Second verse same as the first.
Bill and Brooklyn spent a lot of time talking about home, about Brooklyn and Queens and Brooklyn-Queens day and Manhattan and the subways and buses and people. Bill made no advances toward her even though he felt that she would be receptive to them if he did. He talked about his father, about his father’s having gone to Tilden high school, about his playing football for Bayside high school and beating Tilden in one of their season games.
Brooklyn never failed to bring him drinks from the bar, beer or bourbon, whichever he asked for, and she never failed to bring sodas for the dishwasher crew. She was congenial, cute. He loved her short, dark hair and her darkish, Italian-like skin.
Sometimes Brooklyn would sit with him out in the hall when she had a few moments. He thought, but he wasn’t sure, that sometimes she left her legs a little bit too open. Maybe not. He wasn’t sure, wasn’t sure if she were flirting with him, gently so, so gently that if he did pick it up and asked about it she would be able to deny it comfortably.
That’s how women ran.
Lily, fair Lily, fair-haired Lily didn’t sit with him much, didn’t talk to him much, didn’t hang around the kitchen much. She did her job more than adequately as it worked out and she took care of what she needed to take care of. She didn’t ask for anything special, stayed mostly quiet.
How it came about that she and Brooklyn entered into a contest to see who could score with Bill first was a funny story. Since nothing at Suburban was on the down-low, since the walls had eyes and ears, since everyone knew everything, or just about, they quickly learned who Bill was messing with and even when he was messing with them.
Lorraine and Arlene, the only two waitresses left that Bill was fooling around with wouldn’t say anything. But the signs were clear. Brooklyn and Lily could see that Arlene and Lorraine got props. Every now and then they could be seen to be eating steak or a piece of prime rib over in the corner by the door where Bill left it for them. Sometimes Arlene was seen to be kissing Bill, nothing overtly intimate out in the open but clearly an indication they were somehow familiar with each other.
Lorraine was different. She and Bill seemed familiar together, or so Brooklyn thought, almost in a married-couple sort of way. Lorraine handled herself like an experienced married woman, which was to say that she was slower, softer, less-excitable. She seemed to anticipate what Bill wanted at different times, sometimes what he needed, and she catered to that, almost, if Brooklyn and Lilly were going to put a picture to it, like a mommy cleaning her son’s face after he ate.
So Brooklyn and Lilly found themselves working the closing and Brooklyn, just on a whim came into the kitchen to see if Bill wanted anything. No one was in the kitchen so she went to the hall to see if he was there. He was. He was kissing Lorraine with his hand up her skirt.
Back in the dining room, she reported the scene to Lilly and they entered into the discussion of whether or not they would do him, both agreeing they would but would not be coerced into it by him. So they bet fifty bucks on who could seduce him first.
Bill found a fresh beer and a glass half-full of bourbon on his cutting board when he and Loraine came back into the kitchen. Lorraine helped herself to some of the beer. Bill drank down the bourbon. Esserine told him Brooklyn had been in and out a couple of times and had left the drinks.
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