HungryforMore How a person approaches food says everything about them. Is he a nibbler? A wolfer? A watcher, who doesn’t partake of the feast at all? —JAMES LACHANCE, Meal of a Lifetime Chapter 4 Troy sat at a corner booth watching James brief the servers, plus the new temp chick. He couldn’t wait until he was old enough to be a server—which could happen years before he was allowed into a kitchen. Servers got to sleep late, and they raked in the major cash. He looked at James. Now, chefs, they rocked. Especially owner-chefs. Arrogant pricks, sure. That much Troy had learned while watching his mom serve for most of her life. (He didn’t watch the other part—when she danced. That was too, well, whatever. He didn’t like it.) But who wouldn’t want to be an arrogant prick? James said he’d consider Troy for a server job when he was eighteen and not a day sooner. Three years! Consider! Hardass. Troy knew enough about the business to work the job already. But then, with a few more hundred times like earlier this afternoon, when James had let him into his kitchen to lend a hand, maybe he could skip the wait gig and go straight to line cook. His skin tingled at the bliss of it. Until then, busing wasn’t bad. Had its perks. Like easy swiping from handbags dangling off the backs of chairs. His mom had caught him once, but he split the twenty-three bucks with her and it was cool. He never got caught again. Just take what you need . That was his motto. These rich stiffs never missed a few bucks. He didn’t spend it on junk. He had a secret bank account that paid interest. The Stuffed Shirts Scholarship Fund he called it. Someday, he was going to be famous and rich and arrogant. And good. Like James. The five servers sat around the big table in the back, listening while James ran through the specials for the night. He had prepared a sample of each special so they could remember it and answer questions. Oh, yes, the sauce au snobbo is piquant with just a hint of bullshit. Dan took a bite from the fish and passed the plate to Stu, who asked about the sorrel pesto before passing it down the line. When the dish reached the new lady, she ate the whole thing , wolfing it down like she hadn’t eaten in weeks. The other servers and James stared at her like she was downing a bowl of slugs. She shrugged and smiled and said, “What? There are starving Gypsies in Romania, you know.” Troy sat up straighter at the word Gypsy. Was she? Was she the one who had given James the pendant? Gypsy or not, Troy liked the way the woman shrugged. It said, “Screw you” and “I’d love to screw you” all in the same motion. He wished his mom were at that table. He wished he knew where she was. Of course, then she would have made him go to school today, and he wouldn’t have gotten to watch James make his roux. Counterclockwise my ass . He forced down the lump that was rising in his throat. Troy didn’t care. It’d been one night. His mom would be back. She always came back. A week was the longest she’d ever been gone. She knew he could take care of himself. But she’d been acting so funky before she split. The whispers on the phone, that strange old Gypsy, Madame Prizzo, coming and going. Mumbling about “names” and “never-ending names.” Something was up, and it was weird, and his mom wasn’t telling him shit. Concentrate on the present. Prep chefs chopping garlic in the kitchen. Veal stock set to simmer. Brown crushed velvet chairs and little white candles that would glow yellow when he lit them at four fifty-nine. Les Fleurs was white-tablecloth stuffy up the ass, sure, but it was home. Well, not exactly home, but—yeah, it was home. Who was he kidding? It was where he ate and did his homework. And where he got to watch James cook. He locked his attention onto his two favorite servers, Stu and Dan. Stu was fifty-four and hairless except for his gray goatee. The man’s life was consumed by his bowling league and his boring family, and you knew it—or at least something like it—just by looking at him. Dan was twenty-nine and a drummer in a band called “Darkness.” You knew that, too, in a glance. But when those two dudes, Stuart and Daniel , were on the job, they became blank slates. Invisible waitrons, barely noticed, forgiving and docile and in love with whomever they served as if they served them alone, personally, every night, lords and ladies, masters all. They were no dummies—none of the servers were. There was major cash to be made if you oozed servitude just right. But that new temp server. All hair and tits and skirts. She’d play her game different. Sex and food. Food and sex. No difference except that paying for sex was way cheaper than the food in this joint. Not that Troy had ever paid for sex. But he’d had it. Once. Andrea Pruis from third-period bio. He was ready if the opportunity ever presented itself again. A mixture of terror and anticipation washed through him. Please, God, one more time before I turn sixteen. This time, I’ll open my eyes. Meanwhile, he listened carefully to the kitchen warriors who came and went. Troy knew what was what in this town and this biz, and he kept his grades up. He was going to go to culinary school the day he graduated and make the big bucks and have a family where people didn’t disappear for days on end. A wave of sadness passed over him. For a split second, when he had come into the dining room, Troy thought the new server was his mom, proof he was losing it. He sank deeper into his corner chair. It was an honest mistake; she sure did look Gypsy. Hey, maybe she was Rom and his mom had sent her with a message for him. Troy sat up straighter. Maybe. It was possible. His mom knew how he worried when she split. He shook away the crazy thought. With all those skirts and bangles on sale at The Gap, every other chick looked Rom. You couldn’t be sure. Better to lay low. James and the maybe-Gypsy kept locking eyes and staring each other down as James blah-blahed on. It wasn’t like James to go on and on like this. Usually, Elliot, the floor manager, took over so James could get back to the kitchen. Was it the new server that kept him blabbing? James and that new waitress side by side looked like one of those evening news clips after a tornado: one house pristine and perfect, every blade of grass in place; the other with no roof, timber strewn everywhere, all hanging out. Shit. Was James hot for the temp chick already? Troy loved his mother to death, but he couldn’t get how she never managed to catch James’s eye. If she had, then they could get married, and then James would be his . . . “Roni had tables five, six, nine, ten, and twelve,” James said. “Stu, you take five. Dan, you take nine. Amy, can you handle the rest in that section? We’re full straight through two seatings. One fifty on the books.” Troy startled out of his daydream at the mention of his mother’s name. The woman saluted. “Got it, Jimmy.” “James.” “No prob.” She paused and leaned forward. The pendant James had been wearing earlier fell out of her shirt, dangling from her neck. “Jimmy.” She was Gypsy. And not just any Rom but a Kalderash who wore the cross of The Triumph. Did his mother send her to look after him? Was this stranger waiting for him to come in at five like he usually did when he bothered to show at school and meanwhile she figured she’d make a few bucks? Well, Troy would show himself to his mom’s messenger when he was good and ready. After all, maybe he didn’t want a message from his mother. At least, not a message delivered by a stranger, Gypsy or no. No big deal where his mother was. She’d be back. Always was. He’d rather wait and hear the excuses from her own mouth. Not from some stand-in, no matter how scared he had been last night in their empty apartment, alone, praying for his mom to come home.