James Cain - The Cocktail Waitress

So, she took it.

They lived in Silver Spring, perhaps six miles from me, in a house up on a terrace, and when I got there Tad was out back, with two other children, splashing in a backyard wading pool, a rubber thing with red stripes, that they’d filled with a garden hose. But of course the tricycle was news, and they all rolled it out front, where they took turns riding in it. Then Ethel, Jack, and I sat in the backyard, on recliners, and Ethel tried to be agreeable, unsuccessfully-and I tried, successfully. I felt positively angelic, even to her. Once, there were screams from the street, and I raced around the house to see what was going on. The little girl, who was a bit older than the two little boys, had ridden the tricycle off, so she was down at the corner with it, while the boys were screaming their heads off to her. Ethel, who followed me out, denounced the girl as a pest, explaining that she was always muscling in on what the other children had. But I knelt down, took her in my arms, and asked if she’d like a pair of skates. When her face lit up I promised to send her one. I promised the little boy a ball and glove, and Tad a new hat. Then everyone was happy, and I was the fairy godmother.

So, when we resumed our seats out back, I felt happy and pleased with myself. However, that didn’t last long.

Ethel asked, her voice like ice: “Where did you get the money you’re spreading around so generously to every child in sight? Working at your cocktail lounge?”

“That’s right.”

“I didn’t realize a waitress gets tipped so well, just for waitressing. Or are you doing more now, on the side?”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

“I’m sure you do.”

“My customers have been generous with me, and I choose to share it. I won’t apologize for it.”

“It’s not the generosity you should apologize for, but what you have to do to make it possible.”

Her husband had a trapped looked on his face, as though he wished he could have been somewhere else, not watching his wife light into me.

Suddenly Tad was there, sidling up to Ethel. “What is it, darling?” she asked him.

He pulled her head down, and whispered.

She patted him, picked him up, and carried him into the house.

“You got to go, you got to go,” said Jack.

He rode me home after that, very sociably, and I felt grateful to him. But for some reason my day wasn’t nice anymore. Not because of what Ethel had said to me-she’d said as much before, and I could overlook it. But all because my son had gone to his aunt when he had to go to the bathroom, instead of me, his mother.

Whether the need to do something about it was vividly in my mind when Mr. White next came into the bar would be hard to say. But I certainly lost no time in making myself agreeable to him, offering him the cocktail list as always but adding: “But perhaps you don’t really need it, if you’re having the same as you regularly do.”

“Please. It’s very pleasant, Joan, having it remembered what I regularly have.”

“Well, Mr. White, I wouldn’t forget it so soon.”

Jake had already opened the tonic and was filling the glass with rocks. I toted, then poured, taking the bottle back to the bar. Did I put an extra sway in my step as I walked away, to make my hips jog and my bottom twitch? I may have. I know I unbuttoned an extra button on my blouse before turning around, tray in hand.

“Joan, there is something I’m curious to ask you.”

I rejoined him at his table, and swapped a full bowl of Fritos for the half-full bowl in front of him. It was no more than I’d have done at any of the dozen other tables in the bar. But perhaps I bent slightly lower doing it than was absolutely necessary. “What’s that, Mr. White?”

“Earl, please.”

“I’d feel too familiar.”

“Please.”

“Earl, then.”

“I…”

“What is it? What do you want to ask me?”

“I’m not usually tongue-tied, Joan, I just find myself somewhat distracted at the moment.”

I smiled and lowered my gaze, and said softly: “Pleasantly, I hope?”

“Most pleasantly.”

“But all the same, I don’t want to make it hard for us to have a conversation, Mr.-Earl.” I fastened up the lowest open button on my blouse. “Better?”

“From a certain point of view.”

I walked around behind him. “Better still?”

“From the same point of view, yes.”

There were no other customers in the bar just yet, and Jake had vanished into the storeroom on some errand. For the moment we were alone. I thought of what Ethel had accused me of, and of what Liz had proposed, and about how physically unappealing this man was to me-tall and ungainly, pale and middle-aged. But I thought, too, about Tad, sleeping in Ethel’s home, her kisses comforting him instead of mine when he cried out in the night, her face the one he woke to each morning, and I knew I’d do anything to have him back.

I leaned over Mr. White’s shoulder from behind, reaching forward to polish a spot on the table with a napkin, as though wiping up a spill. Through the thin fabric of his shirt and the thinner fabric of my blouse, my breasts pressed warm and heavy against his shoulder blade.

I heard his breathing change, becoming rapid, even ragged.

“There was something you wanted to say, Earl?”

He swallowed. “You make me so excited I can’t talk.”

I stood upright again, and came around to face him once more.

His face was red, less like a blush than a man suffering after long exertion. He took a swallow of his tonic. It was a minute before he regained his usual color-that is, his usual pallor-and his breathing resumed its normal rhythm. “I like you, Joan. I hope you know that. Perhaps I like you too much. It’s not good for me to get too excited.”

“Why not?”

“Can we just say doctor’s orders and leave it there?”

“I don’t know if I’ll be able to leave it there, if it means we need to stay at arm’s length.”

“Joan, you must.”

“We’ll see,” I said. Then: “What did you want to ask me?”

He took another swallow. “Your husband, who died this past week- how long were the two of you married?”

“Four years,” I said. “Just under.”

“… And your son is three, you said?”

“That’s right. Just over.”

“And how old are you?”

“Twenty-one.”

“I see.”

“What do you see?”

“I just wanted to understand your situation better, Joan.”

“And do you, now?”

“You were seventeen …?”

“A little over,” I said.

“And can I ask why you married him?”

“I’m sure you can guess.”

After some time he said: “It’s not a good reason, Joan.”

“I found that out.”

“… You don’t like to talk about it?”

“Would you?”

“I would like to know what happened, as perhaps I can help.”

“I was in Washington, waiting to start a job. Ron was there, too, living in the same apartment building. He had a record-spinner in his apartment and we would slip over there when we had nothing else to do. Of course we quickly found other things to do-and then I had to get married. That’s all. You need to understand, I was happy about it at the time. But alas, Ron had to get married too, and he wasn’t happy at all. He hated it. He hated it, he hated me, and he hated our little boy. His family hated me too, but didn’t hate little Tad, especially Ron’s sister didn’t. So she has him now, and I have this job.”

“Well, don’t hate the job.”

“Hate it? I was down on my knees the other night, thanking God that I had it.”

“After all, it introduced us. You give me something to look forward to each evening, which I haven’t had in a long time, not since my wife died.”