Free Serving Celebrities: The Complete Collection by Bill Ryan

wasted no time, “Would you like to have dinner with me tomorrow night?” Again, Megan could only come up with an “I… err… ahhh… I guess so…” she stammered. “Good” said Warren, handing her a pen and a piece of paper. “Give me your phone number and I’ll call you. Do you like Italian?” The waiter and I replied, “Yes.” Warren looked to me and the waiter and said, “Nice meetin’ you guys.” He made sure he had Megan’s phone number and jumped back into his car, leaving the three of us and everyone else walking by asking “Was that Warren Beatty?” Megan finally blurted, “…but I have a boyfriend!”
    As we continued to walk down the avenue, Megan kept on repeating, “I have a boyfriend -- I can’t go out with Warren Beatty.” While the other waiter and I kept extolling, “What nerve!!!” and “Did you see the balls he had!!!” “He stops a woman walking down the street and asks her to dinner!” we rejoiced, “He has big balls!” Megan muttered, “…I can’t go to dinner with him.”
    I stayed with them until we got to Seventy-Second Street and the IRT. The waiter and I tried to convince Megan to go on the date, “It is only dinner, it doesn’t mean anything.” “Take the dinner and enjoy yourself,” we told her. I even tried to reason with her as an actor, “Maybe he can help your career -- have dinner with him.” “You know his reputation,” she said, “He’s going to want to lay me.” “Having dinner with him doesn’t mean he has to sleep with you?” reasoned the waiter. “I don’t know.” Megan replied, “You saw the way he looked at me.”
    We stood in front of the subway-station at West Seventy-Second and Broadway when I caved and said, “Your boyfriend doesn’t have to know.” I think I saw Megan’s lower lip quiver. “I’ll go, if you don’t” said the waiter, adding, “…And I’m not even gay.”
    Later in the week, I worked the same shift with Megan. At an opportune time I whispered, “What happened with your dinner with Warren Beatty?” Megan glared at me and replied, “When he called, I told him that I had a boyfriend and that I didn’t think it was a good idea.” She smiled uncomfortably and hustled off to one of her tables. It may not have worked out but you can’t blame Warren for trying -- what rocks that man has!!!
    A few weeks later on a very busy Saturday night, I was in the kitchen with Megan when the hostess rushed up to her and said, “Megan, Warren Beatty just came in and requested your section.” Megan looked as if she had been snared by a red head devouring python. “Tell him I’m not here -- I can’t wait on him,” she replied.
    The hostess was stunned, thinking that Megan would be thrilled that Warren wanted her. “It’s Warren Beatty -- from the movies.” Megan turned away from her, checking the order she was about to take out. “I can’t do it. Put him in someone else’s section.” Megan grabbed her plates and ran out of the kitchen. The hostess, kitchen staff and I watched, as she left. Only I knew the real story behind Megarren .
    Later in the evening, I overheard Megan explaining her strange behavior to the hostess and some of the other waitresses. “We went out a few times but I’ve got a boyfriend. Now he keeps calling me and he won’t leave me alone.” All the women tried to comfort her, in sisterly solidarity. “He’s like that, I hear,” one waitress said. “He uses women and then just throws them aside,” said another. “But he is Warren Beatty!” said the hostess. The rest of the girls gave her the “of-course- you -would” glare.
    I would never know if Warren and Megan got it on, as we used to say then. But on the other hand, there might be a guy right now who has a wife named Megan, who was a waitress in New York City in the early eighties, who sometimes has a very mysterious smile on her face whenever she watches the film “Shampoo,” and maybe now that husband has learned the