Jimmy G showed up right before the service for the two parties. They both went off just about simultaneously, or since the banquet chef, Victor and Bill were doing the service, they ran through one and went directly to the other. Based upon their size, these were a piece of cake, no warmer trucks, nothing but preparation, cooking and dish-up.
After the dish-up they sat in the chef’s office and drank a second beer, Jimmy G’s first. They did not sit long, only long enough to watch through the big window as the stewards and kitchen crew cleaned up the kitchen. Bill and Jimmy G would get a break, a good once actually, nearly an hour and a half if they waited until 3:00 to start the setup for The Falstaff Room.
After that second beer, when he and Jimmy G were set free from banquets, Bill headed off to where he would find Beverly. He knew the way better now and finding their secret place was much more easy.
She was waiting for him.
“Hey,” she said.
He said, “Hey.”
She was sitting on the stairs. He sat next to her. They did not kiss or touch. They sat a moment both looking straight ahead at the window before them.
“Been awhile,” Beverly said.
“We’ve been busy.”
“Very.”
“Working hard?” Bill asked.
“Lots of hours. You’ve seen me.”
“I go straight from banquets over there,” Bill said.
“I know.”
“Bet we’ll get a good dinner play tonight.,”
“Serving turkey again?”
“Yeah. But turkey’s easy, real easy, as easy as dish-up from the banquets. It’s sliced, just about portioned and kept hot on the steam table.”
“Really think you’ll sell turkey?”
“Lots of it. People don’t get it all year round so they eat it now.”
“Well, I hope you have an easy night.”
“Me too. No reason to think we won’t.”
“So what’s up with you?” Beverly asked.
“About what?”
“Anything. Everything.”
“Mostly nothing,” Bill said. “Same stuff different day.”
He wanted to ask how thing were for her at home, but he didn’t. He wanted to ask her what they were doing sitting there side by side, why they were sitting there. He didn’t ask that either. Mostly he figured she’d tell him as soon as she was ready.
“I think he’s going to leave me,” she said after a time. “He hasn’t said anything and hasn’t given any real indications. But I’m starting to feel him pulling away from me.”
“Pulling away how?”
“Distancing himself. I can’t actually describe it, but, you know, he’s not initiating any sex, not making the jokes and comments he used to make. Simple things like when I’m getting dressed he used to say ‘nice ass’ or ‘let me kiss that’ or something like that. Now, nothing. Not just once or twice. I mean nothing.”
“That’s rough,” Bill said. “What are you gonna do?”
“I have no idea,” Beverly said. “Not a clue. I guess I’m gonna wait and see what happens.”
“Well, what about you?” Bill turned and faced Beverly, fixed it so that their eyes met and they were now talking to each other fully engaged.
“What about me?”
“What do you want? I mean you, Beverly, sitting here facing me. In your life, just for you, what do you want?”
“I don’t know. But I’ll tell you one thing I don’t want and that’s a cheating husband.”
“That’s a start.”
“I want to go back to school and get my degree. Not that there’s anything wrong with being a waitress, but I don’t want to do this all my life.”
“Keep going,” Bill said.
“I’m not even sure if I want to be married at all. Not to him, not to anyone. I’m starting to think I want to be alone, just me, take care of myself and not be responsible to anyone but me.”
“Sounds like you have some ideas,” Bill said.
By Peter Weiss
They cooked a lot of turkeys on Thanksgiving. It was the one quiet banquet day although that whole weekend was relatively quiet.
Bill, Jimmy Banquet Chef and Victor did all the turkey set up. They did it days before the actual holiday so that on Thanksgiving morning all they had to do was pop the pans into the rotary oven. Actually they cooked some on the day before so they would be ready to serve turkey early in the day. That way the birds would be cool enough to carve the way they needed to carve them to get yield and aesthetics.
They also made pans and pans of stuffing with their own bread totally from scratch. These they cooked off the day before too so all that needed to be done with it was heat it up. Flavors marinated and increased when left to sit awhile.
The Friday had only two parties, no real banquets, and the parties were small, one for fifty-five and one for forty. They were both in the afternoon.
Bill cooked them with Jimmy Banquet Chef and Victor. Jimmy G came in at noon and disappeared immediately, lost in space, gone somewhere, no one knew where, or if they knew they weren’t saying. Bill wanted to ask, but he didn’t.
If Jimmy G had been around, he would only have been responsible for the vegetables, not even the potatoes. One party had baked potatoes. The vegetable stewards put those into the ovens in the stoves after they’d washed and scrubbed them.
The other party had scalloped potatoes. Victor and Bill did those. The vegetable stewards peeled and cut the potatoes. Bill and Victor prepared the liquid “sauce” to layer over them. Bill and Victor also layered the ingredients in the pans and set the pans to bake.
They had a time to rest. It was only two small parties so there was a lull, a good forty or so minutes when nothing was happening except watching everything as it cooked. Jimmy Banquet Chef took Bill and Victor into the chef’s office and they sat and drank beer. This was one of the few times they drank during the day and it was only because the day was easy and the banquet crew was going home early.
“You can go visit one of your girlfriends,” Jimmy Banquet Chef told Bill.
Bill didn’t say anything. They’d all been working very hard and they were enjoying the slow moment.
“I’m good,” he said after awhile.
“Before you know it your probation will be over,” Victor said. “Goes fast, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah, it does,” Bill said.
“My aunt is crazy about you,” the banquet chef said.
“I like her too,” Bill said. “She thinks she’s my mother. She dotes on me and takes care of me.”
“She wouldn’t let anything happen to you,” Victor said. “So don’t you go letting her down.”
“And don’t you be quitting on us either,” the banquet chef said.
“I have no intentions of it.”
“Good.”
They could only sit a little while. Then they all went back out into the kitchen to check on how everything was progressing. They worked on turning a few things and rotating pans and making sure the potatoes were working okay. Jimmy Banquet Chef checked with the vegetable stewards to make sure the vegetables would be ready on time.
When they went back into the office, not for another beer but to finish the one they’d started, the waiters and waitresses were just coming into the kitchen. They would be having their little meeting, getting their assignments. Bill saw Beverly walk in and he saw the little French one, Nora. come in behind her. Nora had dark red lips and a droll expression on her face. Clearly, Bill thought, she did not want to be there. Beverly had an extra earring in her left ear.
“We’ll have another beer after the service,” Jimmy Banquet Chef said. Then, “Where’s my goddamn cousin?” he asked.
By Peter Weiss
It didn’t take Millie long to spill the beans. Within several days of her boss telling her to cool it with Bill, she told Bill about what her boss said.
“Guess I’m gonna have to wait ‘til I’m really horny and then hit on you,” she said.
Bill noted that she was acting like a school girl. He knew it was an act because every so often she stepped out of the role and let herself be herself. She was wearing dark red this day, dark red lips, fingers and toes, and she made sure to put her knees together and set them apart, same for her feet which, despite it getting colder and colder outside, she still showed—at least for Bill—by wearing flat, open-toe slippers. She stood pigeon-toed every now and then too and looked at him with a little pout.
“I’ll wait for you to tell me when,” Bill said.
“Gonna take care of me?”
“Haven’t I been doing that?”
“No hard feelings?”
“Why should there be?”
“None on my end,” Millie said. She gave him the shy schoolgirl pose one last time. Then she said something that surprised Bill. “I think my boss is jealous,” she said.
“I think she’s smart,” said Bill. “She’s protecting you and me.”
“Maybe,” Millie said. “Anyway, I’m jumping your bones soon as I can.”
“I can’t wait,” Bill said.
As time passed everyone wondered when Caesar would play his hand, if he would play his hand. The longer Caesar was quiet, the more people wondered if he had a hand to play. One thing was sure, Caesar was not stupid and he knew the executive chef and banquet chef liked Bill. More, he knew they knew how good Bill’s work was. Then there was the whole of the Greek mafia there, and they all had taken Bill as one of theirs.
Bill wondered when he was going to meet Millie’s boss. He wondered about her and wondered what she was like. He wondered if Millie was at all near right when she said maybe her boss was jealous.
Then Bill started thinking about himself and first thought was what was there to be jealous about because as it was he still could not picture himself as handsome or desirable. Of interest, maybe he was that because he was a writer, but no one there actually knew much about him and certainly they didn’t know anything about him as a writer.
He wondered. He wondered about what Kalista had told him about the girl Caesar had whatever-he’d-done-to-her, abused, mistreated, only-Kalista-knew-what, and now he wanted to know too. Inquiring minds wanted to know. Kalista had brought it up and he decided to ask her straight out. He did so, but Kalista was standoffish at first.
One Thursday night not long after they’d had the initial conversation, Bill was standing out by Kalista drinking espresso. They’d had a very decent dinner play, a decent night business wise. All nights now were very decent as November marched quickly through to Thanksgiving. Not only were all nights decent, but the dinner service constantly went well such that Bill had proven himself to be a great hire.
Banquets were beyond busy, fully booked with no spaces and little room for the banquet crew to rest. Jimmy Banquet Chef had told his aunt that Bill was a lifesaver. Bill knew this because Kalista told him. She told him everything there was for her to tell, and continually thanked him profusely for taking care of Jimmy G.
“So tell me,” Bill said. “I want to know what kind of man he is.”
“I tell you another time,” Kalista said. “It’s long story. Not pretty one.”
Bill didn’t want to press it, but he couldn’t help himself. “When?” he asked.
“Soon,” Kalista said. “Only so you can protect yourself.”
By Peter Weiss
Kalista could tell stories. Kalista knew all about the men in her family. Kalista knew about some of the men in the hotel. She knew about the chef, the executive chef, and she knew about the F&B Director. They were two key people for her to know about. Not that it mattered for her job security, because it didn’t, but Jimmy G (and she knew about him too)needed protection because he was lazy and did the least amount of work possible. Worse, he didn’t care about his work.
“I know things,” she said to Bill that time she’d made the comment about men, when they were talking about the girls liking Bill and his playing around on his wife. “I know about the men and the women. Most what I know,” she said, “I’m taking to my grave.”
They were hanging out on her station. She was sitting where she always sat, in the chair she’d long ago set up on her station where she could sit when she had no orders and no work and stand to work without moving the chair when she needed to be standing. Bill was standing against the wall near the soda dispenser. He was smoking a cigarette and leaning against the wall. Jimmy G had disappeared a while ago and there were no orders mostly because it was pouring outside and no one was out in the street. They’d had a decent dinner play and had fed, as Bill figured it, the hotel guests who were dining-in due to the rain.
“You’re the matriarch,” Bill said.
“My family,” Kalista said. “Most good, some bad. Jimmy G very bad. He hates it here, wants to go home to his farm. His father is my brother and he never want to come to America. But he send his boy with me because they needed money and he wanted his boy to have a better life.”
“Does he have a better life?” Bill asked.
“Yes. But he doesn’t think so. He has a wife and two kids. I think he’s not happy at home. If he was in Greece he’d be on the farm all day. Better for him.”
“He get married here?”
“Big Greek wedding. His whole family came. That was good for me. I saw my whole family.”
“So what do you know?” Bill asked. He moved a bit closer so she didn’t have to speak out too loudly.
“I’ll never tell unless I have to. I know about my little Jimmy, but he’s good now. Victor was a bad man all the time over there. Here he is quiet. I know something about Caesar, something from before. I’m saving it until I really need it. The executive chef and F&B Director, they used to use the chef’s room for messing around. Sometimes they still do. Most of the women are gone now, but I know who they were.”
“Who knows you know?”
“They can only guess. I spend plenty of time talking to the girls. I got times and dates and phone numbers. I no let my family have a problem.”
“You’re a good woman,” Bill said.
“I protect my family. And you are becoming part of it. So I tell you, I saw Caesar do something to someone. She didn’t want it done but he did it anyway. It was very not nice, made her cry. She cried almost every time she came to work and saw him after he did it. He strut like a rooster afterward.”
Bill did not say anything. He looked at Kalista. Kalista looked back at him.
“Is enough for now. We talk again. That girl quit soon after Caesar bothered her. She needed this job. Is good job. At least,” Kalista said, “you don’t bother girls. They bother you.”
By Peter Weiss
Maybe, despite the business being very busy, the hotel running at full capacity or close to it at all times, The Falstaff Room setting new volume records repeatedly and banquets running at full booking, it was a calm before the storm for Bill. Caesar was too quiet. He wasn’t acquiescent or accommodating, but he was quiet and kept his distance.
The girls were all tired. Toward the end of the evenings in The Falstaff Room Bill could see it in their demeanors and in their faces. Jo Ann carried herself differently toward the end of the nights, showing her age perhaps although Bill thought of it as her showing her excess weight, which was not terribly excess. Rosie and Edelgarde lost the pep in their step so to speak.
Jimmy G was cantankerous. He did not have as much time to sit and read the Greek newspaper or magazine he brought with him. He did not have much time to disappear. He could only get away late at night when the orders were still coming in but it was just the stragglers. Then he would first stop out by Kalista and get espressos for him and Bill before he was off somewhere, who knew where, mostly into the main kitchen where the Jimmy Banquet Chef and his uncle Victor were closing up whatever was happening with the banquets.
Rosie and Edelgarde sweated. Bill could see it sometimes. They ran orders faster than Jo Ann. Jo Ann had one pace, steady, and she kept to it no matter what. Even when Caesar got on their cases, Jo Ann remained unflustered and steady-paced.
When Jimmy G came back from where he went it was Bill’s turn. Bill was working full days every day and he wasn’t about gallivanting. He went off the men’s room, smoked a cigarette on the way, and when he got back, if there were nothing much going on, he would stay out in the hall slightly down the ramp or off to the side up by Kalista. He would smoke a cigarette, drink coffee or espresso or even a soda. They called it pop in Ohio. The first time Bill had heard soda called pop, he didn’t know what it was.
Bill and Kalista were getting close. She was like his own grandmother, Fannie, his mother’s mother who stopped being his grandmother, kind of, somewhere along the line after his mother died. Fannie was fat and happy and round and round-faced. Kalista was kind of the same way, kind of like Grandma at Suburban too.
Kalista treated Bill like family. She took care of him no more and no less than she did her own family which was all over the kitchen in all different positions. She thanked him often for taking care of her lazy nephew Jimmy G who would always, as she said it, do the least he had to do to get by. She also thanked him for taking care of Jimmy Banquet Chef, but every time she did this Bill reminded her that it was the banquet chef taking care of him.
“No,” she said once. “Yes and no. You smart and you work hard and you help him. He rely on you and he need someone to rely on.”
True or not, it was nice to hear and Bill appreciated that Kalista was honest with him, that she shared some of the family stuffs that were going on, particularly about her young great-niece who worked banquet pantry sometimes and how she was sometimes a bit wild.
“I’ve known a few wild ones in my short time in kitchens,” Bill told Kalista.
“The girls like you,” Kalista said. “One thing I don’t like, you married. You should be shamed of yourself.”
When Kalista said this, Bill was cowed and looked to his feet.
“Men,” she said.
By Peter Weiss
Things moved along. Time is always time. Time never stops.
In the next days, they all worked hard. Rosie and Edelgarde made sure to have fun when no one else was around. They teased Bill endlessly, sometimes so much so that Bill took one of them to the employee rest room. That was their goal and it worked. They knew it would work, planned on it, took turns.
Maybe, if Bill had chosen one over the other it might have made a riff. But he didn’t choose, they didn’t choose, they were one happy work family.
Bill would learn about work families. Later, when he became a teacher, he would find that some teachers where he worked had work-wives.
Work-wife, what a concept. A work-wife, he’d discover, was a female teacher who was virtually the same as a wife, the same as a spouse. Only difference was that at the end of the day the work-couple went home to their respective legal spouses.
Bill always wondered. He wondered who knew what. Beverly knew her husband was cheating. She did not know exactly how serious the affair was, but she knew she was being played. Bill didn’t think his own wife knew anything, but of course as these things went he could never be sure. All he knew was that his life and the way things were going were so far from what he’d dreamed he couldn’t remember what he’d dreamed anymore, or, if that were not wholly accurate, he could not imagine how far his train on the switched track had taken him from where he’d thought he was heading.
And that was the blessing of being busy. That was the blessing of having a job, working lots of hours and having the hours filled with good, hard work. There was something to be said for not having to think about life, about your own life.
The girls at work were only a distraction. If it were up to Bill, maybe he wouldn’t ever have fooled around. But then he’d been stricken by Mary and actually loved her, still loved her. Maybe, he thought sometimes, he’d always love her. When he closed his eyes and tried, he could remember the day she was bending over reaching into that oven and he’d slipped his hand under her dress from behind and helped himself to his first feel of her.
Woman that she was, Mother Mary, sweet Mother Mary. She didn’t jump. She didn’t get flustered. She didn’t move. She let him have his feel while she finished what she was doing in the oven. Only then did she stand up.
“Don’t start something you can’t finish,” was all she said.
Bill could finish it. Bill knew right away once she’d said that that he would finish it. What he didn’t know was how much he’d enjoy finishing it and finishing it over and over again.
Mother Mary. What Bill didn’t know was how much he would come to feel for her and how deep his feeling would go for her. She’d told him he’d always love his first crew, he’d always remember his first crew. Later in his life Bill would understand that those were true words, real words. Just as he could always close his eyes and recall the smell of the meat sauce his mother made every Sunday, later in his life he would discover he could close his eyes and see the faces of everyone in that first crew, from the special needs dishwasher with the crew cut, Paulie, on up. When he thought about it, he would discover he could recall these people all his life throughout his life.
Ain’t it funny how the night moves.
Ain’t it funny how things connect. This was the very memory chain he would teach in literature and composition courses later on.
By Peter Weiss
They made a date to make a date. Same signal—that extra earring—and if Bill could meet her they would set a time.
Bill worked a lot of hours. Things at work seemed to be settling in and settling in nicely. Rosie and Edelgarde were happily working hard. Together with Jo Ann they were making a lot of money, and at least for a bit even Caesar seemed pleased.
Whether Caesar was pleased or not, he should have been. The numbers were better than great and all food coming out of the kitchen was, at least from Bill’s and the girls’ standpoints, right on point, good at the very least and mostly excellent. Since he’d been there, at least from what he knew, Bill had no food complaints other than a couple of under-cooked steaks. This was a good thing. Under-cooked steaks were a fact of life for a broiler cook. They happened, just happened. Under-cooked steaks happened for many reasons, and while most everyone thought they happened due to the cook’s error, that was not necessarily the case. Bill knew this clearly.
Bill watched Caesar always. He did not trust him and never would, never could. Just because he had not gone at Bill since Jo Ann gave Bill forewarning didn’t mean he wouldn’t, didn’t mean he’d forgotten or even abandoned his plan. No, Caesar was a bully plain and simple, no different from the bully Bill had encountered in the workhouse. That bully could wait and watch and plot his moves. Bill knew that Caesar had time, still a little more than two months until Bill’s probation was over.
Bill promised himself he’d never let his guard down.
Jo Ann was working later almost every night now. This was good for Bill because it became more difficult for Rosie and Edelgarde to make moves on Bill. Bill just about never made moves on them. Only at times when he was particularly horny or for some reason they managed to make him so would he initiate something.
Rosie knew how.
Edelgarde knew how.
Both of them knew it wasn’t generally with words though it could be.
Purple lips and nails could do it. Leaning over excessively and letting a nipple flash could do it. Bending over and letting him see their crease could do it. These things did not always do it, but they could.
Hard, steady work and sweat could do it too. When they were very busy, busy on top of being busy, Bill sometimes got to the point of just wanting some fun. That’s when he would invite one of them to the distant bathroom they used. That’s when, now that he knew he could have either one of them any time he wanted, he became ornery and made demands for what he wanted, made sure they fulfilled his wants. Bill reasoned that if he were going to do this sort of thing he might as well get what he wanted.
Millie was quiet too. Millie was quiet because she was also very busy. The hotel was running at full capacity, a big money-maker for the chain. Full occupancy nearly all the time coupled with a full banquet schedule and booming restaurant outlet meant lots and lots of linens. Lots of linens and lots of uniforms made for lots of work for Millie and the girls behind the scenes in the laundry.
Worse. Two other things were in play. First, Millie’s boss was in-house just about 24/7. Many nights she did not go home, slept over either in one of the small, only-sold-when-there-were-no-other-rooms corner rooms with strange angles or on the sofa she’d put in Millie’s room off behind the racks of uniforms. She slept on that sofa, came in late to sleep and went out early to work.
Second, she’d told Millie to cool it with Bill. She’d told her she didn’t have to cut it off, just simply cool it a bit.
By Peter Weiss
So Bill knew pretty much right away. It was that one-love thing. It was that Beverly’s husband was young, whoever he was, and the opportunity was there and maybe he hadn’t had a chance to taste all the flavors of water. Then, maybe it hit him in the face like it had hit Bill himself.
Forbidden fruit. A bite of the apple. Marie was a pain in the ass, had become a big pain in the ass to Henry Lee, Suburban’s meat cutter who’d taught Bill to cut meat and a whole lot more. Henry Lee was Bill’s partner and partner in crime. They drank together, got high together, and in general, they just liked each other.
Because Marie was a pain in the ass, because Bill had inadvertently walked in on them in the act, Henry Lee offered her to Bill. Once he’d made the offer, it was out there, out on the table. He told Bill she would do anything, that he could do anything to her. He told Bill they could do her together if he wanted, said she’d like it.
Bill declined this offer too. Bill was stricken with Mary, actually in love with her despite the fact that he was living with his wife-to-be.
Mother Mary. Henry Lee and Bill had been shooting the breeze, talking about things, and when Bill had brought up how he wouldn’t mind doing Mary, Henry Lee had told him to go for it, that she’d go with him in a flash.
One day he was just a single, regular guy living in his own apartment on Norwich Street. Then his friends ask him to drive to a party. Then four days later his wife-to-be shows up at his door and says she’s moving in with him.
Curve ball.
One day he’s just a regular student working his way through school on a work-study program, an English major with solid A’s in his major and everything else except science. He’s got a live-in girlfriend who will become his wife and things are good, real good.
Next day he meets one of his professors for lunch to discuss his poetry. That professor, one of the premiere translators of Japanese poetry and a renowned poet in his own right, asks him if they could go check out what was going on at the demonstration, which they do. Bill does something commendable, helps a demonstrator getting beaten by six plain-clothes FBI agents.
Day after that next day he has a concussion and is all beat-up. He’s been arrested and is facing prison time, not to mention being expelled from the university.
Life changed forever.
Ain’t it funny how the night moves!
Marie wanted to get with a white man. She implored him, said he was her chance, that she might never get another chance. Henry Lee was pushing her on him. He’d already been with Mary and Bea and Norma and others. What difference did one more make?
So Bill knew the answer. Bill knew why Beverly’s husband was messing around. Having an affair, that was a bit much, but himself, Bill still loved Mary and could full well understand loving more than one woman at a time. Bill could also understand office stuff, messing around at work, how you could spend more time with the women at work than you did with your own wife. And at work they were all prettied up too.
Forbidden fruit, availability, curiosity, every day close even intimate proximity — these were the answers, the reasons.
Bill made a note to ask Beverly if she had any curiosity at all. He made a note to ask her if she’d ever been with anyone else. He made a note to ask her what her fantasies were and if there were no consequences for anything at all here exactly what she would want and how she would want it.
By Peter Weiss
“I’m starting to feel like I know you a little,” Beverly said when they were finished telling about themselves and a silence ensued. “I don’t know if that’s good or bad.”
“It is what it is,” Bill said. “It’s neither good nor bad.”
“If we stays as friends.”
“Yup.”
“Or friends with extras. Ever had that?”
“Actually, I have,” Bill said. “Her name was Arlene and we got to be friends because we had things in common that had happened to us in our lives.”
“Think your wife knows you cheat?” Beverly asked.
“Think your husband knows you know?”
“Don’t think he has a clue.”
“Same,” Bill said.
“Don’t you feel guilty?”
“Sometimes.”
“Aren’t you ashamed?”
“Sometimes.”
“Well?”
Well, Bill wasn’t giving anything up. He sat there next to Beverly having told her what he’d told her and listened to what she said. She had an ax to grind. He didn’t have anything invested here except maybe a budding friendship. They’d shared some fun and if that’s all it ended up being, then that was all it would be.
“Well what?”
“Do you care about me?” Beverly asked.
“In what way?”
“In any way?”
“Sure I do. I care that your feelings are hurt and you’re unhappy and you’re undecided about which way to make a move. I care so much that I’m trying not to influence you or push you in any directions. You have to do what you have to do, whatever that is, for yourself.”
“And you?”
“Me? I came up here to Cleveland hoping to get away from the extracurricular activities. I came up here swearing that I wasn’t gonna fool around anymore. That went far.” He laughed, more to himself than anything else. Then he thought about it a moment.
“Maybe it don’t mean shit to a train,” he said. “Maybe it means everything. I never thought I’d be working in kitchens. I never thought I’d be desired by the opposite sex. In college I couldn’t get any. In high school I didn’t get any. I had a girlfriend and we did just about everything but. Then I get to the kitchen and boom, it’s like everyone and their grandmother want me. Go figure.”
“You’re a good looking guy. You’d be a catch if you weren’t married. Waitresses just want to say they did the cook and maybe get a steak every now and then.”
“How’d you meet your husband?” Bill asked.
“Old story. We met in grade school. He pulled my hair and I punched him. I stuck my tongue out at him and told him I hated him.
“We were in the same classes all the way through middle school. We made out twice in middle school, both times at a party when they played kissing games, first time when we had to go into the closet and stay there together for five minutes and kiss the whole time.
“We went out in high school. One night he had beer and we got a little drunk and while I can’t say he forced me, I can say everything just came together for him. He wanted to get laid, I wanted to lose my virginity and the rest is history.”
“Fill it in for me. How do you go from losing your virginity to getting married?”
“I wasn’t an easy girl. I wasn’t giving it up. He knew that. Really, he was okay. And then he hit me in the heart. He said that day he pulled my hair way back when, he already loved me and he never stopped.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah. Wow. So we started being serious and enjoying each other, and then bang, I got pregnant and we got married.”
Bill thought about curves. He thought about how life continually throws curve balls at you. He thought about the curve balls in his life. He saw the one Beverly told him about. Then he wondered why her husband was having an affair, but as he wondered it, he knew the answer.
Before she went on more about herself, Beverly asked Bill about what the end of the story was. Bill told her how Jenny had showed up at his and Pam’s apartment one afternoon and forced him to have spite-sex, vengeance sex.
He told Beverly how Jenny told him she would tell Pam he’d made a move on her if he didn’t give her what she wanted, how she told him she’d tell Pam it was all her if he complied and Pam found out. In fact, she said she would tell Pam exactly what they did and how she’d gotten him to do it, this so there were no secrets between them. Jenny said she was sure she could make Pam understand, and she also said she would enlist Nina to help too.
Well…Beverly wanted to know all the details. Of the sex.
Bill didn’t want to tell it, but she implored him and so he did. And after he did, that’s where he left it. The only other thing he said was that he didn’t have any women until he was at Suburban where he was quite a commodity because he was young, white and in a position of power. The black girls wanted him, not so much jungle fever as much as forbidden fruit or just to say they did.
Goddamn life, Beverly commented.
She told about how she dropped out of school, swore she’d go back after the child was born and they could work it out. But that never happened. The child never happened.
In her eighth month, she told Bill, she woke up one morning with such pain she couldn’t move. She was bleeding profusely and pretty much near dead so she thought. He rushed her to the hospital. They took her right into intensive care and put her on IV’s.
The baby died. It was a girl, Beverly told Bill, a fully-developed pretty little girl whose mother had miscarried—they didn’t know why—and she was never born, or she was taken from the womb already dead.
Talk about fucked up, Beverly told Bill. Talk about depression. Talk about ways to kill a marriage, maybe, especially one that was built upon an accidental pregnancy and the decision to have the baby.
Beverly told Bill what a mess she was, what a drain on his economy and a burden for him to carry for the duration of her recovery. Then there he was, going to school and working full time while she wasn’t doing anything because she’d dropped out of school and had nothing to do.
Wasn’t my fault.
Wasn’t his fault.
Just was.
He worked in an office and they were going to hire him after he graduated and give him a promotion and a title and work him into their company. It was an all-set thing. It was all good too. Until her.
Her, she was a secretary, and so if Bill thought messing around only happened in kitchens and restaurants, forget that. Turns out, she said, everyone in that office was fucking everyone and no one seemed to care that they were all married.
Beverly stayed looking intently at her feet. Her guy, now graduated and moving up in that company was one of the everybody. But he was actually having an affair, or he and his secretary were much more than just having sex. They went out together, went to hotels together and were maybe, she couldn’t say for sure, in love with each other.
Damn was all Bill would comment. But then he asked how she knew and she said she wasn’t stupid and that she’d found condoms, receipts and even a credit card slip from a hotel. But she hadn’t confronted him because, well, because she didn’t exactly know why yet and she wasn’t sure what she wanted to happen yet.
So there it was. Maybe a good Jenny-dose for him would be a good thing she added on when she was done with what she was saying.
