There’s a jukebox near the front door, and it’s playing a country song that I’ve never heard of, but I don’t know any country songs. The bar runs the length of the room on one side, with a row of stools underneath. On the other side is one long booth built into the wall with red cushions and small square tables and chairs in a perfect line.
“Can I help you?” A deep voice behind the bar gets my attention. A tall man wearing a baseball hat and a white short-sleeved t-shirt with ‘Stony’s Pub’ in cursive written across his chest is standing with his arms spread and palms flat on the bar.
Moving past the customers having lunch, I step closer to the bar. “Yeah, I saw your help-wanted sign in the window, but I’m only in town for as long as it takes to fix my car — a month, maybe.”
His eyes move over me and slide down to my feet like he’s checking to make sure I have legs. It’s not a creepy look, it’s more like he’s sizing me up. “You ever waitressed before?”
“When I was in college.” Stepping up to lean over the bar so I can lower my voice, and he can still hear me, I say, “I also can’t find my driver’s license or my social security card, I would have to work for cash.”
His eyes narrow, and he stares at me suspiciously, like I might be an alien about to burst out of my skin. “You gonna show up for your shifts or are you gonna call out sick every other day?”
“Oh, no,” I point my thumb over my shoulder. “I’m staying at the bed-and-breakfast down the street, so I’ll be close, and I really need the money.”
A girl walks up next to me and leans against the bar, setting down the small round tray I see waitresses carry. “I need two taps and a Coke.”
Looking away from me, he grunts, “Alright, Trudy.”
While he’s getting her drinks, she turns to me. “You here for the job?”
Her T-shirt has the same logo on the front, only it’s pink and knotted in the front just over her belly button to show her midriff. The logo curves around her very ample chest, and her jeans miniskirt is tight around her hips. I’ve always been good at reading people when I first meet them, her smile is fake, and I can tell by the way she’s cocked her hip out and set her slender hand with red manicured nails over her half-apron, she sees me as competition.
She’s one of those women who sees every other woman as competition.
She’s pretty. She even has a pretty-girl-next-door look, but there’s anger in her blue eyes. I wonder what happened to her to make her so unpleasant.
Nodding my head, I smile politely. “Yes.”
Cocking an eyebrow, she says, “I hope you can pull your own weight, ‘cause I don’t have time to pick up anyone’s slack.” She flips her blond hair over her shoulder with a tilt of her head.
Nice.
“Your drinks are ready, Trudy,” Stony barks from the other side of the bar as he sets them on her tray, getting him an eye roll before she walks away.
He leans on the bar again as I give him my full attention and rattles off the pay and how tips are split, tells me he’ll pay cash at the end of each of my shifts, and then follows it up with, “If you call out, just don’t come back.”
I never miss work. Being raised by my Grams, who was on a limited budget, taught me from a young age that if I don’t work, I don’t get the things I want and need.
I nod. “That’s fair.”
He takes a deep breath and lifts his baseball hat off his head and scratches the thinning hair underneath it. “I just had a girl walk out last night, and I’m kinda desperate. Can you start tonight?”
Five hours later, I’m carrying drinks to a table at the back of the pub wearing a black cotton miniskirt and a tight yellow T-shirt with ‘Stony’s Pub’ across my chest. I wasn’t dishonest when I told him I’d waitressed in college, I just didn’t tell him it was only for a month before the man who altered the trajectory of my life walked in and swept me off my feet.
What I have on is not even a true miniskirt, it’s more like a band of material around my hips. I’ve never worn a miniskirt in my life. When I came back in at the time Stony told me to be here, one of the other girls, Sammy, who is my height with a gorgeous slim body, tossed it at me.
“Here, try this. Brittney left it when she walked out.” She rolls her eyes as she turns to another locker and pulls her lip gloss out, sliding the wand across her lips as she looks into a little mirror stuck to the inside of her locker. “I don’t know what she was thinking when she took this job. An opinionated feminist woman just out of college has no place around a group of guys like this.”
“What do you mean when you say, ‘guys like this’?” I fold my jeans and put them in the locker so I can pull the stretchy material up my legs.
“The guys you’re gonna meet out there,” she points her chipped painted blue nail toward the bar in the front, “are the kind of guys who call you darlin’ and honey, and the one that makes me cringe - angel. It’s not a slight; it doesn’t mean theythink any less of you, it’s their way of being polite, like sayin’ Miss or Ma’am.”
Good to know.
“What about Trudy? I don’t think she likes me.”
Sammy’s eyes roll so hard I’m surprised she doesn’t lose her balance. “Don’t mind Trudy, she doesn’t like anyone younger or prettier than her, and you’re both. I learned a long time ago to ignore her. She’s one of the unhappiest people I know.”
I look in the full-length mirror on the wall by the door and turn from side to side to get a good look at the skirt that just covers my ass. “I think it’s too short.”
