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.
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