He reached for a fresh gin and tonic. Helen saw that his watch cost more than a minimum-wage worker made in a year.
“You’re going to be here for the second party, right, honey?” the doctor said.
“Yes,” Helen lied.
He stuffed a twenty in her tip jar.
“You gonna give her a free breast exam?” the politician said.
Helen poured booze until her arms ached and her feet screamed for relief. The next time she checked her watch, it was nine o’clock. She’d seen no sign of Kristi all night. She was getting uneasy.
At ten o’clock, Helen made an excuse to go back to the kitchen for more limes. She wandered through the party, scoping out all the stations. Kristi wasn’t working any of the bars or passing around canapes. Now she was worried.
“Where’s Kristi?” she asked, when Steve came by at eleven thirty. The first party was ending. Helen wasn’t going to panic yet. But she had to find Kristi quick.
Steve counted out ten twenties. “She couldn’t make the first shift. She’ll be here at the second party. The one you’re working.”
Helen turned pale.
“You’re not going to chicken out on me, are you? If you turn me down, that’s it, honey. I don’t know your name anymore.”
Topless. Helen would have to work the second party topless. There was no escape. Not if she wanted to talk with Kristi.
She couldn’t do it.
She had to. Helen thought of Savannah, waiting for her little sister who would never come home. Kristi knew what had happened to Laredo. There was no other way to find her.
She took a deep breath. “Yes,” she said.
“Clean up your bar,” Steve said. “Then take off your shirt.
You gotta show your tits at twelve.”
Helen felt like she’d been slapped.
She scrubbed the sticky spilled liquor and soda off her bar while she argued with herself. At midnight, she would be tending bar topless. She’d take off her blouse and bra and parade half-naked in front of strangers. She saw the nuns from her high school staring at her in horrified shame. She heard her mother crying. How could she?
I do what I have to do, Helen thought. I don’t know those people. They won’t see me. I’ll be another anonymous worker. I won’t have a face.
I’ll be half-naked for a bunch of rich jerks.
I’m forty-two, not some blushing virgin. Besides, there are doctors at this party. They see naked people all day.
But not healthy naked people. They see the sick, the injured and the dying. For them, good health is a turn- on.
Then Helen remembered the way the police had looked at her, as if she was a hysterical woman. That was worse than being naked.
Besides, said a nasty little voice. It’s five hundred bucks.
After the break-in, she could use the money.
Helen put the lemon peels, lime wedges and maraschino cherries into little glasses on the bar. She checked the ice.
She counted the glasses and set out the cocktail napkins.
She unbuttoned her blouse. There were six buttons. She’d never noticed before. Now each one counted.
She was standing at her bar with her shirt open. She looked around. No one was pointing and laughing. The guests were inside the mansion, changing out of their clothes. The other bartenders and servers were already topless, looking like they did it every day.
Helen took a deep breath, removed her blouse and unhooked her bra. She stuck them both in her purse.
Going topless wasn’t as bad as she expected. It was a little chilly, since her bar was outside, but that perked things up.
The men stared at her chest, which made her uncomfortable at first. Then she felt better. She knew they’d never remember her face. Their eyes would never get up that high.
I’m invisible, she thought. I am a pair of breasts. I have no other identity.
Some guests had stripped to their underwear. Only a few men stayed dressed. Helen was grateful to the guys who kept their clothes on. Clothes did make the man, she thought. Especially when he was over forty.
A skinny woman whose pool house had been featured in a recent Sunday paper strolled by, clad only in pink thong panties and a push-up bra. Helen was pleased to see she had cellulite.
Helen served a beer to a naked politician. He had on a wedding ring, but he stared at her chest as if he’d never seen a bare one before.
She was getting used to the fat men in their underwear. It wasn’t any worse than the beach during tourist season. Most of the sex and drugs seemed to be inside the house, so she was spared those scenes.
It’s not bad, she thought.
Then the lizard, Mr. Cavarelli, slithered up to her bar.
“I’m invisible. Management never deigns to notice boiler-room staff,” she told herself, as she poured his red wine. And she was. Mr. Cavarelli never looked at her face or noticed her shaking hands. His flat yellow eyes were fixed on her breasts. Helen wondered if he engaged in interspecies sex.
Her skin crawled.
What was the boiler-room boss of bosses doing at a society party? He was better dressed and fitter than most of the men. He’d also kept his clothes on. Thank God. She didn’t want to look at his lizard hide. Cavarelli took his wine and slid into the jungle of palms near the pool.
Suddenly, she found herself staring at another man’s chest. A man wearing a well-cut black sport coat and a black T-shirt that said, CLAPTON IS GOD.
She knew only one person who had a shirt like that. The man she’d wanted to see for more than a year. The man who had eluded her so thoroughly, she’d begun to doubt he existed.
It was Phil the invisible pothead.
He was real after all. And he could see her, too. Way too much of her. Helen grabbed a pair of liter soda bottles to cover her naked chest.
“What are you doing here?” Helen and Phil said simultaneously.
“You’re Phil the invisible pothead.” Helen had waited so long to see him, and now she couldn’t look at him. Instead, she talked to his chest, the way the men talked to hers.
“I’m your neighbor, yes,” he said. His voice was soft and low. Another time, it would have been sexy. Now, it was like being doused with cold water. “What are you doing here?”
“Tending bar,” Helen said. She could feel a full-body blush creeping down past her shoulders. She adjusted her soda bottles to make sure they covered as much chest as possible.
“Helen, you—”
“How do you know my name?”
“Margery told me. I pulled you out of the fire, remember?
Does she know you’re here tonight?”
“She’s not my mother,” Helen said.
“She loves you like a daughter,” Phil said. “This stunt would worry her sick. You’ve got to get out of here. It’s dangerous.”
“Don’t be such a guy. I have a job to do.” It was hard to look serious with two soda bottles stuck on your chest.
A fifty-something man in blue boxers interrupted. “Hey, what do I have to do to get a drink?”
“Sorry,” Phil said. “You’ll have to use the other bar. My friend is going home. She has a chest cold.” He took off his sport coat and threw it over Helen. It felt soft and warm.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” Helen said. “You’re not pulling that big brave male stuff on me.” She wanted to hand back his coat, but she couldn’t let go of the bottles. She shrugged it off instead.
