Holloway's: Part Two, second story from Drift, by Victoria Patterson

A funny thing happened while I was writing yesterdays post about Drift, by Victoria Patterson. I’d been thinking about Victoria Robinson, an old friend from my days of working in film production in New York City, she was really something special, a wonderfully smart, witty, good humored person that I lost touch with. When I saw Victoria Patterson’s name, I immediately thought of Victoria Robinson, because up until yesterday I’ve only known one Victoria. So every time I mentioned the author of Drift, I used the wrong last name, and, well…shame on me, but it’s been fixed for those of you watching at home.

There was a stunned silence that swirled around my car just now, as I read the second story in this marvelous collection. It was very cinematic. I’m sitting in the parking lot of Stop & Shop, rain falling down, reading this blistering story about a group of women who work as waitresses in a restaurant. This seems fairly banal, but right away you’re floored by one woman thinking about what a shitty person she believes she is. “You fucked so many men”, “trying to get attention and love” “you’re disgusting, filthy.” Then she thinks of a friend of her fathers that she slept with, how screwed up it was, how young she was, “but then her hair was in his fist.” At this point I’m completely riveted. I’m not telling you this because it’s salacious, I’m telling you this because it is so good that it might just be true. Sometimes the best fiction feels like that.

Patterson writes about a dead end group of women who haven’t got the self esteem to ask for a second helping from the plates of left overs they nibble on in the kitchen. July Anne, the manager who rules with a whip and finds ways to feel better when she threatens her staff with unemployment, “you’re too old… to perform lap dances”. Maybe you’ve reflected on the job of a waitress, how sometimes they seem sad, tired, worn out from waiting on YOU, but that’s the job, Quentin Tarantino said so… There isn’t an easy resolution to this story, and it just flies, like the difference between cotton and silk sheets. The build up involves the real owner of the restaurant that July Anne manages, and his arrival, which is just to good to be spoiled here.

-JR