hotttt

“I just texted my British friend!” he said. “I said, ‘I have a hot waitress from England!’”

I blinked. The man at Table 52 was not unlike any of the other guests at lunch that day. Rheumy eyes, paunchy stomach, air of money - it was all the same. I had just wanted to check in and converse a little, because that was my job. And the best tips were always from older men who sat alone.

He tapped his phone and swivelled it so I could see. The text glared back at me.

“HOTTTT.” He’d written “HOTTTT.” It made me want to take his phone and throw it into one of the fryers. This man was old enough to be my father. 

I didn’t have time to grind my teeth. I needed to stop that habit, anyway; I didn't have dental insurance. I looked back at him and smiled instead.

“Hot? Me? That’s so kind of you!”

Hot was, in fact, my new favorite word. It pertained to everything. Phoenix was hot. The sidewalks got so hot that walking a dog on them was an endeavor for after dark. The air was so hot that everything had to be an indoor activity. Doors got too hot to touch the handles, so stores would cover them in towels so that patrons could touch them. 

I was paid to be hot. The other girls were also paid to be hot. The guests weren’t supposed to touch us, but they were supposed to want to, and we were supposed to be hot enough to keep them coming back. The restaurant was hot; the air conditioning never worked and the girls took turns to walk into the cooler room, hoisting their hair away from their sweaty necks, wiping salty beads from their upper lips.

Our hair was supposed to be styled, our makeup pristine. I, for one, hadn’t figured out how to sweat-proof my warpaint. At least my body looked alright when it glistened. Hot, even. Table 52 seemed to think so. 

I watched him for a moment, wiping some of the grease from his sandwich onto a napkin. I wondered where else he’d like to put those fingers. 

Most of the guests were harmless. But you never knew. 

I didn’t, anyway. Not two weeks prior, a man had driven four hours to the city just to catch me at midnight in time for a ride home. I had declined the ride. I had declined the visit, in the first place, but he'd come anyway. The next day, he came to my apartment and knocked while I lay in bed, frozen. I had thought we were friends, until he’d started asking if I could “put in a good word” for him with some of the other, younger, girls. Until he’d invited me into his bedroom, where there were pictures of women in leather constraints against the powder-blue walls. Until he’d leaned in for a kiss and puckered his lips against my ear. This man was also old enough to be my father. I didn’t think he was going to come back and skin me alive, or anything. But you never knew.

I looked down at Table 52’s phone again. The screen had changed to his home page, where a picture of a beautiful girl looked back. I asked him who the girl was. 

“Oh! That’s my daughter,” he said.

“She’s beautiful.”

She was. She had clear, olive skin and bright white teeth. I couldn't see her body in the photo, but I assumed it was athletic, and probably covered in a sundress, feet shoed against the ground in sandals. 

It must have been nice to be her. 

The man rubbed his chin, fingers cleaned of chicken grease. He hadn't shaved very well that morning.

“She is. She's very attractive. She doesn't get her looks from me!”

That, I could agree with. 

I asked him what he did for work. He said he ran a logistics company. I told him my dad was a lorry driver. He laughed, then, because I didn't know the exact word to describe the kind of vehicle my dad drove. In my mind, it was just the lorry-with-the-crane-on-the-back. 

To the man at Table 52, I was a treat. A hot little British girl, tits pushed up for his pleasure. A hot little British girl who made him laugh before a round of golf. A hot little British girl that he could talk to for the cost of a chicken ranch sandwich and an iced tea. Much cheaper than the strip club, more interactive than Sports Illustrated.

The phrase “winner winner chicken dinner” seems eerily apt.

I’ve never forgotten what my dad said to me when I asked him about the page three models. I’d seen them here and there, whenever stray tabloids weren’t tucked away from the prying eyes of us girls. The page three models lolled against stone walls and palm trees, some thrusting their arms into their hair, and their boobs stared blankly at the camera. I had wanted to know why they did that. Why were these women naked in the newspaper? Why didn’t they put some clothes on and work in supermarkets or hospitals or schools, like all the women I knew? 

Dad said, “well, if they can make money that way, then good for them.” 

Dad had not, however, sat me down and told me that those women could afford their rent but they could not afford to go out alone at night. In order to pop out for a pint of milk past midnight they needed a bodyguard, or a boyfriend. Dad never instilled a level of caution about the world in me because he’d never had to have one. It was one of his virtues: he was trusting and kind and cheerful, always. So I became trusting and kind and cheerful, too.

This was the wrong line of work to be trusting. Men sitting alone at high top tables didn't tip big for chitchat. Men sitting alone at high top tables were the same sort of men who found you on Facebook and messaged you asking when you were working. Men sitting alone at high top tables said they weren't like other men sitting alone at high top tables, and then it was too late and they came knocking. Men sitting alone at high top tables equated hotness and cheerfulness with availability. And being hot is frightening. I knew this now.

“You have a great personality,” the man with the rheumy eyes said. “I can see it. You have a lot of potential.”

I wanted to ask him to give me a job. Give me benefits. Give me vacation time, so I could go home and squeeze my dad and tell him I was sorry for moving so far away and that America was too hot and too full of stupid people and guns, and that I'd like very much to get a fry-up from the burger van now, please. I'd like to sit in the lorry or on the sofa or somewhere safe, please. I'd like not to have to smile through gritted teeth while a man whose daughter was my age told me I was fuckable, please.

I said “thank you,” instead.

After he left, I siphoned the contents of his plate into the trash and took the black book to the register. 

He'd tipped me ten dollars. Seventy-one percent.

Good for me, I guess.