Silverware

            Salad fork. Dinner fork. Dessert fork, turned sideways. Two steps over. Salad fork. Dinner fork. Dessert fork, turned sideways. Two steps over. Patricio had gotten into the monotonous groove of laying down the silverware. He was showing trying to show the new girl, Alyssa, the order of how to set everything up. She followed close by, taking care of the knives and spoons. She wasn’t quite into the routine of continually sidestepping around the table welling setting down silverware. Instead, she would robotically walk-up behind a seat, slightly bend over, and place a knife and spoon. The black of the uniform slimmed her figure, but it couldn’t hide the curvature of her ass whenever she set anything on the table. Patricio was well of this fact and made sure to take many mental pictures that would be filed under butts, sub-filed away under Asian chicks, and maintained in El Banco de Spanko (or Spank Bank for those that absolutely suck at Spanish).

            He looked over to find Jacob, Tom, Roy, and Jeff laying down the pieces of the collapsible dance floor. A deep thud would resound. One man would stand on one wooden jigsaw while the other would kick the recently dropped piece into place. Thud. Pat, pat, pat. Silverware set-up was a dull task, but it was nowhere near the suck-fest that dance-floor setup was. Steve walked in through the door stage left of the platform where the wedding party would be sitting. He had a stack of circular mirrors and started placing them on top of the crimson runners in the center of the tables. The light reflected off of the mirrors and bounced off of Steve’s bald head. This image brought a bit of a giggle to Patricio.

            All of a sudden, Alyssa shot upright at the other side of the table and gasped. “Oh no!” she shouted, her eyes wide in horror. Everyone else paused what they were doing and looked at her. She continued, “I gotta go!” Her legs carried her out of the room in something between a run and a sashay. Soon enough she was through the doors and gone from sight. Everyone else continued on with organizing the room, but Patricio knew that face. That was the face he felt about to come on whenever the desire to quit was upon him. He had envisioned quitting a number of times, many of them involved a song he had penned for the occasion that was heavily laden with the phrase “fuck you.” Of course, the song had several verses that were dedicated to a variety of people and tasks at the hotel.

            Patricio continued setting the forks on the tables. Salad fork. Dinner fork. Dessert fork, turned sideways. Two steps over. He had to find his rhythm again and try not to think or he would slowly lose his mind. Salad fork. Dinner fork. Dessert fork, turned sideways. Two steps over. He soon lost his rhythm again when he looked up and saw Alyssa walk into the room. Her large chestnut eyes looked more relaxed than they had before. She swept a long black strand of hair out of her face over her ear. In that brief moment she looked like a vision out of a dream.

            “Everything alright?” Steve asked.

            “Oh, yeah. I just had to take a huge dump,” she stated before her face scrunched up and she giggled, completely pleased with herself. Steve shook is head at her response as if the words had just slapped him. It was about that moment that the vision was gone and Patricio’s erection was lost entirely. He continued setting forks and debating whether or not he should shred some recently acquired documents at his personal bank of spankitude.

Any names and likenesses in this story are entirely coincidental.

The Pit

The Conversation Area was the fancy name given to a lowered pit behind the elevators, toward the front of the atrium. It was a rhombus of gaudy hotel-floral carpet that seemed to get in the way of getting from the restaurant/bar to the pool area. It was also the area where assorted crackers, finger foods, and alcohol were placed in order to deter early wedding from coming in to the banquet hall. Jacob and Tom flanked Steve the banquet manager, towering over him like guards to a child, in the walkway above the pit in front of the Cascade Bar & Grill watching for what snacks were running low as the various guests picked at them like so many seagulls.

Little kids threw coins into the hotel fountain and made wishes, adults drank, teens awkwardly looked around while dressed in clothes that, while looking nice, were a little tight. It was not until Steve looked over at the snack table and noticed the table skirting was moving that he saw the problem. A small child crawled out from the table with a massive grin while a dark fuzzball scurried away from the child at intense speed. He walked to the bar and told Megan to give him two tumbler glasses. The rat had to be removed and discretely. When he returned to his post between Jacob and Tom, he noticed that nobody was screaming or scared. Nobody else had noticed the rat. Everyone had been to busy having a good time to notice anything crawling at their feet. He then recalled the last time rats showed up in the pit and Patricio ended up making a huge scene because he shattered a tumbler glass trying to catch one, missing the rat entirely. Steve set the glasses down on the ledge of the divider wall in front of him. He would wait until the guests were in the banquet hall before he notified Ryan from maintenance to take care of this.

Any names and likenesses in this story are entirely coincidental.

Pre-Wedding Huddle

            “Alright, everyone group up,” ordered Steve, the pocket-sized banquet hall supervisor. The fourteen servers, all in black, shuffled through the sea of six-foot circular round tables like a small gang of Johnny Cash impersonators. Each table was covered in white table clothes and adorned with a crimson table runner that was held down with a circular mirror reflecting a fishbowl above it that contained a red rose that taunted the pale stones below it by floating on the water. Around these fishbowls were three votive candles and the edge of the table was bordered with eight black napkins folded into a pyramid and surrounded by silverware—a dessert fork above, a salad and dinner fork on the left, and a knife and spoon on the right huddled along a saucer with teacup.

The servers converged on to the edge of the square dance floor that lie before the raised table that would be where the wedding party would enjoy their meal.  “In the past couple weeks we have had a few weddings,” he started every pre-wedding speech the same way as taught to him by his high school wrestling coach had back in his glory days, “last week we did ok, but this week we gotta do better. We had a few complaints that servers were not as helpful as they could have been and did not get the coffee around to everyone as much as they could have. That is disrespectful and it can’t happen again. Tonight, we need to be rock stars. Tonight, we need to be on the ball. Tonight, there will be no screw-ups! We will treat the guests with respect.”

A long silence hung in the air before he started again. “Ok,” he pointed to the left of center chair at the head table, “here is the bride.” He indicated the rest of the chairs on the rest side of the table, giving each a number. “One, two, three, four, five. Five bucks to play, you know the game: choose which chair the hottest bridesmaid will sit at.” A mess of singles and five-dollar bills landed in Steve’s clipboard and he made note of who chose which chair.

“Chair one!”

“Chair four.”

“Chair two.”

“Chair zero.”

“There is no chair zero, Patricio,” Steve replied without looking up from his clipboard. He didn’t have to look up to know who was talking. Patricio had a habit of trying to annoy Steve to the point that it was an art form.

“The bride will be the hottest, hands down,” replied Patricio.

            “You know I have seen the bride already.  Are you really sure you want to take that bet?” Steve looked Patricio dead in the eye as best he could, which was hard for him considering he was four inches shorter.

            “Damn it! Fine, chair three.”

            “Anyone for chair five?” The betting continued for a moment before the servers fled like shadows to light votive candles and prepare water glasses.

Any names and likenesses in this story are entirely coincidental.