By Nicole Baute
Maja Bubic can’t sit still. Perched on a bar stool in Dunn’s 24-hour delicatessen, just north of Elgin and Cooper streets, Maja waits impatiently for her night shift to begin.
Her right leg – crossed over her left – is bouncing uncontrollably.
“I haven’t slept all day,” she explains. “I won’t be sleeping for the next 48 hours.”
Maja is a newly minted Dunn’s server and works a day job at a chic bra shop before checking in at Dunn’s for her 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. weekend shift.
I ask her how she manages to stay awake and her eyes widen behind her red-framed glasses.
“Coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee!” she says.
Approximately one cup an hour, by my math, and I make a note of her wisdom for personal reference.
Dedicated to my craft, I’m working the night shift at Dunn’s to get the inside scoop on Centretown after dark.
I’ve scored myself an authentic Dunn’s T-shirt and a place behind the hostess stand, where I will greet customers with varying degrees of cheerfulness as the night progresses.
Servers at Dunn’s have seen it all. Jacqueline, a young server with dangly earrings and long brown hair, says she once caught “a prostitute smoking crack” in the upstairs washroom. Another night Heather, a mild-mannered brunette, was a casualty in an alcohol-induced mustard fight. The jaundiced squabble exploded in the dining room and out onto Elgin Street. By the end, yellow smears covered the windows of nearby shops.
Heather is Dunn’s full-time night waitress. Truly nocturnal, she doesn’t get a lot of sunlight and admits the night shift has taken its toll on her body.
“You get adjusted after about a month,” she explains. “Then after a couple months you start to get sick . . . you just get run down.
You get over it,” she says with a shrug.
I pour myself a cup of coffee.
12:03 a.m.
Dunn’s is a huge, eatery-style joint with red brick walls and dark wood tables seating up to 180 people.
A few customers are scattered around the restaurant, eating bulging smoked meat sandwiches and drinking vanilla milkshakes. Otherwise Dunn’s is pretty quiet. The servers and hostesses lounge around the “please seat yourself” sign and lean on the bar, eating candy from Sugar Mountain and cracking jokes. We’re waiting for “the rush.”
An older woman in a green jacket comes in and sits in a round booth against the far wall. Her name is Theresa, Heather tells me, and she’s been coming in alone every single night for about seven years.
Ever since her husband died she can’t sleep, Heather says.
Theresa usually stays until at least 4 a.m., slowly leafing through the day’s issues of Metro and the Ottawa Sun. She orders fish and chips or a ham sandwich.
She always sits in the same booth, an inconspicuous fly-on-the-wall; a quiet matriarch keeping a watchful eye over the delicatessen.
Theresa says she likes to chat with the staff. “It’s nice to socialize,” she says. “I get to know them. They’re my family.”
“They call me Mother Theresa!” she chuckles in delight. “They’re nice kids.”
2:10 a.m.
The after-bar crowd starts to stagger in. There are 18-year-olds returning from a club in Hull, hipsters discussing the iPod battle at Barrymores, Guns N’ Roses fans hungry after rocking out at Scotiabank Place, and a drag queen in a red dress and black pumps.
Jennifer Fisher, the boisterous night manager, leans on the hostess stand and gives me a running commentary.
“That’s Steve” – she points to a dark-haired man – “over, bacon, white, no fruit, extra bacon.”
“Get ‘em in, get ‘em fed, get ‘em out,” she says, with a defiant nod.
I keep myself busy ushering seemingly drunk people to tables around the restaurant.
The servers juggle plates and huge glasses of water while the Black Eyed Peas blare from the stereo. There’s an accident in the kitchen, and the crash of falling plates echoes through the dining hall. Nobody misses a beat.
3:16 a.m.
I chat with a middle-aged man sitting alone eating a bowl of pea soup. His name is Chris Jonas, and he’s a flight simulator engineer and pilot from Corpus Christi, Texas. He’s in Ottawa for two months working on Transport Canada’s C90, an airplane used for pilot certification and VIP flights.
Chris works on the C90’s autopilot software in the evenings, starting at 6 p.m. and ending sometime after midnight.
“Can I tell you something?” he asks. He leans forward and his government ID card dangles dangerously above his soup.
“It’s my first time in Canada and I really like it here. I met lots of interesting people.”
Then he makes fun of how I pronounce the word “out”.
As a few customers stumble out the door, I start yawning uncontrollably. I guzzle down another cup of coffee and begin my closing chores, wiping sticky fingerprints off the booths and sweeping dirt and crumbs off the Dunn’s welcome mat.
4:41 a.m.
Theresa’s been sitting in her booth all night, slowly turning the pages of her newspapers. Now she gets up, gathers her belongings and adjusts her patterned scarf. She zips up her coat, blows her nose with a Kleenex from her purse, and starts to move towards the door.
“Bye, Theresa,” Heather calls from the other side of the restaurant, where she is adjusting place settings.
“I have tomorrow off so I won’t see you,” Heather says. “I’m gonna sleep all day!”
Theresa smiles warmly and nods goodbye, giving the front door a gentle push. Then she shuffles out onto the street, where the cabbie who picks her up every day is sure to be waiting.
5:06 a.m.
The restaurant is finally empty and I’m slumped over the bar. Alex, the busboy with the seven-inch mohawk, is mopping the floor. Some of the servers are heading home to bed.
The cook, Fares Al-Khalidi, sits with me and watches the clock, still wearing his apron. He gets to go home at six, he says. Fares has worked various night jobs since he immigrated to Canada from Jordan in 2002. He says he likes it. He has a good time joking around with his co-workers, and he’s used to the routine.
“But sometimes it’s hard,” he admits. “The night, it’s not like the day.”
5:32 a.m.
Outside on Elgin Street it’s quiet and still. Above the restaurant’s double doors, the giant red “Dunn’s Famous” sign is fading, the electric light flickering like an uneven pulse.
I climb into my car and drive home through the city in a daze. The sun will soon be up. The Dunn’s night shift crowd will settle down to sleep, just as the rest of Centretown comes to life.