One Good Hustle (20 page)

Once all the plates are cleared, and the chafing dishes are off the banquet tables, Hugh Tink wheels the wedding cake into
the banquet room, followed by one of the other waiters carrying a tray of fruit, lemon tarts and Nanaimo bars.

My bandages are starting to work their way off my heels. One is sliding around my ankle; the other is slipping out the back of my shoe. “First-aid kit,” I yell when I’ve scraped off the last plate.

The door swings behind Hugh as he comes back into the kitchen. He gives me a sour look. “For God’s sake, Samantha, why are you barefoot in those sneakers? Wear hose and a decent pair of socks the next time you come to work and you’ll save yourself a lot of heartache.”

“For chrissake—” My mouth snaps shut.

Hugh looks at me, daring me to finish.

“I’m—I’m just trying to do a good job,” I say. “And I’m
bleeding
.” Standing on one leg, I bend my knee, reach back and take hold of my most wounded foot.

Hugh looks at the blood on the canvas heel. “Take that out back and deal with it. I don’t think the kitchen is really the place. Actually, just take your break now, please.”

I hobble out back to the loading dock and sit down on the top step.

It’s still light out. Staring down the potholed alley, I can see a scruffy bearded guy collecting bottles. I’d rather do what he’s doing than this. Social insurance numbers are for suckers. The only people with social insurance numbers are the jerks who carry a baloney bucket to work.

It suddenly occurs to me that we’re only about three blocks from Tenth Avenue Divine. Drew took me to Movie Night there once. They had their own projector and a screen set up in the
sanctuary for the youth fellowship groups. The show was called
A Thief in the Night
and it was about this woman named Patty who wakes up and her husband is gone—his electric razor is still running in the sink. On the radio, the announcer says that millions of people around the world have suddenly disappeared the same way. Turns out the Rapture has happened and Patty was left behind when Jesus took all the real Christians up to heaven. The rest of the movie is about how Satanic forces now have control of the government and the people left behind must agree to receive a government number—666, the Mark of the Beast—or face the guillotine.

The soundtrack was cartoony and the actors sounded as if they were reading from a chalkboard. I started to snicker about ten minutes in. Drew gave me a soft elbow in the ribs, but soon he couldn’t hold back the giggles either.

“Where did these dorks learn to act?” I whispered.

“The Academy of Wooden Indians,” Drew said.

Mandy Peterson leaned over and hissed at us. “It’s not about the acting, it’s about the message.”

“They should’ve stuck the message in a bottle,” Drew said.

It was so bad even Mandy eventually lost it.

I miss that night right now. I miss it like a person. I wish that you could keep a certain day or night in your drawer and take it out every now and then and hold it up to your ear like a seashell. Or maybe I just miss Drew.

Inside the banquet hall, the deejay’s voice comes over the speakers telling everyone to lend a hand and pull the tables back to make room for a dance floor. It’s time for the first dance.

Some jerk starts banging his glass with a spoon again and then they all start up with the
ping-ping-ping-ping
. It sounds like a bunch of slot machines.

Big laughs follow.

I ease off my sneakers and cringe when behind me Lionel Richie and Diana Ross start into “Endless Love.” Just when you think it can’t get any worse.

I stare at the bloody mess of my heel and a flash of Marlene’s bleeding face comes to me, her scared eyes crying, on her hands and knees in that Vegas hotel corridor.

Her poor goddamned face.

This shitty, stupid song. And the
ping-ping-ping-ping
. Like Vegas all over again. Sometimes I feel like a walking haunted house.

“Aren’t you going to eat?”

I jerk around to see Jill standing behind me with a plate full of buffet food.

“I’m taking my break too,” she says. “I got an extra piece of lasagna for you. There’s hardly any leftovers, so if you’re hungry you better get a plate or you’ll be shit out of luck.” She sits down beside me on the loading dock and dangles a slice of beef under my nose.

I wave it away.

She stuffs it into her mouth. Talking around it, she says, “I can’t believe your friggin’ feet.” She chews some more and swallows.

I smooth new bandages onto my heels and rub the sticky parts against my skin, good and firm. The music from inside
rolls on. Queen’s “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” makes way for Cat Stevens’ “Peace Train.”

“
Folk
music?” Jill gags a little. “Play some
funk
, not folk. Play some Rick James, man, play some George Clinton. Who can dance to
this
shit?”

“I like this song.” I pick up the extra fork she brought me and poke at the lasagna.

“You would,” she says. “You and your little hippie blouses. All you need is some flowers in your hair and a joint in your mouth and you could get on that dance floor and twirl till you passed out.”

“Cat Stevens is cool,” I snap. I mean it too. When I was a kid I used to sing along like a maniac when Cat Stevens came on the radio singing “Wild World” or “Peace Train.” He makes the kind of music that sounds like hope, even if it makes you cry.

“He’s a Muslim,” Jill says. “Packed it in and got himself a dozen wives.”

“He did not. Shut up.”

“You shut up. He did so, baby. I read it. He prays to Muhammad and shit now.”

Gripping the wooden step with my toes, I sigh and look down the alley. “If your parents are Christian, how come they don’t go to church?”

She shrugs. “We used to. Right around when they quit drinking. Christianity isn’t just about the building, you know. Mom and Dad believe in Jesus, but church people can get majorly
pious
—wouldn’t say shit if their mouth was full of it.”

“So, Christian yes, church no.”

“They just pray and try to do the right thing. I’m like that too. My mom thought it was a test of my convictions when Roman gave me an ultimatum and I kept my integrity. He can get bent as far as I’m concerned—because
I’m
still a virgin. I’m saving myself for Billy Dee Williams.”

I snort.

She giggles.

“Do you believe in hell?” I ask her.

“Yup.”

“Who do you think ends up there?”

“Why? You going to murder Hugh Tink?”

I look out to the main street and watch the cars pass. A couple walks down the slope of the sidewalk, the girl clipping along in purple suede platform boots and a dress that looks as if it’s made out of a hundred ripped kerchiefs. She stops and cups her hands around her mouth, trying to light a cigarette. Her long blond Barbie hair whips in the breeze.

The guy brushes it out of her face. “You’re going to set yourself on fire,” I hear him say, and he laughs.

His voice gives me a jolt. I lean forward to get a better look.

“They’re from the wedding party,” Jill says. “He’s okay. She’s a hippie-dippy pain-in-the-ass. She probably requested this shitty song.”

The wedding party? He’s been here the whole time? Maybe I sensed that he was here and that’s why he came into my mind. And who the hell is
she?

I start to put one of my shoes back on but it hurts too much.

“How come you guys aren’t in there doing the chicken dance?” Jill yells to them.

Big mouth. Jill and Ruby have the biggest mouths on the planet.

“You first,” he calls back. He squints. Oh god. “Sammie?” He takes a couple of steps into the alley.

I give him a limp sort of wave. “Hey.” My voice echoes high and squawky inside my skull.

“Holy shit, that’s what’s-his-face, isn’t it—the guy who showed up at the door for you?” Jill hisses.

I nod, wish I could evaporate. Wish he’d come closer.

Drew looks back at the girl he’s with. She’s still on the corner, smoking. “It’s Sammie,” he says, and heads toward us.

“Who?” The blonde clomps down the alley after him.

“Hey, they’re playing your song,” he tells her.

“ ‘Peace Train’?” she screams. “I’m missing my song!”

Jill nudges me with her foot.

Drew grins back at the girl, his noggin joggling around on his skinny neck like he’s a bobble-head doll. His hands are like big bony puppy paws hanging out the sleeves of the jacket. Drew likes Cat Stevens. He played a mix tape he’d made when I was over at his house. There was Cat Stevens, Carole King and the Moody Blues and I loved all of it. Up in his bedroom, I watched Drew sing along to “Where Do the Children Play?” while we played checkers on his bed. His voice was so gentle and easy and I wanted to touch his hand so much. And then his mother came in to check on us again.

He stops at the bottom of the loading dock. “Hi,” he says to me, his voice soft.

“What are you doing here?” And then he stuffs his hands into his pockets as if he just remembered how uncomfortable the situation is. “Are you guys waitresses for the reception?”

I nod. “First night on the job.”

His blonde friend dances around in her purple platform heels and sings the last few notes of “Peace Train.”

Jill scowls at her for a second and then displays my sneaker with the bloody heel for them. “Super-Waitress, here, forgot to wear socks.”

“Sammie …” Drew looks as if it’s his blood he’s seeing.

The blonde stops swinging her flouncy kerchief dress and gawks at the shoe. “That’s harsh,” she says. “Man, I’d take the rest of the night off if I was you.”

She looks as if she’s our age. Maybe a year or two older.

“This is my cousin, Magnolia,” Drew explains. “The one I told you about with the horses.”

“
Maggie
,” she corrects him, and rolls her eyes. She’s hanging on to the strap of a purple suede purse with fringes that dangle to the pavement.

Maggie. I remember him talking about some cousin who lived on a farm in Langley and wore see-through hippie tops with no bra. “It’s hilarious when she’s on one of the horses,” he told me once. “Bouncing all over the place. And she’s not flat either!”

People kiss their cousins. They marry them sometimes. I wonder what he’s said to her about me.
Sammie? Oh, she’s just some mixed-up jerk I used to hang around with
.

“The groom’s my brother,” Maggie says, her face incredulous. “He’s the one who married that poor lady in the bridal
gown. Did you catch her face? The entire experience has given her a rash.”

Jill hoots as if she knows the whole family from way back. I chew my lips.

“Didn’t you recognize him?” Drew asks me. “You met Shaye that time when we all went out on the boat. He was part of the College and Career group.”

Now I remember him, stretched out, sunning himself on the bow of the boat with his best friend, Maurice. Pale and thin, Maurice kept his shirt on and wore his black hair slicked back in a sort of 1950s style. Maurice had a voice and a manner like Liberace and he was the femmiest guy I’d ever met. Though, I don’t think I actually did meet him; he didn’t talk much to anyone but Shaye.

“How come I haven’t seen you all night?” Drew asks me.

“Because she pissed off the bride in the first ten minutes,” Jill says. Loud. She’s so damn loud. “She’s supposed to stay away from her.” Jill puts her dinner plate on my lap, takes a pack of smokes out of her purse and lights one.

“Ah, poor Trudy,” Maggie says. “Don’t take it personally. I’d be in a shitty mood if I had to marry into our family too.”

Someone stomps out onto the loading dock behind us. I turn to see Hugh Tink standing there.

“You girls have about three more minutes,” he says. “There are dessert plates to clear.” He turns on his heel and goes back inside.

“Bag your face, motherfucker,” Jill says once she’s sure Hugh’s out of earshot. “I just sat down!”

I reach for one of my sneakers again, undo the laces and spread the canvas as much as possible so that I don’t rub my heel too much getting it in.

“Sammie,” Drew says. “Don’t. I—um—I got socks. Put mine on.”

“Don’t worry about it.” I put my toes into the sneaker. “I’m fine.”

“No.” He sits on the step below me to undo his laces.

I look at his foot as he lifts it out of a black Oxford dress shoe. “Why are you wearing jock socks with a suit?”

“Because I’m a goof.” He pulls one white tube sock off. “My mom just bought them for me. Brand new, see?” He takes off his other shoe and sock number two.

I can’t look at Drew when he’s this close. I stare at the socks in his hand instead. They look just like Ruby’s chocolate layer cake to me right now. So damn nice.

I’m afraid to let my face move much because it feels as if chunks of me will start breaking off if I do.

“I didn’t see your mom inside,” I say, and the words come out all hoarse.

“Don’t ask.” He exhales.

“Big fight with
my
mom!” Maggie says from the bottom step. “Battle of the battleaxes.”

I take my foot out of the sneaker while Drew slips his bare feet back into his dress shoes. He waves the socks in front of himself. “Lemme air ’em out a little for you.”

Stop being so kind. Stop it, stop it, stop it!

Jill leans into my ear. “I’m going in. I’ll tell Hugh you’re in
the bathroom.” She takes a last drag off her cigarette, flicks it away and disappears inside.

“How’s your mom?” Drew asks.

“Fine. Better. I don’t know.”

He lays one sock on his knee and then he gathers up the leg of the other and readies it for my foot as if I’m three years old.

I laugh a little. “I can put it on myself.”

But I raise my foot and let him slip the cool damp cotton onto it. Setting my foot on his knee, he folds his white tube until it’s an ankle sock. My eyes well up as he moves on to the second foot.

Maggie smiles as Drew carefully puts my shoes on. Her face is gentle and her big blue eyes remind me of a doll’s.

“Better?” he asks me.