In the early 1980s I bussed tables at a restaurant where the waiters wore tuxedoes and water glasses were heavy goblets. The maître d' was a swarthy and handsome man with a European accent that boomed through the massive dining room. Marius owned the Marius Restaurant and ruled it like a rogue king. He'd charm diners as he prepared Caesar salad and steak Diane "tableside" on the floor, then laugh and swear with the staff in the backroom. He called me "little shit-ass."

Although the Cleveland mafia was losing its might by then, it was still somewhat active. For a few of them, the Marius was a Westside haunt, particularly after the notorious Blue Fox shut down. Marius always welcomed Cleveland's underbelly lords heartily.

"Tony!" he'd say grandly when they'd step through the arches of the main entrance, "I have a beautiful veal chop for you. And Danny? Jimmy? Where have you guys been?" They'd laugh and slap one another's backs. After the mobsters were settled at the bar, Marius would turn to rush into the kitchen, his jovial grin gone. Tense, private and brief conversations would ensue with the cook and headwaiter. If the right food and liquor weren't on hand, Marius would send someone out to retrieve them from a mysterious source.

No one had to tell me to fear the Mafiosi.

They preferred the dark enclaves of the Flying Dutchman bar over the main dining room. Sometimes they were alone, sometimes in a group. Lenny and Moe and Tony and Butch were always smoking. Sometimes they would beckon me.

"Hey kid, get me a pack of Winstons."

And no matter how many plates were to be cleared or buckets of ice were to be retrieved, when one of these guys wanted something, I jumped.

"I don't care about the goddamn deuce, you little shit-ass!" Marius would yell at me. "You always take care of Lenny Tiggs! You hear me? You always take care of Lenny Tiggs!"

I would take Tiggs' five, get change, get the Winstons from the machine ($1.25), tamp down the pack, carefully open the cellophane such that only the top came off and open the foil to a tiny square tent. I'd tap out a few smokes and place the pack, his change and a book of propped-to-display "Marius" matches on a salad plate and offer it up on a drinks tray to Lenny Tiggs. He would invariably pick up the pack only.

"Keep the change, kid."

Tiggs was bald with a deep tan and heavy jowls. His brother Moe looked just like him, although I don't know if they were twins. They wore Cosby sweaters in the winter and polyester golf shirts in the summer. The Tiggs brothers and their posse said "fuck" a lot. They paid in cash and overtipped. The topic of going into or getting out of jail always loomed around these guys. They called women dames (good) or broads (bad).

Another mobster, Butch Manolli, used to come in before we were open and sit at the bar. Tommy the bartender would turn away from the lemons on the cutting board. "What can I get you, Butchie?" he'd ask while I silently stocked the shelves with glasses. Tommy would pour that 9 a.m. Scotch with ease. The liquor smelled different at that time of the morning, but it was a perfect match for Manolli's thin cruel lips, which spewed expletives when they weren't taking in booze and cigarettes. Helen the hostess once whispered to me that he was "an enforcer," although everything about those guys was whispered.

When the Marius closed, I worked at the Casablanca on Clifton in a building that originally housed Cavoli's Restaurant, a Cleveland West Side institution that boasted the "Sports Bar and Trophy Room," which was a clubby little bar in the basement beneath the formal dining room. The walls were decorated with painted caricatures of Cleveland celebrities and sports figures from a generation before. It had been popular in the '50s and '60s, when the likes of Lou Groza or Rocky Colavito might pop in, and all but defunct by the time I worked there in the mid-'80s.

The mobsters from Marius started coming into the Casablanca as well. They liked that downstairs room, perhaps because it recalled a bygone era. We'd bring down bottles of liquor and food for them, and then leave them alone while they played poker.

I was always sent in to clean up the aftermath. The figures on the wall that I did not recognize were frozen in laughter and amazing plays all around me as I crawled around the floor gathering playing cards and debris, then scraped plates caked with dried food and cigarette butts into a bus tub.

There were two gay waiters at the Casablanca: Mark and Perry. I would go to the gay bar with them after work where we'd laugh and drink and smoke and eavesdrop on the other patrons ("You only love him because he's got a cock this big!"). Mark and Perry would give my chest a perfunctory glance and stroke my long brown hair.

"Oh honey, the men I could get if only I had what you have," they'd say. I adored those guys.

One day Perry didn't show up for work. When Mark came in, he told me that the drunk Mafiosi had cornered Perry in the parking lot after closing; they thought it would be funny to rough up the fag waiter. They bludgeoned him to within an inch of his life and left him in a heap on the crumbling edge of the asphalt.

Perry had a broken nose - at least that was the only injury I heard about. He did not come back to work for a week (or was it longer?). Other than murmurs in the kitchen, no one said anything. No one called the cops. No one talked about which thugs were involved in the beating. When Perry returned, he was still bruised up, but he moved around the same men who nearly killed him as if nothing had happened.

I wanted to talk. I wanted to scream. I wanted to show sympathy and tenderness to Perry, but he just hushed me and shook his head in dismissal when I raised my eyes in question. Maybe he'd fielded additional threats. Maybe he'd been paid off. I have no idea.

Today, a video store occupies 11517 Clifton Blvd., and the gracious dining room of the Marius is filled with the offices of Larsen Architects. The cast of characters in this column is mostly dead.

As for the wide-eyed 15-year-old I was then, she's still somewhere inside me. Because when I listen to my glossy educated friends talk about the brilliant symbolism in The Sopranos, the kid in the bow tie and vest pipes up and says, "Bullshit." She's entitled to sniff at the literati. After all, she hauled hotel trays stacked with soiled dishes on her shoulder while tiptoeing on eggshells behind those terrifying men.

I am loath to join the self-righteous set that lambastes the glorification of mob life in fiction and film. But I'm also pretty sure that Lenny Tiggs didn't visit an attractive brunette therapist. Butch Manolli probably did not grapple with a complex marriage or intelligent, inquisitive children. My Cleveland wiseguys did have one thing in common with Tony Soprano, though. They were in the "waste management" business.

But take away the gifted writers, actors and directors, remove the sanitizing filter of a television screen, and the real-life goodfellas smelled every bit as bad as the garbage they hauled. I know. I was there.

eobnow@cox.net; erinobrien.us