He went back to the bar.
The friend came out of the men’s room, and rejoined his other two friends and the girls.
Then at last, here came Tom.
He started for the booth, but changed his mind and sat at a table, the same one Mr. White sat at, every day when he came. I brought him a cup of hot coffee from the kitchen, black, and said: “Maybe this will help.”
“You bet,” he whispered. “Thanks.”
He sipped it, flinched at how hot it was, then sipped again. He kept on sipping until it was all gone, then wiped his mouth with a cocktail napkin. He took out a pocket comb and combed his hair, and then picked up the napkin again and wiped his face, where it was covered with sweat. “Feel better now,” he said with a smile more subdued than the grin he’d given me before, but no less handsome, and don’t think he didn’t know it.
“Wouldn’t you like a little more coffee?” I said.
“No, I’m O.K. now.”
“You sure you are?”
“Oh yeah. I feel good now.”
“Then in that case-”
I stood off and let go at his cheek with one hand, I guess on my right-hand side, then with my other hand on his right-on his left and his right. Then I let go all over again, as he half stood and tried to grab my hand. But I yanked them clear and kept on slapping, with everything I had. The guy who had gone to the men’s room with him came diving over and grabbed me, “wrapping me up” as it’s called, but I jerked loose and let him have it too, so he staggered and fell. Then I turned back to Tom, and really went to finish him off, and trying to duck me he fell too, beside his friend on the floor. By then, as Liz told me later, the whole place was in an uproar, with Bianca grabbing at me, and Jake grabbing at me, everyone grabbing at me, trying to make me lay off. Of course, with Tom on the floor, I had to lay off, and did. But it was some seconds before I realized what Bianca was saying, as she kept backing away from me, where I must have made a swipe at her too. “You’re fired!” she kept screaming at me. “You’re fired! — now get out, you get out of here! Didn’t you hear me? I said get out!”
By that time I’d come to my senses, a blend of indignation on the one hand and shame on the other; that, and rage at myself for losing my temper and, with it, the job I needed so badly. I’d told myself I’d do anything to get my son back-but one drunk’s wandering hands had been enough to make me a liar. I cursed my temper as I headed back to the locker room.
I’d come to work in my uniform, but I’d worn a spring coat to hide it, and I had left some other clothes in my locker besides-the denim pants that I’d worn that first day, and a plain white linen top. I was there, peeling off, when Liz appeared, and she began taking her uniform off too. “She’s not doing it to you, baby! You hear what I said? I told her-told her to her face she’s not. So we’re both out, same like. It’s how it always winds up, these goddam jobs in a ginmill, but tomorrow we’ll look up another.”
Then Bianca was there, and Liz let her have it direct, with what she told me but more, expressed in potent language, at which Liz was quite good. And Bianca just stood there and took it, by the benches in the middle, while I kept on changing my clothes. And then lo and behold, who should be there but Tom. He looked hangdog and pale, but passably sober now that he had some coffee in him, and perhaps my slaps had knocked some of the drunkenness out of him as well. “What’s going on?” he wanted to know.
“What do you think’s going on?” Bianca answered. “I’m sorry, Tom. But the kind of help I get now, these things can happen, and do. Please overlook it, this once. It won’t happen again, I promise you.”
“I asked what’s going on?”
“She’s fired, that’s what’s going on.”
“No, Bianca, she’s not. Not over a smack or two.”
“A smack? She was giving it to you like Floyd Patterson in the fifth round, and not only you. She’d have decked me if I hadn’t stepped back at the right moment.”
“But you did.”
“Your friend didn’t, and got a right to the jaw.”
“From a southpaw,” Tom said. “He’ll recover.”
“Listen, Tom, I can’t have a girl in this place that treats you the way she did. Treats any customer like that, but especially you. That-”
“Goddam it, I said she’s not fired.” He advanced on us both and Bianca shrank away.
“She’ll apologize, and it won’t happen again. Isn’t that right?”
“She’s not apologizing for anything,” Liz shouted, but I put a hand on her arm.
“I was out of line, Bianca, and I’m sorry. I lost my temper.”
Liz was having none of it. “Joanie! I saw what-”
“Oh, he deserved it, and worse. But I still shouldn’t have done it.”
“Bianca?” Tom said. “I’m satisfied, are you?”
“Three broken dishes! And a stain in the carpet-”
“I’ll pay for it.”
“I can’t take your money, Tom-”
She looked as though this might finally be her breaking point, the time she put her foot down and wouldn’t be moved. But finally she muttered, “O.K., O.K., Tom. If you want it that way.”
“She stays?”
“If she controls that temper in the future.”
Liz snapped: “How about if Tom here controls his hands? And after I vouched for you, too!”
That began another round of it. It took us ten minutes to get it all settled down, with Tom leading Bianca back to the bar and Liz and I changing back into our uniforms. When Liz and I went back there, things were going as usual, only with Bianca serving the drinks as Jake mixed them. In a half hour or so we closed, but when Tom and his party went, he still hadn’t paid his check, never mind the extra for the damage I’d caused. “Don’t worry,” Bianca told me, still mad, it seemed. “He promised he will. You won’t be out anything.”
“You bet she won’t,” Liz told her. “Did you hear me?”
“Liz, I heard enough for one night.”
10
Next day nothing was said, by Liz when she drove me to work, by Bianca after I got there, or by Jake when I got ready his set-ups, about what had happened the night before, somewhat I confess to my relief, though the fact that nothing was said meant I was still in the doghouse. Things went along as though nothing had happened at all, until lo and behold, who do I see sitting there, around eleven o’clock at night, at the same table he’d been at, the one Mr. White always sat at, looking at me, but the man who had grabbed my leg. I asked: “Can I serve you something, sir?” as though I’d never seen him before.
“Fizz water,” he answered. “Seltzer. Straight.”
I brought it, and he said: “And, my check, please. From last night. I should have paid and forgot.”
I had it, under an ashtray, at the end of the bar, and got it for him. It was forty some dollars, almost fifty. He put down two twenties and two tens. I handed one of the tens back, but he pushed it at me again. “For you,” he said. “I forgot you last night, too. Or at least, forgot to pay you.”
I put the $10 down again, and told him: “I’ll get you your change,” and did, putting a dollar and something, forty or fifty cents in silver, on the change tray in front of him. He pushed it, with the $10 added again, toward me, telling me: “I said, that’s for you.”
“Sir, I’m sorry: I want nothing from you.”
“… That how you treat an old friend?”
“Sir, you may be Bianca’s old friend, but you’re not mine-not an old friend or any kind of a friend. I don’t care for your money, and frankly I don’t care for you.”
I went back to my station, but he followed me over. I noticed some customers had started to stare, as perhaps I’d been louder than I’d needed to be. Quieter, I told him: “Will you please go back to your place? You’re
