For the first hour of the dinner shift I shadowed Reynaldo, always staying a few feet behind him, listening and watching him work. He was a master of his craft. First he’d welcome each new table to The Restaurant, then he’d compliment one of the people at the table, usually one of the men, who, to my surprise, would almost always respond by blushing. Then he’d take a drink order. He’d tell the table about the night’s specials, doing so with salesmanship and gusto. He’d say, “And that’s prepared with a whisper of cilantro and it’s $14.95.” The customers would nod at this moment and lock eyes with one another. Sometimes they’d make an “mmm” sound. Then Reynaldo would ask them to peruse the menu at their leisure and he’d promise to return with their drinks in two shakes.

As soon as we were outside of the table’s earshot Reynaldo began cursing them out under his breath. “These mummies are already dead inside and they don’t even know it,” he said. Anyone who was over the age of 40, or anyone wearing a sportcoat, or a dress with a floral print qualified as a “mummy.” While we waited for the bartender to fill our order, Reynaldo gave me some advice. “Two things I want you to notice,” he said. “One, always pick out the person at the table who you think is most likely to pick up the check. Pay that person a compliment right away. It’s usually a man. If there are two or more men at the table, pick the alpha. The alpha is always the fattest one, or the loudest one. Tell him that you like his tie or his sweater or his stupid sportcoat, or ask him if he’s been on vacation recently because he is looking especially well-rested. Be bold and flirt with him a little.”

I told Reynaldo that I couldn’t do that. If it was a woman, sure, oh yes, I would flirt up one side of her and down the other. But a man? I wouldn’t flirt with a man. I couldn’t.

“Because he’s straight? And you’re straight? Let me tell you something. Even if he’s straight, flirt with him. You straight men have the most fragile egos in the world. You’ll take flirting from anyone or anything. Number two, use the word cilantro when describing the specials. Cilantro has buzz around it right now in the restaurant scene. Cilantro is hot. Everyone expects everything to have cilantro in it, even when it doesn’t.”

My goal that night was to make myself invisible, to literally stay in Reynaldo’s shadow for the duration of my shift. But I was tall, and my new shoes were pinching me, so I tripped over my own feet a couple of times. Each time I did Reynaldo would put his arm around my neck and pull me close and ask me to kindly practice my ballet moves after my shift. Which surprised me, because he’d been mostly warm and supportive up until this point.

Mr. Galanti positioned himself behind a small lectern at the front of the restaurant, standing in a carefully angled cone of light that made it appear as if he’d just beamed into the restaurant from space. He welcomed diners as they walked in, referring to the regulars by name. Then he led them to what he promised was a table that he’d personally selected for them. “Those two mummies are in here every other night,” Reynaldo whispered as Mr. Galanti filed past us with a couple—man in a sportcoat, woman in a floral-print dress—in tow. “If he seats them in our section, I swear I’ll snatch that toupee off Galanti’s head and throw it up into that tree.”

I looked up at the tree rising high into the glass atrium. It was some sort of olive tree or ficus, with wide leaves that were constantly clogging the filter in the burbling fountain below. I imagined Mr. Galanti’s toupee suspended up there in the branches and I started laughing out loud. Reynaldo looked pleased with himself. “I swear I’ll do it one of these days,” he said. “My last night here. You’ll see.”

As the tables filled up—four more two-tops, two more four-tops, one six-top scheduled for an 8 o’clock arrival—and as the diners’ needs evolved from drinks to appetizers to main courses and finally to desserts, more parts of the restaurant came to life to contribute in some small way. A short, mannish Indian woman named Jeeta efficiently pumped out a steady stream of martinis and glasses of wine at the bar. When one of our tables ordered tiramisu, Reynaldo asked me to go find our in-house pastry chef, Bobby, a surly man with an acne-scarred forehead who, I discovered in the employee locker room after my shift, always made his tall paper chef’s hat the very, very last article of clothing he removed before taking his after-work shower.

The restaurant had a distinctive rhythm to it, and watching it all come together, watching the disparate parts line up to ensure that these people were fed and content and were sent on their way was thrilling to see. It was also agonizing, because I was painfully out of step with the entire operation. When Reynaldo asked me to fix a cappuccino for table 16, I stood in the kitchen blowing scalding hot foam everywhere with the cappuccino machine until Reynaldo told me to let him handle it before I permanently disfigured myself. He watched me clear away the dishes from table 4, which I did by first stacking the dirty dishes at the center of the table, then grabbing the stack and hauling it away. There were many moments where I didn’t know where to go, or what to do, so I simply ducked into one of the many dark corners of the restaurant—the dramatic track lighting meant that the place was filled with shadows—hoping no one would find me. The less I did, I reasoned, the fewer opportunities I had to make mistakes.

An hour into my first dinner shift, Reynaldo pulled me aside and asked me if I’d ever waited tables before. I knew right then that he knew the truth about me. He’d seen me for the fraud I was. The jig was up.

“Don’t be silly,” I said, still thinking that there might be some way I could turn this night around. I’d made it this far, I figured. Might as well keep going. “I simply haven’t had the chance to show you and Mr. Galanti what I can do yet.”

Reynaldo glanced over my shoulder. “I believe your chance just arrived,” he said. I turned to see Mr. Galanti seating two people at the Oprah Table. It was two women. One of the women was tall and slender. The other was shorter, and rounder, and when she removed her sunglasses, she bore a striking resemblance to Oprah Winfrey.

A murmur traveled through the restaurant. Everyone turned in their chairs to look, to glimpse Chicago’s most celebrated celebrity—second only to Michael Jordan—in their midst. My knees went weak. Before, I had the  chance to take off my apron and run screaming from the restaurant, Reynaldo whispered to me the only nine words in the English language that could have possibly calmed me down at that moment. He said: “Has everyone gone blind? Because that’s obviously not Oprah.”

The murmur was already dying down, as club members realized that, as Reynaldo had observed, this was not Oprah at all, but simply one of the many thousands of affluent women in Chicago in the early ’90’s who affected Oprah’s style and mannerisms. “Try to remember what I’ve taught you,” Reynaldo said, as he ushered me towards my very first table. “If you need anything, I’m here, right behind you.” And I could see in his eyes that despite the fact that he knew what I was, that he knew full well that I was out of my depth, he wasn’t going to abandon me.