The Cocktail Waitress (7 page)

“And he thinks Ron was—”

“He thinks we should keep the investigation open. He didn’t even want to come tell you about your sister-in-law’s call last Tuesday, but I convinced him it was the fair and proper thing to do, seeing as how the accusation against you was so clearly false.”

“For that I thank you. But—what can I do about the rest?”

“It’s not a question of your doing anything, just be aware that as far as the police are concerned, the matter’s not closed.”

It shook me, even though I knew I’d done nothing wrong, that no amount of investigation could show I had. You hear stories of people being railroaded, of innocent men and women sent to the chair. I asked: “What’s he got to be unsatisfied about?”

“Nothing, if you ask me. But he doesn’t like how some of the facts line up. Your husband was a heavy drinker—we got that from all the interviews we did—and he’d been drinking quite a lot that night, yet he was sober enough afterward to manage a drive home of more than forty minutes, in the dead of night, on some fairly twisty roads, without any mishap. Why, then, after you put him out of the house, does he crack up the car just ten minutes from home—presumably no more tired, no more drunk, the road no darker?”

“It was raining by then,” I said. “And we’d been arguing—he might have been distracted.”

“You see, now, that’s exactly what I told him.” Sergeant Young spread his hands. “But—all the same. Church insisted that the car be checked for signs of tampering, he asked the medical examiner who performed the autopsy about any signs of violence to the body that might not have been caused by the accident …”

“And?”

“And nothing. None of these inquiries turned up anything. But he still insists we not close the file.”

“Aren’t you his boss?”

“His partner, Mrs. Medford. It’s not the same thing.”

“So: what does this mean for me?”

“You might have to answer some more questions, at some point. You might be asked to sign paperwork permitting your husband’s body to be exhumed.”

“Exhumed!”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Medford.” He genuinely seemed to be.

“It’s a horrible thing to suggest,” I told him. “But if it has to be— O.K. I’ve got nothing to hide. He can ask all he wants.” The tremor
in my voice gave the lie to the confidence I was trying to portray.

Sergeant Young leaned across the table toward me and dropped his voice. “I wish you could be spared all of this, Mrs. Medford. Really I do. You don’t deserve it after what you’ve been through. Your husband drank, and he ran off the road, and he was alone in the car when he did it. Even if you did have a hand in it somehow—”

“Sergeant Young!”

“—I say
even
if you did—”

“I didn’t!”

“—but
even if you had,
I wouldn’t like to see you hounded for it, much less punished.”

“Please don’t say anymore. You make me very uncomfortable.”

“I regret that very much, Mrs. Medford. My intent was the opposite.” His eyes held mine, and I could see kindness in them. Or what I thought was kindness—you can never be certain. “As I say, they don’t teach it at the academy, but you learn it on the job: not every man’s death is a crime.”

I was relieved to see I had other customers to serve now. Making apologies, I headed for a table of three men in business suits, and felt enormous relief when they placed an order for club sandwiches to go with their drinks, since it gave me an excuse to retreat to the kitchen, to call it to Mr. Bergie.

I stayed in the kitchen as long as I could. When I got back to the bar, the sergeant was gone, having left behind just the mint leaves in his glass and a dollar tip.

I come now to Tom Barclay, but before I tell about him, what he did to me and what I did to him, I have to tell about our pants, the hot pants Liz went out and bought, for her and me to put on, without telling Bianca we would, thereby causing a situation. It might sound frivolous, coming on the heels of such serious matters as potentially being accused of murder—but everything else stemmed from it, however trivial it might have seemed at the start.

It was the first week of July, and murderously hot in the Garden, even with air-conditioning. That was unusual in Hyattsville, because Prince George’s County doesn’t have it hot like in Washington, or in Montgomery County in Maryland, alongside Prince George’s but north of it; and vice versa, not such cold weather in winter. But we had it hot this time, and not being used to it, our clientele was feeling it more than some other clientele might. And of course all the girls were feeling it, especially Liz. During a lull one night she said to me: “Joanie, not to get personal, but are you getting damp, like? In a certain intimate place? That we don’t mention in mixed company, but between girls could be called the crotch?”

“Liz, it’s these velveteen trunks—”

“They’re nothing other than
murder
—”

“And, Liz, the pantyhose make it still worse.”

“Joanie, we’re doing something about it, but don’t ask Bianca’s permission, because she could say no for some reason, and I’m not sure what I’d do about it. I could blow my top, but don’t want to. You know what I mean, Joanie? I like it here.”

“What are you going to do?”

“You’ll see.”

So I saw, because next night here she came in with four pairs of chambray hot pants, in the same color the velveteens were, crimson. Or almost the same color—they were really more like maroon, which of course had some black mixed in, instead of blue. When I’d paid her for my two, one to wear, the other to wash overnight, she led the way back to the locker room, where we made the switch. “And Joanie,” she whispered, when we both had the velveteens off, “we take off the pantyhose too. And we don’t put them back on.”

“Are you sure we shouldn’t ask Bianca?”

“No, Joanie, we should not.”

“Why not? Why go looking for trouble?”

“That’s it, she might say no.”

And when I’d peeled the pantyhose off, and had put the hot pants on, pulling them up over skin, she said: “And, with the legs you got, Joanie, it could also be a nice feature. It could attract trade, you know what I mean.”

“Speak for yourself, why don’t you?”

“O.K., then, O.K.”

Under pantyhose I wear panties—there’s two schools of opinion about it, but decency, it seems to me, as well as personal cleanliness, wants that layer of silk, in against your personal parts. So, silk panties inside, chambray pants outside, both kind of loose, don’t forget—and topside the peasant blouse as I always wore it before to go out on the floor, when who should come in but Bianca. We had it hot for some minutes—she didn’t really have a good objection to offer, but insisted she should have been asked.

I said: “O.K., then we ask.”

“And the answer, Joan, is no.”

Liz cut in: “No, Bianca, on this we don’t ask you, we tell you. Did you hear what I said?”

Bianca was looking furious, but I could see her sense of affront warring with her native preference to give in when pressed. Liz must have seen it, too, and pressed harder.

“O.K., then, we strike. As of right now, if you say we have to wear those velveteens in this heat, we’re on strike. We’re going to letter us up some signs and parade up and down in front. And we’ll wear these when we do it.”

“But those hot pants’ll get wrinkles in them,” Bianca said. “All pointing front and center and down. They won’t be decent.”

“Wrinkles are good for business. Wrinkles like you say we’ll have.” Liz went on: “Anyhow we
won’t
have wrinkles, Bianca, these pants are made out of chambray—chambray the shirting material, made on purpose not to get wrinkles.” She pulled out the label on her extra pair. “Hey, these are Burlington pants. Wake up—Burlington wouldn’t make wrinkles.”

It gave her the excuse she needed, to save face: “Then—I guess it’s O.K.”

“Then, Bianca,” I told her, “we graciously call the strike off.”

“O.K., Joan.”

She kissed me, and Liz gave a little cheer, and that was the end of the matter.

So I thought.

I guess it was 11:30 that night, when Tom came in with his friends, three other guys and two girls, the men all young and rugged and both the women beauties, and all of them half crocked when they got there. Liz had overflow business, and Bianca gave them to me, putting them in a booth, which made a pretty tight fit. It was so tight that Tom had to push one girl in just a little bit tighter before wedging in himself, on the left side of the booth as I faced it, which of course put him next to me, one leg jutting out into the aisle, when I stood in to serve. He grinned naughtily at me, in a way clearly meant to make
my heart race, and it annoyed me that, being a rather handsome grin, it did, just a little. Then they all began ordering doubles—bourbon and ginger ale, I suppose the worst combination ever, not only to make them all drunker, but also to make them sick. However, Bianca said go along, give them what they wanted. “He’s an old friend, Tom Barclay is, so don’t hurt his feelings, please.” I tried to imagine how this young buck with the rakish grin could be an old friend of a woman Bianca’s age, and I suppose it showed in my face because Bianca said, “His father was a regular here from the time my husband built the place. Tom’s grown up here.”

He didn’t seem to have grown up too much, judging by the way he was carrying on with his friends. But Liz got in the act, saying how nice he was, “except of course when slopped, but even then no worse than somebody else. Who is nice slopped?”

“I couldn’t think of anyone.”

Serving drinks to the slopped is no work to write home about, no matter how nice when sober. The girls got louder and louder, and the guys more personal with me, meaning they said things no one should say, to any girl any time anywhere. But Tom, being next to the aisle and to me, didn’t confine it to saying. He also did some doing, pawing me over whenever I came to the table, especially around the bottom, which he patted a number of times. I fixed that by stepping away, and no great harm was done. But then, as I was reaching across to pour one of the girls her drink, he put his hand on my leg, on my bare leg, above the knee on the inside, and began sliding it up. You can see now why I’ve gone into such detail, about the hot pants, the silk panties underneath, and how loose they both were. I’m trying to say I all but turned to ice, and reacted automatically: I clamped both legs together, so his hand couldn’t move, and at the same time turned away, on my heel or something. But that pulled his hand around too, and I suppose threw him off balance, because all in the same split second, there he was on the floor, pulled out of the booth when I
turned. Then, in a flash, there was Liz. And then, there was Bianca. It was she, not me, who saw what the fall had done to him—reacted on his stomach, so he was holding on to his mouth, gulping and gagging and trying not to throw up on the floor. And I was standing back, his hand off me at last, wondering what I should do.

It was one of his friends, sliding out of the booth, who got him to his feet and began rushing him back to the men’s room, growling into his ear: “Not here, Tommy, not here! Hold it! Hold it three more steps, and then let it come, the whole goddam bellyful!”

He got to the men’s room without letting go in the lounge, and after a long moment of silence, somebody laughed and conversation went on. Bianca, for once in her life, showed some spine, and said to the bunch at the table: “You’ve all had enough. When you’ve drunk out, you can get. I said get, I mean get the hell out.”

She came, stood by me, and waited while Jake went back in the men’s room. He came out and came over. “We’re in luck,” he reported. “He let go all right, five and a half gallons—but in the toilet. He flushed it, and not none went on the floor.”

He went back to the bar.

The friend came out of the men’s room, and rejoined his other two friends and the girls.

Then at last, here came Tom.

He started for the booth, but changed his mind and sat at a table, the same one Mr. White sat at, every day when he came. I brought him a cup of hot coffee from the kitchen, black, and said: “Maybe this will help.”

“You bet,” he whispered. “Thanks.”

He sipped it, flinched at how hot it was, then sipped again. He kept on sipping until it was all gone, then wiped his mouth with a cocktail napkin. He took out a pocket comb and combed his hair, and then picked up the napkin again and wiped his face, where it was covered with sweat. “Feel better now,” he said with a smile more
subdued than the grin he’d given me before, but no less handsome, and don’t think he didn’t know it.

“Wouldn’t you like a little more coffee?” I said.

“No, I’m O.K. now.”

“You sure you are?”

“Oh yeah. I feel good now.”

“Then in that case—”

I stood off and let go at his cheek with one hand, I guess on my right-hand side, then with my other hand on his right—on his left and his right. Then I let go all over again, as he half stood and tried to grab my hand. But I yanked them clear and kept on slapping, with everything I had. The guy who had gone to the men’s room with him came diving over and grabbed me, “wrapping me up” as it’s called, but I jerked loose and let him have it too, so he staggered and fell. Then I turned back to Tom, and really went to finish him off, and trying to duck me he fell too, beside his friend on the floor. By then, as Liz told me later, the whole place was in an uproar, with Bianca grabbing at me, and Jake grabbing at me, everyone grabbing at me, trying to make me lay off. Of course, with Tom on the floor, I had to lay off, and did. But it was some seconds before I realized what Bianca was saying, as she kept backing away from me, where I must have made a swipe at her too. “You’re fired!” she kept screaming at me. “You’re fired!—now get out, you get out of here! Didn’t you hear me? I said get out!”

By that time I’d come to my senses, a blend of indignation on the one hand and shame on the other; that, and rage at myself for losing my temper and, with it, the job I needed so badly. I’d told myself I’d do anything to get my son back—but one drunk’s wandering hands had been enough to make me a liar. I cursed my temper as I headed back to the locker room.