Several years ago, as is the natural course of things, I proposed marriage to the woman who is now my wife. Or, at least, I tried to propose marriage to her. The problem was that every time I opened my mouth to pop the question, our waiter came by to say something or other, and popped the magic moment as if it were a small red balloon.
In between interruptions, I finally managed to ask her, though by that time I was so befuddled by a combination of wine and waiterly pestiferousness that I think I actually wound up asking her to pass the breadsticks. My wife, being a quick study and all that, readily recognized from the look on my face that it was not breadsticks I was asking for. The rest, as they say, is marital history.
That particular waiter can be found at a nice little restaurant in Verona, Italy, called Bottega del Vino. And he's proof positive that, in the same way that guilt is the lingua franca of mothers around the world, approaching your table at exactly the wrong moment is one of the more significant factors defining a waiter.
This particular miscreant seemed to have a particular knack for the fine art of the inappropriate interruption. A Brobdinagian brute of a fellow, he played the tables at this especially romantic trattoria like a master. I could see him lurking in the shadows, cagily watching a couple grow closer, more intimate, more tender. And only at that moment, at the very peak of passion, at the crux of concupiscence, would he leap from his lair, and opt to announce the nightly specials, take the dinner order, ask if more wine was needed or question the crest-fallen lovers about dessert.
Sometimes he would pounce for no particular reason at all, simply to ask if all was well, if the gnocchi or the risotto were properly prepared, if the osso buco or the vitello tonnato were just right. Verona, I reminded my wife-to-be, is the city of Romeo & Juliet, a romantic story that does not end well. Very possibly they came to their bad ends simply because of service like this.
Now, I will admit that in most cases, it's fairly impossible for a waiter to gauge exactly what's going on at any given table. It's hard, from a distance, to determine whether someone is whispering into their lover's ear an unspeakably indecent act or an industrial secret worth untold millions. Most waiters, I've found, tend to show up at merely random moments – usually wrong moments, but random nonetheless.
But there are others who, I'm sure, have developed an uncanny ability to interrupt the flow of the evening at precisely the wrong moment. In the same way that lower animals can sense an impending earthquake, they know that something of great import is about to transpire at a given table. And so, they leap into the breach, pepper grinder held high, wine bottle at the ready, dessert menu in hand. It is, I suppose, a talent of which I should stand in awe. And I do – I call it awful.
– Merrill Shindler