The Wait

“You told us it would be about 45 minutes and we have already been here for an hour,” a broad woman with a rigid grin says to the hostess, her teeth clicking together, annunciating each syllable carefully.
“I’m sorry ma’am. Your name is up next.” The short hostess looks up at the massive shoulders and forces a smile.
“How long will it be?”
“As soon as a table for eight clears, we’ll clean it and seat you.”
“Are we talking hours or minutes?”
“Probably only minutes.” She turns her smile on again, larger this time, showing her bright teeth.
The woman walks sour-faced back to her husband, four kids, and in-laws.
“She says we’re next.”
She returns to her spot against a wooden table where she places the round pager down and continues watching her youngest daughter twirl in circles around the center of the lobby, knocking into passersby and forcing the people gathered on the perimeter of the room to push their backs against the walls to avoid being hit. She doesn’t even notice when the pager lights up in a pattern of alternating red lights. People near her watch as the pager reflects in a wine bottle. No one calls her attention to it. They want her table.
“Is there a Parker party of eight?”
The woman snaps out of her reverie. “It’s about time!”
“Do you have your pager?”
“Little good it has done me.” She gropes around the table and picks up the disk. She narrows her eyes and clenches her jaw at the flashing lights.
“Ma’am, we’ve been paging you for five minutes. We almost gave your table up.”
It is nearing 6p.m. on a Friday night , and the lobby at this popular Italian restaurant is overflowing with people. Children are running in circles, babies crying, parents talking, the front door is opening and closing as those coming and going maneuver among people standing or sitting on benches and chairs, all hunkering down to sit out the hour wait for a table and dinner.
As soon as “Parker party of eight” is swooped away, an older woman with silver hair and matching earrings steals a glance at the chair where the older Mr. Parker had been sitting. She makes a lady-like dash for the chair and is narrowly beaten by two teenage girls who plop into the bench as if the music had just stopped in a particularly competitive game of musical chairs. The silver-haired lady redirects herself past the chair, pretending that she has no interest in it, and leans against a wall near the dimly lit bar where a little boy with freckles is pulling leaves from a plant on the floor and counting them.
“One, three, eight, severnneen, twenny, fives, three, six” He counts each one as he stacks them on top off one another. He smiles up at the silver-haired woman, who smiles back an angry, forced sort of smile before looking for an excuse to ignore him. Not affected, the little boy starts his counting game over, taking each leaf from the pile, folding it neatly, and dropping it in the woman’s purse that hangs conveniently at his eye level.
Meanwhile, a little girl in orange crocs and a purple dress is staring at the freckled boy between adult legs from across the room. She breaks away from her mom and clunks over to him, upsetting a new mother and her baby carrier.
“Hannah, be careful. Come back here,” a voice calls from the other end of the lobby. “Frank, go get Hannah, please!”
A hand reaches down from the sky and grabs Hannah by the back of her lilac dress. She is yanked up from the floor, and just in time; a man swollen with pasta and bread and sporting a marinara stain on his crisp blue shirt has almost stepped on her fingers. He smiles a big toothy grin at Hannah who starts bawling back at him from over her father’s shoulder. She inspects the pager in her father’s hand before snatching it away and putting it in her mouth.
Pasta Man holds the door for three women peacocking in from outside. They form a line by the hostess’ stand.
“Hello, how are you tonight?” the hostess asks.
The woman with the largest hair answers, “Three, non-smoking.”
“Can I have a name please?”
“Sherman.”
“It’ll be about 50 minutes. This will blink when we page you.”
“An hour? Are you serious? I’m not waiting an hour.”
The three women tromp out the door, but are immediately replaced by two elderly gentlemen in suits and ties. The first, a slightly balding, skinny man in a too-big suit makes a dash for the hostess.
“How long a wait for two?” he asks, out of breath
“50 minutes or so.”
“That’s not bad.”
Again, the exchange of pager and instructions, and the men survey the lobby in search of a place where two men might sit or stand comfortably together. The people who have already been sitting in the lobby for 40 or so minutes understand the surveying look and spread their legs, move their purses, and lean at a wider angle.
The men eventually find a small nook by a window just in time to hear two old women with penciled eyebrows complain about the wait. “You know, Barry and I were at Texas Road House two days ago, and the wait wasn’t this long. We got in and got sat real quick. I don’t know why this place takes so long,” the first woman wheezes to her friend who nods in agreement.
“They’re always slow here.”
“Maybe it has to do with the fact that the tables have people sitting at them. They can’t kick people out,” the oldest and biggest of the two men interjects good-naturedly.
“Well,” one of the women huffs. Both arch their indignant eyebrows and turn their backs to the man, unable to argue with common sense.