Cinco de Mayo plus a couple, a beautiful Thursday morning. Classes were over at the university and graduation was coming Sunday, a little later this year due to the way the calendar worked out. Bill’s fiancé was up in Cleveland visiting her family, making arrangements with them for the ceremony.
Bea was overtly cantankerous from the get-go. Bill had taken Mary to the Upper Room last night after work and they had driven in together this morning. To Bea, they both looked happy and sated. She recognized the after-pleasuring-themselves aura about them both, and it ticked her off. Worse, they made no attempt to conceal what they’d done. They didn’t flaunt it, didn’t go around telling anyone/everyone. They just came in together. Bea knew right away why. She knew where they’d been.
So they were at work. They’d changed into uniforms, had coffee, played the numbers. Bill and Bea had talked about what she needed help with, things from downstairs that needed carrying up, stuff about the dishwashers, that they needed to do.
Bea was doing her thing over on the pantry station. Henry Lee had just come in and was sitting over by her reading the racing pages. Bill and Mary were in the back. They had things well under way. The round was in the oven, the sauces were on the stoves and the specials were either prepared or they were working on them. Waitresses and dishwashers were not in yet so things were relatively quiet.
The more Bill and Mary worked together, the madder Bea got. Mary had turned up the music so it spread throughout the kitchen, this despite the hum-roar drone of the exhaust fans.
Henry Lee noticed Bea’s mood almost immediately. He wrote it off as a woman thing until, when he was on his second cup of coffee, Bea started mumbling to herself.
“Your time of the month?” he asked her without getting off her stool.
“What?” Bea said.
“Girl, you talking to yourself.”
“Was I?”
“What happened? Mr. Bea not doing his homework?”
“Mr. Bea doing just fine.”
“So, what’s up with you?”
“Look at them,” Bea said.
From time to time as he sat there, Henry Lee had been looking at them, Mary and Bill, and seemed to him they were just doing what they were supposed to be doing.
“What about them?” he asked, but then it occurred to him that Bea was being catty, jealous. “They just working. You horny or something? Bathroom door locks.”
Bea didn’t say anything. She was like the bull seeing red, getting madder and madder. If it was in the cartoons, she’d be scratching that front hoof in the dirt and the smoke would be coming out her ears. For no apparent reason to anyone but herself, she stomped over by the dish machine and threw a stainless steel mixing bowl into the pot washer’s sink. The stainless steel on stainless steel made a huge crash, was a clear attention-getter.
“Watch out,” Henry Lee said to no one in particular. He stood up. No way he was staying where he was. Bad enough he had to ask Bea for the key to the linen closet, which he did.
She threw the keys to him in an unfriendly way. He caught them, caught her looking at Bill and Mary who weren’t doing anything other than working. He shook his head and went on down the stairs.
Mary didn’t have to say anything to Bea. She knew what was up. She knew Bea knew the moment she called her and told her she was riding in with Bill. She figured Bea might be miffed, but wasn’t anything she could do about it, anything she wanted to do about it. She wasn’t not going with Bill on account of Bea. Bea went home every night to Mr. Bea.
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