The Cocktail Waitress

“What else?”

“The Fritos-they’re for free, and you keep the bowls filled at all times. They put the customers in mind of having a drink.”

“You mean they’re salty.”

“I don’t and you don’t. I mean they’re compliments of Bianca, and you know what’s good for you that’s what you mean, too.”

“They’re special from Mrs. Rossi.”

“And don’t you forget. She’s a nut about it.” He tossed his cloth down on the bar, untied his apron, and came around to my side. “Let me show you the rest.”

He showed me my pocket totalizer, my cash register, and my book of slips, and explained to me how to keep the slips in separate piles, and then when a check was called for, to tote it up on the totalizer, present it to the guest, take his money to the register, put it in and ring up the amount of the check, then take out his change and bring it back to him. “And for Christ’s sake don’t make a mistake,” he growled, looking me in the eye. “Bianca’s easy on some things, like wind blowing free in the blouse, but on others, like clean fingernails and money, she’s a bitch. You make a mistake, it’s on you.”

“I won’t make a mistake.”

I had just got the chairs down and was putting the Fritos out when Liz came back again, from where she’d been in the kitchen. “So let’s split up our stations now,” she said. “How you say we split it right down the middle and alternate: one week I’ll take the near station, the one by the door, while you take the one near the men’s room, next week, vice versa. Fair enough?”

“O.K., suits me fine. But this week you take the station next to the door, so you can greet them when they come in, the patrons I mean-they’ll all be strangers to me.”

“That’s how we’ll do it, sure,” she said. Then:

“Got to go-here comes Mr. Four-Bits, always our first customer. You’d think, the way he rolls out his two quarters, they were solid silver, from the Philadelphia mint.”

I looked, and Mrs. Rossi was bringing a customer in, an important-looking, middle-aged man in gabardine slacks and sport shirt. Liz motioned, and Mrs. Rossi started to seat him at her station. But when he saw me he stopped, stared, and said something. Bianca looked surprised, and brought him over to me. It was my first meeting with Earl K. White, and I was just as startled as Liz.

4

He was a tall man, rather pale, and obviously someone important. I went over, handed him a wine card, with of course the cocktail list facing, and asked: “May I get you something, sir?” He asked for a tonic on the rocks, without even opening the card, and when I turned to the bar, Jake was already opening a bottle, and putting it out beside a highball glass with one rock in it. “Hold on to your tray at all times,” he said, “and watch the cork center. It’s to keep stuff from sliding around, but if you’re not used to it, tricky.” I went back to the table, put down the glass and poured, and took the bottle back, throwing it into the box under the bar. Then I walked past Mr. Four-Bits to my place near the men’s room. But he turned and motioned me to him. “You’re new here?” he asked.

“Yes, sir-this is my first night … If you have to know, you’re my first customer.”

“What’s your name?”

“Mrs. Medford.”

At last, after watching it all day, it slipped out on me, but at once I corrected it. “Joan.”

“You gave yourself away.”

“… I already said it’s my first night.”

“I can’t say I’ve found many cocktail waitresses called ‘Mrs.’ It sounds more like the way a lady announces herself.”

“I am a lady, I hope.”

“That may be; not every waitress is.” He said it with a glance in Liz’s direction. I couldn’t imagine what he found unladylike in her deportment or manner and not in mine, unless it was that I had called him sir. We were wearing the same outfit, after all, with the same fraction of the buttons on our blouses unbuttoned and the same lack of concealing fabric underneath.

“The ones that I know are,” I said. “And I imagine most of them are. Being a waitress and being a lady are not incompatibles.”

“That’s a very big word for a waitress.”

“I’m sorry, sir, if you prefer smaller ones, let’s say a person can be both.”

“… Well, then, what do you want me to call you?”

“Whatever you wish, sir.”

“Mrs. Medford?”

“… I admit in a bar it sounds a bit silly.”

“I agree. I’d rather call you Joan.”

“Then, please do.”

We both were sounding self-conscious, and our eyes locked. His gaze wandered down to my legs, and then locked with mine again. I knew that, in spite of our small clash, or perhaps because of it, this man was attracted to me. I waited, and then, in a faintly personal way, asked him: “What do you want me to call you?”

He waited, while his mouth twitched in a smile, and then very solemnly said: “I’m Earl K. White the Third.”

He spoke as though I should know who Earl K. White the Third was, and perhaps even fall down from surprise, but I’d never heard of Earl K. White the Third. However, hating to disappoint any man well-off enough for there to be three of him, I pitched my voice as though greatly impressed: “Oh? Really?”

“Yes. Now you know.”

“Mr. White, I’m honored.”

“Mrs. Medford, Joan, likewise.”

Then, after looking me up and down once more, especially down, he added: “If I may be personal, Joan, I’d say your husband’s a lucky man.”

I knew it was really a question, and I waited a moment before answering. Then: “Mr. White,” I told him, “I don’t have a husband- I’m recently widowed, I’m sorry to say. But I do have a child that I have to support, a little boy three years old, which is why I took this job, and came out in this outlandish garb. I may say I applied for work on the restaurant side, but then was told I was wanted in here, or more qualified for work in here, whatever it was. I don’t myself quite know the reason for my transfer-unless they thought I looked well in the uniform. Or costume. Or lack of costume-whatever it is.”

“Whatever it is, it’s most becoming.” Then: “Joan, I judge you’ve been through the wringer-may I express my sympathy? Belated, but sincere. I’ve been through the same wringer. I’m widowed too- my wife died a few years ago.”

“Oh? Then I express my sympathy too.”

“Thank you, Joan. Thank you very much.”

It was all stiff, self-conscious, but we managed to get it said: I was free, and he was. Then, as though to switch to casual things, he said: “Beautiful weather we’re having.”

Now my mother had said to me once, “You’ll be told: Don’t talk about the weather. Joan, always talk about it. It’s the one thing everyone has in common with everyone else, and often the only thing to talk about. Talk isn’t always so easy-talk about what you can talk about.”

“Oh it certainly is,” I answered. “I read somewhere there are more quotations about June, about the weather we have in June, than about any other month. A day like today you know why.”

“That’s fascinating, Joan, I’ll have to look it up in Bartlett.”

Who Bartlett was I had no idea, though next day I found out. We talked along, about the difference a fine day makes, and then suddenly he asked for his check, and I went to the bar and wrote it. When I brought it to him, he