Then to Sue: “This is Joan, and she’s coming to work on the floor. Take her back, give her a locker, find a uniform for her-from the back-from-the-laundry pile, there on the pantry shelf.” And then to me: “When you’re dressed, come back to me here and I’ll tell you what you do next.”
“Yes, Mrs. Rossi. And thanks.”
“Something about you doesn’t quite match up.”
“It will, give me time.”
Sue led through the dining room to a kitchen with a chef and two cooks in it, chopping and slicing and stirring, to a corridor that led to a room with lockers on one side and benches down the middle. She opened the locker with a key she took from a rack, then disappeared, and by the time I’d taken my things off was back with my uniform, the short skirt and apron in one hand, the jersey in the other. She watched while I hung up my clothes in the locker, and put on the things she had brought me. The key had a wrist loop on it, and when I had locked up and slipped it on, I must have made a face at my legs, which of course were bare, as she said: “It’s O.K.-some of the girls don’t wear any pantyhose. On some things, like fingernails, Bianca’s strict as all get-out, but on others she don’t care.”
She led on back to Mrs. Rossi, who was still in the dining room. But with her was a gray-haired, rather good-looking woman perhaps in her forties, in peasant blouse, crimson trunks, and beige pantyhose that set off a pair of striking-looking legs. “Be with you in a minute,” Bianca told me, and went on talking. But the woman asked: “Hey wait a minute-who is she?”
“New girl,” said Bianca. “But about the imported bubbly-”
“Wait a minute, wait a minute! Why’s she dressed for the dining room?”
“It’s where she’s going to work.”
“Oh no she’s not. Here you’ve been promising me a girl, and now when she’s here you put her to work on this side.”
“She’s new, she’s never been broken in, she can’t work in the bar, she’s not qualified.”
“Oh yes she is!” And then, to me: “Show her your qualifications, to work in the cocktail bar. The gams, I’m talking about.”
I turned to show my bare legs, and she went on: “And, by her looks she’s been broken in.” Then to me again: “Haven’t you?”
“If you mean what I think you mean,” I admitted, “yes. I’m a widow, so happens. A recent widow with one child.”
“So, Bianca?”
It wasn’t the first time, and wouldn’t be the last, that I’d see her take a position and then reverse herself when pressed. “O.K., take her over.”
“Come on,” said the woman to me, leading me back toward the lockers. “Name, please?”
“Joan. Joan Medford.”
“Liz. Liz Baumgarten.”
I couldn’t help liking Liz, I don’t think anyone could, but suddenly I asked: “When does the cocktail bar close?”
“One o’clock. Why?”
“How I get home is why. The restaurant, I know, closes at nine o’clock, and I could walk home at that hour. But at one in the morning-”
“No problem-I’ll ride you, Joan. I have a car.”
We’d reached the changing room, and Liz closed the door behind her. I took off the skirt, apron, and blouse, and she brought the same trunks as she was wearing, and another peasant blouse. Then, opening a locker, she took out a package of pantyhose. “They’re beige-O.K.?” she asked.
“Oh my-and thanks, Liz.”
“In the bar, bare legs get kind of cold at one o’clock in the morning. But, if you’ll accept a suggestion from me, with what you’ve got to go inside this blouse, I’d leave the bra off.”
“You sure about that?”
“Well, I do. It kind of helps with the tips.”
“With me, tips are the main thing.”
“And with everyone, Joan. Don’t be ashamed.”
And then, explaining: “In case you’ve been wondering, why I would want competition, when I’ve had it all to myself, well, it kind of works backward, there in a cocktail bar. Because, swamped with work, I’ve been slow, and in a bar, it’s one thing you don’t dare to be. They’d wait for food, but drinks to them are important. And when I slow down from being swamped, they get real sore about it. And when they get sore they don’t tip. What I’m trying to say, beyond a certain point, a whole lot of people don’t help, not with the tips they don’t. Vice versa, you could say.” And then, when I’d put on the pantyhose, trunks, and peasant blouse, which drew tight over two points in front: “You’ll do. I’ll say you’re qualified.”
“You’re not bad yourself.”
“O.K. for an old lady-pass in a crowd.”
She was a lot better than that, and as to what she was actually like: I never did guess her age, but whatever it was, it was enough to give her gray hair all the way through-beautiful gray hair, silver almost, that she wore cut at her shoulders, and curled. She was medium in size, with features slightly coarse, I have to say, and yet damned good-looking. Her eyes were a light blue, and wise but not hard. And her legs were different from mine-where mind are round and soft, hers were full of muscle, but with keen lines and a graceful way of stepping.
She led on out again, to the dining room, to the foyer, and to the bar, where a blocky-looking man in a white coat was polishing glasses with a cloth and arranging them in neat rows. “Joan, Jake, Jake, Joan-she’s our new girl, Jake. Go easy, she’s never worked a bar before.” With that, she headed off for the kitchen.
“Haya, Joan.”
“Jake, hello.”
It turned out that on alternate weeks, I was due in at four o’clock instead of five, to fix set-ups for Jake, as well as get the place ready, putting out Fritos in bowls, and setting the chairs down, where they’d been put up so the place could be swept. The sweeping was going on now, by a boy with a push mop, so I got at the set-ups first.
“First set-up is for the old-fashioned. You know what an old-fashioned is?”
“You mean the orange slices and cherries?”
“… Yeah, them.” He gave me a long look, then went on: “And for Martinis?”
“I turn the olives out in a bowl and stick toothpicks in them.”
“For Gibsons-”
“Onions, no toothpicks.”
“O.K. Now, on Manhattans-”
“Cherries.”
“No toothpicks if they have stems on them. But sometimes the wrong kind is delivered, and them without stems take picks. On Margaritas-”
“Salt? In a dish? And a lemon, gashed on one end, to spin the glasses in?”
“Speaking of lemon-”
“Twists? How many?”
“Many as three lemons make. Cut them thick, put them in a bowl, and on top put plenty ice cubes, so they don’t go soft on me. I hate soft twists.” He looked at me like I was a dancing horse or some other marvel. “You sure you never …?”
I explained: “My mother used to give parties, and my father fixed the drinks. I was Papa’s little helper.”
“Christ, you have a father-I should have known. Well, it takes all kinds, don’t it?”
It was the sort of remark I could have taken poorly, but he was smiling as he said it, so I smiled back at him. “What else?”
“The Fritos-they’re for free, and you keep the bowls filled at all times. They put the customers in mind of having a drink.”
“You mean they’re salty.”
“I don’t and you don’t. I mean they’re compliments of Bianca, and you know what’s good for you that’s what you mean, too.”
“They’re special from Mrs. Rossi.”
“And don’t you forget. She’s a nut about it.” He tossed his cloth down on the bar, untied his apron, and came around to my side. “Let me show you the rest.”
He showed me my pocket totalizer, my cash register, and my book of slips, and explained to me how to keep the slips in separate piles, and then when a check was called for, to tote it up on the totalizer, present it to the guest, take his money to the register, put it in and ring up the amount of the check, then take out his change and bring it back to him. “And for Christ’s sake don’t make a mistake,” he growled, looking me in the eye. “Bianca’s easy on some things, like wind blowing free in the blouse, but on others, like clean fingernails and money, she’s a bitch. You make a mistake, it’s on you.”