Джеймс Кейн - Mildred Pierce

“Girls! Girls!”

“I caught her! She’s been doing it right along, stealing tips off my tables! She stole ten cents off eighteen, before that lady sat down, and now she stole fifteen out of a forty-cent tip right here — and I seen her do it!”

In a moment the place was like a beehive, with other girls shouting their accusations, the hostess trying to restore order, and the manager flying out of the kitchen. He was a rotund little Greek, with flashing black eyes, and he summarily fired both girls and apologized profusely to the customers. When the two of them suddenly paraded out, in their street clothes, a few minutes later, Mildred was so lost in her reflections that she didn’t even give her girl a nod. It was not until the hostess appeared in an apron, and began serving orders, that she woke up to the fact that she was face to face with one of the major decisions of her life. They needed help, that was plain, and needed it now. She stared at the water glass, twisted her mouth into a final, irrevocable decision. She would not do this kind of work, if she starved first. She put a dime on the table. She got up. She went to the cashier’s desk, and paid her check. Then, as though walking to the electric chair, she turned around, headed for the kitchen.

The next two hours, to Mildred, were a waking nightmare. She didn’t get the job quite as easily as she had supposed she would. The proprietor, whose name was apparently Makadoulis, but whom everybody addressed as Mr. Chris, was willing enough, especially as the hostess kept shrilling in his ear: “You’ve got to put somebody on! It’s a mess out there! It’s a mess!” But when the girls saw Mildred, and divined what she was there for, they gathered around, and passionately vetoed her application, unless Anna was taken back. Anna, she gathered, was the girl who had waited on her, and the aggressor in the fight, but as all of them apparently had been victims of the thefts, they seemed to regard her as their representative in a sense, and didn’t propose to have her made a goat. They argued their case in quite noisy fashion, letting the counters pile up with orders while they screamed, and making appropriate gestures. One of these gestures wiped a plate into space, with a club sandwich on it. Mildred caught it as it fell. The sandwich was wholly wrecked, but she put it together again, with deft fingers, and restored it to its place on the counter. The Chef, a gigantic man addressed as Archie, watched her exhibition of juggling with impassive stolidity, but when the reconstructed sandwich was back on the counter he gave her a curt nod. Then he began banging on the steam table with the palm of his hand. This restored quiet as nothing else had been able to do. Mr. Chris turned to the girls. “Hokay, hokay.”

The question of Anna being thus settled, the hostess hustled Mildred back to the lockers, where she unlocked a door and held out a menu. “Take off your dress and while I’m finding a uniform to fit, study this menu, so you can be some use. What size do you wear?”

“Ten.”

“You worked in a restaurant before?”

“No.”

“Study it, specially prices.”

Mildred took off her dress, hung it in the locker, and stared at the menu. There were fifty-five-and sixty-five-cent lunches on it, as well as appetizers, steaks, chops, desserts, and fountain drinks, most of these bearing fancy names that were unintelligible to her. In spite of her best concentration most of it was a jumble. In a minute or two the hostess was back with her uniform, a pale blue affair, with white collar, cuffs, and pockets. She slipped into it. “And here’s your apron. You furnish your uniform; it comes off your first check, three ninety-five; you get it at cost, and you keep it laundered. And if you don’t suit us, we charge you twenty-five cents’ rent on the uniform; that comes out of your check too, but you don’t have the whole uniform to pay for unless we really take you on. The pay is twenty-five cents an hour, and you keep your own tips.”

“And what’s your name, Miss?”

“Ida. What’s yours?”

“Mildred.”

They started for the dining room, but going through the kitchen Ida kept talking into her ear. “I’m giving you a light station, see? Three, four, five, and six, all them little booths against the wall. That’s so you don’t get no fours. Singles and twos are easier. All them that’s just come in, you take them, and them that’s already started on their lunches, I’ll take care of them myself. That’s so you don’t get mixed up on them other girls’ books.”

They reached the dining room, and Ida pointed out the station. Three of the tables were occupied by people who had given their orders before the fight started, the fourth by a pair of women who had just come in. All were getting annoyed at the delay in service. But still Mildred wasn’t permitted to start. Ida led her to the cashier, a fish-faced blonde who began savagely telling Ida of the complaints she had received, and of the five people who had already walked out. Ida cut her off, had her issue Mildred a new book. “You’ve got to account for every check, see? In here you mark your number, you’re No. 9. Here you mark the number of the table, here the number of customers on the check. Down here, put down everything they order, and the first thing you got to learn: don’t make no mistake on a check. It’s all booked against you, and if you make a mistake, it’s deducted, and you got to pay for it.”

With this ominous warning in her ears, Mildred at last approached the two women who were waiting to have their orders taken, handed them their menus, and inquired what they were going to have. They replied they weren’t sure they were going to have anything, and wanted to know what kind of place this was anyway, to let people sit around without even asking them if they minded waiting. Mildred, almost in hysteria by now with what she had been through that day, felt a hot impulse to take them down a few notches, as she had taken Mrs. Forrester. However, she managed a smile, said there had been a little trouble, and that if they could just be patient a minute or two, she would see they were served at once. Then, taking a quick lunge at the only thing she remembered about the menu, she added: “The roast chicken is awfully good today.”

Slightly mollified, they chose chicken on the sixty-five-cent lunch, but one of them said loudly: “See there’s no gravy on mine in any way, shape, or form. I hate brown gravy.”

“Yes, Miss. I’ll remember.”

Mildred started for the kitchen, barely missing a girl who appeared at the out door. Swerving in time, she dived through the in door and called to Archie: “Two roast chicken. One without gravy.”

But the ubiquitous Ida was at her elbow, calling frantically to Archie: “Hold one gravy, hold it!” Then she yanked Mildred aside, and half screamed at her. “You got to call it right! You can’t work nowhere without you’re in good with the Chef, and you got to call it right for him. Get this: If there’s any trimmings they don’t want, you don’t call it without ’em, you call it hold ’em!”

“Yes, Miss.”

“You got to be in good with the Chef!”

Dimly Mildred began to understand why that great paw, banging on the steam table, had restored order when Mr. Chris had been mobbed like a Junebug in a flock of angry hens. She had observed that the waitresses dipped their own soup, so she now got bowls and filled them with the cream of tomato that her customers had ordered. But there was no surcease from Ida. “Pick up your starters! Pick up your starters!” At Mildred’s blank look, Ida grabbed two plates of salad from the sandwich counter, whipped two pats of butter into two small plates, and motioned Mildred to get the four plates in there, quick. “Have they got water?”