and on the drive home we own the road

courtesy of dan, from matthew klam’s “let’s get small”:

Eleventh grade: We have busboy jobs at Le Château, a big, corny restaurant run by a mean French family, in a stone mansion overlooking the Hudson Valley. The maître d’ is not so sure about us; neither are the waiters, the captains, the wine guys, or Joseph, who hired us, or his lieutenant, Koos. Individually, we do a capable job of clearing, hauling trays and dish tubs, but as a team we’re incompetent and despised. The grandmother catches us eating food off people’s plates, we’re blamed for breaking the ice machine, and the staff generates a growing list of insulting nicknames for us. But there’s a wonderful smell of baguettes in paper bags, and on the drive home we own the road, dissecting the strangeness of a menacing world.