On the Good Foot

When I was twenty-five, I landed a job waiting tables at the Word of Mouth Cafe on Broad Street in Augusta. They called me Monday of Masters Week, would I please come work there? I had walked on a shift at Friday’s the previous Friday (the Masters schedule didn’t please me), so I needed the work and graciously accepted. Whew!

The owners were in the middle of a messy divorce, fighting over the restaurant. We all thought Ann was an idiot to fight for it—she could have kept the kids and the house with a pool and collected half the income plus child support, which would have been a sweet deal. But she’d already given up singing onstage once, when she and Dave married because of Mr. Brown’s anti-nepotism policy. She said she’d be damned if that happened again.

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. She won the battle in court, and Dave stopped playing bass there. When he left, the band left with him, leaving Ann to put together a new house band to justify the cover charge. The head wait, who was boinking Dave, also left, and I was promoted to head wait about two weeks in.

Word got out about the band leaving, and business was falling off something fierce. A band was put together, and they were talented, but there weren’t enough butts in the seats. Those fickle fates put Mr. Brown in my path. I was over at the King George, where I used to work.

I went in the back door to the kitchen. I was there to see Linda before they got busy. Almost as soon as she finished hugging my neck, she told me Mr. Brown was in the dining room, and I better get my behind out there and say hello.

He was at Mr. Graves’s table. Mr. Graves came in every day, got a pint of Hienekien at the bar, then ordered his second at the table. If he didn’t want the special, he defaulted to the teriyaki chicken, and when I worked there, Linds would fuss at me for stealing pieces of zucchini from it in the window. I could always placate her with my lemonade. By the time I’d been there a year, my opening sidework was making lemonade for the kitchen. My lemonade is legendary.

It was just Mr. Brown and his driver (yeah, you know the stories about why he needed a driver. Georgia and South Carolina didn’t like him behind the wheel after the various incidents). His driver doubled as his bodyguard. I’m ashamed that I’ve forgotten his name and hope it comes to me—this was nearly thirty years ago. Mr. Brown rose from the booth to hug me, then I told him I was working at the Word, and Ann sure could use his help.

It landed wrong, and he was offended, responded with, “I’m not giving her any money!”

I imagine he constantly had people asking him for money, but that hadn’t occurred to me, and I was equally taken aback and said, “Mr. Brown! I would never ask you for money, not even for myself!”

He saw the genuine shock on my face and said, “Alright, Miss Thing, how I’m gonna help her without openin’ my wallet?”

Time to lay out my plan. “Mr. Brown, if you would just stop in on a Friday or Saturday night when you’re in town, and, if you feel like it, get on stage for a song or two, I’m sure word of mouth would do the rest. After all, that is the name of the restaurant, and after that, it’s on her.”

He told me he’d think about it.

I went in to work Friday afternoon at four, through the back door, into the kitchen. Back then, staff didn’t use the front door in a restaurant. Always through the kitchen into the wait station to clock in and start setting up. Sweet and unsweet tea had to be made, silverware rolled into linen napkins, glasses to run to the bar, lemons to cut, tables to set.

Matt and Willie were in the kitchen. Willie washed dishes and made the wings and nachos. Willie’s double fried buffalo wings were only for staff, and he made nachos in two layers, so you weren’t left with a plate of chips halfway through. Everybody loved Willie.

Matt was your standard white guy with dreads and two pairs of pants and a hot girlfriend. In this case, Heather, the new waitress who also taught gymnastics. He didn't have any formal training, but he could cook, and he and Willie were the only ones in the kitchen who didn’t leave when Dave did.

Sheree was setting up the bar, the only part of the restaurant with any quality of light. We served dinner, but we were as much a jazz club as restaurant; however, it doesn’t feel right to call it a club. People could bring their children, and many did during the first seating. The bar was a standard rectangular horseshoe bar with cocktail tables on one side at the top of the house and dining room between it and the dance floor and stage. The wait station, which opened into the kitchen was behind the stage.

Sheree said Ann was upstairs, so I got on up to the second floor street front loft, which Ann had made into her own private green room. I had to tell her not to ask Mr. Brown for money if he came in without it sounding like I was telling her what to do.

There were racks of clothes, mainly evening tunics with long underskirts in various pastels and neutrals with no shortage of embellishments. A dressing table with a professional makeup mirror and a little velvet stool was situated across from the clothes. A matching velvet chaise lounged catty cornered to the makeup mirror. A glass of champagne sweated on the dressing table. Great.

At least she was here. There were days when we stood in the back parking lot waiting for her to show up and unlock the joint. Sheree or I would go next door to Joanie’s salon to use the phone. Joanie was Sheree’s sister-in-law then, and I was friends with the whole family. Cell phones weren’t a thing yet.

“Ann?”

I heard the sink and sank onto the chaise to wait.

When she came out of the bathroom she gave me her shrewd look, but I restrained myself from rolling my eyes and said a silent prayer to Diana Ross. I’ve never been much for pandering to divas giving me attitude.

I figured the sooner she heard what I had to say, the sooner she’d shrink herself down far enough to fit inside that mirror and one of her stage dresses.

“I saw Mr. Brown yesterday at the George.” I watched her face while I said it, and there it was in her green eyes under a short ash blonde do. A limousine faded down 5th Avenue in the jade of her eyes. She heard her Toronto accent come back to the front of her speech when she asked if I spoke to him and added a comical, “Ay?” Born performer.

I nodded, and she started counting chickens right there in front of me. I could almost see them laying eggs in her mind’s eye. “How much do you think he’ll help?”

I sat up, glanced at the beads of condensation on the glass of champagne merging into one another to trace rivulets down to the stem, then shifted my eyes up to Ann’s. “He didn’t say, and he didn’t commit.”

She picked up the glass, took a small sip, and shook her head. “He isn’t going to give me any money.”

I stood up and looked her in the eye. “No. And you’re not going to ask him for any. I asked him to come in and maybe get on stage if he feels like it.”

She didn’t understand how that would help, do I explained it to her the same way I explained it to Mr. Brown. Her dramatic sigh filled the room and came down like Icarus from the sky. I'm pretty sure the floor shook.

“I’m going to tell Sheree, Sheila, Perry, and Stefan to watch you tonight.” Insubordination be damned—I wasn’t going down with the S.S. Ego. I headed toward the stairs. “If you ask him for money, he won’t come back.”

I let that land and resonate, and hotfooted myself back down the stairs before she could reply. I had work to do.

Sometimes you just feel something in your bones. I went behind the bar, up a step (which is brilliant—elevating the bartenders’ work space, establishing visual authority) and gave Sheree the lowdown.

“For real?” She thought about it for a few seconds, then nodded her platinum-ponytailed head, and said, “Yeah, I bet he comes in.” She gave me wink and said not to worry. Good bartenders know how to pace their regulars and put them to work, and good regulars are happy to assist the house when they can. It’s a relationship that fully acknowledges the codependency.

Everyone grumbled when I checked their stations and sent them back to the dining room to align tables and chairs and replace sloppily rolled silver. The band arrived in a good mood, rare on Friday, after a full week at their day jobs, and Sheila, our hostess, was dressed to the nines, as usual, but she’d also had her hair and nails done. By the time we opened our doors, we were as close to shining like a new penny as possible in the dimly lit dining room.

Sheree hit play on the system behind the bar, filling the space with AWB’s “Pick Up the Pieces,” our standard opening, start-the-night-right song.

Friday nights had been hit or miss for several weeks, but the first seating had never suffered, and we filled the tables at our usual pace. John, our guitarist, had an uncanny resemblance to Prince, and his brother Jerome on keyboards may as well have stepped out of a Cameo video. The resemblance didn’t end with looks, and “Purple Rain” and “Word Up” were their most popular covers.

When the band took the stage, they went straight into "Ain't No Sunshine When She's Gone." Every night followed a set playlist unless requests were made. Ann didn't get on stage very often--her cocaine habit was taking a toll on her voice.

The band followed their standard set list with no deviations, but electricity crackled through the air, and, although everyone remained seated, nearly everyone was chair dancing--folks swaying in their seats, maybe doing some footwork under the table.

As some of the early tables departed for where the night would take them, it happened. Mr. Brown arrived in a party of four and told Sheila to seat his party in my section, close to the stage. She brought them to the table in a drift of resortwear leopard with gold bangles jingling on her arms and a coppery pedicure winking out of her jeweled sandals. As Sheila made her way back to the front, every jaw on the stage dropped, and Eric, the drummer, froze for a minute. The hardest working man in show business was in the audience. It would have been a table that caught attention even without him, but with him . . . whispers of "Is that who I think it is?" and "Is that really him?" thrummed through the dining room. When my tables asked me, I just smiled and nodded.

I brought water to the table and filled the glasses, greeting Mr. Brown and thanking him for coming.

He flashed his grin at me and said, “When I get up on that stage, put your tray down, get on that dance floor, and shake your moneymaker.”

I winked at him and replied, “Like a sex machine?”

His party appreciated the banter and ordered drinks, Tanq & tonic all around. Shortly thereafter the band took a “pause for the cause,” and Sheree put “I Feel Good” on the system. Most of the wait staff would run drinks to all of our tables, then slip out our back door and in Brad and Jamie's. they owned the bar next door, Time Piecez, which was a bit of a coke den, but we just went over to slam a shot before smoking a joint in the back parking lot. We all stayed inout own house during this band break.

Excitement flurried through the restaurant, and I asked Mr. Brown if I needed to guard the table. Sometimes he didn’t feel like giving autographs, and one of the reasons he loved the King George was our fierce protection of his wish to not be disturbed while eating his dinner. He had once been especially impressed with how I handled a man who thought he would overrule me about approaching the table while Mr. Brown’s plate had food on it. My service ethics stayed with me after I left the George.

They’d had dinner before arriving, and he was welcome to signing as many as asked, a good dozen or so before he stood and approached the band as they filed back in the back door.

Next thing we knew, Mr. Brown was onstage with a microphone in his hand, asking the band, “Can I count it off?”

“We can’t start till you count it off,” came back in such unison that I imagine it appeared rehearsed.

I put my tray down after “One, two, three, four” and caught the opening chords with my hips. Sheree joined me and Ann ended up behind the bar, and we had that floor hopping before the bridge. Word spread down Broad Street (where Mr. Brown used to shine shoes for tips), and we had a packed house that night. And the next.

Mr. Brown stayed on the scene for a month, dropping in on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday night every weekend. When he left for his next tour, he took Eric with him. Ann complained about him poaching her drummer, “He hit it and quit.”

*Author note: Ann managed to run the place into the ground within a year. I left shortly after she started paying us in cash, sensing tax problems in the makings.