I Hated Your Sister

I Hated Your Sister

         I hated your sister the first time I met her. No, seriously. She knows; she hated me too. The reason is she was a bitch. No, stop. Don’t jump up like you’re going to hit me. I’m married to her now, for Christ’s sake! That means you and I – we’re brothers, too. Yeah, I know it’s only been four hours since we smooched on the altar. And I know – I know all too well I’ve been married before. But this is the girl of my dreams. I can feel it. So can she.
         Anyway, yeah. I hated her when we met. She was waiting tables at this pizza place in Brooklyn that I had never been to, but my dad took me for a slice once because he read about it on a blog or something. The pizza sucked. So did the service. I think I wrote a shitty review about it when I got home.
         Seriously, listen to how bitchy she was. I went into the restaurant alone because my dad drove up from Hoboken and he was having a hell of a time parking the car. It was getting close to rush hour and we didn’t feel like waiting more than twenty minutes for pizza, no matter how good my dad’s blog said it was. So I hopped out to get us a table before he got back from the Bronx or Peru or wherever it was that he parked the car. Well, anyway, there was a lobby area where this big Italian family was waiting. Actually I thought that was funny because normally Italians don’t go out to eat – especially not Brooklyn Italians, and especially not to pizzerias– so I thought that was a sign the food was going to be good. Anyway, one of them motioned me through the door and said they were waiting for a big table in the back, so I went right on through.
         Now, to explain why your sister was a bitch, I need to explain the entrance to this place. They do all the food prep right there in the front – they had this huge brick oven and a bunch of people rolling dough and pushing around sauce and doing that cool finger-spinny-thing they do. Anyway, there was a line going up to a register sitting on the partition between the floor and the food prep area, and there wasn’t a maître d' anywhere in sight. I figured I was supposed to hop in that line.
         Well, I was wrong. That was the line for takeout orders. I was sort of coming to figure that when this cute chick with oversized, goofy wire-rim glasses, a white t-shirt and an apron came out, walked right by me and took this couple that walked in after me. Now, mind you, this girl was sexy. Really sexy.
         Okay! Okay! I’m sorry, stop hitting me.
         But she was. So I wanted to kind of say something about how she skipped me without pissing her off and ruining my chances with her.
         Look, I don’t care what you say. I’m married to her now, so obviously the chances of picking up a waitress during her shift are pretty good.
         Anyway, I kind of motioned to her and said, y’know, that I’d been waiting longer than those other people, and I still hadn’t been seated. The place was pretty crowded, so I was worried a table wouldn’t open up for a while.
         She looked up at me with those big green eyes of hers, hair done in a knot – I think she was holding a clipboard, too, but I don’t remember to be honest – and she said, “They were here first.”
         Now, you tell me how she could have possibly known who got where when – she was in the back, probably being a nasty bitch to some other poor folks – and she couldn’t see anything. So I said – as nice as I could be, but still firm – I said, “Excuse me, but I saw them come in after me.” And I knew I was right because I remembered thinking that the girl was completely out of the guy’s league when they walked in.
         And she goes – I swear to God – she goes, “If you had been waiting in the right area, maybe I would have seen you.” That was funny because the couple was standing about four feet to my left when she called them. And also, who are you, the pizza police? Do you even want my business? Why are you being so nasty? It’s seriously people like her, who impose unnecessary rules for no reason whatsoever that make this world an evil place. Hitler was that kind of person. So was your sister.
         Apparently I said all that stuff out loud.
         I guess I said it pretty loud, too, because everyone in the place was just kind of looking at me at this point. And of course it was about then that I caught a glimpse of my dad through the window, coming up the block, not the slightest clue how nasty our waitress was going to be. Well, I shut the hell up because I didn’t want him to think I had picked a fight with the waitress in the three minutes it took him to park the car in Peru – he was always saying I was getting in fights with people. So I said I was sorry and that I didn’t mean it and that I would wait right there, four feet to the left, for another table to open up. And she just kind of pouted and walked away, the other couple in tow.
         It was about then, right as my dad was pushing through the door and your sister was turning away, that I realized that maybe she wasn’t a bitch, that maybe she was just having a bad day – she was, I came to find out. Your mother had just died. She was a great woman, from what I’ve heard. Sorry again about that.
         Well, I didn’t do anything about it then, but I promised myself I’d make it up to her by the end of the night.
         My dad came through the door about the time I got done promising to myself. The poor guy was smiling and completely ready to eat this pizza and had absolutely no idea how big an ass I’d made of myself before he came in.
         So we ended up waiting there for another fifteen minutes or so even though a booth had opened up about two minutes after our little interchange, but finally your sister told us to follow her to the back and she seated us right there, pretending like nothing was wrong but staring daggers and all that. It’s kind of like the look she’s giving me right now. Hey, sweetie. I should probably figure out what’s wrong, but let me finish the story.
         Well, we went to order drinks, and my dad ordered a Sam Adams Winter Lager, which they didn’t have, so he just got the Boston Lager instead. He loves Sam Adams. I’m more of a Rolling Rock guy, and that’s exactly what I ordered. But get this – she carded me! That’s right, your sister carded a twenty-seven year old man out to dinner with his fifty-three year old father. I was obviously not under the legal limit – even though I’ve always looked young (and sexy, too) – so I asked her right then why she needed to see I.D.
         “For the beer.”
         That’s all she said. For the beer. Can you believe that? I wasn’t expecting that. I was bracing myself for some nasty retort or more dagger staring or something and this girl, without even missing a beat, goes, “For the beer.”
         Well, normally I have my license on me but I had left it in the center console of the car, which was evidently back in Peru, so I was shit out of luck on the beer front for the evening. It was a pretty ingenious passive-aggressive comeback if I do say so myself. So was the burnt pizza that came over a little while later.
         It was a bit after she came by to ask how everything was, no longer staring daggers but chipper and happy, that I saw her crying. It was an accident, too. I went searching for the bathroom and down the same hall was a back exit. Well, she was standing by the door, hand to her eyes, under her glasses, sniffling and choking up and the like – and I saw my chance to make things right.
         I tried to think of something witty and appropriate to say but nothing came to me, mostly because I’m pretty sure there’s nothing witty and appropriate to say in that situation. So what I did was I just gave her a big bear hug like we’d been dating for months or she was my sister or something. Now, I braced myself for the worst and expected her to pull away, but she kind of just sunk into my arms and started sobbing a little harder. Quietly, but harder. I remember standing there for what felt like ever and thinking about how her white shirt looked pink because it was bathed in the glow of the orange EXIT sign, but eventually I came around to saying something and when I did, it happened to be “I’m sorry.”
         And she said it wasn’t my fault and I said I knew that, but I also knew she dealt with assholes like me on a daily basis and that definitely didn’t make whatever it was any easier, so on behalf of all the assholes she dealt with all day long, I was sorry. She laughed at that and pulled back a little bit, and I thought that was going to be the end of it until she quoted Walt Whitman.
         I thought she was pulling away from me, but it turns out she was just trying to look into my eyes for a minute. And then she said, completely out of the blue, she just said, “What is that you express in your eyes? It seems to me more than all the print I have read in my life.”
         I said House of Leaves, and she said Leaves of Grass, and I said shit and I knew I had fallen in love.
         She said, “It’s fine. I’m a writer, I’m supposed to know that stuff.”
         And I suppressed the urge to explain that actually she was a waitress and I could prove it by all the table waiting I had seen her doing, and that I was an actual writer, but really I just said the last part.
         And she said that then it wasn’t fine and I should never again mix up Walt Whitman with anyone, especially this Danielewski or Denulsky or Doo-hicky fellow, so help her God.
         Well that was the beginning of a really long talk we had about how House of Leaves is actually the best piece of literature in modern history, and about her mom and what a great woman she was and about you, actually. And we talked for a long, long time and after that I never called your sister a bitch ever again, until just a minute ago.
         And I never wrote that shitty review, by the way. My dad did, as a comment on that blog, because the damn place burnt his pizza and didn’t serve his twenty-seven year old son a beer and, while he was on the subject, stole his son’s heart. But I think he took it down when he got our wedding invitation a few months ago. Anyway, yeah. I hated your sister the first time I met her. But that’s how things work. Now I can’t even see the slightest flaw in that girl. She’s damned beautiful and she’s all mine and you know what? I love those goofy wire-rim glasses she used to wear.

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