Ryan trudging across the parking lot.
“You do the same,” Greta replied.
Eddie was hoping they would sit to either side of him, creating a barrier so he didn’t have to sit next to any of the other family members.
“Did you call ahead?” Megan asked as Shane hobbled to within earshot.
“No, I’m a goddamn moron,” he said sarcastically. “I called from the car. They should have a table waiting for us.”
Megan found it hard to believe. “You called from the car and they have a table for six just sitting around on a Friday night?”
Shane didn’t bother to answer. Instead he just shook his head in annoyance and took the lead position in the walk to the front door. Walking through, the group was confronted with a long, enclosed waiting area filled with other parties. As they passed the mob on their way to the host station the mood of the patrons seemed to grow increasingly worse as they got closer to the dining room. It showed on each face that these people had been standing around a long time.
At the host station Shane grabbed a glance into the dining room to make his own assessment of the situation before saying anything. Seeing an empty table here and there, he turned his attention to the hostess, a skinny, young girl of college age, dressed in a tight, low cut black top and a red plaid skirt. “Kroeger,” Shane said with an arrogant, flirting smile, eliciting a look of dismay from the wife standing beside him. Fifteen years ago maybe Hazel was this girl.
The hostess smiled briefly, then looked down to scan the list of reservations. Her index finger traced the first column of last names and moved on to the second. Two-thirds of the way down she stopped and ran her finger horizontally across the name Kroeger and the number six. “Here it is,” she said pleasantly. “That’s going to be about thirty minutes.”
“Thirty minutes?” Shane echoed in outraged disbelief. “I called in over an hour ago. We should be at the top of the list.”
The hostess looked back down at the reservations. A second number told her the time when the reservation was made. It was only fifteen minutes ago. “I’m sorry, sir,” she said, in her best mock-apologetic tone. “We’re very busy tonight.”
Shane turned to Hazel to back him up. “This is ridiculous,” he said, peering into the dining room again. “Look, there’s an open table right there.” His wife was nonplussed, more concerned with wiping away a smudge of some kind on the leather jacket she had purchased only two weeks before at Filene’s Basement in anticipation of the coming fall.
“It’s going to be just as bad anywhere else,” she advised.
He shook his head and huffed to accentuate his disgust with the entire situation. It was an act he had performed many times before. “Fine,” he said, accepting the hostess’s terms like a war general that had just conceded too much.
“I’ll call your name when your table is ready,” the hostess informed him, happy to have the situation defused. Shane and Hazel turned away, announced the wait to the rest of the family, and they all took their place at the end of the line. Now Megan felt like she was corralled.
Twenty-five minutes passed before Shane bothered the hostess again. When he approached her podium she asked for his name as if she had never seen him before. At second glance Shane realized that this was a different hostess. Same tight black top and red plaid skirt, but her hair might be a bit lighter and her breasts were definitely larger. But when the new hostess located the Kroeger name on the reservation list her response was the same as her predecessor. “It’s going to be about thirty minutes.”
“What? That’s impossible. We’ve already been here thirty minutes and that’s how long the last girl said it would be.”
The new hostess was quick with her practiced response. “Some of the tables are lingering a bit longer than we expected. We should have a table for you in about thirty minutes.”
This didn’t fly with Shane. “I’d like to see a manager,” he demanded.
The hostess picked up a receiver and dialed one number. She turned halfway around and muttered something into the phone as Shane looked back to his waiting family. Within a minute a middle-aged man in a white button-down T-shirt and a cheap tie tucked in between two buttons arrived at the host station. “Yessir, can I help you?” he asked, seeming oblivious to the situation.
“Yeah, I have a party of six and we’ve been waiting for over a half hour to get a table,” Shane explained infuriated.
“What’s the name, sir?” the manager asked.
Shane repeated his last name again. The manager looked over the reservation list until he found it. “Okay,” he said plaintively, “that’s going to be about thirty minutes.”
“But that’s what you people said last time.”
“I’m terribly sorry, sir, but we are very busy tonight and not all our tables are moving as quickly as we’d hoped. And there are still a lot of people ahead of you. Thirty minutes is the best we can do.” It was a speech the manager had given a thousand times before, each recitation becoming more and more disingenuous. But it was enough to placate Shane and the big brother returned to his family to break the news.
“Another half hour?” Ryan repeated, agitated by the update. “Screw this. I’m going to have a smoke. Let me know if we get seated.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out his pack of Marlboro Lights. Flipping the top open he saw three remaining cigarettes, enough reason to head outside. As he walked out of the waiting area, at the door he stopped and shot Eddie a glance. “You wanna go grab one with me?”
Eddie was a bit shocked by the offer. Nothing so far had indicated any kind of friendship, or that Ryan even liked him. But it didn’t matter. Eddie had decided on the drive up that he was going to keep an eye on Megan’s little brother. After the story she told he wasn’t going to let something like that happen again if he could do anything to prevent it. Being a smoking buddy seemed to be a good way to keep tabs on him. And so he found himself standing in the Hilltop Steakhouse parking lot, sparking up a Marlboro Light with the reason his wife had left her family.
Between puffs Ryan looked out across the highway to the passing cars. He wasn’t particularly interested in conversation and wasn’t doing anything to start one. There hadn’t even been any eye contact between the two since Eddie returned Ryan’s lighter after the first cigarette was lit. It was becoming uncomfortable, the long, extended silence. Ryan seemed content to identify and judge automobiles, perking up for a second at those that met his approval as they passed by, but Eddie felt the need to talk.
“Pretty nice of your brother to take us all out to dinner,” he said, hoping to start an exchange.
Ryan looked at him, chuckled suggestively, took a drag on his cigarette and said, “Yeah, well he does shit like that,” before turning back to the entertainment of the speeding cars.
Eddie continued. “He seems to be a pretty take charge kind of guy. What’s he do for a job?”
“Shane works for the town. Building Inspector,” puff puff. Then, somewhere in Ryan’s head, a thought occurred. “Hey, so without your powers that must mean you’re out of a job, huh?”
Eddie shrugged and then lazily nodded.
“What are you going to do?”
It was a good question. So much had happened so fast that Eddie hadn’t given any thought to his future employment. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “What do you do?” he asked before quickly regretting the question. He thought it might not be wise to ask a former, and possibly current, drug dealer about his occupation.
Ryan didn’t hesitate. “I was in landscaping.” It was a clever enough answer. “I was thinking about becoming a ref.” “Football?” “Wrestling.” “Wrestling?”
“Yeah. Killer Kowalski has a wrestling school down in Southern Mass. That’s where Triple H trained.” Eddie gave a look of ignorance. “Triple H is one of the big names in the WWE. Anyway, I heard from a friend that you can become a ref if you go to wrestling school. So I sent in some money and went for a tryout. They told me I had a lot of potential. But then I was raking leaves last April and pulled my back out. The doctor told me there was no way I could go to wrestling school and that I probably shouldn’t be doing any landscaping either. So now I’m just resting up, hoping my back heals before I try to do anything else.”
“I don’t think I would be a good wrestling referee,” Eddie admitted.
“Yeah, well it’s not for everybody,” Ryan said before returning to the amusement of the passing cars.
Another cigarette later the table was ready and Ryan and Eddie were called inside.
An entirely different hostess, this one closer to forty and with a loose, white top, lead the group to their table, situated in the middle of the restaurant. Shane looked around, unhappy with the arrangement. “Can’t we get a booth?” he asked.
“We don’t have any that will seat six people,” the hostess told him. Shane shot a dirty look at Megan and Eddie, blaming the two added people for his dining discomfort. Neither noticed.
On one side of the table sat Eddie, Megan, and Greta. Across from Greta was Hazel, next to her Shane and, next to him Ryan. They each settled into their seats quickly, hoping to cut down the time spent fidgeting so they could get right to the meal, all accept Shane. He swayed back and forth in his chair, testing the legs and appearing unsatisfied by their ability to hold him. “Switch seats with me,” he commanded Hazel. She refused. “Switch seats with me,” he ordered Ryan.
“Screw off.”
“Come on,” he pleaded to his wife. “This chair is going to break and I’m going to fall on my ass. I don’t need to hurt my leg again.”
“Just relax,” she said. “The chair is fine. The longer you mess around with it the longer it will take before we get our waiter to take our order.”
“I already know what I want,” Shane said. He turned in his chair and looked for a waiter to notice him. When one made eye contact he flagged him over. “Are you our waiter?” he asked.
“Yessir, my name is Clark and I’ll be your server tonight. Can I get you something to drink to start off?” He was barely twenty and slightly fey, short brown hair and a pitted face.
“Yeah, I’ll have a Pepsi,” Shane said, with no regard for the rest of the table. “Listen, Clark, so this ribeye you got listed here, how big is that?”
“Our ribeye is twelve ounces and it comes with…”
“That’s not like eight ounces of meat and four ounces of fat, is it?”
“No sir, we trim our meat pretty lean.”
“Alright, I’ll have that. Medium rare.” Shane folded his menu and handed it to the waiter. His gaze turned to the table and he began to reorganize his plate and silverware to his preferences. Slowly he got a sense that the rest of the table was looking at him. He turned to his wife, who gave him a brief disapproving stare before looking up to the waiter.
“I think we’re going to need a few minutes, Clark,” she said apologetically. Then she turned her sour look back to Shane.
“Oh, don’t start with me,” he said. “I’m friggin’ hungry.”
As they ate they took turns telling stories about the recently departed Helen Kroeger. As he had no stories to contribute, Eddie Sanchez just sat back and enjoyed a well-done porterhouse as he listened to the myriad ways one woman touched the lives of five others.
“There was this one time,” Shane began, “I’m walking home with my buddies. I think we were about eight or nine. I’m going over to Mitch Tedesco’s house after school to play some football, which means we had to walk along Shawnee Avenue the whole way. And the car and bus exit for the school is a couple blocks down Shawnee in the opposite direction as our house. Well we’re walking along and all these buses start passing by filled with those kids who live up in the projects off the highway. So Mitch and I decide to give them the finger. But we don’t want the bus drivers to see us, so we wait until the bus has about halfway passed before we flip the bird. Wouldn’t you know it, there I am, giving the finger to one of the buses when I notice the car right behind the bus looks really familiar. It was mom in that Dodge Duster she used to drive. Anyway, she sees me and comes to a screeching halt. Then the door just opens, right. No words, just an open door because I knew I was in trouble. So I get in the backseat waiting for her to say something. But she’s completely silent. We’re driving around for a while and she doesn’t say a word. And that’s when I realize where we are. We’d just passed through the gate at the plant. She parks the car and gets out. I lean out the window and I’m yelling to her, ‘You’re not going to tell dad, are you?’ Still nothing. I sit in the car for like fifteen minutes waiting for her to come back. When she does I ask her if she told dad but she still keeps quiet. The whole ride home and for the next four hours I was sweating my dad getting home and smacking the shit out of me. When he finally did get home he didn’t say anything to me about it, so I don’t think she told him. But let me tell you, that afternoon I just about pissed myself I was so scared about what was going to happen to me and, to this day, I can’t give the finger. Any other swear or gesture is fine. But the finger is off limits. That was some serious conditioning mom did to me that day.”
Ryan’s story also started with the walk home from school. “Okay, I’m six years old and I’m walking home with my best friend, Ethan Long, and some other kids. These other kids are all fifth graders, so we thought they were pretty cool. What they thought would be pretty cool was to see two best friends fight. I can’t even remember how they did it. All I know is that we got to the end of my street and suddenly I was pounding on Ethan. I mean really wailing on him. And it’s not like he was that much smaller than me. He just couldn’t fight I guess. At one point he manages to get back to his feet and I throw this monster punch right to his nose. Blood starts gushing everywhere. The fifth graders are freaking out. This wasn’t any ordinary nosebleed. So one of the older kids picks him up and starts to carry him home. I went to my house and hid in my bedroom. Later that night, Ethan’s mom came over and was bitching at mom. I never heard the whole thing, but mom did a pretty good job covering for me. I didn’t even get in trouble for it or nothing.”
From Eddie’s viewpoint, Ryan seemed pretty proud of his story. “Were you ever friends with the kid again?” he asked.
Ryan took a sip of beer. “He was out of school for a while and then his family moved to the other side of town. I don’t think it had anything to do with the fight. But I saw him once we got to Middle School. First day I went up to him and asked him if he wanted to hang out after school. He had some lame excuse, so I didn’t bother asking again. He was a theater geek by then anyway.”
“You never heard the whole story,” Megan interjected, “did you?”
With a mouth full of half-chewed meat Ryan said, “What story? Kid was pissed he lost a fight. He was a big baby anyway.”
“That kid had to go to the hospital and have hot irons shoved up his nose to fuse the veins shut or else he would have bled to death. I went to school with his older sister and she told me he was afraid to go back to school if you were going to be there. So his mom drove him across town to Raynard Elementary every morning. They didn’t move for another two years. But if you’d ever bothered to go over there and offer an apology you would have known that.”
“Oh fuck you.” Ryan was attempting to stare her down from across the table.
“Okay,” Greta stepped in to make the peace. “Let’s change the subject. Megan, why don’t you tell a story about Helen.”
Megan broke the stare with Ryan and looked down at her food. “I’ll pass,” she said, followed by a long silence. She could feel Greta pleading with her through expression. Still upset, Megan relented. “Alright, I have a story. So one day someone, who I won’t name, was setting up nails in the street. A new couple had moved into the neighborhood and they were a little loud. Mom had been complaining about their rowdy parties and people parking their cars all along the street curb. Well, this person got it in their head to booby trap the street by taking pieces of black roofing shingles and sticking nails through them so that cars would ride over the nails and get flat tires. Of course, he didn’t tell anyone about this scheme and I happened to be walking home the day he did it. I was running down the street for some reason, not looking down at the road, when suddenly I feel this unbelievable pain shoot through my foot. I fall over and scrape my knee. That’s when I notice the giant rusty nail sticking out of the bottom of my shoe. So there I am, screaming on the street, when the person who set up the nails comes running over. And he says, ‘Hey, you messed up my booby trap.’ I try to get him to go find mom but he has a sudden revelation that he might be in some kind of trouble and he bolts the scene. It wasn’t until after ten minutes of yelling that she finally heard me. We went to the hospital where they yanked the nail out, gave me a Tetanus shot and sent us on our way. I’m pretty sure the person responsible was never held accountable.”
“Shouldn’t have screwed up my booby trap,” Ryan said.
Greta, sensing the mounting tension, went for a segue. “That was the Ortons, the family that moved in and had the rowdy parties. They’ve settled down a lot since then, Mindy and Frank. I think it was because they got married so young. Maybe they weren’t ready for the suburbs just yet. But after a few years they decided to start a family. They tried forever to have a baby. I never heard what exactly the trouble was, but for some reason it didn’t happen. So, about seven or eight years ago they adopted a little newborn.”
“Fun Size,” Ryan interrupted. “I call her that because she’s a black girl and she looks just like one of those Fun Size Snickers you give out at Halloween.”
“Her name is Samantha,” Greta corrected. “Your mother used to babysit for her a lot. Once that baby came along, the Orton’s became really good friends with her. They were over all the time. Nobody ever talked about the old feud. Time, and other things, seems to make fighting seem insignificant.”
The bill came and Shane was not happy. He started asking everyone what they ate, checking it against the itemized price list, making sure he wasn’t being charged for something they didn’t receive. The math added up correctly, but he still wasn’t pleased. Despite the protests of everyone at the table he asked for the manager again.
“Is there a problem, sir?”
“I was just looking at the bill,” he said suggestively.
“Did we charge you for something you didn’t get?”
“No, we got everything,” setting up his game.
“So then what is the problem?”
“The problem is that we had to wait in line for an hour even though we had reservations. I get to the table and my chair is so shaky I spent most of my meal trying not to fall on my ass. The waiter never asked us if we wanted a second basket of bread. And I ordered my steak medium-rare and what they brought me was medium. Now we came here because we experienced a great loss this morning, our mother died. We’re trying to get through this grief as best we can and when we come here all we get is more misery. So I don’t know what to do, but I’m feeling really uncomfortable about paying this check.”
The manager took a deep breath, assessing the situation. He knew the type of person he was dealing with. “Let me see if I can adjust that for you,” he offered, taking the slip of paper away from Shane and disappearing into the kitchen.
“Shane, that was disgusting,” Megan chided.
“Hey, I’m not happy with my meal,” he said in defense. “And since I’m the one picking up the check, and this is America, I get to say what I want to the manager. The customer is always right.”
They sat in silence until the manager’s return. In the end he had cut the price in half and offered a round of free desserts for the entire table. Everyone was too stuffed to eat anything more, but Shane said they would take them as leftovers. The manager instructed Clark, the waiter, to go into the kitchen and package up six desserts, two pieces of cheesecake and four chocolate mousse cake slices, for their party. While he was going about his task Shane was figuring out how to properly tip the server. What he figured was proper was nothing. “He’s lucky I didn’t try to get him fired,” Shane said in defense of his stinginess.
Clark returned with two bags of desserts and the group left the restaurant, five of them with their heads held in shame.
In the parking lot it was decided that Megan would take Eddie, Greta, and Ryan, since they were all going to the same house. Shane packed into his oversized SUV with his wife and the six free desserts. Feeling victorious, he roared out of the lot and onto the highway, his vehicle an extension of his momentary virility.
Once Shane was out of sight Megan pulled up to the front of the restaurant. “I’ll just be a minute,” she said, getting out and running inside. She tracked down Clark and handed him fifty dollars.
