But she wasn't in the mood to talk. She ordered a coffee regular, glared at me until I brought it and then asked for the music to be turned down. I relayed the message to Karl, but he refused. I relayed his response, and she threatened to report him to a superior. Karl said let her. I gave her this message, she looked me over carefully, said, "I am sick and tired of him."
"Let her go, she's a manic depressive insomniac who was in love with the guy who worked these hours before me," Karl said and he quickly turned back to he work at the grill. Just then the song "I've Got the Music in Me" blasted from the radio and Karl began to pound greasy hamburger patties on the skillet with the rhythm. "I love this song," he shouted.
Karl loves a lot of songs, and music dominates the atmosphere of Tasty late at night. The rhythm sets the working pace and the decibel level controls the frenzy of the crowd. Karl, being a student of music, admits to changing noise levels in order to adjust the crowd. He likes' em frenzied.
One person who doesn't hear the music is Bill. He wears a walkman and indicates what kind of service he wants by hand signals. Twirling his finger in the air indicates that he desires a cup of coffee. It took me a while to figure this out, but eventually I got it to him. In reponse, he congratulated me with a thumbs up.
Bill, a tall, lanky man, then casually sat in his corner and watched the students invade his hangout and eventually leave. He smiled at the students, made eye contact with me when he wanted more, and soon introduced himself, uttering the only words I heard him speak, "How you doin?"
Some of the regulars are a little younger than Bill and the elderly women. One such person is Santos, who I saw in the Square many times before actually meeting him at the Tasty. He sports several earrings and a real smooth mannerism that goes with his jean jacket. This guy also was mean, looking to start a fight with a redhaired guy who sat alone at the table. But Karl refereed and brought the conflict to an end.
To these regulars, Karl calls them the "real people" who dominate his place after 3 a.m. when the bar crowd leaves and it becomes a social club where everybody knows each other, I was the "celebrity grill cook." That was pretty good in my mind because at least I was sort of real. But the two Pine Manor students fresh from the Picadilly Philly instantly recognized me as the Harvard student I was.
When Harvard students visit the Tasty pack into the cramped diner, they behave as though they were standing around in Weld Hall and a freshman party. There's constant noise, fights break out and couples make out. These are not model customers; they aren't real people. In fact Karl has to make some of them pay ahead of time because he knows they'll run out on him after they have eaten their food.
But students like bantering with Karl. Karl flirts with the women.
In the morning Karl stops the witty back-and-forths and begins serious conversation with the customers, most of them middle-aged laborers, men who eat their eggs breakfast in the Tasty. During this time the diner goes through eight gallons of coffee and a dozen eggs.
The stories they tell have the ring of male bull session. One man wearing blue work clothes tells how he tried to pick up a beautiful woman at a bar. "I went up to her and I said, 'Honey, name your price, I'll do anything but I have got to be with,'" he recounted. "So she turns to me and says, 'I go with women." Well that just floored me, I go with women, I couldn't believe it," he told the assembled coffee drinkers. "She just said, 'I go with women,' right there in that bar, and she was so beautiful." He proceeded to repeat the story, two more times.
Karl probably has heard the tale several times before because in the Tasty, which holds to the motto "Round the clock conviviality with mustard, onions and relish," most things are constant and there is always a sense of circular return. Indeed just after most of the men left for their jobs some of the Harvard football players who had been there the previous night sat down at the counter in ties and blazers. They were having breakfast before they left for a road game and this time, in the sedate atmosphere of early morning, Karl didn't make them pay in advance.