The Shrine at The Floridian

The first time I waited tables was at a diner called The Floridian.

I was told to write my orders down.

That would have been the sensible thing to do. The practical thing. The thing any normal person learning the job should have done.

But the actor in me had other plans.

I decided the diner was going to become a training ground.

How was I supposed to memorize screenplays, scenes, monologues, pages of dialogue, if I could not memorize a simple exchange between two people over breakfast?

A coffee.

Eggs over easy.

No toast.

Extra bacon.

Hash browns crispy.

A side of fruit instead of potatoes.

Then a table of five.

Then ten.

Corrections. Additions. Substitutions. Drinks. The strange little architecture of human preference.

At first, I ran to the POS system as fast as I could, repeating the order in my head like a prayer I was afraid to drop.

Table seven.

Burger medium.

No onions.

Add avocado.

Coke.

Unsweet tea.

Pancakes for the kid.

Sauce on the side.

The words would flicker in my mind, and I would try to get them into the machine before they vanished.

But the more I practiced, the more the game changed.

I started categorizing things.

Main item.

Temperature.

Side.

Substitution.

Drink.

Exception.

Human beings revealed themselves in edits.

Nobody ordered the menu exactly as written. Everyone had a little private law. A preference. A refusal. A habit. A small rebellion against the printed page.

After a while, I did not have to run anymore.

I could hold a whole table in my head.

Ten people.

Ten meals.

Corrections and additions nested inside each order.

Drinks included.

It became a fun little game I played with myself, though nobody else knew that. To everyone else, I was just waiting tables. To me, I was rehearsing. Training the instrument. Turning diner noise into memory work.

In the back, there was a room dedicated to Marilyn Monroe.

A shrine, really.

The owner must have loved her. Her face was everywhere. Laughing. Posing. Glowing. Becoming the version of herself that the world had agreed to worship.

At first, I did not think much of it.

Then, after enough shifts, I started to like her too.

There was one picture in particular.

Black and white.

She was wearing a black top, signing an autograph.

I do not know why that one stayed with me.

It was different from the others.

There was something in her eyes I could not quite place at the time.

She looked happy, but slightly sad.

Incredibly attractive.

Incredibly vulnerable.

Not the bombshell.

Not the symbol.

Not the poster.

A woman caught between performance and exhaustion, giving a piece of herself to someone who wanted proof they had touched the myth.

Maybe that was why I kept looking at it.

Because I was learning memory in the dining room and studying presence in the back.

How people order.

How people perform.

How people smile.

How much can be hidden behind a face the world thinks it understands.

I was still becoming an actor then.

Maybe I still am.

But somewhere between the breakfast rush and the Marilyn shrine, I began to understand something about performance.

It was not just remembering the words.

It was remembering the person underneath them.