Paula Bomer - Nine Months

Sonia met Katrina while working at an Italian restaurant on Newbury Street. It was a decent job in some respects. The money was good, the work wasn’t so horrible, though the man who owned the restaurant was completely crazy. He cooked, too, and his wife helped on weekends, and often they fought so horrifically — screaming and throwing pots and pans, and really, really screaming — that Katrina and Sonia would have to turn up the radio very loudly so as not to freak out the customers. They would smile at each other when this happened. It was the conversation opener between the two of them. Because Katrina didn’t like Sonia at first. Sonia knew that. Katrina didn’t like “college” girls. Katrina didn’t go to school. She went to rock shows. But Sonia had been insistent. And funny, without trying to be so. Katrina laughed at her, not with her, but that was OK with Sonia. At least she wasn’t being totally ignored anymore. And Sonia was just so intrigued. Who was this woman, this mildly weird-looking woman, who thought so highly of herself? Who sashayed around the restaurant like everyone should lick her toes?

After work, Sonia would go home and dream restlessly of waiting on tables. The next morning, she’d wake tired, her neck and arms hurting from carrying trays of food. She was often too tired to paint in the mornings. One night she asked Katrina if she had the dreams, too.

“They’re called waitressing nightmares,” Katrina said. “Dreams isn’t the right word.”

“And you’re always carrying food and can never get it to the customer?”

“You can never find your table. It’s waitressing hell in your sleep. Waitressing is haunting work. I’ve been doing it for three years.”

“Here? Three years here?” Sonia had just started a few months ago, right before the spring semester ended.

“No, you crazy college girl.” Katrina laughed at Sonia. But it was all right. Sonia didn’t mind amusing Katrina. Because honestly, her attraction to Katrina was piqued by a curiosity that was somewhat objectifying. Everyone Sonia knew was at a college. Beyond not going to college, Katrina hadn’t even finished high school, and Sonia had never hung out with a high school dropout before. “What do they teach you in that fancy school? That people often work at the same place for three years?”

“Well I’m sure it has happened before. And I study painting, not the work habits of the American people.”

Katrina smiled at her. Again, it was a bemused smile, not completely friendly. At this point, Sonia hadn’t yet understood the magic that was Katrina. She looked at Katrina and she saw a shaggy-haired, wide-bottomed short girl with a long nose who didn’t go to college. Katrina said, “Do you want to go out with me after work? I’m going to the Paradise to see a band. This bass player I know put me on the list plus one. My sister was going to be my plus one, but she can get in by herself. She knows the guy at the door. Rock ’n’ roll is a great way to make sure you don’t get the waitressing nightmares. It clears the head of all waitressing things before sleep. You’ll dream of other things, I promise.”

And so it went. Free drinks, backstage passes. Smalltime bands and then the bigger ones, visiting from LA, from New York, from Chicago. There was Lemmy from Motörhead. There were endless hair bands. Katrina got banged by everyone, by Slash, the guy from Warrant, Chris Robinson from the Black Crowes, Tommy from the Replacements, the guitar player from the Chili Peppers. Katrina knew everybody, cool or uncool. Sonia never had a waitressing nightmare again. Granted, she got stuck with whomever Katrina didn’t want. But that was fine with her. Because it was all experience. They were all people. Well, men actually. And it was all fun. Lighthearted. It was adrenaline rushes and loud-ass music and sweaty men and drugs and alcohol. It was short skirts and tight shirts and the power of a well-shaped nipple. A nineteen-year-old nipple. What was more beautiful than a pink, swollen nineteen year old girl’s nipple? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. And Sonia learned that there was no shame in that, only joy. Only joy in the beauty of youth, if you were brave enough to feel it.

BUT THAT WAS YEARS ago. Over ten years ago. Fucking fifteen years ago. Now, Sonia’s nipples, well, they weren’t outrageously bad, but they were darker, not as pink, a little wider. She turns on the TV in her sterile Holiday Inn Express room. She flips through the channels. She lies down and it feels good to put her feet up, After an hour or so of resting like that, she begins to feel restless, hungry, a little alarmed at herself. She even calls home and Dick answers and she hangs up. He was alive. They were all alive. They. And then she calls information in Boston, and then the greater Boston area, and then she finds her, with a hyphenated last name, Katrina Nelson-Allen, in Harvard, Massachusetts. But she chickens out and doesn’t call her. Instead, she puts on the one dress she brought, a babydoll dress from years ago, from Betsy Johnson, when babydoll dresses were fashionable among rock chicks, and it works when she’s pregnant, making her look not so pregnant, and her swelling breasts hang out the top nicely, all cleavagey. She leaves her hotel, getting the desk guy to call her a cab and decides to go the Kenmore Square, to go to the Rat, her favorite club from her years in Boston, the best fucking rock club in the world.

The Rat. Where she danced to the Pixies, the Neighborhoods, the Bags, Ultra Blue, Jawbreaker and, well, a hundred other bands. Mitch had worked the door, Mitch who had a hole in his throat and this little microphone thing he put up to it when he wanted to talk. Not that he talked much to Katrina and Sonia, as they sashayed by him, letting him feel their asses, not asking for the cover charge. Mitch was a huge man and had tons of gray hair and a gray beard and he really was an institution, he was in charge, he could bounce out anyone, the Del Fuegos when they got too drunk, frat boys who weren’t regulars but were trying to slum it and he just didn’t like. He had power . Rock ’n’ Roll power. And he loved Katrina and Sonia, because what was not to love about them?

The cab stops in front of the Rat, which looks exactly the same and this delights Sonia beyond all belief, as if the world was truly wonderful and made for her happiness. She puts on some lipstick, checks her face in her compact, and then as she walks toward the Rat, feeling self-conscious of being pregnant — although, man, she’s really carrying so nice and small, but pregnant is pregnant — notices something is wrong. There’s a big football-player-looking guy at the door, all steroid muscles and tight shirt with a leather jacket and spiked hair.

Sonia walks sort of slowly up to him, peaks in behind him. The bar looks the same. It’s crowded, but not too crowded, loud, louder than she’s used to these days but probably not louder than it was back in her day. But where’s Mitch? A sort of panic sets in.

“Hi,” Sonia says.

“Hi,” football player says, with a reassuring Boston accent. “The cover’s ten bucks.”

“Oh, of course.” Sonia reaches in her bag, finds a ten in her wallet. She can’t believe she’s paying a cover charge. Her face goes red. “You know, I never had to pay a cover here before. Where’s Mitch? Mitch … well, Mitch …”

“Mitch is dead.”

Sonia swayed, put her hand on the door to steady herself. “What? Mitch is dead?”

“Yeah, the throat cancer came back and killed him.” Stunned, Sonia barely notices the guy take her ten dollars, her anger overwhelmed by grief. Mitch was dead. Mitch, who made her feel special, like she was in the club of hot girls who got to bang hot rock boys. Mitch, Mob connected, the man who put up with nothing, who protected all the girls he loved. Sonia remembers the time he beat up Ike Wagner, a local rock hero, because he tried to rape some poor girl in the men’s room. And he beat the shit out of him, movie-style blood and action, right in front of the Rat. Wagner would never press charges, not with Mitch’s connections. He was a hero, a legend.