Then the busboy dropped the tray.
He had tripped, it proved, on a napkin.
There were heavy stacks of plates and side dishes on the tray—glasses of water—metal domes.
The boy staggered—and the wild gesticulation of his free arm was caught by my peripheral vision. So I saw the tray slant—saw its burden slide and crash onto the heads of a pair of buttressed dowagers, a few tables away. The noise seemed to continue for a long time and a scream permeated it as the boy lost hold entirely on his tray, fell against a chair-back, and dish after soiled dish cascaded onto flower hats, bright blouses, fat shoulders, and freckled necks.
A rush of waiters masked the scene. Guests stood to see better.
A bull-voiced beldame roared, "Send the manager!"
Her less hefty companion burst through the waiters, daubing at the stained area of her bosom and throwing bits of lettuce with every swipe. She made a beeline for the ladies' room—followed by her smeared, stentorian colleague, whose hat was full of dill and parsley.
This commotion had hardly died down—Jay had no more than managed to clear the carpet, dispatch the wreckage on the table, send out the chairs for purging, and bite back the last traces of his mirth—when another oddity got under way.
"I want," said a man seated beside Paul, "a baked apple."