The Actor

Original absurd, satirical and funny fiction. Influences include Pynchon, DeLillo, Vonnegut, and Norm Macdonald (all lovers of SEO).

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The manager brought out Sandra’s meal instead of a waiter, so like a defiant interrogatee Sandra shook her head and palmed away the lasagna.

“I’ll never.” she said. “Why, Gary? Why?” 

Gary wore circular glasses, which he tore off before pinching the bridge of his nose. He had memorised this mannerism from a Steve Jobs biopic. Then, without warning, he punched the bowl back across the table. The porcelain rim jabbed Sandra’s chest. There was a thud, a wince, and giggles from the other employees. 

“Because it’s your job, Sandra. Now for God’s sake just eat the flippin’ lasagna. Otherwise, I’ll make everyone do what I know none of you want to.” 

A threat. Sandra’s cheeks turned red like the budget ‘tomato’ paste used in the lasagna (and the toilet cleaner). Her eyes, as blue as the Saturday Fun Times logo, narrowed. Her teeth clenched. 

Floating before her was Gary’s managerial head. Protruding from a black turtleneck, the head resembled some fungus grown, not in a lab, but in a Master of Business Administration classroom: a throbbing, living thing forged in a cauldron of business cards and textbook pages, brought to life through blood oaths and incantations to the holy trinity of Networking, Compounding and Kaizen. 

“Well,” said Sandra softly to this ghoulish creature. “I know my rights.”  

Sandra was a heavier woman so it took some wriggling to round the circular table and escape the booth. Once free, she rubbed the pain from where the bowl struck her chest and began fanning her left arm slowly across the dining space, as if to say look around, Gary, there’s no one here. 

Sandra was dressed in her trademark loose cardigan and jeans. Still, she resembled one of those game show assistants revealing the prizes. First prize, by the cash register, we have the table of sexy university students. Second prize, we have Ricco, the smelly man who squats at the Saturday Fun Times bar. Third prize - now this is a real gem - we have the giant Saturdays novelty clock that always points to ‘Fun Times’. 

When Sandra’s graceful display finished, Gary spoke. “I’ll do it, Sandra,” he threatened. 

Sandra stared up at Gary’s chin. “No, you won’t, Gary, you coward.” 

“No one can stop me,” he continued. 

Gary then lifted his eyebrows and nodded, as though the blue Saturdays vest under his turtleneck was made of C4 and the pen in his hand, the detonator. “Now,” he said, “eat the flippin’ las-ag-na, or else.”

Resting at the end of a skidmark halfway up the bowl’s edge was Sandra’s lasagna. The cubed glob began sliding back down, as if it had tried and failed to escape while they were distracted. 

This would be Sandra’s third plate of mass-produced carbohydrates for the shift. Contractually, she was obliged to eat at least 30% of each meal; that was the job. But that day, and most of late, her job made no sense. 

“Which lasagna? This lasagna?” she said. 

Sandra picked up the bowl, held it at eye level. 

“Don’t you dare,” said Gary. 

Sandra’s colleagues - the sexy university students on the nearby table - fell silent. They held each other tight and stared at the woman holding the bowl aloft. 

Sandra was in her forties (the students guessed seventies, or like hundreds). She was in a different stage of life, and maybe that’s why the students failed to understand why Sandra so often looked angry. Every shift she seemed annoyed at Gary, or the world, the lasagna. There was always some form of trouble. Many of the students, mainly the boys, had strange dreams that included Sandra. She’s wrapping the cardigan tight as she does, her neck craned forward. She’s lecturing a giant ant about her legal rights. The ant is wearing a blue Saturdays vest and spitting venomous lasagna. Gary is shouting Fun Times and masturbating. The world is ending. The world has ended.   

When Sandra released the bowl, it fell for an eternity before shattering on the fake boards. Gary gazed down mouth agape at the porcelain and ‘tomato’ mess on his shoes and trousers. 

“That’s it,” he yelled. “I warned you.”

Gary then pointed to the rear of the restaurant. “Rachel,” he said, “get my coloured markers. Alex, fetch my MBA textbooks from the office safe. Tilly, stop crying. It’s time,” he said, sliding the circular glasses back on, “to boost team morale.” 

Saturday Fun Times is a restaurant unlike any other. At Saturdays, you can come and experience the thrill and excitement of being a real-life waiter. Come down with your friends and see what it’s like to take an order. Try dealing with difficult customers. Get yelled at by your manager, played by Saturday’s own, Gary Crown. 

At Saturdays, we cater to all needs. Want to serve a family of five? We have dedicated eating professionals and their (for legal reasons) puppet children. These puppets look and act like real kids: they stare at iPads and then continue to stare at iPads. 

Want to feel cool again? Why not try out our ‘lads package’ and serve a table of six at the beginning of an ‘epic’ bachelor party? Maybe one of them will die tonight. Wow!  

Perhaps you’re just after a traditional waiting experience. Then why not serve Sandra, our middle-aged, overweight and opinionated eating professional? She drinks wine and eats only lasagna. She’s angry. She absolutely will try to talk to you about Ru Paul’s Drag Race or the evils of Donald Trump. Are you sure you’re ready for that? 

Whatever your waiting needs, Saturdays has you covered.

At the head of the party table, Gary lobbed a yellow marker at one of the students. The marker struck the young man in the shoulder. His eyes sprung up and darted between his colleagues. A dozen blank faces stared back. The young man would remember this betrayal right up until his untimely death at his Bachelor of Risk Management graduation ceremony; sinkholes, though low-probability, can be high-consequence. 

“Let’s focus, now,” began Gary. “Listen, I know things aren’t looking good at the moment.” 

He was referring to the complete, months-long absence of customers. The Saturdays leadership team believed that external market factors such as interest rate rises, supply chain interruptions, and record rental prices had hurt their target demographic. It’s almost as if pretending to be a waiter on a Tuesday night was a discretionary expense for some.

“But the pipeline is incredibly strong,” lied Gary. “The work will come, I promise. And look,” he said, again taking his circular glasses off but this time tenderly, “your jobs are not pointless. Sure, there’s something else you could be doing with your time, but-”

“Wait, there is?” interrupted the risk management student. He then scratched his temple, stood up and left forever. He took up surfing. He tried a pottery class with his sister. Those final six months - before the sinkhole took him - the risk management student lived boldly and with love. 

Through Gary’s MBA training, he was able to intuit that the young man giving everyone the finger as he left was a sign of poor morale. There was no more time to waste. 

Gary introduced the morale-building activity: Rapid-fire Bonding (RfB). In RfB, one valued team member stands while the rest ask that truly-valued employee questions about their life. The extremely-highly-valued employee standing then writes down those details. This helps the team of world-changers learn about their colleagues, bond and develop ‘robust’ morale. 

The Saturday Fun Times team began the exercise with Gary and worked clockwise, which meant Sandra would be last. 

“First off, my name is Gary and I have an MBA...” 

 They were seated at the party table reserved for corporate events to service the big consulting firms. This was now a distant, pre-recession revenue source. The table always reminded Sandra, however, of the night those two obnoxious consultants - slightly drunk - gave her a hard time. 

In Sandra’s script, she orders the lasagna (every meal) and then says something like, “I know I shouldn’t, so don’t tell anyone.” But that night when she said her lines, the two men laughed, louder, louder, and made her repeat it over and over: lasagna, lasagna, lasagna. 

To them, the sound of her voice was a joke. They laughed at her. Sandra turned red like the ‘tomato’ paste, yelled that she knew her rights, and marched to complain to Gary. This only caused the two vultures to cackle louder. And vultures can cackle so long as they bring in revenue. 

Sandra appeared lost in that memory when it was her turn to stand in the bonding session. By this point people were fatigued and bored. There was a hostile atmosphere brewing, which originated primarily from Gary’s incorrect interpretation of RfB.    

 “What’s your last name, Sandra?” asked Gary.   

“What?” she asked.  

“Last name, Sandra. Write it down. Don’t be difficult for once.”

“Oh, right,” said Sandra. She wrote down Miller, Sandra Miller. 

Gary’s mistake was that in RfB someone other than the employee being questioned is supposed to write the details. This is because the actual (kinesthetic) learning comes from the handwriting itself. The way Gary instructed RfB meant that the person writing better remembered details about themselves, such as their own name. Run this way, RfB can actually make people more narcissistic, hostile and downright nasty.  

“Are you married?” asked Gary, smirking to the others. 

“Gary,” said Sandra. “How is that… Why is that-” 

“I don’t mean anything by it, Sandra,” interrupted Gary. “This is RfB. Are you married?” 

Sandra paused with her pen hovering over the paper. She was about to write down ‘single’. 

The students behind her laughed and one called out, “Write down, ‘alone’.”

The laughter grew. Sandra’s shoulders tensed. She pulled the cardigan taut and held it against her chest. She didn’t turn to the group for some time. They thought she was crying, which caused one of the young people to start openly laughing and Gary let her; Gary always let them. 

“I bet she has no kids, either,” said Rachel. 

Abbey laughed. “Write down ‘childless’. Go on, write it down.” 

“And no passions or hobbies either,” said another. 

Richard, the tall boy who dreams of ants, put his hand on Abbey’s knee and searched for his own reflection in her hazel eyes. He soon lost interest and called out, “Write ‘annoying voice’, too.” 

They all laughed. Sandra turned to Gary. He was smiling and chewing the end of his circular glasses, like he knew this would happen, like he wanted this to happen. 

If ever Sandra had cause to yell it was then. But when she faced the broader group, she froze. She fell silent. Her lines left her. She dropped the marker and scurried away. 

After the activity, the others were all in a state of robust morale, so Gary considered the activity a success, and humiliating Sandra, a nice benefit. 

It was moments like this that the sacrifices he made for the MBA seemed worthwhile. All those days spent with his head buried in textbooks, the missed birthday parties, the lost fiancée, found two months later living with another man. 

How had Gary not noticed that Amy was gone? How had he not noticed the empty closet, the missing shoe racks? How did he fail to see that every night he brought home two complimentary Saturdays lasagnas, that one would be left cold in the morning? How could he be so blind to the commercial quantity of plates filled with rotting pasta sheets and maggot-filled mince, scattered throughout a house whose carpet still wore the marks of where the couch once rested and the television cabinet sat, marks that now formed the scars of their domestic life, their lost love? The Master of Business Administration, that’s how.

After returning his MBA textbooks to the office safe, Gary found Sandra sulking in her usual booth. He placed his palms on the table and towered over her. He blocked the dangling lights. He obscured the Fun Times clock. 

“Face it, Sandra,” he said, still smiling. “You have nothing outside of this place either. You need Saturdays as much as me. That’s why you’ll never quit, and why I’ll never fire you.”

Sandra stared at the glossy surface, hair limp like a discarded mop. She was motionless. Then an alarm went off and she shifted her weight to reach her phone. 

“Sorry about that, Gary,” she said. “It’s my alarm to sound the end of my shift. That damn Fun Times clock never moves.” 

“And neither will you,” said Gary.  

Sandra did not respond. Instead, she wriggled from the booth, seemingly with ease this time, and pranced to the door as if running late for something exciting. In the entrance, she paused. She turned to cast one last look at Gary. The expression she offered then was one that shocked Gary. It was like a completely different woman from the one he’d known for four years was smiling back. 

Gary was still pondering that strange expression by the time Sandra arrived home. 

She lived in a three-bedroom house in Cheltenham, and though she opened the front door quietly, her daughter knew she was home from the porch lights and was waiting inside. Madeline was of course gripping the stuffed monkey. She was always gripping that monkey. 

Sandra bent over, picked up Madeline and threw her in the air. Mark, her husband, approached from the kitchen. He had on that new sweater and Sandra commented that it looked nice and then kissed his stubbled cheek. 

“How did you go today?” asked Mark. Sandra could not contain that smile. “Oo, that good,” added Mark.

“You should have seen me,” she said. “I did that thing we practised. When my character was outraged, I fanned my arm like this across the entire floor. Oh, and when I was being bullied by Gary and the students, I held my cardigan tight like this. Mark, I was convincing. I was so convincing. I can really feel it - the improvement. I just know soon I’m going to land one of those roles at the theatre. I just know it.” 

Sandra’s husband gave her a kiss and said, “My wife, the actor, the world’s greatest actor.”