Читать книгу Molly’s Game: The Riveting Book that Inspired the Aaron Sorkin Film - Molly Bloom, Molly Bloom - Страница 11

From the outside, Boulevard, the restaurant where I’d just been hired, looked dark and mysterious. When I walked in, I saw the young Hollywood set lounging on suede ottomans and leather banquettes. I felt as if I were crashing a private party.

I arrived thinking it would be like the other jobs I’d had. I would receive some training and then start, but that wasn’t the kind of place Reardon Green ran: it was sink or swim in his world. Everyone was rushing around, nobody had a second to answer a question, and I was constantly in the way. I stood in the middle of the whirlwind and took a deep breath. It appeared I didn’t have any tables assigned to me yet, so I started doing laps around the restaurant clearing plates and refilling drinks. I placed a lemon-drop martini in front of a woman I recognized from some show on television.

“Oh, actually, can you bring me the whole lemon?” she asked me.

She turned to her fellow diners. “I like to cut it myself—just to make sure it’s really fresh. You see them sitting out there in those plastic bins covered with flies.” She shuddered and the whole table shuddered with her. Of course, then they all wanted to garnish their own drinks now. I was sent off to find an orange, a lemon, and a lime.

The walk to the kitchen took me past tables full of celebrities and socialites, and I tried not to stare at the A-list faces I had seen in magazines but never in person. As I pushed through the kitchen doors, the noise of the dining room receded behind me.

The kitchen had its own sound, a symphony of orders and acquiescences, the clink of plates, the thud of heavy iron pots, and the hiss of meat hitting a pan. Andrew was screaming at the sous-chefs and hurrying plates to go out to the tables. I rushed through it all and made for the fridge, trying not to bother anyone or get in the way. In my hurry, I turned the wrong way and found myself in a supply closet where Cam, one of the owners, was leaning back against a mountain of paper towels with his pants around his ankles. I stopped dead in my tracks. This was by far the most humiliating moment of my life.

“Sorry!” I whispered, still frozen in my tracks.

He smiled at me, affable and completely unembarrassed.

“What’s up!” he said. “Wanna be in my movie?”

He pointed toward the security camera on the ceiling and widened his boyish grin, raising his hand for me to high-five him. The girl who squatted on her knees in front of him giggled. I did not want to insult him, so I gingerly leaned over the girl and quickly slapped his palm. Then I fled as fast as I could, my face burning with embarrassment.

What had I signed on for?

A WEEK AFTER I STARTED WORKING at the restaurant, I went to a party with Steve. I was standing and listening to everybody talk about the pilots they were shooting and the scripts they were writing, feeling very much like an outsider, when a pretty girl grabbed my hand.

“Who cares?” she whispered in my ear. “Let’s take a shot!”

She was dressed head to toe in designer clothes, carrying a bag that was worth more than my car. I followed her into the kitchen. Three tequila shots later, she was my new best friend.

Blair was a party girl, but she was down-to-earth and kind, and she seemed not to have a care in the world. She was the heir to a peanut butter fortune, and her family had houses all over the world, including Beverly Hills, where she had spent her childhood before being shipped off to a fancy private school in New York.

A couple of young girls walked into the kitchen, and Blair flinched. I recognized one of the girls from a popular MTV reality show.

“Oh shit!” Blair said, grabbing the tequila bottle with one hand and my arm with the other. She dragged me into a bathroom down the hallway.

“I hooked up with that girl’s boyfriend and she caught us. She wants to kill me!”

I started laughing as she tipped the bottle back and took a swig. We spent most of the night in the massive marble bathroom, laughing and taking shots, talking about our lives and our big plans for the future. I told her about my living situation—because in a week I wouldn’t have one. Steve had laid down the law.

“Oh my God! Move in with me!” she squealed. “My apartment is gorgeous, you will love it. I totally have an extra room.”

In one drunken night, hiding in a bathroom from a scorned reality star, I found a new comrade and a place to live.

That was L.A. You just never knew what would happen when you left the house.

I DIDN’T LOVE WAITING TABLES, and to be honest, I was pretty terrible at it, but the restaurant was a way into this strange new world, composed of three primary layers: the staff, the customers, and my bosses.

The staff was not your normal restaurant employees. They were all aspiring musicians, models, or actresses and most of them were actually very talented. The waiters were usually aspiring actors who treated their restaurant position simply as a role they were playing. I observed them as they got into character, put their ego aside, and became who they needed to be for the table: flirt, the frat boy, the confidant. The bartenders were usually musicians or models. The girls were sexy and glamorous, and they knew how to work a room. I studied their ability to be flirtatious and coy at the same time. I practiced doing my hair and makeup the way they did, and I took note of the sexy outfits they put together. I tried to make myself small, and take it all in.

The customers were larger than life: celebrities, rock stars, CEO’s, finance wizards, actual princes; you never knew who would show up. Most of them had a pretty healthy sense of entitlement, and keeping them happy all the time was next to impossible. I learned little tricks, though, like speaking to the women first and primarily (for the date tables) or being efficient but invisible during business lunches. I was good at reading human behavior but terrible at food service. I was constantly dropping plates, forgetting to clear certain forks, and I was a disaster at opening wine in the ceremonious way the owners required.

But to me, the most interesting characters of all were Reardon and his two partners.

Reardon was brilliant, impatient, volatile, and impossible. He was the brains of the operation.

Cam was the son of one of the richest men in the world. His monthly trust-fund checks were enough to buy a small island. He seemed to take little interest in the business and, as far as I could tell, spent his time womanizing, partying, gambling, and indulging in every hedonistic vice you could imagine. He was the money; his role was signing off as the guarantor.

Sam had grown up with Cam. He had brilliant people skills. He was charming, hilarious, and he knew how to schmooze better than anybody I had ever seen. I guess he was the head of marketing and client relations.

Watching the three of them interact was like observing a new species. They did not live in the same world I had known for the last twenty-some years. They were over the top, unfazed by consequence and had a total disregard for rules and structure.

THE FORMULA AT THE RESTAURANT was the same as at any in Beverly Hills that hoped to survive—provide the discerning customer with the best of everything. The partners had spent a small fortune on Frette linens, Riedel glassware, and wines from the finest vineyards. The servers were attractive and professional, the chef was world-renowned, and the decor was beautiful.

The inviting atmosphere that the staff created was part of our act. Our politeness was the curtain that concealed the frenzy that was always threatening to surface. You see, the bosses expected perfection and professionalism—that is, until they got a couple drinks in them and would easily forget their carefully laid plans.

One Sunday morning, I went to open the restaurant for brunch, and discovered that Sam, a DJ, and a bunch of girls were still there partying. Sam had turned our fine dining restaurant into his very own seedy after-hours club. I tried explaining to him that I needed to open the large suede curtains and remove the makeshift DJ booth so that I could ready the restaurant for service. He replied in gibberish.

“Dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb …” he garbled, and closed the curtains as quickly as I opened them.

I called Reardon. “Sam is still here partying. He won’t leave and he won’t let me open the restaurant, what should I do?”

“Goddammit! Fuck! Put Sam on the phone. I’m coming down there.”

I handed Sam the phone.

“Dumb dumb dumb dumb,” he continued to Reardon, and handed me back the phone.

“Get him in a cab!!” yelled Reardon.

I looked around the room, but Sam had disappeared.

“Wait, I think he’s gone,” I said.

Just then, I looked out the window. Sam, with his large-face gold Rolex, polished Prada shoes, and beige silk pants, was outside boarding a bus. I ran out to try to stop him. I started laughing into the phone.

“What’s going on, what’s he doing?” Reardon demanded.

“He’s getting on the bus to downtown L.A.”

“As in public transportation?”

“Yep,” I replied as a happy and obliterated Sam waved cheerfully to me from his seat on the bus.

“Jesus.” Reardon sighed. “Tell the Hammer to pick him up.”

The Hammer was the guys’ security slash limo driver slash money collector. I heard he had recently gotten out of jail for something, but no one would tell me what.

I called the Hammer, who grumpily agreed to take the “sled,” which was what Sam had named the company limo, to find Sam somewhere in the streets of downtown. When I hung up and turned around, the DJ and the girls were just about to open a thousand-dollar bottle of Louis XIII champagne.

I swooped in and grabbed the bottle.

“No, no, no! Time to go home, guys,” I said. I turned off the music like a parent busting up a party and ushered them out onto the street.

I managed to get the restaurant open in time for brunch and the Hammer eventually found Sam walking the streets of Compton with a bottle of Cristal champagne and some interesting friends. It seemed like every day at the restaurant was more absurd than the last, but it wasn’t ever boring.