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     "Good afternoon.  Do you have a reservation?"
     They're very dressed up, these two.  Especially for a weekday lunch at a classy but small restaurant.  She's going to have to make an effort.
     She shows them to a reasonably good table, gives the sales pitch about the soups (potato, beef vegetable, chicken noodle) and the pasta (alfredo, mushroom, spinach), and gets drinks.  It's 12:30, and Rachel is already sick of work.
     Someone in the kitchen rings the bell, and she wanders in, ready to balance plates up her arms and smilingly deliver food she wants to eat to people she can't stand (Table 5 has small, uncontrolled children), but it's only the day chef, Jeremy, wanting the phone.  
     Jeremy is tall and dark and sometimes tries to be mysterious.  He has black hair (of course he does) that offsets his blue eyes in the most predictable of ways.  Rachel wonders if he plans to cook and talk to his silly blonde girlfriend at the same time, and nearly says so, but Jem comes from the temperamental school of chefdom, and it's probably better to leave her comments at the door, because he looks cranky.  Rachel sighs.  Often Jeremy looks in need of a hug, but last week the new girl asked him what was wrong and he threw a plate at the wall, so Rachel figures hugging is a little out of the question.
    A group of four arrive.  Because they are people, they choose to sit at the one uncleared table in the restaurant, in spite of the fact that there are six other free, clean tables, and then complain because it's got dishes on it.  Rachel reminds herself that she is getting paid.  She takes the dishes through to the kitchen and tries not to listen in on Jeremy's phone conversation.  She winces.  Definitely the silly blonde girlfriend.  Unenthusiastically, she heads back to the table of two, on the way stepping over a child from Table 5, who hits her in the leg with a fork and a great deal of enthusiasm before screaming and throwing silverware the length of the room.  
     "Ooh! Has Ryan dropped his fork?  Ryan's dropped his fork!  Excuse me! Excuse, me, miss! We need another fork," his mother says in a high-pitched voice to rival the squeals of her child.  
     "Certainly," Rachel says, smiling as though Ryan just enchants her.  She goes to get them a fork, thinking, some people shouldn't be allowed to go out in public, and he didn't drop it, woman, he threw it!  They also want more drinks, so naturally, she complies.
     Back to Table 12, with the rich couple, who have announced to the restaurant that they are now ready to order.  The woman extends a frighteningly manicured nail towards the menu.
     "What, exactly, is the Monterey Chicken?"
     Rachel informs her that is is, alarmingly, grilled chicken with a topping of monterey cheese.
     "You're sure it's not a type of fish?"
     Rachel assures her that yes, she's positive.
     "Good," the woman says, tapping her nails on the menu, "Because I'm allergic to fish.  Highly allergic."  She then glares at Rachel as if to imply that Rachel had been trying to give her fish, and her husband puts his hand protectively on her arm.  Together they glare poshly at her.
     Rachel takes the order to the kitchen.  Jem is off the phone, and he doesn't look happy.  She suspects that he and the girlfriend have broken up again.  They break up regularly.  Like everything else, it gets predictably routine.  She drops off the order and leaves.
     The group of four, sitting at their nice, clean table, has been looking at their menus for several minutes now, and decides to order steak hoagies.  The only problem is, there are no hoagies on the menu.
     "I'm sorry," she says, "But we don't actually have any hoagies on the menu."  She sings the praises of the club sandwich and the panini (turkey, bacon, cheese, tomato, pesto), the closest thing to a hoagie, but this is just not good enough.
     "Look," one man says, "we heard a man over there (vague gesture to the corner of the dining room) talking about a submarine sandwich," in a tone designed to let her know that he's in on the Submarine Sandwich Conspiracy.
     "Honestly, sir! Just because someone said it doesn't make it true!" This is not what Rachel says.  Instead, she smiles politely and apologizes again.  Eventually the whole table gets rather huffy and decides to have Caesar salads.  The man keeps looking at Rachel as though she's hiding a hoagie behind her back, purely out of spite.
     She goes to the kitchen to pick up their orders, and Jeremy hands her the plates.  This is a little weird.  Jem doesn't usually hand her plates, but then again sometimes Jem is a little weird.  She shrugs it off and thanks him.
     Jem's hand touches hers under a plate (unintentionally, of course) as she's about to leave the kitchen, and she gets slightly flustered.  She nearly drops the soup, but then it's only because that stupid child Ryan is crawling around again.  Table 5 doesn't have anymore requests.  This is surprising.  Rachel thinks, I need a cup of coffee.  The bell rings.  Damn, that will be the food for the posh table.  Nevermind.
     She returns and makes a flippant comment about coffee.
     The food's there, and as she reaches for it she notices that her hand is shaking slightly.  Jem looks at her hand, then at her face, and raises an eyebrow.  Sometimes Jem's eyes are a little too piercing.  Rachel wonders idly if he has ever worn eyeliner, since he does buy into that kind of thing, and studies the edges of his eyes.  Jem looks like he is about to say something.
     The kitchen is kind of small.
     Rachel delivers the food and makes coffee for herself.  The posh table with the allergy woman sees this and suddenly decides that they want coffee. This starts off a restaurant-wide trend that keeps Rachel at the coffee machine for the next 20 minutes, while her own coffee goes cold. Rachel wonders what would happen were someone to lose their mind and shit on the floor during the dinner service. Would everyone do it, or would it be like when someone orders cheap beer and everyone else pretends not to notice while sipping their medium white wines?
    The kitchen bell rings.  The monotony is killing her.  She walks in, saying "I am so sick of being charming..." to no one, because Jem is outside.  The phone is sitting on the bench.  She takes it back into the restaurant.