The East River Club, like all country clubs, had a large number of rich and famous members, many of whom rarely ever set foot in The Club. The richer and more famous a member was, Reynaldo explained, the less he or she visited the place. Reynaldo pointed to the men and women milling about in the atrium dressed in yoga pants with towels over their shoulders. “The ones who come here every day,” he said, “are desperate to justify the insane membership fees.” The lone exception to this rule was Oprah Winfrey. There was no one in Chicago who was richer or more famous than Oprah. (Except for Michael Jordan, who was also a member, and who had never been to The Club, not once, ever.) Yet, according to Reynaldo, Oprah visited The Club in the pre-dawn dark almost every day to have her workouts in the gym that was reserved strictly for celebrities.

“Few people know this, but she actually came into The Restaurant once,” he said, lowering his voice in a way that made it sound as if he was about to tell me a campfire ghost story. “It was in the late afternoon on a Thursday, about an hour before the dinner shift. Nancy, that unholy witch who I swear I will kill one day, made us open up early for what Nancy referred to as ‘the Club’s number one V.I.P.’ Who should walk through those doors but Oprah, wearing a terrycloth head band and tiny round sunglasses.”

Reynaldo led me to a two-top in the corner. He crouched and lifted the table cloth, peering under the table. “This is it,” he said. I crouched next to him. On the underside of the table someone had drawn a large “O” with a marker. “Go ahead, take a seat,” he said.

I sat down and looked out across The Restaurant. I was looking at the same things that Oprah had once looked at. I wondered if the chair had retained any of Oprah’s magical aura, and whether or not I might be able to absorb some of it. Even the smallest bit of Oprah’s aura, if it got on me, would do a world of good.

“She ordered a piece of cod, dry, and a cup of black tea, then she left a $3 tip on a $22 check,” Reynaldo said. Reynaldo pretended to be a paparazzo and held an invisible camera to his face. He pointed his “camera” at me. “Ms. Winfrey, is that you?” he said. “What’s your relationship status with Stedman? Is it true that you lost a hundred pounds and gained a hundred pounds in six months? Ms. Winfrey, how rich are you? Ms, Winfrey, why don’t you tip the service industry standard of 20 percent? Ms. Winfrey, can we take your photograph?” He made picture-taking sounds—chh-chick, chh-chick.

I pretended to shield my eyes from the invisible flashes and mimed eating motions. “I said no pictures!” I snapped. “Now let me enjoy my dry cod in peace, damn it!” Reynaldo dropped his invisible camera and began to silently applaud. He complimented me on the rawness and intensity of my Oprah impression.

The Oprah Table, he said, was my table for the night. “It’ll bring you luck.” He told me that he’d be working the rest of the section, motioning to about nine other tables, which seemed like a tremendous amount of tables to me. I remembered that I’d sold myself as waiter with years of fine dining experience. So I did what an experienced waiter would probably do when given the news that he’d be waiting on one table: I told Reynaldo that a single two-top was an absolute insult to a world-class fine dining expert like myself and I demanded that he give me more tables. Then I prayed that he would ignore me.

“Everybody starts out with one table,” he explained. “Even I started out with one table. It’s one of Mr. Galanti’s rules. He calls it ‘the art of the perfect service.’ ” The art of the perfect service, he said, involved being prompt, attentive, but never overbearing. “A waiter should appear at the precise moment he’s needed, and vanish again long before the customer has a chance to think, ‘Boy, I’d sure like this guy to go away and leave me to my gazpacho.’ ” Reynaldo paused for a moment and apologized for having to walk me through these painfully obvious aspects of table service. “I’m sure you already know all of this,” he said.

I assured him that, yes, I knew all of these things, but that even the best waiters in the world could stand to hear these golden tenets again once in awhile. Reynaldo continued to tell me more about Mr. Galanti’s art of the perfect service as he began walking towards the back of the restaurant. “Follow me, we have one more thing to do before we open,” he said.

We travelled along a short hallway that eventually opened up onto one of The Club’s cavernous banquet halls. The place was the size of a football field and dark. Chandeliers hung in the rafters. Tables and chairs were stacked in the corners. The only bit of light in the room was coming from the windows along a far wall where the drapes were parted to reveal a slice of the gray-green Chicago River. I briefly wondered if I was dreaming. “Lie down on the floor, belly to the carpet, please,” Reynaldo said. He pointed to a spot on the oriental rug under our feet and began rolling up his sleeves.

I asked him what laying down on the floor with my belly to the carpet had to do with the art of the perfect service and took a step back towards the hallway.

“It has nothing at all to do with the art of the perfect service,” he said. “I’m training to be a massage therapist. I graduate from my program next week. You’re tense—anybody can see that. Look at the hunched way you’re walking.” He did a quick imitation of me that wasn’t flattering at all. “I’ll do an adjustment, you’ll feel better, and some of that tension will be gone. In fact, it’s my duty, as a trained professional, to help you right now.” Then he added the words, “Trust me. I do this for all the waiters. Now please let me do my duty.”

Reynaldo wasn’t wrong; I was tense. I’d had a knot as hard as a stone in my left shoulder for months, ever since the snowstorm in Ohio. The idea of finally getting some relief sounded terrific to me, even if it was at the hands of a man who I’d just met, and who was probably gay (double earrings), and who was probably coming onto me, and who had received his training from a massage therapy school which was probably called, for all I knew, Fred’s School Of Massage Therapy.

But here he was, standing before me, offering relief. “Oh, all right,” I said. “Let’s get this over with.” I got down on the floor. I placed the side of my face against the banquet hall’s carpeting, which, up close, smelled like french fries and bleach. Reynaldo knelt next to me, planting his knees against my ribs. He told me to exhale. “Breathe all that tension out. Keep going. More, more, more.” When all the air was gone from me, he placed one hand on top of the other in the center of my back. He leaned forward and, using his body weight, he drove his palm downward. A rippling sensation, like a string of carefully arranged dominoes toppling over, traveled the length of my tailbone all the way up to my the base of my neck. A muted popping sound rang out.

I felt calm and peaceful for the first time in months. My eyelids were suddenly heavy. I wanted to fall asleep right there on the floor of the banquet hall. I couldn’t do that, of course, because Reynaldo probably would have tried to molest me. Maybe that had been his plan all along—to get me relaxed, then have his way with me. I hadn’t spent much time around gay people, and didn’t trust them at all. I was afraid of them and their gay ways. The only gays I’d ever seen before were the outspoken gays in college. They were always protesting something outside of the student center, lobbying the school for more recognition, for more gay rights. They were boisterous. They were strange. The men sometimes wore floppy wide-brimmed sun hats. There was a rumor on campus that the gays held mysterious gays-only parties where everyone—men and women alike—took all of their clothes off at the door then danced together in pitch black dorm rooms.

I climbed back to my feet. My shirttail had come out in the back. I quickly worked to get it tucked back in. I thanked Reynaldo in a formal way. I told him that I felt better, as he’d promised I would.

“Glad to help,” he said. Then the two of us walked in silence back out onto the floor together. My fine dining debut at the East River Club was about to begin.