About a month after “Splash Dance,” as Reynaldo had dubbed my dousing of the Oprah doppleganger, just as I was starting to ease into a routine at the Club, Mr. Galanti hired a new waiter named Dave. Dave was tall with hair the texture and color of wood shavings and a mouth that seemed to be disproportionately small in relation to the rest of his face. He’d famously arrived for his initial interview at the East River Club on a skateboard. When Mr. Galanti introduced Dave as the staff’s newest addition, Dave gave a brief “funny” speech about himself. He boasted that he’d earned a two-year marketing degree in four years from a downstate university. He told us that he was the worst student the university had ever seen. “When they gave me my diploma, the dean said, ‘Dave? You are by far the worst student we’ve ever seen. Here’s your diploma. Now get the hell out of here.'”

Everyone laughed at Dave’s story, even Reynaldo, who I expected more from. I seethed. I hated Dave, not because he was ignorant, which he was, but because he was not East River Club material. Not in my opinion he wasn’t. I’d earned my position at the Club. I’d survived those first weeks through a combination of aplomb and moxie, and I was proud for having done so. With Dave and his stupid face on staff—I used the words “stupid face” to describe him in a journal entry later that night—everything I’d accomplished was diminished. If Dave could be a member of this selective community, then how selective was it? Listening to Dave crow over all the corners he’d cut in his life, and about all the partying he was planning to do in Chicago, I had to stave off the urge to snatch the newly minted name-tag off his chest—if there was a dumber name than “DAVE,” I couldn’t think of what it was—and throw it into the lobby fountain.

On Dave’s first night on the floor, he tripped on the step by the piano and dropped a glass ramekin of butter. The ramekin didn’t break. It bounced once then began rolling along the hardwood of the restaurant. It made a racket. Dave loped after it. Diners put down their forks and craned their necks. I’d been praying for Dave’s humbling, praying for him to reveal himself as the complete joke he was. I didn’t expect his humbling to arrive so quickly. Mr. Galanti, from his perch at the maitre’d station, saw the whole thing. I thought, Reap what you have sown, Galanti.

Once Dave retrieved the ramekin, he did something strange: he turned and, facing the restaurant, took a deep bow, like a conductor at the end of a performance. The restaurant’s patrons didn’t seem to know what to make of this. No matter. Dave kept bowing in silence. Then someone began clapping. Soon, the entire restaurant erupted in warm applause.

I envied Dave in this moment, much more than I wanted to. If the same thing had happened to me, if I’d chased down a runaway ramekin, I knew myself well enough to know that I would have cowered in the kitchen for the rest of my shift.

On his second day at the restaurant, Dave began handing out nicknames. Reynaldo was “Ese.” Pete, the sous chef, was “Cookie.” I was “Cadbury,” because Dave observed that I was uptight and trying to be perfect, like a butler. I didn’t want to be known as Cadbury; I would have done anything to unshackle myself from that abhorrent name. But it was too late—Dave had spoken. I was Cadbury until further notice.

On his third day at the restaurant, Dave called in sick. No waiter ever called in sick at the East River Club, not unless it was a matter of life and death. Doing so meant that the on-call waiter, who was no doubt at home, slippers up on the coffee table, watching “The Price Is Right” and praying with every cell in his or her being that the phone would not ring, would get a phone call—the worst call imaginable—informing him that he had to come to the restaurant immediately. I suggested to Mr. Galanti that there was a very strong possibility that Dave wasn’t sick at all, that he was simply too hungover to come in. Mr. Galanti thanked me for my scrupulous detective work and told me to mind my own business.

The on-call person that day was Reynaldo. He arrived about an hour later. His forehead was damp. His name-tag was on crooked. He vowed to do bodily harm to Dave the next time he saw him. Reynaldo wound up pulling a large table of Italian business men, a table that would become known as his “8-Top To Glory.” The men left him a $200 tip on a $400 check, and one of the men, a man with a lion’s mane of black hair and a gold wedding band on his hand, wrote his name and phone number on the back of the check. A few days later, Reynaldo would begin an affair with the man that would go on for several years.

After lunch, as we re-set the tables for dinner, I attempted to remind Reynaldo of the bodily harm he’d promised to inflict on Dave. It was no use. Whatever malice he’d previously had was utterly vaporized by the $200 and the phone number. On my next shift, I wandered into the banquet room at the back of the restaurant and, to my surprise, stumbled upon Reynaldo and Dave together. Reynaldo was delivering one of his trademark back-crackings to Dave, who was belly-first on the floor.

“Cadbury, you have to try this. Ese’s hands are pure magic,” Dave said, half into the carpet.

Reynaldo’s back-crackings always made me uncomfortable; I rarely took him up on his offers. Yet, I had foolishly assumed those offers were exclusive to me. Now it seemed that Reynaldo was cracking every back in town, including Dave’s. I felt a pang of jealousy, then felt angry at myself for feeling it. I mumbled something about the restaurant opening soon. Then I headed back out onto the floor.