It was Saturday, and though I hadn’t found a job yet, I still treated it like a weekend morning. Some interviews were lined up, and since rent wasn’t an obligation, I wasn’t in a rush to start my day. I ate cereal and watched television. I had the apartment to myself while my party-planning uncle, Mark, pulled extra hours on a bar mitzvah. After sipping the last of the milk from my bowl, he called me.
“Hellllllllllllo,” he elongated. He asked me to dig around to see if he had any incense left. I found them in one of the drawers of an end table. He instructed me to stuff them in a tote with the large Bic lighter. There were two options: he could send somebody to pick the things up or I could bring them over. I agreed to head over.
“How much money do you have?” he asked. I dug through the pockets of the pants I wore from the night before. Six bucks left after dropping some cash at the bar by myself. He assured me that he’d pay the cab fare, so I threw on some clothes and locked up, running over to 16th St to catch a cab to the Four Seasons.
When I got to Georgetown, Mark walked out front and slipped the driver some bills. I didn’t think he got a lot of sleep, but he looked pretty intact.
“What time did you get back last night?” I asked.
“4:15. Slept, showered, got back here at 6:30.” He stared off before returning his attention to me. “6:15.” He had pretty much been there for fourteen and a half hours. But that’s what he does, always trucking along enthusiastically, like a man feeling the residual effects of a cocaine bender.
Mark led me inside, down into the basement. An arched entryway congratulated Joshua in English and in Hebrew. I waited outside while my uncle made the rounds, giving instructions to the waiters, the hotel staff, and whoever else were his employees for the day. I met a woman with a shaved, silvery head named Annie. She looked like an aged, frumpy version of Kanye’s model girlfriend. We stood silently before Mark returned and dragged me inside.
I finally saw what Mark had been talking about: the Middle Eastern marketplace. But, you know, not really a Middle Easter marketplace. More like if the Middle East received a makeover from your home decorator. Produce stands that could be a display at a high end furniture store. In the next room, one stand had Falafel, another had salmon. And all of these things were appetizers.
We ran into Susanne, the woman in charge of organizing this event, except she requested Mark’s help at the last minute, so she seemed to possess less authority. Some gauze was taped to her chest and sticking out from her spaghetti strap top. Instinctually, I thought ‘Breast Cancer Survivor,’ but remembered Mark mentioning her face looking pretty good “after getting some work done.”
Mark and I squeezed through a curtain into a backroom. I saw two rows of set tables. A carpet-like partition and some additional curtains blocked off another room, where a boy sang from the Torah. The tour must be over soon, I thought. Then Mark grabbed flowers to use as center- or end-pieces, so I assisted him. When he started to show me how he wanted a pile of nuts at each place setting, there was a tacit understanding that I was going to help out for the day.
The had a process for the nuts: scoop them with a cup, pour some in my palm, release them on the table near the upper corner of each plate. This proved too slow, so I simply splashed them onto the table straight from the cup. A younger woman stopped me. Because there was no lighting, I could barely make out her face or the blonde, frizzled hair, and her all black attire helped cloak her in the shadows.
“You need to stop that,” she said, flat hand atop my wrist. “The guests are complaining.” Mark overheard, so he stepped in while I continued to work. I reverted back to my palmed nut technique, which seemed to make the girl happier. But she stopped me again a few minutes later.
“This is way too loud. He’s reading the haftarah. It’s the most important section of the service,” she said. Her voice dripped in condescension. Would she enjoy the irony of instructing a fellow Jew? I thought.
Again, I remember Mark gossiping about Susanne’s daughter, Corrine, a twentysomething that had worked as a nurse in New York but returned to DC after a series of panic attacks or emotional episodes. To give her something to do, Susanne put her to work, despite little experience. I didn’t need any verification to know that I was dealing with Corrine.
When the service finished and the guests were led out of the room, the employees and I stacked the chairs and cleared the area. With the partition moved and the curtains widened, we brought out the tables from the backroom. We fine-tuned the place settings, added some fruits on the table to complement the nuts. “Nephew, nephew!” Susanne cheered each time I passed. Waiters placed spoons in bowls of hummus and tahini sauce. Some Yiddish four-piece band started performing in the corner. After roughly thirty minutes, the room for the bar mitzvah was converted into a dining room. The curtains had stretched along the ceiling, giving the effect of a succah. My Catholic uncle was responsible for a lot of this.
I sipped scotch in the corner by the bar while guests were led back inside. A couple of adults made toasts, while some kids goofed off just outside, their faces stuffed with grapefruit and figs or chocolate and almond caramel squares. Mark had said that about $48,000 was spent on food alone. “White people with too much money,” he laughed, shaking his head.
One of Susanne and Mark’s co-workers, Meghan, passed by.
“You’ve helped out Mark with other parties, right?” she asked me.
“Nope. Actually, this is the first party of his that I’ve even been too.” And it was true, although I had seen a few pictures from other events, heard about how he threw big spectacles for the Smithsonian and Republican National Convention.
“After my bar mitzvah,” I told her, “I hid in my basement with my best friend and played my new guitar.” I smiled.
“I know, right?” This agreement was more like her interpreting my story allegorically, like I was indicting the upper class. She left to chat with someone else.
Later, Corrine passed by.
“My feet are killing me,” she complained.
“Ahhh, bummer,” I said. “Were you here since last night too?”
“No.” She looked at me like I told a bad joke. “It’s these shoes.”
After my drink, I milled around, snuck in a few snacks for myself. Mark and I reunited back at the arch at around 2:15. Our services were no longer needed; Susanne and the crew would handle clean up. She had to set up another party that evening before heading to Europe the next day.
“This is wild,” I complimented. “I haven’t seen anything like this before.”
Mark smiled. “This is maybe a third of what I usually do.”
(note: besides Mark, names were changed)
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