Do I do it? Yes I do.
It could be worse. It is worse for Lloyd Betts. Lately he’s put on weight and his hair’s gone thin. He doesn’t get a call all shift and waits zero tables and winds up sitting on the P-51 wing, playing solitaire in a hunched-over position that gives him big gut rolls.
I Pilot six tables and make forty dollars in tips plus five an hour in salary.
After closing we sit on the floor for Debriefing. “There are times,” Mr. Frendt says, “when one must move gracefully to the next station in life, like for example certain women in Africa or Brazil, I forget which, who either color their faces or don some kind of distinctive headdress upon achieving menopause. Are you with me? One of our ranks must now leave us. No one is an island in terms of being thought cute forever, and so today we must say good-bye to our friend Lloyd. Lloyd, stand up so we can say good-bye to you. I’m sorry. We are all so very sorry.”
“Oh God,” says Lloyd. “Let this not be true.”
But it’s true. Lloyd’s finished. We give him a round of applause, and Frendt gives him a Farewell Pen and the contents of his locker in a trash bag and out he goes. Poor Lloyd. He’s got a wife and two kids and a sad little duplex on Self-Storage Parkway.
“It’s been a pleasure!” he shouts desperately from the doorway, trying not to burn any bridges.
What a stressful workplace. The minute your Cute Rating drops you’re a goner. Guests rank us as Knockout, Honeypie, Adequate, or Stinker. Not that I’m complaining. At least I’m working. At least I’m not a Stinker like Lloyd.
I’m a solid Honeypie/Adequate, heading home with forty bucks cash.
…
At sea oak there’s no sea and no oak, just a hundred subsidized apartments and a rear view of FedEx. Min and Jade are feeding their babies while watching How My Child Died Violently. Min’s my sister. Jade’s our cousin. How My Child Died Violently is hosted by Matt Merton, a six-foot-five blond who’s always giving the parents shoulder rubs and telling them they’ve been sainted by pain. Today’s show features a ten-year-old who killed a five-year-old for refusing to join his gang. The ten-year-old strangled the five-year-old with a jump rope, filled his mouth with baseball cards, then locked himself in the bathroom and wouldn’t come out until his parents agreed to take him to FunTimeZone, where he confessed, then dove screaming into a mesh cage full of plastic balls. The audience is shrieking threats at the parents of the killer while the parents of the victim urge restraint and forgiveness to such an extent that finally the audience starts shrieking threats at them too. Then it’s a commercial. Min and Jade put down the babies and light cigarettes and pace the room while studying aloud for their GEDs. It doesn’t look good. Jade says “regicide” is a virus. Min locates Biafra one planet from Saturn. I offer to help and they start yelling at me for condescending.
“You’re lucky, man!” my sister says. “You did high school. You got your frigging diploma. We don’t. That’s why we have to do this GED shit. If we had our diplomas we could just watch TV and not be all distracted.”
“Really,” says Jade. “Now shut it, chick! We got to study. Show’s almost on.”
They debate how many sides a triangle has. They agree that Churchill was in opera. Matt Merton comes back and explains that last week’s show on suicide, in which the parents watched a reenactment of their son’s suicide, was a healing process for the parents, then shows a video of the parents admitting it was a healing process.
My sister’s baby is Troy. Jade’s baby is Mac. They crawl off into the kitchen and Troy gets his finger caught in the heat vent. Min rushes over and starts pulling.
“Jesus freaking Christ!” screams Jade. “Watch it! Stop yanking on him and get the freaking Vaseline. You’re going to give him a really long arm, man!”
Troy starts crying. Mac starts crying. I go over and free Troy no problem. Meanwhile Jade and Min get in a slap fight and nearly knock over the TV.
“Yo, chick!” Min shouts at the top of her lungs. “I’m sure you’re slapping me? And then you knock over the freaking TV? Don’t you care?”
“I care!” Jade shouts back. “You’re the slut who nearly pulled off her own kid’s finger for no freaking reason, man!”
Just then Aunt Bernie comes in from DrugTown in her DrugTown cap and hobbles over and picks up Troy and everything calms way down.
“No need to fuss, little man,” she says. “Everything’s fine. Everything’s just hunky-dory.”
“Hunky-dory,” says Min, and gives Jade one last pinch.
Aunt Bernie’s a peacemaker. She doesn’t like trouble. Once this guy backed over her foot at FoodKing and she walked home with ten broken bones. She never got married, because Grandpa needed her to keep house after Grandma died. Then he died and left all his money to a woman none of us had ever heard of, and Aunt Bernie started in at DrugTown. But she’s not bitter. Sometimes she’s so nonbitter it gets on my nerves. When I say Sea Oak’s a pit she says she’s just glad to have a roof over her head. When I say I’m tired of being broke she says Grandpa once gave her pencils for Christmas and she was so thrilled she sat around sketching horses all day on the backs of used envelopes. Once I asked was she sorry she never had kids and she said no, not at all, and besides, weren’t we were her kids?
And I said yes we were.
But of course we’re not.
For dinner it’s beanie-wienies. For dessert it’s ice cream with freezer burn.
“What a nice day we’ve had,” Aunt Bernie says once we’ve got the babies in bed.
“Man, what an optometrist,” says Jade.
Next day is Thursday, which means a visit from Ed Anders from the Board of Health. He’s in charge of ensuring that our penises never show. Also that we don’t kiss anyone. None of us ever kisses anyone or shows his penis except Sonny Vance, who does both, because he’s saving up to buy a FaxIt franchise. As for our Penile Simulators, yes, we can show them, we can let them stick out the top of our pants, we can even periodically dampen our tight pants with spray bottles so our Simulators really contour, but our real penises, no, those have to stay inside our hot uncomfortable oversized Simulators.
“Sorry fellas, hi fellas,” Anders says as he comes wearily in. “Please know I don’t like this any better than you do. I went to school to learn how to inspect meat, but this certainly wasn’t what I had in mind. Ha ha!”
He orders a Lindbergh Enchilada and eats it cautiously, as if it’s alive and he’s afraid of waking it. Sonny Vance is serving soup to a table of hairstylists on a bender and for a twenty shoots them a quick look at his unit.
Just then Anders glances up from his Lindbergh.
“Oh for crying out loud,” he says, and writes up a Shutdown and we all get sent home early. Which is bad. Every dollar counts. Lately I’ve been sneaking toilet paper home in my briefcase. I can fit three rolls in. By the time I get home they’re usually flat and don’t work so great on the roller but still it saves a few bucks.