I Was a Valet Car Parker

Summer jobs are all around me: the kid scooping my ice cream, taking my tickets at the roller coaster, replacing bicycle tires, babysitting. I had similar summer jobs as a teenager: teaching kids’ recreation courses, waitressing, working at a cookie chain, babysitting. My friends worked at the Dairy Queen, landscaped and caddied. At night we snuck around town in the flatbed of pick-up trucks or the back seats of Cameros, slipping through chain link fences and skittering across golf courses under dark, starry skies. Then I went off to college and the summer jobs seemed to get a little more serious—became a shade more strenuous. I’m not sure if someone told me outright or if I just noticed it happening, but maturity was implied. Friends started to commute into the city, intern at banks and non-profits, wear high heels and use the drycleaner. So I upped the ante for myself.

The summer after my college freshman year at college in New York City, I moved in with a girlfriend who had an apartment in Boston and applied for a job at the Four Seasons Hotel right on the Boston Common. I knew banking wasn’t my milieu—I had always been more of a service industry gal, myself—so I filled out an application. There were loads of options in the various departments at a grand hotel: housekeeping, kitchen, dining room, and concierge. There were so many boxes where I could imagine myself working that I checked the majority of them. “That sounds like fun, oh, I could do that.” But the call I received from HR was for the parking department. Would I be interested in parking cars? “Sure,” I replied gamely. I could drive a manual and automatic shift, I hadn’t had any accidents and was confident behind the wheel. What the heck. I got the job.

I was issued a polyester beige tunic-type top with a neru collar, itchy black pants and a little plastic nametag that read my first name only. I was the only woman on the crew. The rest of the nametags read Mohit or Obadu, Micky, Ricky and Juan. We were a motley crew from a panoply of nations but got along famously. Obadu was appointed the boss and would tell us whose turn it was when a car pulled in, and toss us keys for the cars we needed to bring up. Some men balked briefly when I came around the hood of their car with a big smile and my palm out, but they acquiesced and handed me the keys. Only one guy insisted on driving his car down to the carport himself, then later asked for his car, refusing to give me the alarm code so I had to drive his car up from below with the alarm shrieking. George Benson made up for it the following week, though, by letting me drive his Mercedes 6000 series without batting and eye, and Kenny Logins gave me a big smile and a very nice tip. Most folks were kind and generous, and the work was fascinating and fun.

I learned from the doorman, Vincent, how the underbelly of holding cars at the front door worked, and how much tax-free cash he made daily just from keeping track of who’s beamer he should bring up when and which cars he could afford to bury and for how long. His pants and breast pockets were jammed with keys and wads of cash yet he cut a slick figure in his captain’s hat and brass-button coat that went down to his knees. He knew just when to bow and how far to scrape and even though his Southy accent was thick, he held himself high and made everyone feel fancy. Then he would wait a beat or two until the cheap sun-of-a-gun had driven off in his Rolls and unleash a torrent of curse words befitting… a doorman from South Boston.

Soon, I befriended Jamie the bellman. He had light blue eyes that actually twinkled and long blonde eyelashes that nearly trumped his dimples. Jamie told me all about how he could be commissioned—for a price—to acquire a whole host of booty at a hotel guest’s request from cigarettes to prostitutes and a bizarre lot of randomness in between. The Four Seasons was putting up many of the headliners for the summer concert series in the park, so I learned which famous rock stars wore wigs and which used drugs, who was really nice, and who was a jerk. I learned which fake names they gave to register with at the front desk, who made the biggest mess for housekeeping and who skimped at tipping.

Jamie told me all the dirt when we got off our shifts at 11pm and met up for ‘last call’ lobster bisque at our bar up the street. Sometimes we’d sneak back into the hotel afterwards and up into the labyrinth of service elevators and hallways that paralleled the guest hallways, up to secret rooftop alcoves or balconies of vacant suites. When we started to date I often slept over at his apartment on Charles Street. Jamie had a mattress on the floor of a rent controlled apartment that was so besieged by cockroaches, he had poured a little moat-like mound of white cockroach powder onto the floor that circumnavigated all four sides of the bed. I stepped over it to climb under the covers feeling like a giantess from Gulliver’s travels. Somehow I didn’t find this situation repugnant—his place was a much easier stroll through the park to and from work, and I like having a boyfriend—yet I often dreamt of cockroaches.

Nearing Labor Day there was a new hire. She was a tiny dark haired woman from Thailand whose nametag read “Mom”. Jamie and I made her feel welcome because she was so lovely and shy, and also because we loved calling her Mom. Jamie and I broke up the week before I returned to college. I would be going and he was staying. This wasn’t a summer stint for him, but his full-time job. We said a heartbreaking but understanding goodbye and hugged for a while up on the roof. It had been a wonderful, oddly magical summer. At least, I joked through tears, we could find comfort in knowing my spot on the car valet crew was being filled by Mom.

Moving Friend

In a few weeks one of my closest friends is moving to the leftern most third of the United States. If you’re looking a child’s puzzle it’s one of the ones that are big and blocky and really far away. I know this because I’ve driven across country six times and this is no day trip. I also know that physical distance doesn’t factor in always, such as in the case of neighbors who moved 20 minutes away whom I hardly see anymore. There are other, more subtle distances, which can account for space. There are connective tissues, effort’s twine, that may weaken and break allowing friends to float away, drifting off slowly on an ice floe labeled “busy”, everyone waving and getting smaller by the month.

            This friend will be missed. And not only by me. She’s been an inscrutable force in the lives of many, creating parties where none existed, coercing folks to put on a wig or get out on the dance floor, check out a band, or ride a mechanical bull. She’s forged a neighborhood where there might not have been one. And she’s taken in the strays, without judgment or expectation, opening her heart and home to whomever needs a pal or an ear, a drink or a nap, a bowl of cereal or a laugh. I know this generosity of spirit first hand and I can say without exaggeration that it’s changed my life.

            In my experience, I know people who found their friends early and are happy with their choices, so they’ve rolled up the welcome mat and stopped noticing potential. No need to look further. Then there are the folks who stick to their kind, which, out here means other married people. They like nice round numbers and knowing that everyone is spoken for—no loose ends or unpredictability. At the restaurant they want their husbands to have other men to talk man things with and not get into conversation with some wanton unattached woman who upsets the boy-girl ratio at the table. They crave a guarantee.

And finally, there are those who feed on exclusion, little thrills of being on the inside, knowing others didn’t make the cut. These folks find comfort in a fixed roster of friends, inside jokes, and endless references harkening back to earlier social events like a closed circuit. There’s a social currency exchanged between these insiders, whispers and nods, which for some brings a tiny buzz. It’s also predictable, cozy and safe.

            My friend who’s moving is odd in this respect. She’s open to new experiences, delights in them. And if that new experience comes in the form of a recently divorced mom, then great—the more the merrier. “We can always make room.” So she opened up her heart and home to me, scooping me up and taking me along to wherever she was invited that would be appropriate to take, for instance, a house guest. Always, it seemed, she said, “Just come along, they won’t mind,” which spoke volumes to me about her marriage—rock solid—and her friends, also open-hearted, generous people who welcomed a new person, a different face, a fresh point of view.

It felt European to me, this ‘join us’ mentality, or maybe it’s mid-western—she’s from Ohio. This generosity of spirit is certainly more Christian that many of the Christians I know, yet, she’s not religious so I know she doesn’t do it to get points. She couldn’t care less about even numbers and gets no rush from being on the list. I don’t even think her powers of empathy are so finely tuned that she understands implicitly how brutal it can be to get dressed and leave the house alone for the thousandth time, to show up alone, searching for a familiar face, hoping to find someone to sit with. Personally, I don’t think she thinks about what it’s like to live alone in a community full of couples. I think she’s just curious about people. It’s one of the ways she gets her thrills.

So she introduces herself to the guy who butters her bagel, the lady in the bra department, the haggler at the flea market, and stray cats, like me. She wants to know their name then a little bit of their story, not too much, but just enough to make each day a little different from that last. She looks everyone in the eye, and tells it like it is. When she has a party, the plumber comes. I asked her once why she thinks she might be so socially generous, and where she gets it. She shrugged and said that maybe it was her mom. “Everyone was always welcome at my house.”

Thanks to my friend who’s moving, and her mom, I now have a bunch of friends who’ve been coerced into trying me on for size even when they might have had all the friends they needed in the world, people who’ve given me a chance because she told them to. Her friends are my friends, and they don’t care that I’m not half of a couple. I’ll miss that she’s creative, funny and always up for a good time, but the legacy of inclusivity she’s leaving behind is beyond value. In her physical absence, I’ll think of her when I’m at estate sales, order her drink from time to time, and never pass up a theme party. I’ll vow to laugh off the small stuff, let go of the big stuff, and be as openhearted—especially to stray cats—as she was to me. Call it Christian, or generosity of spirit. Call it whatever you want. But call. Scoop someone up and ask them to join you. I’ll do the same.