Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You (v1.2) (11 page)

“A writer, huh? Right.” Suddenly the woman was all business. “I don’t know nothin’ about any couple of weeks, though. Rent’s by the month for writers and musicians and such, in advance. You have references?”

Quinn grinned, at last feeling himself totally in familiar territory. “No, but I’ve got five hundred dollars in my pocket ready to hand over to you, if that counts?” He probably could have gotten a room for half that, but all his expenses were being paid, and he decided Somerton Taite would be getting off cheap at twice the price.

The manager motioned with her head for Quinn to follow her into her apartment, talking around the cigarette once more as she took a key off a rack hanging inside the door. “No pets, no loud parties, no putting your beer bottles on any of my tables without using a coaster, ‘cause that’s what they’re there for. Just act like your mama’s gonna be stopping in and checking up on you, because since she isn’t, I am. I dust, run the vacuum cleaner, and scrub the sink and bathroom once a week. If you make that too hard for me, you’re gone. Didn’t put up with it from my kids, ain’t putting up with it from anyone else. Got that?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Quinn answered, unconsciously straightening his spine. He took a quick look around the living room, a classroom-size area jammed with overstuffed velour furniture, a snowstorm of white lace doilies, and dominated by a big-screen TV currently showing a half-naked pair of lovers making out on a sandy beach that had never seen the outside of a Hollywood soundstage. He could smell ham and cabbage cooking on the stove in the unseen kitchen, and was only mildly surprised to see the long-neck beer sitting on a coaster and resting on a table in front of the couch.

“Got it,” Quinn added, stepping farther into the East Wapaneken twilight zone. “Anything else?”

“Nope. Just the five hundred.” He handed over the bills and they disappeared down the front of the muumuu, probably to be lost there forever. “And my name’s Mrs. Brichta.”

“I’m Quinn Delaney,” he offered in return. “You may call me Quinn.”

“And you can call me Mrs. Brichta. Only thing the man gave me that’s worth hanging on to. You’re in Two B, up the steps and to your left. I clean that room on Friday mornings, so’s you’d better be up and out by seven on Fridays unless you want me seeing you in your skivvies. Now let me get back to my soaps.”

“Maybe I
should
write a book about this place,” Quinn said to himself as he unloaded soft-sided luggage from the trunk of the Porsche, then laughed and shook his head. “Nah, who’d believe it?”

There were too many of them. And they just kept coming.

Shelby had been regretting the choice of four-inch heels since about two o’clock, and had begun cursing those heels in earnest by five as that old saying “run off her feet” hit home with a vengeance.

How many people lived in East Wapaneken anyway, and why did they all want to have dinner at Tony’s? Didn’t they have homes? Didn’t they have kitchens?

Didn’t Tony know the meaning of the word
reservations?

She had no clean tables, three parties unconscionably lingering over dessert, and twelve people standing in line next to the cash register, making it nearly impossible for her to open the drawer.

A party of twelve was in the small no-smoking room in the back. East Wapaneken had probably never heard of the Surgeon General’s warnings or, if they had, didn’t believe them. The party was to celebrate somebody’s seventy-fifth birthday, and they’d damn well better hurry up and eat because another party, sixteen in this one, was due in the door in less than an hour for another party for an eighty-seven-year-old—Tony had given the eighty-seven-year-old permission to smoke in the back room.

And it was only five o’clock !

The first day had been fun, a lark. She’d played hostess and everyone had smiled and everyone had helped her.

Now, well into her second day, she suddenly seemed to have been thrown to the sharks, everyone thinking she knew what she was doing, everyone ignoring her pleas for help.

“You’ll get the hang of it, hon.”

“Don’t seat them until we get the setup down, babe.”

“Where
in Philadelphia did you say you did this?”

That last one had come from Tony just ten minutes ago, when he had stepped out of the kitchen to see her trying a loaves-and-fishes sort of division between tables as she ran out of menus.

She’d lifted her chin at him and told him she most certainly had time to chat if he had time to be away from the kitchen. He’d turned on his heel and shambled off, looking back at her over his shoulder in what might be called an expression of amazement. Maybe even of respect.

If there was one thing Shelby could do, it was handle the serving staff, although she doubted Tony would like to be slotted into that particular category.

But it had been her only victory.

She knew she was doing everything wrong, but she didn’t know how to do it correctly.

Tabby had told her that yesterday had been the exception, not the rule, and the only reason they hadn’t been crowded was because the high school baseball play-offs were being held up the street.

Shelby hadn’t believed her, because she’d returned to Brandy’s apartment a little after nine o’clock , too tired to shower before she fell facedown into bed, one arm around the stuffed dog, her mind and body numb with fatigue.

She hadn’t even hung up her clothes. She’d never hung up her own clothes, but this was different, because if she didn’t hang them up when she took them off then she’d have to hang them up later, and probably press them first. She thought about Susie, about all the maids she’d had over the years, about how she had always left a trail of discarded clothing for them to pick up, never even thinking about it once, let alone twice. But before she could feel too bad, she fell asleep, her nose all but buried in the pillow, and woke to find Princess sleeping on her Armani suit, which was now covered in white fur.

But she had made it through her first day, and had barely even flinched when Brandy’s alarms started going off.

Now she knew that yesterday had been a walk in the park when stacked up against the mayhem going on right now.

Well, there were two things she could do about it, weren’t there? She could either throw down the single menu she had left, stamp her feet, and shout “I quit!” or she could suck it in, or up, or whatever, and stop allowing events to dictate to her instead of the other way around.

There must have been a Taite in the army at some time, probably the Revolutionary War or something else dramatic, because somewhere deep down inside Shelby suddenly arose the belief that, yes, she had been born to command.

“Tabby,” she said as the waitress all but ran past her on the way to the kitchen, “I need you to clear table six so that we can seat some of these people.”

“Are you freaking nuts?” Tabby countered, giving a quick nod of her head in the direction of the service bar.

Tabby had six kids and worked double shifts five days a week to keep food on the table. She was known for her efficiency, but not her gracious manner. “Tell Bobby to get the stick out of his ass and do it. All he’s doing is serving drinks because you haven’t told him what else to do.”

“He’s supposed to clear off the tables? But why isn’t he doing it?”

“Honey, you have to tell Bobby to inhale, and I’m not talkin’ weed here. He’s supposed to be busing tables, and I’m supposed to be serving food. You, hon, are supposed to be making sure we’re all busting our humps.”

“I… I’m the
manager?”
Shelby asked, and suddenly her feet didn’t hurt quite so badly. She’d spent the day filling sugar, salt, and pepper containers. Surely managers didn’t do that, did they?

Tabby tried to walk past Shelby , but she stuck out a hand and grabbed her arm. “About those sugar containers…”

Tabby snorted. “Yeah, we were all wondering when you’d figure that one out. The guys do that stuff, Bobby, Tom, Pedro. Good joke, huh?”

“Hilarious,” Shelby said, and now her feet didn’t hurt at all.

She let go of Tabby’s arm, turned around slowly, with great purpose, and drew a bead on Bobby, who was leaning a hip against the service bar, sipping a glass of soda.

“Robert, clear—er, bus and set up table six, please. Then tables twelve and fourteen.
Now.”

The teenager dropped his chin onto his chest. “Busted. Knew it was too good to last,” he muttered, then picked up a plastic bin and headed for table six.

Shelby then made a quick circuit of the room, stopping at every table, smiling widely, asking if the patrons were enjoying their meals, asking the lingerers if they’d received their checks and if everything had been satisfactory.

It was the old heave-ho, and it was done by the master, a woman who had emptied more rooms after charity balls than young Bobby had probably had fast-food burgers. Clearing Tony’s didn’t hold a match to moving a herd of tipsy revelers out of the local country club before the committee was assessed an extra fee for the use of the ballroom.

She punched numbers into the cash register, took names and how many were in each party from those milling about in the vestibule, complimented Bobby on his efficiency, and personally helped the birthday boy maneuver his walker through the crowd to the exit.

Order. That was what was needed at Tony’s. Just some semblance of order. Someone in charge.

She could do
that.
She hadn’t filled a single sugar container without making a mess all over the table, but she could do that.

And if Tony knew what was good for him, he’d stay in his kitchen and let her get on with it.

At six-thirty the doors opened and Brandy and Gary walked in, followed closely by a familiar face, one she’d seen that afternoon, playfully casting him in the role of Excellent Adventure.

“Hi, babe,” Brandy said, winking at Shelby surreptitiously. “Look what we found wandering the halls; our new neighbor. Two B to our Two C. And, being really nice small-town types, me and Gar invited him along to dinner. Quinn Delaney’s his name. He says you told him about the apartment, right?” Then she leaned closer and whispered, “Black Irish, I’m betting, and handsome as sin. Nice work if you can get it and hubba-hubba and all that.”

“Subtle, Brandy, very subtle,” Shelby hissed back at her through her professional, welcoming smile. “Mr. Delaney, how nice to see you again. I’m afraid you’re too late for the early-bird special.”

“My loss, I’m sure,” Quinn said, watching as a very becoming pink flush crept into Shelby’s cheeks. He suddenly had the feeling he hadn’t been “lucky” enough to bump into Brandy and Gary so much as he’d been singled out by them for some project they had in mind. Just as he had singled them out for his own reasons. Now, what could they have in mind for him?

Cleaning Shelby’s clock was the first answer that popped into his mind, and he deliberately quashed it.

Then he smiled. What the hell, every job should have fringe benefits.

“Yes, well, um,” Shelby said, the man’s smile doing something very strange to her insides, “if you’ll all just come this way?”

“I think I know him from somewhere, Brandy,” Shelby said as they walked toward the ladies’ room. The restaurant had quieted down after the busy dinner hour, and Shelby had been sitting at Brandy’s table for the past fifteen minutes, most of that time staring at Quinn Delaney without letting it appear that she was staring at him.

“I do, too,” Brandy said, poking Shelby in the ribs. “I think he was the subject of Brandy’s erotic dreams, episodes five through eight, the dark and dangerous years. My God, Shelley, did you see those sexy gray eyes? Bedroom eyes, that’s what my Aunt Betty used to call them, and she should know, considering she’s been married three times. Did I tell you that? Yeah, it’s true. Three times. Can you imagine? And I can’t get Gar to the altar
once.
No wonder I had two desserts.”

Shelby washed her hands as she examined her appearance in the mirror above the sink. “I suppose you’re right. He does look like a
GQ
advertisement, doesn’t he? Black slacks, black shirt, black hair, gray eyes. Definitely
GQ
But does he have to keep
looking at
me that way?”

“What way would that be?” Brandy asked, sliding her own hands beneath the lukewarm water. “Like he could eat you with a spoon? Because that’s what I’m seeing, Shel, and Gary must think the same, because he’s been kicking me under the table for the last hour. I think I’m supposed to invite you guys along when we go bowling tomorrow night. You game?”

Shelby was somewhat diverted by this question. “Bowling? I don’t know; I’ve never been.”

Brandy ripped off two pieces of paper toweling and handed one to Shelby . “You’ve never been
bowling?
Oh, my dear, my dear, you have led a sheltered life, haven’t you? Well, that settles it. Now come on, let’s get back to the table before Gary says something dumb that gives you away. He’s a doll, but he sure can talk too much.”

“I would have thought he’d be lucky to get a word in edgewise,” Shelby whispered under her breath, shaking her head as she smiled, followed after her new friend.

She’d taken no more than three steps into the restaurant proper when Tony’s gruff voice reached out and touched her right between the ears. “Hey, Philadelphia !”

Her shoulders slumped for a moment; then she stood up very straight and walked over to him. He wasn’t going to fire her. She might have messed up earlier, but for the past few hours she’d been right on top of things and she knew it. “What can I do for you, Tony?” she asked him, chin up, even if her stomach was doing small flips.

Tony looked around, then glared at Tabby until she threw up her hands and backed away from the two of them. Whatever he was about to say, he was making sure no one else heard him say it. “Good job,” he said, almost in a whisper, then turned on his heel and headed back into the kitchen.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Shelby said, watching him go. The man
was
a marshmallow, just as Brandy had said.

And she was a success.