Read The Cocktail Waitress for Free Online

you.”
    “They make us wear those things, you know.”
    “I imagine it helps with tips, from male customers anyway.”
    “It seems to.”
    She looked down at her own torso and shook her head. “And I’m working here. If I had what you have …”
    I left her a dollar as tip. It wasn’t her fault she couldn’t fill out a blouse the way Liz and I could.
    Back in the house I looked up Elizabeth Baumgarten in the phone book and dialed her number. When she answered I said: “Liz, this is Joan. I got my phone turned on, and in celebration thereof, called you first of all.” She took it big and flung off a couple of gags, then said she’d stop by around 3:30 and run me down to work. I told her: “Make it three, so we can visit a little while,” and she said she would. Then I set the alarm and lay down for a little nap, to let the breakfastdigest. I got up just after two, put on light tan pantyhose, the trunks, flat-heel comfortable shoes, and a peasant blouse of my own, as the other wasn’t fresh anymore, and needed a dunk in the basin. I was hanging it up on the shower rail when the doorbell clicked, with a knock following, and I skipped down the hall to answer. But instead of Liz it was Ethel. Her eyes opened wide at my costume. “Oh,” I said. “Hello, Ethel.”
    “I’m here for Tad’s things,” she told me.
    “Well come in, why don’t you? Act sociable.”
    “… If he has any things, that is.”
    I didn’t appreciate this crack, but I still played it friendly and took no notice. “Of course he has things,” I assured her, motioning her inside.
    “I only say so because you seemed to have so little, when I first came here on Sunday. It was truly a shock.”
    “So you said at the time.”
    She continued to speak, not bothering to face me, as she walked past me to the living room: “I mean, not even electricity, Joan! I don’t see how you could live that way, how you could raise a child that way.”
    Before I followed I glanced at her car, which she’d put in the drive, to make sure Tad wasn’t in it, locked up to bake in the sun. He wasn’t, and I went in the living room. By then she’d taken a seat, but resumed her stare at my outfit, especially my trunks. “I see you’ve noticed my uniform,” I said. “I’ve taken a job. I work in a cocktail bar—the Garden of Roses, down the street.”
    “… Joan, I’d be ashamed!”
    “Of what? Working for a living?”
    “There are livings that don’t require you to dress like… a tramp.”
    “Find me one that’ll have me and I’ll apply. In the meantime, I’m earning good money and all I’m doing for it is bringing people drinks and a bit of food, and a smile to go with them.”
    “Might as well have nothing on but that smile.”
    “The more they admire what they see, Ethel, the more they tip— and tips are the object of the game. They have to be, when you have a little boy and have to pay board for him.”
    “You don’t have to pay board, I’ve told you.”
    “Oh, but Ethel, I do. I can’t be beholden to you.”
    She stared some more, then broke out: “Joan, don’t you have any pride? If not for your own sake, Joan, you could think of Tad.”
    “You mean, to be a fit mother for him?”
    “… Yes! That’s what I mean, exactly!”
    “And you’re not the only one, Ethel. Would you believe it, some woman called up the police about it, talked to the officers who handled Ron’s case, trying to get them to move, to have me declared an unfit mother. Can you imagine something like that? This woman even mentioned Joe Pennington—you know, that boy you spread rumors about, as being something more to me than just an acquaintance. Who do you suppose would have done a thing like that?”
    She didn’t answer, and I sat there kicking my foot. Then the doorbell spoke again, and when I opened the door Liz was there. She came in and I presented her: “Ethel, Miss Baumgarten, my very good friend. Liz, my sister-in-law, Mrs. Lucas.”
    Liz