parties, festivals that previous summer, all the lovers won
and lost, and though I really tried I couldn’t work out
where I fitted in. Their in-jokes made me chilly, and my
shivering killed their laughter dead.
I was their Percy.
I would have let them brand me with a burning log, Ava,
if only!
No,
I pretended to have other friends and plans
to save them having to include me all the time.
I’m sure they knew.
I was working as a waitress in a restaurant down
the road – Colombian Fusion.
My boss was this neurotic woman in her forties,
gym-obsessed from Somerset, who owned the business
with her husband and his mother who was the chef.
She would say –
He’s the Colombian, I’m the fusion!
All the time.
She’d also look me up and down and say
a hundred squats a day would change your life.
She requested that I sweetly sing – hola! – when anyone
came in.
We had Colombian customers of course. They winced at
this, peered past me to the kitchen to make sure.
A few days into working there my boss confided
she was having an affair – she’d started sleeping with the
owner of a rival restaurant down the road.
Italian place. Italian man.
He’d pop by occasionally – drink a beer,
chat to the husband or to me while she served tables
hip-ily – coming back to shake the cocktail shaker in a
way that made her tits bounce quite chaotically.
Ciao baby! She’d say to him. We’re always glad to
have the competition over, and she’d ruffle her husband’s
hair and kiss him on the head while holding the Italian’s
eye.
She was obsessed with being obsessed.
Would ask me endless questions –
Did I think that she was bad?
