adam

Nothing pisses Adam off like being asked what else he does. Isn't this enough ? he'd hiss.

What he really wanted to say is that he drinks, watches hockey and fucks waitresses when his girlfriend isn't around. Or another answer he would mutter after all the diners were home and snug in their beds is that he robs tourists at gunpoint. Why is it, Adam often wondered aloud, that everyone thinks this is our little hobby, that this is a side job we do to amuse ourselves. The answer they're looking for goes like this: I'm in med school, I'm an intern on the hill, I'm a writer.
The truth is more like this: I'm a loser who spends his days off masterbating and eating fried foods, I'm dying of AIDS and hate myself, the police are looking for me, but I still have to pay my bills.

Adam went beyond the breaking point regularly. While fairly well insulated from termination by virtue of dating the General Manager, he had been counselled to take a week or two off sometimes, and moved to San Francisco for a while, only to find that most of the waiting jobs were taken by losers who moved there before him.

Once, the calming drone of dining in main hall was shattered by a loud crash. Then another, this time with yelling and the sound of splintering wood. Then more crashing. It was Adam breaking chairs. He'd been pushed over the edge, probably by a customer who needed more mayonaisse. Or a busboy who went on his break while people were still being seated. Or maybe by the Rangers losing three in a row, whatever the cause of his violence, the outcome was the same. Despite broken furniture, or sometimes ketchup bottles, (which explode in a most satisfying thunk) Adam would be healed, as would those around him, whose frustrations were vented through proximity to this selfless activity. He was our patron saint, the waiter messiah, willing to die for our sins, to break so that we would not be broken. Following these tempests would be an eerie calm, and benign nods from the management. It's just Adam, they'd say, as though this were expected and acceptable behavior. Which it was.