Book Description

'All I ever wanted was to look good with her walking down my favorite street where the sidewalks were paved with my best intentions amid the fear in people's eyes. Her face became crimson, as if someone had cut off her air. The expressionless look on her face was one that brought about a strange terror in me. I loved her.' The Waiter is a beautiful, tragic portrait of loneliness. It is the story of a gigantic, isolated black man living in Washington, D.C. who hates and mistrusts people, yet gives much of his life to service. After his parents blame him for the accidental near death of his younger brother, The Waiter is exiled from home. For years afterward, he lives a resentful and sheltered existence, yet remains preserved away from a growing Washington drug and murder crisis responsible for the deaths of many blacks. Unaware of the crisis, The Waiter clings to an idea of providing the best of service to the antagonistic, fearful patrons who frequent his job as a personal way of defining himself. At the same time, he remains reclusive outside of his work, feeling invisible in an increasingly tense public. In Bryce Range, the posh Washington restaurant that employs him, The Waiter meets and falls in love with Samantha, a beautiful white regular patron who graces his table one weekend night. During the misguided courtship that follows between the two, The Waiter's asphyxiating attempt to love Samatha unknowingly accelerates her private suffering from being molested by her own father as a child. Her pain manifests itself through a severe depression that relinquishes her at times without speech or memory. Upon growing dependent upon his relationship with an increasingly ill Samantha for relief from his own solitary existence, The Waiter employs his tremendous service mentality in an effort to care for her deteriorating mental state. His destructive impatience and ignorance of Samantha's distress soon renders her as nothing more to him than another troublesome patron. Once Samantha's mental illness leaves her bedridden without appetite, conversation, employment or emotion in his own home, The Waiter's pain propels him toward seeking understanding from people in the malevolent city he has spent years shielded from in resentment. After the loss of Samantha, The Waiter is left with a stunning portrait of his own lack of compassion, which gives him the courage to reconcile with himself and his family.