A Special Relationship (16 page)

 
Carrie nervously tucked a few strands of her bob-styled hair behind her small ear before she spoke.
 
Robert exhaled.

 
“Yes, ma’am,” she said so nervously that she then cleared her throat.
 
“I was waiting to take your orders.”

 
“Then why didn’t you say that?
 
You don’t just stand here getting all into our business like this.”

 
Robert looked at Tyler, who had a reputation for being disrespectful to service workers.
 
It always bothered him, but never to this degree.
 
“Let’s just order,” he said.

 
“No, now Robert, this is important.
 
I want to know why she felt some grand need to just stand here hovering over us like—”

 
“That’s enough, Ty,” he said firmly.
 

 
Tyler stared at him as if she wanted to fire back.
 
“Anyway,” she said, knowing not to push Robert too far or he’d leave her in a heartbeat.
 
“What are we ordering?” she asked him.
 

 
Carrie looked at Robert too, but as soon as his gray eyes so much as glanced her way, her heart fluttered.
 
What was it about this man, she wondered, that caused her to have all of these crazy kinds of feelings every time he just looked at her?
 
Yes, he was impressive.
 
Yes, he was unbelievably handsome.
 
Yes, he was a kind, respectful, good Christian man.
 
But so what?
 
He wasn’t even available, and even if he was there was no way, Carrie knew,
that
she could even see herself with some white guy like him.

 
“We’ll have the baked Tilapia, both with baked potatoes,” he said.

 
“Butter and sour cream?”
Carrie asked, writing intently to avoid looking at him again.

 
“Yes.”

 
“Salad, cole slaw, or mashed potatoes?”

 
“Salads.”

 
“Dressing?”

 
“Ranch.”

 
“For both?”

 
“Yes.”

 
“Lite on the dressing,” Tyler instructed Carrie.
 
“If it’s swimming in it we will not hesitate to return it.”

 
Carrie nodded, taking down that request too.
 
“Anything else?” she asked them, looking at Tyler this time.

 
“That’s it,” Tyler said, and Carrie began to collect their menus.
 
She grabbed Robert’s menu without a problem, trying hard not to
so
much as look in his eyes.
 
Tyler, however, reached for her glass of wine just as Carrie reached for her menu, and the collision of hands caused the glass to tip over and spill onto Tyler’s beautiful, expensive, eggshell white Chenille pantsuit.
 
Carrie’s heart dropped.

 
“No-you-didn’t!”
Tyler yelled as she jumped from her seat, the wine draining like a paint brush down the front of her white jacket.
 

 
“Oh, no!”
Carrie said nervously, seeing the damage too, as other patrons in the restaurant looked their way.
 

 
Robert stood up and grabbed the overturned, still pouring glass, to try and minimize the damage, but he knew the damage had already been done.
 
He looked at Carrie.
 
As he had suspected, she was nearly frantic with regret.
 
She kept saying “I’m so sorry,” over and over, her sad eyes now wide with worry as she grabbed napkins to see if she could help undo this nightmare she had just caused.

 
But Tyler was too angry to even consider Carrie’s help.
 
She slung Carrie’s shaky hand away from her, calling her a “clumsy witch” as she did.
 
But Carrie insisted on helping, believing desperately that dabbing napkins on the stain could lessen its’ impact.
 
Tyler, however, was furious.

 
“If you don’t stop touching me!” she yelled angrily and slung Carrie’s small hands away from her again.
 
Robert knew Tyler all too well and moved to get in front of her before that temper of hers really erupted, but he didn’t move fast enough.
 
Tyler, just appalled that some lowly waitress could ruin her evening like this, looked at Carrie with renewed anger and then slapped her hard across the face.
   
   

 
“Tyler, that’s enough!”
 
Robert shouted angrily and lunged toward her, pulling her back and away from Carrie before she could do further harm.
 
The entire restaurant went silent, watching this live movie, and Alphonso, who had been summoned by his staff, began hurrying to the table.
 

 
Robert, like everybody else in the room, looked at Carrie.
 
And that look on her face did him in.
 
He didn’t see anger there.
 
He didn’t see a woman ready to do as most females in her position would have done and returned Tyler’s insult with a slap of her own.
 
All he saw was disappointment.
 
And sadness.
 
And the
kind of deep-seated hurt and pain
that no one event could have possibly caused.
 
Tyler’s slap, Robert believed, was just the accumulation of a long road of heartache this young woman had undoubtedly endured.
 

 
Carrie had wanted to slap Tyler back.
 
She wanted to with all that she had.
 
But she held back.
 
Not because of any great restraint that she had, but because she knew she’d be fired for certain if she fought a customer.
 
“I said I’m sorry,” she said, regulating the emotion in her voice.

 
“You’re sorry all right,” Tyler shot back from behind Robert, who now stood between the two ladies.
 
“That’s your problem.
 
You’re lazy and sorry and every other poor excuse for a human being! I can’t stand people like you.
 
Probably did it on purpose anyway.”

 
“On purpose?”
Carrie said, astonished, her voice now strained, tears beginning to well up in her pretty eyes.
 
Robert’s heart ached for her when he saw the glimmer of tears and all he wanted at that very moment was to pull her into his arms and protect her from barracudas like Tyler Langley for the rest of her life.
 
But who’d protect his heart from her, he wondered, when her true colors were inevitably revealed and she turned out to be not quite the sweet innocent he’d took her for?
 
Gloria had him snowed once too.
 
He had wanted to protect her too.
 
Now he wondered if he hated her.

 
Yet, he still felt a need to defend Carrie, to make it clear to Tyler that no way she could believe that the spill was nothing more than an accident.
 
But before he could say a word, the restaurant’s manager was upon them.
 

 
“In the kitchen,” he said to Carrie as soon as he arrived at their table.
 
Then he quickly turned to Tyler and apologized passionately, assuring her that Jetson’s would pay all expenses related to the cleaning or replacement of her pantsuit.
 
Carrie, however, hadn’t moved and Alphonso, not in the mood for this at all, frowned.
 
“I said get in the kitchen, Banks!” he said between clenched teeth.

 
Carrie looked at the customers in the restaurant, who were looking at her as if she was a piece of trash that had blown in, the kind of
you’re not good enough
looks people like her had to deal with all of their lives.
 
Then she looked at Robert.
 
He was the only one in the entire room who had the courtesy to not stare at her.
 
He, in fact, wasn’t looking at her at all.

 
But before Alphonso could humiliate her even more than she’d already humiliated herself, she hurried for the kitchen.
 
She could hear Alphonso apologizing to Tyler Langley again and the atmosphere of gaiety in the restaurant beginning to reemerge.
 
Carrie, however, was devastated.
 
She needed this job almost as badly as she needed air to breathe.
 
It was her freedom, her chance to finally begin to live her life without the dominance of her mother around, or the criticisms of her sister, or the demands of men like Dale and Willie Charles who wanted to mold her and make her into what they wanted her to be, regardless of what she wanted.
 
She wanted to never again have to depend on another human being for as long as she lived, that was what she wanted.
 
She wanted her freedom.
 
And she wanted it now.
 
And this simple job, this little nothing low level employment that many would view as no big deal at all, was her chance.
 
That was why she prayed that she didn’t lose it.
 
That was why she prayed that Alphonso would cool himself down, and give her another chance.

TEN

They walked to Tyler’s car in a somber mood, as if they’d just witnessed a tragic car wreck.
 
Robert was especially grim, as he couldn’t get that hurt look on Carrie’s face out of his mind.
 
And the way Tyler treated her, as if she as the lowest of the
low,
made him barely able to remain in her presence.
 
But a quick reality check kept him with her.
 
Her never pretended to be with Tyler because of her winning personality.
 
It was all about the sex.

 
Tyler was somber, too, but her somberness had nothing to do with her treatment of that brainless waitress, as she saw Carrie, but she hated that Robert had to see her lose her cool like that.
 
She wanted this man to love her and marry her, not to be repulsed by her.
 
And the way he treated her after the spill, made her certain that repulsed was exactly what he was.

 
They had parked their vehicles across the street in a private parking lot because Jetson’s had filled to capacity, but now Tyler was upset about that too.
 
With the prices Jetson’s charged, she noted, they should at least provide adequate parking.
 
Robert looked at her as she complained, and he knew the parking problem wasn’t nearly what annoyed her most.
 

 
Carrie, or that clumsy waitress as Tyler knew her, was on her mind.
 

 
“Get over it, Ty,” he said to her.

 
“That’s easy for you to say,” she replied as she looked down, once again, at her outfit.
 
The reddish stain was now prominently displayed on the front of her pantsuit, causing her to walk with her purse in front of her.
 
Robert had insisted that she remain and eat her dinner, and she had agreed, but she still could not abate her anger.
 
It wasn’t the cost that bothered
her,
it wasn’t even the act itself.
 
It was the sheer gall of that female, who actually had the nerve to try and help clean up the mess when it was her clumsiness that had caused it in the first place.
 
Tyler even wondered, once again, if the witch had done it on purpose.