Bill’s fiancé was not due home until the day after New Year’s. So if you looked at it that way, he still had one night free. But Bill was conflicted. Bill was always conflicted. He was conflicted and afraid as well as shy and reticent. One might not have known it regarding how he was with the kitchen help and waitresses, but this was true of him in his personal life. Later, he would discover a whole host of things about himself that would show how having had his life torn apart several times at a really early age affected him. When he added to that the survivor stuff and the substance abuse it was even more complicated and that didn’t talk to the effects of the substances.
For now, at any rate, he was a young soul way off the track he’d picked for his life, about to get married and busy messing around in a whole lot of things he should never have been messing around in. No one could have told him anything about any of this. The only thing that might have deterred him, or stopped him in his tracks, would have been getting caught.
Mary and Bea were already dressed in kitchen whites and up on the floor at work when Bill got in. He’d slept until almost 8:30 when Lorraine had awakened him with kisses.
“You’ve got to go to work,” she’d said.
Bill did not stir. Despite her kisses he lay still, refused to move. Finally she pushed at him until he sat up. “Damn,” he said.
“You got time for a quick shower if you want.”
“Nah. I’m okay.”
“Might wake you up.”
“I’m up enough.”
A moment later he got up from the bed. He was naked but Lorraine had laid out clean skivvies for him.
“Mr. Dad may not always pay his child support, but I still have a few more sets of his unused, packaged skivvies.” She laughed. “Anyway, I wouldn’t care if you didn’t wear underwear.”
“Sometimes I don’t,” said Bill. “Not lately though. We change in the hall a lot now.”
“That must be kind of strange.”
“Yes and no. In the end it doesn’t really mean anything. We change and we go to work. Mary says that you always love your first crew.”
“So where’d we sleep last night?” Mary asked when Bill came up on the work floor.
“At Lorraine’s. We didn’t get out of here till very late. It was much easier to just sleep there.”
He made sure to omit the fact that Lorraine’s daughters were not home. He made sure to be selective in what information he let out. He had one more night without his fiancé and he wanted to spend it with Mary. He didn’t know if that could happen. He didn’t know if that would happen. He only knew he would try. Since it was the holiday and they were closing early, he felt he had a shot at it even though they were not able to use The Upper Room. Maybe, he thought, they could find a place to go or they could go parking somewhere. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d gone parking.
Meanwhile, up on the floor he assessed what he needed to do to work with Mary to get her set so he could go downstairs to cut meat with Henry Lee. Because of how busy they’d been there was a lot of meat to cut. Prime ribs were already in the oven. That was the day’s special. They were running a limited menu of steaks, prime rib, fried fish or shrimp. This meant they’d probably sell a lot of steaks. Then, with any sort of luck, they’d be out of the place early.
Coming Right After Mother’s Day
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