The Cocktail Waitress

Garden, and returned without incident.

That evening was another like the one before, and likewise the one after that. Next evening, however, things weren’t the same, even a little bit. He took his walk as usual, came home, and kissed me, but in a queer, guilty way, and at once went upstairs, asking me to stay off the phone so he could make a call. Then when dinner was served he didn’t come down. I went up, knocked on his door, and pushed it open, and found him sitting with his intravenous mechanism attached, the rubber tubing feeding his medicine from an elevated bottle into his arm. He started, looking embarrassed, almost as if he’d been caught at something, which was silly, since I knew he was taking the treatments and he knew I knew. I said nothing about it, just informed him that dinner was on the table, and he said he didn’t want any- “not just yet anyway.” It was an odd way of putting it, as though he was hungry but was putting off food for some reason. He didn’t look at me, and I went down, had dinner myself, and tried to figure it out, with no success. I was in the drawing room later when the doorbell rang. No one was due that I knew of, and I had a sudden feeling about it. “I’ll take it,” I called to Myra, who had started for the door to answer it.

When I opened, a girl was there, in a sort of nurse’s uniform, a coat over her shoulders, a cab in the drive behind her. She blinked, then said: “… If you’re the housekeeper, I’m Bella, calling on Mr. White.”

I confess I felt rocked down to my feet. She was here at my suggestion, no doubt about that, but actually to see her, with her cab waiting outside, set my head to spinning around. “Oh yes,” I said, “I think Mr. White is expecting you-come in, please.”

She did, and I got my bag from the drawing room, went out and paid off the cab-twelve dollars and something. I gave him fifteen, then went back inside. Running upstairs I knocked on Earl’s door and called: “Earl? Company!”

I guess I did it with malice, at least a little bit, as someone had told me once that that’s what a madam calls when a visitor comes-“Girls! Company!” Anyway, I beckoned her up, showed her the door to knock on, and went down. When I heard it open and close, I went to the kitchen and told Araminta, “Mr. White has a visitor. He’s not to be disturbed, but if anything happens-if he has an attack-you can reach me at this number.” I wrote the Garden number on her kitchen memo pad. To make sure she understood, I asked her: “You understand about his attacks?”

“You mean the pain he gets in the chest?”

“That’s it. Let me know, at once. You can give him his pills if he needs them, but don’t call anyone else, even the doctor, till I get here. It’ll take me no more than ten minutes.”

“Yes, Mrs. White. I got it.”

She looked at me very oddly, but I felt warmth under the squint, and felt things would be under control. Then I put on my coat, got out my car and drove down to the Garden.

It was a Friday in early November, with the hatcheck open again, the first time in months, as of course in summer no hats are worn, or coats, or anything checkable, and October had still been warm. A new girl was on the booth that I didn’t know, but it’s where the phone was and I had to depend on her. I gave her a buck and when I told her my name she knew who I was, and was quite excited at meeting me. I guess I was known as the girl who’d made good. I told her: “I’m expecting a call, a very important call, and I’ll be in the bar. Don’t fail me please. I may be helping Liz, so if you don’t see me, tell her.”

“You can depend on me, Mrs. White.”

“Joan.”

Liz first seated me at the bar between two other customers, then moved me to my regular little table when it opened up. I didn’t really expect any call, and was happily losing myself in helping her with her orders when something touched my arm, and when I turned it was the new hatcheck girl. “Call for you, Joan. Woman says it’s important.”

It was Araminta: “Get out here, Miss Joan-it’s hit him. He’s bad off this time-real bad.”

I parked the car out front, and she had the door open by the time I jumped out. I went in and upstairs. Myra was there, in a chair by the bed, and Earl was there, under the covers with no clothes on, judging by the pile strewn on the floor, pants, shirt, underwear and all. Beside it was a dainty lace brassiere, left behind by its owner in her hurry to exit.

He was holding his chest and had his eyes tightly shut, but when he heard me enter he forced them open. “Thank God you’re here, Joan,” he groaned, each word coming at a great cost. “This is it-you win.”

“Win? Win?”

“You were right, I’m trying to say.”

I told Myra: “O.K.-you’ve done the right thing, all of you. Now-”

“Let me know if you need me, Miss Joan.”

She went and I asked: “The girl left you like this?”

“… I told her, go. She was scared.”

I saw the pill bottle lying on its side on the bed, empty. “The medicine didn’t help?”

“Not this time. This time’s the end, I can feel it. You-win.”

“Will you please stop saying I win? If it turns out the way you say, I’m the biggest loser of all time.”

“It will turn out that way. It’s not only the pain this time-I can’t get my breath-a new twist. It can’t go on. If I’d only listened to you-”

“Stop it. Stop it.” I had the phone in hand and looked up Dr. Cord’s number in the book beside it. There were two numbers, one with an ‘H’ alongside, which I took to mean it was his home; when you’re rich enough, and I suppose sick enough, I guess your doctor gives you his home number to call him day or night. Sure enough, Dr. Cord picked up at home, and before I got through a sentence of explanation he said he’d be over at once. When I returned to Earl’s side, he looked worse, his jaw clenched against the pain. Through it he said: “I heard you-beat a guy up once-at the Garden.”

“… I certainly did beat him up.”

“For-trying something with you.”

“Yes.”

“If you’d only-beat me up. Just once. If you’d beat some sense in my head.”

For a couple of minutes then he didn’t say anything, and I didn’t either, just watched him struggle to get air and held onto his hand. He let out a little whimper.

“It’s my fault,” I said. “This whole thing was my idea, I thought you’d be safer here-”

“No. Not-your idea.”

“I was the one told you to call her.”

“I had the idea-weeks-before you popped it out. It was so crazy — couldn’t make myself say it. But I had it. Joan, listen-there’s one thing still unsaid.”

“Yes, Earl. What?”

He raised up on one elbow to say it, but what it was I didn’t find out and don’t know to this day. When he fell back he was gone, and at that moment a man walked in that I’d never seen, who I realized was Dr. Cord. I told him: “Thanks for coming, Doctor. However, I think you’re too late.”

He went over to Earl and felt for a pulse, and finding none let Earl’s arm gently down. “He was long overdue, Mrs. White.”

29

He began with the death certificate, then interrupted to call the police, “so there can’t be any question,” and then turned to me and said: “He probably didn’t mention it, but I tried to tell him that marriage could well be fatal. I was upset when I saw the news in the paper, that he had wed-”

But I cut in to say: “He told me everything, especially what you said, and we got married anyhow. He knew the risk, I begged him to remember it, but he wanted a normal life.”

Dr. Cord looked me over then, in a way that was all too familiar to me-Sergeant Young had done it, and the lawyer, Eckert; Tom had done it, and Lacey, and Luke Goss, and plenty of other customers at the bar; all sorts of men had, hundreds probably, since I turned twelve and first began developing a woman’s figure. At the job I’d