The Hooker and the Handyman

Hook it, girl

Hook it, girl

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful young woman named Svetlana. She had jet black hair and huge dark eyes that peered right into a person’s soul. She came to America full of the same hopes and dreams of so many others who came before her. She imagined roads paved with gold and endless opportunities of success, but instead it appears that she became a two-bit Craigslist hooker who ended up sitting at Table 16 with a date who looked like a fucking handyman and was old enough to be her father.
It is 10:37 and we close in 23 minutes. With a temperature outside of 15 ° and the last customer leaving forty minutes earlier, I have already gotten it in my head that I was done for the night. The coffee is dumped, the bread put away, the silverware is rolled and all that is left is for the manager to decide to lock the doors fifteen minutes early. The restaurant door squeaks open and I see a young woman and a much older man walk through the curtain that is hanging to block out the cold night air. Her low-cut black lace dress belied the frigid weather outside. He is wearing baggy jeans and a flannel shirt, his grey scraggly beard in direct contrast to her perfectly coiffed hair. She looks like a hooker. He looks like a handyman.

“Keetchen is steel open, yes?” she asks.

I smile a forced smile as I pick up two menus and let them know they can sit wherever they like. They walk past the eleven two-tops and head directly to one of the only two tables in the restaurant that is set for four people.

“Let’s sit back here,” he says, “where it’s more private and quiet.”

Yes, it’s so loud up in the front of the restaurant with all of those non-existent people. By all means, sit as far away from my computer and side stand as possible.

He sits on one side of the booth and she attempts to sit on the other, but he encourages her to sit next to him. She does so, but it looks like it’s not exactly what she wants to do. At first, I can’t tell what their relationship is. It seems like a date, but I can’t imagine that the two of them have much in common. It slowly begins to dawn on me that they are in the middle of a business transaction and the one thing they have in common is a Pay Pal account so that he can pay her for her time.

Harry the Handyman wants to know what we have to eat and what’s good and I wonder why I even bothered handing him a menu if he doesn’t plan on opening it. As I remove the extra place settings, I rattle off the the items on the menu that can be made in the shortest amount of time exclaiming how delicious the pasta is that takes about six minutes to prepare and conveniently leaving out the roasted chicken that takes twenty-five. He needs to think about it, of course, so I walk back to the bar and stare longingly at my coat and gloves that I had already brought upstairs from my locker.

Two minutes later, he is walking up to me.

“I think she might want some coffee, so why don’t you go ask her how she takes it.”

I know how she will be taking “it” later and it will probably be with two condoms while her eyes are squeezed shut and she’s trying to imagine anyone but Farmer Fred laying on top of her. Of course, she wants coffee so I make a whole pot just for her since the only coffee I had was poured down the drain not five minutes earlier.

They decide on their meal of pan-roasted cod for her (eight minutes) and a medium rare burger for him (ten minutes). After he orders, he again comes up to me at the bar to tell me he is going outside to smoke a cigarette and asks me to “keep an eye on her” while he’s gone. The only thing I have my eye on is the clock and it’s one minute past closing time. As he smokes, I watch the woman constantly check her iPhone and text. I assume she is talking to one of her other prostitute friends about how crappy their jobs are and how awful their customers can be and for one brief moment I completely understand her world.

The kitchen breaks a new record in getting their food out quickly and after I serve the meal, I settle in for what I am sure will be a long rambling dinner as the two of them play footsie and make googly eyes at one another. To my surprise though, they both devour their food with a sense of urgency and they are ready for their check ten brief minutes later. Their expediency only confirms my suspicion that this “date” is on an hourly basis and Larry the Lumberjack doesn’t want to pay for overtime. He hurriedly throws down a couple of twenties to cover the check. I see the woman look at those two twenty-dollar bills with envy, but I know she has already gotten her money for the night. Or at least some of it; maybe he had to put a down payment before dinner and the balance is due after the date ends. I know not how these things work.

He helps her on with her coat, carefully pulling her long dark hair out from the collar and I can’t help but notice that she looks annoyed at him for touching her. He leaves me a good tip and I wonder if he will leave her one later. Or maybe he will give her “just the tip.” Again, I know not how these things work. They vanish into the cold night air and I lock the door behind them. Off they go to make the most of their night together. Two souls joined as one for at least an hour. That is the story of the hooker and the handyman.

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