Chapter 8: The Roster Tells The Story
The diner on Route 9 still smelled like coffee and mop water at eight in the morning. I sat in the back booth with my leg stretched out along the vinyl, the cut on my shin throbbing under the bandage, and my phone face-up next to a cold cup of coffee. I’d texted Luis at six. He’d finally answered at seven thirty.
You really want to talk about Saturday? he wrote.
I wrote back, just need to ask how they picked me for the tray.
He walked in at eight fifteen, still in his kitchen hoodie, his hair damp. Luis had worked the estate galas for three seasons. He slid in across from me and didn’t order anything.
“You look rough,” he said, looking at my leg, then quickly away.
“I’m okay,” I said. “I just need to know what happened before I went out.”
He rubbed his hands together. The waitress came by and he waved her off.
“They changed the roster last minute,” he said, quiet. “I was supposed to take the champagne. Carla had me on it Thursday. Then Saturday at four, Daniel came into the prep kitchen and said Mrs. Whitmore wanted a change. He said she requested the new girl with the ponytail. By the fountain.”
My mouth went dry. I could hear the water again, the splash.
“He said that exactly?” I asked.
Luis nodded. “Yeah. He said she wanted a clean look for photos near the fountain. Carla didn’t argue. You know how it is. You don’t argue when they ask for something specific.”
I stared at the table. My ponytail had been tight, my shirt pressed that morning. I’d thought I got the tray because I was the most careful with the glasses.
“Did anyone think that was weird?” I asked.
Luis shrugged, but his eyes stayed down. “We just thought she wanted someone photogenic. We didn’t think—” He stopped. “Maya, what are you going to do with this?”
“Nothing yet,” I said. “I just wanted to know if it was random. It wasn’t.”
He leaned forward a little. “Don’t put my name in anything. I need that gig. They pay late but they pay.”
“I won’t,” I said. And I meant it. “Thank you for telling me.”
He left money for my coffee even though he hadn’t drunk anything, and left before I could say more.
I stayed in the booth and pulled out the envelope I’d brought. Carla paid us with paper checks stapled to pay stubs so thin I usually threw them away without looking. I’d kept the last four in my glove box.
I spread them on the table. $13.50 an hour. Thirty-two hours listed, thirty-two hours paid, but I’d worked three twelve-hour days that week for the Whitmore wedding and the gala setup. The extra hours had been labeled “training supplement” at $9 an hour on a second line. No overtime. At the bottom, where it should have listed workers’ comp, there was a blank.
The waitress refilled my coffee and glanced at the papers. “You need anything else, hon?”
“No, thanks,” I said.
I took a picture of each stub with my other hand, trying to keep my fingers from shaking. I’d never been hurt on the job before. I hadn’t realized missing coverage wasn’t just a missing line. It meant the ER bill from Sunday was mine. It meant the tetanus shot and the antibiotics were mine.
I called Jenna next. She’d worked catering two summers ago and quit after the foundation’s Labor Day gala.
She picked up on the third ring. “Maya? Carla said you fell in the fountain. Are you okay?”
“Stitches,” I said. “I’m calling because I wanted to ask about that Labor Day you worked. The estate terrace.”
She was quiet for a second. “God. Why?”
“Did anything happen to you there?”
She laughed, but not like it was funny. “Yeah. They had me carry the oyster platter in heels they provided. Two sizes too big. One of the guests, the blonde lady, she kept asking Daniel to make me walk closer to the edge so she could get a photo. I ate it in front of forty people. Oysters everywhere. She laughed too. Then Daniel walked me to the back and told me not to file anything, that they’d add a bonus. Which never came.”
My chest tightened. “Did you tell Carla?”
“Carla told me it was an accident and that these events are stressful for the hosts,” Jenna said. “I needed the reference, so I let it go. Did the same thing happen to you?”
“Similar,” I said. “Tray. Fountain.”
“Jesus,” she whispered. “It’s a thing, then. I thought I was just clumsy.”
After I hung up, I called Marco, who’d done bar service last year. He didn’t answer, but he texted: yeah they tripped me with the trash bin near the torch, thought it was a joke, same gala, same lady watching.
Three of us. Different years. Same terrace. Same woman watching, same man moving us into place.
I sat back and let the diner noise come back in, the clink of plates, the bell over the door. It wasn’t a single accident. It was a placement. They put the new person where she could be seen falling, and they paid us in a way that made it expensive to complain. The waterproof pocket on my vest wasn’t the only thing they hadn’t noticed about me. They hadn’t noticed I kept the stubs.
May you like
I folded the papers back into the envelope and slid my phone into my own pocket, feeling the weight of the clip I still hadn’t shown anyone. I wasn’t ready to accuse anyone out loud, and I didn’t have the terrace video to prove the foot that caught my ankle. But I had a roster change, a pay pattern, and two other servers who remembered the same smile.
That was enough to stop calling it bad luck.
