This was during Sarah’s final month in college. She was vigorously battling incompletes, preparing for that last barrage of finals, and scouting around for a graduate school. She was grateful for my mysterious absences and quickly accepted that I was working late. That January unraveled into thirty-one long days, and each of the evenings stretched far and thin like taffy. The art of courtship is a patient one, and I was getting an indelible chill from the many strolls. My own limited Midwestern experiences broke the ritual of dating into two stages: the initial part was taking the girl to some kind of spectacle—like a movie or roller-skating. This was the ice-breaking stage, where a passing of time would allow a familiarity, an understanding of priorities, incidental touching, the cultivation of ease. The second part was trickier. It usually required the use of some enclosure, a car or an apartment, and some kind of narcotic was helpful. The point was getting laid. At best, it was a seamless series of subtleties. But Eunice was far-sighted and conditions were never very good. She could see the dark brambles beyond the sunlit pathway, so usually all she would politely allow were those damned walks. One evening, after a particularly tedious promenade that left me feeling painfully raw and primitive, I told her what I wanted. She sweetly and neatly explained that she would not compromise, indicated that it was late, and suggested that perhaps I had better look elsewhere. Both of us in a huff, I left her in the lobby of her dormitory.
At home that night, I felt as swollen and feverish as a blister. Lying next to the sleeping Sarah, I turned and twisted. I was beaten but not defeated. The next morning Sarah was at school early and I spent the day rallying myself for that night’s assault. In a week’s time, though, the unexpected occurred: Sarah graduated. I took the day off to watch the commencement, and then after congratulating her with a big kiss I rushed to work to pick up Eunice for our nightly walk. Sarah’s sudden freedom gave her an added awareness, though. For the first time, she wondered about my nightly delirious state and the extra care I had recently invested in my attire. I learned later that she had followed me one night and spied on me and Eunice slurping on a soda, two straws in the same cup. When I returned home that night, exhausted and frustrated, I lay quietly next to Sarah, who was probably playing possum. She was not confrontational and apparently didn’t know how to approach me. The next day, I awoke late and Sarah was already up.
“I want to talk with you,” she quietly muttered.
“’Bout what?” I asked as I quickly tugged on last night’s clothes.
“About us.” Her voice remained hushed and her eyes were fixed to the ground.
“Later,” I replied as I raced out the door. It was a Tuesday and the only day when Eunice and I worked together. After opening the theater, the people came in and the show started. The day manager was working upstairs so I was able to sneak out to the candy stand and talk with her.
“Why are your clothes so wrinkled?” she asked me. I explained that I hadn’t had time to change from the previous night.
“But it’s more than that.” She reached out and took a pinch of the fabric, “I’ve noticed this about everything you wear.”
“What?”
“All your clothes are old.”
“Well, how am I supposed to buy a wardrobe on minimum wage?”
“Minimum wage? How long have you been working here?”
“Almost a year.”
“I think that’s longer than anyone else.”
“It is,” I assured her.
“Well, you should get a raise.”
“I probably should but this isn’t a real job.”
“Well, if you can’t even afford to buy clothes, then you should find a real job. Clothes are a necessity.”
“All right,” I replied to close the issue, “I’ll ask for a raise.” And then we changed the subject and talked until the manager came back downstairs. I went back into the theater and forgot about the conversation until the intermission, when Pepe walked into the theater. He was about to vanish into his office when Eunice yelled over the counter to him, “The usher would like to speak to you.”
After a year of working there, the only communication Pepe and I ever had was an occasional nod. I found him petty and undeserving, and he probably didn’t notice me at all. Suddenly there he was, looking at me, attention undivided.
“Come on up.”
I followed him up to his office. He offered me the seat across from him.
“What’s up?”
“Well, Pep,” I began nervously, wondering if I should bring it up, “I just finished a year of working here.”
“Yeah, so I worked here for years, what else is new?”
“Well, you own the place.”
“What are you getting at?”
“Well, I was wondering about a raise?”
“A raise? You mean a monetary raise?”
“Sure.”
“I’ve never given a raise before. This isn’t that kind of job, kid. It’s minimum wage; the President gives you a raise here.”
“Well, I was wondering, under these circumstances, if you might give me one.”
“Look, kid, I wouldn’t want anyone making a career out of this. How can I put this—it’s the kind of job one takes when going through troubled times. Nestor, for example, he just got out of Riker’s Island—in fact he’s here on a work-release program, and Neville was just released from Bellevue.”
“Yeah, but both of those guys were fired. In fact, most of them were fired, and you can rely on me to be here during the rough times.”
Pepe nodded his head, pursed his lips, and looked out the window a moment. “This comes as a complete surprise to me, kid. But all right, I’m experimental, maybe it’ll supply incentive.” As he said this, he typed figures into the old-style calculator on his desk, and finally, pushing a tally button, he calculated. “I’ll give you a raise of twelve point eight cents an hour, take it or leave it.”
I thanked him and then the phone rang. How the hell he came up with twelve point eight I’ll never guess, but without saying goodbye to me or hello to the phone, he held the phone to his ear and silently started feeding figures into that calculator in the center of his desk. As I returned to my post in the theater, I figured that now I could buy a Snickers candy bar every three and a quarter hours without having to dig into my preestablished income. When I proudly told Eunice how I had won my twelve point eight cent increase, she sneered and said that I had mishandled it.
“What do you mean? Twelve point eight cents?” I responded. “What do you call that?”
“What the hell can you do with twelve cents?”
“What was I supposed to do?”
“You should’ve threatened to quit.” She went on to say that I was spineless and needed to learn to be more assertive.
“More assertive?”
“That’s right,” she said, and then revealed a bit of herself. “Back home in Gary, the Mormons taught a person to have fortitude when they were in the right.”
“Well I’m sorry but there were no Mormons upstairs in Pepe’s office to help me with this one.”
“Well, you might consider joining a church,” she remarked. When I smiled, she added, “Oh go ahead and snicker, but it could build a little character.”