It's holiday party season, and that means a lot of work for Jeremy, an actor/cater-waiter who would rather be watching hoops than passing hors d'oeuvres. But then he gets booked for a big NBA party, and couldn't his life be about to change, right now?
Take a champagne flute, Happy New Year,
The Editors
It was the busy season - the stretch between Thanksgiving and Christmas where the city is non-stop catered events. Office holiday parties, private events in Upper East Side apartments, huge galas thrown by the real estate crowd. Themeless excuses for companies to get drunk. There was work almost every day of the week, and Jeremy had worked 11 of the last 12 days, shifts ranging from 5 to 12 hours a pop. He knew some of the other caterers had been pulling doubles. He’d asked one of them how she could work so much. She looked at him and said, “You gotta get it while you can get it, baby.”
That’s what got Jeremy so ecstatic when he got to the Javits Center and saw a giant ice sculpture of a trophy with a basketball on top. An NBA party? That was different.
Jeremy had always liked basketball, but that fall and winter he’d taken his fanhood to another level. He listened to four different NBA podcasts every week. He split a League Pass subscription with a buddy from high school and specialized in late night games. He chose watching Utah-Dallas alone at 9 p.m. over going out. Preferred falling asleep on the couch with Marv Albert’s and Reggie Miller’s voices echoing in his head to sleeping in bed. Someone on Twitter said they were spending more time following the NBA because it was a distraction from all the bullshit of the world. And Jeremy agreed, even though the person who tweeted that probably worked in politics or immigration law or climate or something important and stressful, and Jeremy was an out-of-work actor who catered a few times a week.
It was not common to be excited at the start of a catering shift. Jeremy worked for a guy named Tom Palonko, a name Jeremy always suspected of being entirely made up. Palonko worked with multiple catering companies across the city and provided supplementary staff as needed. His emails included a mishmash of font sizes and colors, with some things highlighted for no good reason and other key information left out, with a follow up email correcting the previous email. NOTE – this event is Tuesday the 13th NOT TUESDAY THE 14TH but you should’ve known that SINCE THERE IS NO TUESDAY THE 14TH – PLEASE RECONFIRM. There had to be a more efficient system to wrangle some 1099’d cater-waiters, but Jeremy admired the dedication to this web 1.0 form of communication.
Jeremy was an actor, but things weren’t going too hot. He’d moved to New York after college with another actor friend, Oscar. The plan was to stick it out together, but after a few months of trying to find representation, Oscar landed an internship with a magazine, which quickly turned into a full-time gig. A year and change had gone by, and they were still roommates, but Oscar wasn’t auditioning anymore, and Jeremy felt like he was on an island. He’d done a little summer stock theater, met a few actors, which was how he wound up catering, but he felt like he was always missing out on something more exciting. To make money, he catered.
Sometimes there were fancy guests and he’d angle himself and his tray of tuna tartare in front of a celebrity or politician. “May I offer you a pig in a blanket? And by the way, I really admire your work,” he’d say to a bit player he recognized from a mini-series he’d binged. At the rehearsal dinner for a tech billionaire’s daughter, the catering captain was very particular about the billionaire host getting offered every tray of canapes that hit the floor. Jeremy had seen the billionaire on the news – he was flirting with running for president at the time – and relished the opportunity to sell him on some braised short rib sliders. The guy refused every offer, but, Jeremy had to admit, looked him in the eye and said, “No, thank you,” every single time.
After a few months on the job, Jeremy adopted a mantra he’d learned from Russ, an old-timer who captained the Brooklyn wedding circuit in the summertime: get in, get paid, get out. At the start of every event, Russ gathered the crew together for a meeting, going over the schedule of events, the menu, who would be butlering white wine and sparkling water, who would be bussing, what kind of dinner service they were providing (buffet was Jeremy’s favorite – tons of leftovers). Then Russ would look to the group – usually 10-12 caterers, all about 20 years younger than him – and say, “You know, no matter what happens tonight, we’re all gonna go home. The night will come to an end, and we’ll go to our separate apartments. So just… just keep that in mind.” It worked for Jeremy.
But tonight was different. This was the NBA. Where amazing happens. Perhaps it could even be amazing for him. Here was his chance to charm someone into a position where his love for hoops could pay the bills. Maybe he could end up in a commercial campaign. Or on a podcast. At the very least, some free tickets.
The captain was going over details – what time they needed to be room-ready, introducing the floor and sanit captain – and Jeremy got a quick selfie with the championship trophy carved from ice. The head captain, a grey haired guy with a severely pointed, Marvel-villain looking goatee, cleared his throat and reminded everyone that, “we will not be taking photos or posting anything online.” Then he went over assignments. Jeremy was butler/bussing – passing prosecco on silver trays as guests arrived, and then using that same tray to collect used glasses and plates for the rest of the evening. An incredibly dull assignment usually given to the least reliable caterers. Perfect.
Just before go-time, the caterers got hustled off the floor so the photographers could take a picture of the empty room. Jeremy lined up with everyone in the staff holding area, and got ready to eat. They usually served family meal before these big events started. Tonight it was a classic assortment of dry chicken, a chili-like soup, some super leafy salad, and either sweet potato or squash. Massive hunks of unknowable, unseasoned gourd. Jeremy ate, crushed a diet coke, changed into his black shoes, threw his black shirt on, tied his tie, and hit the NBA-ready floor.
As he approached his butlering post, he wondered who the first person to walk in would be. Maybe an agent? Would they be invited to these things? That could be neat, too, working for an agent, learning how to negotiate deals. He had some ideas for how players could make more cash on the side via social media. That would be a great thing to pitch. You gotta get their face direct to camera more often, more selfies! Actors know…
A few unrecognizable folks trickled in, but Jeremy kept his eyes trained on the entrance. He saw a tall silhouette make his way up the stairs with a slow, measured gait. That had to be a player. But who? Muscular, 6-foot-7, at least. Was that Paul Pierce? He was on the Nets now so that would make sense. The guy got closer. Jeremy squinted, but he couldn’t change reality. The man was anonymous. Jeremy realized he wasn’t even that tall.
The room was getting busy. His first tray emptied quickly, and he walked back and forth between the service bar and the floor, getting a fresh tray loaded with six more flutes. He was on edge, trying to scout out his targets. His tray emptied again and he turned back for a refill. All the while Jeremy scanned the crowd, convincing himself there were some NBA stars present, willing them to appear.
But the crowd did not seem unusually gargantuan, and he didn’t recognize anyone. Also, there were a ton of white people here. It started to dawn on him: it was the middle of December and there were seven games tonight all over the country. If he wasn’t here, he would have been flipping between them. Why would any NBA players be taking a night off from playing NBA basketball to attend a Christmas party in New York City?
This was not a glamorous party full of NBA stars and media personalities. This was just another office party where the office happened to be the National Basketball Association.
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The monotony of the evening started to sink in. At big dinners with table service there was a rhythm of pouring wine, taking orders, serving people individually. It could get a little stressful, but it made the night go by more quickly. But tonight? Just circling the room with a tray looking for empty glasses and trash? Mind-numbing.
A look at his watch told him it was only 8:30. The party was scheduled to go until 11. There was just no way.
He knew other cater-waiters would sneak a drink during a shift. And there were definitely a few who’d show up stoned. He guessed there were probably a few guys who would have a joint at work, too, but those were the professional stoners and you’d never know they’d partaken. Getting high on the job wasn’t something he’d normally consider.
But a couple weeks back he’d caught up with a buddy who gifted him a weed gummy, which was still in his backpack. It should stay there, certainly—but the long basketball-star-less evening loomed.
As he wandered through the crowd he started to take stock of his ‘career’ to date. He’d auditioned for a few things over the past couple months, and even had a callback for an off-off-Broadway show about a pastor who gets abducted by an alien. He thought that one went well. But a week went by and he had heard nothing. He googled the show later that month and saw they went with someone who seemed taller and more handsome. Classic.
After a few more mindless trips around the room, Jeremy went for a rummage in his bag. Anything better than this boring job. He popped the edible and went back to scouring the floor for soiled dishes.
He wondered about the life of a wine glass. How it would go from party to party, crated around in a big pink lug. The Party Rental guys dropped it off early in the day, then the catering crew would empty the lugs and set up the bars or the tables. And then that glass would get served to a guest, and the guest would walk around with it, and talk with it, and drink from it, and then some other caterer would come clear it, and empty out the dregs, and put it back into a lug. And then when that lug was full it would get shoved into a pile with the others, and at the end of the night, the team would put all of those lugs into one place, and eventually the rental guys would show up and load all of it on to their truck and take it back to the headquarters out in Jersey. Soon the glasses would be sent out to the next party, where the same thing would happen again. No change.
As he was turning to head back to the floor, a captain stopped him. The pointy goatee guy. Intimidatingly tall. Jeremy wondered if he hooped. For a split second, he thought maybe he was busted. But he didn’t even feel high! The captain held out one finger and listened to his radio, getting some really important news from the front. Then he focused back to Jeremy and said, “I need you to stop what you’re doing and go to coat check.”
Jeremy looked back coolly, put his tray down, and started walking to coat check, which was way on the other side of the building.
He never worked coat check. It seemed easy and he was always a little jealous of the people who got to work it. You just basically chill, hang coats up and give them back. There were even tips that they didn’t share with everyone else. No one ever tipped you for picking up their dirty glasses.
It was on the long walk from the kitchen through the party, past the bar, past the charcuterie displays, past the servers passing desserts, when Jeremy noticed the shift. A slight slowness. Or an awareness of his slowness. Which, maybe he was always this slow but it took an edible to make it clear? He noticed his arms were swinging while he walked, and thought that it was a weird swing, so he tried to stop swinging them, but then his arms were just dangling by his side like big dangly lumps of uselessness, so he shoved his hands in his pockets and kept walking.
He was wondering about his speed or lack thereof when he finally got to coat check, which had been set up in the initial corridor where he’d checked in with the captain that afternoon. It looked completely different now that it was dark, and all the decorative lights were turned on, and the music was playing. Festive, for a corridor. The coat check station was set up on one side, behind a bunch of pipe and drape. Ten-foot-tall curtains enclosed all the coat racks, while a few attendants stood at a table in front to greet guests. Jeremy ducked between a slit in the curtains to get into the coat area when he saw the horror – mountains of coats, all piled up on one another.
He stopped and took it all in. There were a few other caterers trying to dig through everything. He walked over to one and asked what happened? “Fuckin dominos, man. Shit’s a mess,” the guy responded, as he threw a coat in the air. Jeremy nodded, not really understanding. He found a familiar face, someone he’d worked with in the past, asked her what had happened. “The coat racks were set up too close to one another, I guess, and one had too much heavy shit on it, and so it toppled over, and then all the other racks behind it fell.” Jeremy nodded and whistled. He looked back at the ground and could hardly tell where each new coat began.
A handful of caterers were trying to get the racks back on their feet. Jeremy walked down to the front of the domino pile and joined in. There were a couple dozen coats on each rack, and maybe 20 racks had toppled over. As they lifted each one up, most of the coats stayed on the ground. When you went to pick them up, you realized that half of the coats had fallen off their hangers. This meant they were separated from the numbered coat check tag someone had put on the hanger.
They were looking at hundreds of coats and hundreds of hangers with numbered tags and no way to know which one belonged with which except to guess based on the way they fell. Like a forensic detective but with North Faces and cardstock.
It was getting late. The first few guests were trickling out, handing their numbers to the person working the front of coat check, and waiting. Jeremy watched as the woman taking tickets smiled at the guests before turning away and allowing panic to overtake her face. She yelled out “Where is 267?” and they burst into action.
It was chaos. Guests flooded the coat check table, thrusting their tickets at the cater-waiters. There was a log jam. The smiling ticket taker fled. Guests were upset, asking what was taking so long, demanding to be taken in the back so they could find their coats themselves. One of the catering captains wired for more back-up, and another 10 caterers ran down from the party. Soon, each of them was at the front, grabbing a ticket from a random guest and asking them for a detailed description of their belongings.
Jeremy, now dealing with the competing effects of weed, stress, and adrenaline, got into the action, getting a ticket from an older gentleman who said he had a “black peacoat.” Jeremy, thinking about the dozens, perhaps hundreds of black peacoats he’d seen in the back, politely asked for the brand and size, to which the old guy responded, “I don’t know, I think it’s got like a blue tag? Pretty sure it’s a large. Can’t you just do your job?”
It stung, but Jeremy retreated. What was his job anyway. Armed with tiny nuggets of information – black coat, blue tag, large – he turned back to the breach. His fellow cater-waiters ran to and fro, desperately searching for the correct coat, hoping against hope the tag they held in their hands matched a tag on a coat somewhere.
The coats tangled and spun, and he remembered the old catering captain Russ and his words of wisdom: this will end and we will go home. It didn’t feel so definitive tonight.
He wondered, when did Russ come to New York? Was he from here? Was he an actor? He didn’t seem like he was From New York, the way some of the others made it clear they were all caps FROM NEW YORK. And he was a handsome guy, or at least a guy that looked like he probably used to be handsome. So he was probably an actor, and now he was a catering captain and… was that it? Did he still audition? Did he have a family? Would Jeremy?
He lunged for a black coat with a blue tag. As he grabbed for it, he felt a competing tug. Another cater-waiter had spotted it at the exact same time. “What size you looking for?,” she asked. “Large,” Jeremy responded. She inspected the tag. “This is a medium. Mine.” And she snatched the coat from his hands, sprinting around the corner, barreling through the other waiters back to the front, her trophy held in front of her.
Just as he figured he’d be searching for this black coat, blue tag, size large until every other coat had disappeared, it was in his hands. No interfering caterer to contest. It was a clean victory. No casting director smiling politely while they put his name in the NO pile. No headshots sent off into the abyss with no response. No other actor with more connections or a better smile to steal the role. A tangible win. He rushed back to the front of the coat check area, holding the coat in his hands, proud of himself, feeling empathy for the other cater-waiters who had not been so lucky, and mild disdain for the guests yelling at them all to hurry up.
He got to the front, looked around and realized: he totally forgot whose coat he was holding.
-30-
Matt DaSilva is a New York City-based actor and writer. Mattdasilva.com.