Charlie Brown’s Steakhouse by Matthew Dexter

My six grade teacher always used to eat at this restaurant where I used to work as a waiter. Mind you this was much later, about eight years after my last visit with the intricate labyrinth of wrinkles on her face–after I failed at college in Arizona, returned to New Jersey; when serving prime rib, pouring drinks, and making Caesar salads was more my thing. She was the oldest teacher I ever had, and she lived with the theatre lady in an apartment near Charlie Brown’s Steakhouse, where they would sit in the lounge downstairs at least once a week.

I worked at Charlie Brown’s for many months, but never once said hello. I hid behind the hostess stand beside the helium machine that blew up the colored balloons for the children. Sometimes I would sit near the top of the stairs and spy, watching the restaurant insignia grow obese. The helium machine hissed and instantly the balloon would fill with majesty so fast it sucked air into their lungs. The kids watched, smiling. Then I would go out the side door for a cigarette break.

I used to fake bake every day, often hitting the tanning saloon on my lunch hour when I was pulling a double shift. Once I was so careless I cut my finger while chopping celery. They had this device that chopped the lemons into eight perfect slices. I collected them in a plastic bucket during pre-shift. But other fruits and vegetables were more tedious, and dangerous. I sucked the blood, a vampire with black apron; face whitening, worried, while my teacher and her lover sat at their usual booth.

“You okay?” Nathan asked. He was the best waiter, big belly, burning ambition, delivering impeccable service for tips, when he should have been working on Wall Street.

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

They smoked and her voice sounded like bottled-up thunder. Always thankful watching their turkey necks shaking, happy they made it another day. Every second is gravy for them. They weren’t strong, but had healthy appetites.

Supposedly the teacher cried when I thanked her at the end of the year; some bullshit note that made it all worth it in the end. Teachers’ salaries and social security makes morning meals their security blanket. Like Linus and Snooki, the smell of freshly cooked flesh is my security blanket. Hands in apron, watch them doggishly eating salads, French onion soup, smoking, drinking coffee, diet sodas with a straw and sliced lemon wedge with their Hibachi Chicken Sandwiches.

What would I have said, if I were to say anything? Sucking the blood from my finger, balloons growing bigger, as if they’re about to explode, but rarely do. Should she remember me? Sometimes she looks in my direction. Does she keep that note under her pillow? Is my handwriting in that old shoebox in the back of her closet? Are they really lesbians or merely two lovers enjoying a good restaurant?

When lunch is finished and they leave, I look at the helium machine and wonder what the hell’s wrong with me. When will I ever grow up?