Merlot (7 page)

“Ahh, ma’am,” Heidi smiled weakly, a hint of
terror in her eyes.

“The same, please.”

“A Coke?” asked Merlot.

“A merlot?” asked Heidi, simultaneously.

“The merlot. Oh, and then you were going to
get me that change,” Cindy smiled icily into Heidi’s wide eyes.

“I’ll be right back,” Heidi assured them.

“So, sorry about that, just a little headache
in the dining room, actually the right kind of problem. We just
overbooked and didn’t have quite enough tables. It’s all taken care
of,” Merlot said, casting an eye across a sea of baby boomers
dancing to Neil Diamond tunes.

“So, how would you feel about dining in an
exclusive part of the operation tonight?” he asked.

“Here we go,” Heidi said returning with the
Coke and glass of wine in Olympic-record time.

“Your wine ma’am, and your change,” she said
making eye contact with Cindy as she slid a crisp ten-dollar bill
across the table.

“Thank you,” Cindy replied then turned to
give Merlot her undivided attention.

“The dining room is full and will be for a
while, like I said, the right kind of problem,” he half lied, not
wanting to take the chance of having to talk with Osborne any more
than necessary.

“I was thinking, if you wouldn’t mind, we
could dine in my office. It would be private, the service will
still be good, and the food excellent. Plus, it will give me a
chance to get away from all this, and have an uninterrupted
conversation with you. I feel like, well, between me running around
tonight and what was your friend’s name, Kari?”

“Karen,” corrected Cindy.

“Yeah, well either way, I feel like we
haven’t talked and, to tell you the truth, as long as I’m out here,
they’re going to keep calling me.”

“Your office sounds wonderful,” Cindy said,
envisioning candlelight and personal waitstaff.

It took them fifteen minutes to make their
way through the bar. Merlot talked to people, gave the word he
wasn’t to be disturbed and checked with the hostess Allie about
some special situation. Eventually they made their way to his
office.

Whatever Cindy was hoping for wasn’t what she
found. She had conjured up some sort of elegant, romantic private
table, a waiter or two. Most likely a rose or something on the
table, not to mention candlelight, probably a sound system playing
soft music, lights dimmed for romance.

“Let me just clean this shit off,” he said
over his shoulder, stacking piles of invoices one on top of the
other and dumping them on a dreadful striped couch with torn, duct
taped arm rests. He set two coffee mugs onto the credenza behind
his large, black chair. Each mug still held coffee and as he picked
them up they dribbled a small puddle across the desktop.

He grabbed a soiled terry-cloth rag and
attempted to wipe at some sort of stain that seemed as if it didn’t
want to leave, moistened the rag by dipping it into the trail of
coffee and garnered moderate success, then nodded at a green
Naugahyde chair.

“Just pull that damn thing up here to the
desk and I’ll get some food for us. What do you feel like?”

“Ahh, is there a menu?” Cindy asked, still a
little in shock.

“Oh yeah, sure, let me get one for you,” he
said, leaving before she could say no wait.

She looked around, remembered the new top she
had purchased now lying on her bed and her ridiculous dreams about
a romantic evening and started laughing. The guy runs a God damned
restaurant and it’s Saturday night. He doesn’t have time to have a
romantic dinner.

He quickly returned with a menu, a couple
bottles of wine in hand and things began to look better.

“Recommendation?” she asked.

“If it were me I’m partial to the bruschetta
appetizer, and we have the best prime rib,” he said, knowing they
had plenty of both in the kitchen.

“Okay, you sold me. Is there more merlot,
Tony?” she asked sliding her glass across the desktop.

He filled her glass, left with the menu,
returned in short order with silverware and napkins.

She attempted to sit gracefully in the green
Naugahyde chair and failed, miserably. The arms on the thing kept
it from moving any closer to the edge of the desk and the angle of
the chair’s seat placed her butt about a foot lower than her knees.
With her skirt up above the top of her thighs she would have killed
right now for a pair of jeans, but had to settle for the napkin,
quickly unwrapping her silverware and draping the cloth across her
thighs. It was a little like having a GYN exam. The only thing the
chair lacked was a set of stirrups.

He sat opposite and just a bit higher in his
black leather office chair.

“Who’s that?” She gestured with her third
glass of wine to the only photo in the room; a man with a small boy
in a Little League uniform

“That’s my dad, and that goofy looking kid in
the baseball uniform is me.”

“Is he still alive, your Dad?”

“No, but I still miss him every day. We were
real pals.”

She attempted to wedge her knees underneath
the overhang of the desk but the arms of the chair prevented her
from moving any closer. She felt like she was slumping into the
back of the chair.

He seemed not to notice, and he chatted on
about work, her work mostly. Asking what she did in a day? How
crazy was it working through the fair week?

“Well Merlot, isn’t this cozy,” cackled a
waitress. She carried four plates, another bottle of wine and
pushed the door open with her hip. She set the food on the desk,
looked around then down at Cindy who suddenly felt on display.

“I’ll get some candles, honey, never enough
time for romance.”

He rolled his eyes and remained quiet while
she was in the office. Once the door closed he said,

“She’s been with us for over thirty-five
years. My dad hired her, she’s a good worker, loyal, and she gets
away with murder.”

“Ahh, that’s so sweet,” Cindy said, about to
finish another glass of wine. She wiggled down ever so slightly
into her chair and felt a warm glow coming all over her.

It was toward the end of the meal and she
pushed food around her plate, not really hungry anymore. He set the
bruschetta and salad plates on top of a stack of files on the
credenza. Candles flickered in the draft from the air conditioning
as melted wax dripped on the worn surface of the desk. In the
background, Kiss of Death pounded out their final set for the
night.

He poured more wine into her glass, not that
it was empty. In fact it hadn’t been empty all night. He’d kept it
reasonably full. Every time he filled it she would say, “Oops, not
too much.”

Eventually, she stopped worrying about
getting drunk and was cautioning herself about getting drunker,
although that didn’t seem to be working either. She was draped
sideways in the green Naugahyde chair, legs swinging freely over
the arm of the chair, shoes somewhere on the floor below. A
half-eaten plate of chocolate gateau rested on her chest. She
gestured with the wine glass as she spoke.

“The money these fuckers bring in, oh Jesus,
I didn’t mean to say it that way.”

“Customers?” suggested Merlot.

“Yeah, the fucking customers, Tony. That’s
what the fuckers are, customers. Anyway, you wouldn’t believe it.
It’s sticky, all covered with sugar and fruit drinks. And it smells
like grease, you know all that shit they have at the fair. By the
time I get home I just peel my clothes off and take a long hot
shower.”

“There’s this one guy, really weird, he’s
always eyeing up the tellers. Get this, he wears a Vikings jersey,
these really baggy shorts, a baseball hat and hunting boots or
something. Oh, he’s so gross,” she shivered at the thought.

“He’s all sweaty, and at the bank about a
hundred times a day, always in a hurry. Know what we call him?
Porky Pig. That isn’t very nice. He has this crew cut and a Donald
Duck tattoo, I mean what’s that?” she laughed, took another
sip.

“I’d want to take all my clothes off and just
burn them if he touched me.”

“Sounds interesting,” Merlot said a bit
luridly.

She didn’t react.

“I smell like the fair after handling all
that money, and I haven’t even had my butt inside the gate.”

“More wine?” asked Merlot.

“I’d better not, I’ve got to be at work early
on Monday to count weekend deposits,” then inclined her glass so he
could refill it.

“Tomorrow’s Sunday, you can sleep in,” he
poured.

She seemed to think about that for a half
moment, sipping. “There’s so much of this cash from the deposits we
balance our drawers about ten times a day, haul the cash into the
vault. They separate it into the various denominations.”

“You mean like Catholic and Lutheran?” he
joked.

“No,” she said, not picking up on the joke.
“You know, tens, twenties, that sort of shit. Then they run it
through the counters, bundle it in master bundles of one, five or
ten grand, depending, so the couriers can haul it to Central.”

“Sounds busy.” Merlot encouraged.

“Busy, Christ,” she said washing the
declaration down with more wine. “You’ve no idea. We have to hire
extra people just to run this shit through the counters. Ha! That’s
real glamorous, sitting around card tables with five other people
in a vault with no fan. We used to have people supplied by Central,
but they’ve cut back on staff so many times they didn’t have anyone
to spare.”

“So get this,” she said, lurching halfway in
Merlot’s direction spilling wine on her dress, hiking it well above
her hips. “I’ve got thousands upon hundreds of thousands of dollars
to count and I have to hire temps. You know how hard it is to get
good temps? It’s a nightmare.”

“Last year,” she continued after a healthy
sip, “we caught a girl stealing. College kid. I felt really bad, I
mean it was stupid. She stole, I don’t know, a hundred bucks or
something. Course I had to report it. Her father was a big-shot
customer. We had to let her go, charge her, I mean the whole bit.
They had to make an example you know, no exceptions, that sort of
deal.” She paused for another healthy gulp.

“The really shitty thing is she could have
made five times whatever she tried to grab just by volunteering for
some overtime hours.” She drained her glass, the slightest drop ran
down her chin.

“I felt bad for her.”

“Sounds like your couriers must be pretty
busy,” he refilled her glass.

“Yeah. You know,” she turned her head to look
at him with glassy eyes. “You know Tony, I should call her, see how
she’s doing.”

“If you think it would help.”

“Naw,” she swallowed heavily from the
refilled glass, “I’m the one that turned her in. I had to, I mean.
And, I’m glad I did, the little brat, she jeopardized all of us,
the count off by a hundred or two hundred, Jesus Christ. I mean
what was she thinking? Still, in the end it was a stupid kid thing,
you know? We’ve all done dumb things,” she said then took another
long sip.

She looked over at Merlot with a glassy stare
as her head weaved. He knew she wasn’t just drunk, she was
absolutely plastered.

“So you were telling me about the couriers,”
he said, topping off her glass.

“I was? I thought you wanted to hear about
Lutherans and Catholics, ha, ha, ha, ha. Just kidding. One of our
biggest customers is the church diner, who would have thunk it! Get
this, it’s called The Last Supper Diner. Isn’t that cute? Some
church from like out in Wilmer or Saint James owns it, but all
these old folks can’t figure out whether it’s Catholic or Lutheran,
so they all eat there. It’s pretty cool. These little old
white-haired ladies giving you another cup of coffee and shit. We
get free passes at the bank every year, and I know some of the
ladies there, so I always get real good service.”

She took another gulp of wine, dribbled some
down her dress, but didn’t notice.

“Mmm-mmm, I’ll take you there. I get a free
pass and they give me real good service.”

After working seven days a week at his own
place he was having a tough time coming up with somewhere he would
rather not be than The Last Supper church diner, replete with
little old ladies pouring coffee.

“Do the couriers get free passes?” figuring
he would give it one more try.

“Naw, they just pick the stuff up and run,”
she slurred, not looking at him but holding out her glass in his
direction.

He refilled it and waited.

“They don’t get to know the customers the way
we do, and most of them don’t even talk to us. They’re pretty up
tight. Except for this one guy Billy, he’s really nice. I mean,
Billy at least says hi. The other guys all act like they have a
stick up their ass. You know how people who carry guns are, always
walking around like ‘we’re really tough’.” She took a heavy gulp,
rested the glass on her chest then stretched her legs out and
examined her red toe nails.

“How often are they there? Do they just come
at the end of the day?” thinking, tell me something.

“End of the day! You kidding? There wouldn’t
be room to breathe in there if they just came at the end of the
day. End of the day! Ha!” she attempted to half sit and immediately
slumped back down, oblivious to the red wine she spilled down the
front of her dress.

“Haven’t you even been listening? They come
every other hour, you goof. Only we have them scheduled so it’s at
twelve after on the even hours and twenty-five after on the odd
hours, so we don’t set a pattern. Sort of, you know, in case
robbers are watching or something.”

He casually jotted down the times she had
just provided.

“Well, you have all those dye packs and
things I see on the cop shows right? Maybe tracking devices or
something in there with the money?”

She turned halfway toward him, speaking as
she moved. “Tracking devices, man, where the fuck did you get that?
We don’t have tracking devices, we barely have enough room or time
just to get all that crap into trash bags. Besides, the courier is
coming to get them so why bother to put a dye pack in there? Not
that we have ‘em anyway. Oh brother,” she giggled, then sipped,
draining her glass, setting it on the desk, almost but not quite
knocking it over.