I needed a home base, a place to work that wouldn't drain me of every ounce of creativity that I had. I had a job waiting tables elsewhere, but the management hassled me and the low cash return wasn't worth it.  I shredded the want ads, determined to find something so I wouldn't have to return.  After an afternoon of hop-scotching all over Manhattan, I ended up on the East Side and decided to make this particular restaurant my last stop.  As soon as I walked in, I knew that I would work there. I knew it, immediately.  As I walked through a neatly trimmed garden area festooned with custom made spiffy little English cars and terracotta furniture, it was as though I
  stepped into another world. The bridge loomed over me and this place knelt down underneath it, austere and remote:  a medieval palace inlaid with glass and chrome, with walls of cut stone that arched towards the sky majestically and pointed towards Queens.

They gave me an application that completely intimidated me. I had never waited tables in a four star restaurant but I had eaten in enough of them to know that it wasn't about running the food or bussing the tables.  They would expect me to be a salesperson.  No more mopping up vomit.  The food was there to help the patrons enjoy the wine.  Or was it the other way around? Who
knew.  I'd make more money, but to paraphrase Biggie, that meant more problems.  I just wasn't sure exactly what kind of problems.  More on that later.

One of the managers walked up and casually looked over my shoulder, sighed and said in a crisp British accent that if I couldn't fill out the top half of the application, there was no need to complete the rest of it.  He needed someone who knew the basics about wine.  And I didn't.  At all.  Dejected, I took my application to the bar where the hostesses and a reservationist
gathered around me and encouraged me to come back and apply again in a week or two. I left thinking about how I'd pull off that wine quiz.  The feeling that I would work there stayed with me.  I would return victorious.  But when?