Valet - eh?

It was Thursday night. I carried a plastic double-sided sign to the entrance of the parking garage.  I opened it up and put one leg on the sidewalk and the other in the street.  People were coming and going all around me, like passengers in an airport.  Servers, boat captains, cooks, bartenders, deliverymen, parking attendants, cashiers, bussers.  Restaurants and bars pumped employees in and out like blood through a heart.  I made sure everything I needed was in order and then all that was left was to wait.

            Mitchell was supposed to arrive at 5pm. It was 5:15 and he was nowhere in sight.  I paced frantically hoping he would get there soon. 

            “Valet!” two guys in white button-down shirts, black pants and black vests walked up behind me.  I turned around and didn’t recognize either of them.  I gave a pitiful half smile.  The guy who’d called my name was smoking a cigarette.  Big fake diamond earrings dangled from his earlobes.  He had a thin, chinstrap string of facial hair hugging his jaw line.  He looked like a porn star.  “You the valet?” 

“Yea,” I said attempting an air of cool.  “You guys working on the boat?”

He took a long drag from his cigarette and then looked over his shoulder.  He held smoke in his lungs and without exhaling answered, “Yup.”

“You guys servers?”

“Slot technicians.”

I imagined him patrolling old lady’s coin cups, giving errant machines a stiff elbow if needed.  He moved on to talk to someone more interesting.  Standing there with baggy shorts and a shirt tucked in too tight I wasn’t up to his standard.   He and his buddy left me standing awkwardly outside the circle of conversation. 

            A car pulled into the valet only lot.  My boss’s instructions echoed in my brain “If they aren’t valet, call the number and have ‘em towed.”  Maybe it was Mitchell. 

            I jogged over to the lot.  Two Filipinos, an older woman and a younger man, sat in a red, dilapidated T-Bird.  The man rolled down his window as I approached. 

“Valet only sir.  I can valet your car or you can park in the garage.”

“What is the cost, valet?”

“I’m seven, the garage is ten.”

The old women butted in, “We can’t park enwhere, not there, not there, not here.  We going on the boat to gamble, where we park?”

I was sweating, my face was glistening, I could feel it.

“I’m sorry,” I offered, “but I just work for the company that is using this lot.  I don’t want to tow anybody.”

The man and woman both perked up at the passive aggressive threat and the woman looked in her purse for some cash.  They were pissed.

“Ok,” the man said getting out of the car. “I want you to leave it parked like this.”

“I will have to move it against that wall,” I said pointing over his shoulder.

“Why, why you can’t leave like this?”

“Because it doesn’t make sense, I have to organize the lot like this,” I made two parallel movements with my arms. “One row like that, another like that.”

“I want you to leave it here, like this.”

I smiled despite being frustrated. “This is how I was told to do it…”

“Huh,” he interjected sharply.

“I have to do it like this, this is how I have to park them.”

He shook his head and went to give me the keys.

“Wait,” I said, “I need to get you a ticket.” 

They walked off in the direction of the casino will call and I ran to get their ticket.  One part tore off as their receipt, another went on the dash of their car and the middle section of the ticket went onto their key ring.  Tear, tear, stab. 

            I jogged over to them standing in line.  The woman gave me the seven dollars and I gave them their piece of the ticket.  I could see all her bottom molars were missing as she gave me a perfunctory smile.  “Good luck,” I told them.