“Alex wanted to invite you sooner,” said Kari, “but I thought we should give you a chance to handle your business.”
“I appreciate that,” said Gloria. “Because any other time and it would have been out of the question. I’ve been swamped. And once we open, I know it’s going to get even busier.”
“When Reno called and told me that you were in town,” Alex said, “I told him what took him so long. You’ve been in town.”
“That was my fault,” said Gloria. “I got so busy, I forgot to tell him I had closed on the property. He had no idea.”
“Was he upset?” Alex asked.
“No, sir,” said Gloria. “He was pissed,” she said, and they laughed.
“That’s Reno,” said Alex.
“When do you open?” Gloria asked her.
“In a week’s time. The employees will return to work on Monday after all of the electricians and painters and everybody else is gone. We hope to launch the new and improved Lucinda’s Diner on Friday.”
“She’s an old friend of mine,” said Kari. “I’m shocked she sold it, to tell you the truth. We thought it was sold before you took over, but that didn’t last very long at all.”
They heard the front door open.
Kari looked at Alex. “Expecting someone?” she asked him.
Then they heard that voice. “Where’s everybody?” It was Oz.
“Right here, Oz,” Kari said, “if you turn a corner.”
Gloria, on hearing that name, exhaled. She knew he was related to Alex Drakos, and she had halfway expected him to be at dinner with them. Truth was, she was looking forward to seeing him again after how he helped her that morning three weeks ago. But he wasn’t at dinner. But now he was just about to face her again? She thought she’d be ready for it. Now she wasn’t so sure.
“Oz is my kid brother,” Alex said to Gloria.
“I see,” said Gloria. She had no interest in giving him any backstory.
But they were distracted anyway because Oz, being Oz, entered talking, and with Jennifer, the woman from the bar, on his arm. “My friend here wants to meet the great Alex Drakos,” he was saying. “I told her there was nothing great--”
Oz stopped in his tracks when he saw Gloria. He hadn’t seen her since that morning on that sidewalk, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t been on his mind. She had.
“Hi,” she said to him. She was surprised to see a woman with him, and at the same time, she wasn’t surprised at all.
“Hello,” Oz said to her.
She was a little disappointed if she were to be honest with herself, but she didn’t let that suppress her manners. “Thanks again for helping me out that morning,” she said to him.
“Have you had any trouble with that guy since then?” he asked her.
“No,” she said. “But I don’t go that route anymore either. At least not until their construction project is over. That may be why.”
Oz smiled. “Maybe,” he said. She had such warm eyes, he thought. And then he looked down the length of her body.
But when he didn’t continue by telling the others in the room what he and Gloria were talking about, and when he didn’t introduce his lady friend, Alex stood to his feet and extended his hand. “How are you?” he asked Jennifer. “I’m Alex. And this is my wife Kari. And this is Gloria.”
“Hi everybody,” Jennifer said cheerfully as she shook Alex’s hand. Then she waved her hand. “I’m Jennifer.”
“Jennifer?” Alex asked and then looked at Oz. Was this the same Jennifer who abandoned him at that bar, he wanted to ask his brother. But Oz was still staring at Gloria.
“What route do you take?” he asked her.
It seemed out of order to everybody, but Gloria answered. “I go on that back road, Spencer Creek Lane, and then I come back up a block away from that construction site.”
“Oh, okay. I know where you’re talking,” Oz said.
“Oz said you wanted to see me?” Alex asked Jennifer.
“Yes, sir. I just wanted to shake the hand of the man who put Apple Valley on the map,” she said. “If it wasn’t for your hotel and casino, we wouldn’t have nearly the tourist dollars we have in our economy now.”
What did she know about the economy, Alex wanted to say. “Thank you,” he said instead.
“Where were you headed, Oz?” Kari asked him.
“To his place,” said Jennifer with a sly grin, and Gloria looked away from both of them.
Oz was upset too. He wanted to dump Jennifer right then and there for blurting out his personal business that way, but he realized he would just be lashing out at the wrong person. Because he felt weird seeing Gloria again. Because he felt he had the wrong woman on his arms seeing Gloria again.
“Anyway,” he said, “we’d better get going.”
“Nice meeting you all,” Jennifer said like some southern belle, and then she and Oz began leaving the room. Oz, however, glanced back at Gloria. Gloria was already glancing at him.
It was a brief encounter, Gloria thought, but a telling one. Because now she had no illusions. Now she knew, if she hadn’t already, that Oz Drakos, despite his kind gesture that morning, was not reliable. He was, in fact, the absolute last man on earth she needed in her life.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
That Monday morning, the day her employees would show up for work and finalize the diner’s reopening, Kari was dressed and ready to get to work. But her cell phone rang again. This time it wasn’t Leyla. When she saw that it was her big brother Teddy, she smiled. And answered. “Called to wish me luck?” she asked him.
“You need to get back here,” Teddy responded.
Gloria frowned. “Get back where? To Philly? I told you I plan to return after we open.”
“You need to be back here Wednesday night.”
“Why?”
“Dad wants to see you. He wants you at his house Wednesday night.”
Her heart began to pound. “What about?”
“It’s Joey’s big mouth. He jumped up and told Dad you’re moving to Florida.”
Gloria was mortified. “He didn’t! How did he even know? I never told him anything about my plans.”
“But I did,” said Teddy.
“Teddy, you didn’t!”
“He kept our secrets before. I didn’t think it was a big deal. But I forgot.”
“You forgot what?”
“Since his accident and since he’s been living on Pop’s estate, he and Pop have gotten close. He tells him everything now apparently. And last night he just blurted it out.”
Gloria couldn’t believe it. She leaned her head back.
“He didn’t tell him that you bought a business or anything like that,” said Teddy, “but he did tell him you were leaving him.”
Gloria rubbed her forehead. “How’s he taking it?”
“He wants you at his house Wednesday night. You, me, and Joey. And he ordered me to deliver the message. How do you think he’s taking it?”
Gloria let out a harsh exhale. A part of her wanted to kill Joey. He knew how their father was. Why would he tell her business like that? But another part of her was kind of relieved, in a scary way, that the cat was out of the bag. It was done now. She had to face facts. She had to face her father. May as well, she figured, be now than later.
“Okay, you’ve delivered the message.”
“And?”
“And I’ll try to catch a flight out Wednesday afternoon.”
“There’s no trying, Glo. You’ve got to be here Wednesday night. I would send a plane, but Dad’s planes are grounded for the week.”
“Grounded? Why?”
“Maintenance. They’ll be down the rest of the week.”
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll be there.”
“You know how he is.”
“Of course, I know how he is! I know who I’m dealing with. I’ll be there.”
“Sorry about all of this, sis,” Teddy said. “I truly am. I never dreamed
Joey’s stupid ass would tell Dad of all people.”
“It’s okay. He used to couldn’t stand to be in the same room with Dad, now he wants to please him like some little kid.”
“Like you used to want to please him,” Teddy said.
Gloria knew it was true. “When there is no pleasing him. You know that.”
“Yes, I do,” said Teddy with a chuckle.
“I’ll see you Wednesday night,” Gloria said, they said their goodbyes, and then they both ended the call.
But Gloria had fear mixed up with her relief. Because she knew her father, and she knew he had the power to stop her in her tracks. But she knew she would have to face the music, sooner or later. She exhaled again, said Lord, help me, and then exited her room.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“Who is she anyway?”
“Some black girl, all I know.”
“I heard she’s really young.”
“She is. She’s not even thirty yet.”
“But Miss Lucinda likes her. She says she’s a good’un.”
They were in the diner, sitting around two tables, waiting for their brand-new boss to arrive. And although all of them were hopeful that they would keep their jobs, and they loved the new paint on the walls and the new tables and chairs, all of them were doubtful too. The youngest person working there was Elsie, and she was in her forties. Everybody else were in their fifties and sixties and had been working at that diner, in various iterations, for decades. But they’d never felt more worried about their future than when they heard that some young girl was taking over.
Shirley, the manager, a woman in her fifties, was especially worried. She started working at the diner when she was sixteen. Four owners later, she still held on. But something, even to Shirley, felt different this time.
“I can’t imagine a girl in her twenties would want to keep us old foggies around,” said Pearl, another old timer. “And she’s a black girl too? I’m no racist, but let’s face facts ladies. Every one of us are white. Every one of us are old as Methuselah. She’d probably want to hip up the place, and we ain’t hip.”
“It’s not our fault that they hire these young girls, black and white, and they never stick around. Miss Lucinda tried to hire young people, too, and blacks, but look what it got her? Not one of them hung around like we did.”
“Maybe she’ll appreciate the fact that we hung around,” said Carlton, a man in his sixties. “But I doubt it.”
“I doubt it too,” said Shirley.
And then Gloria walked in. And the three men on staff perked up. Although she was young, she looked way older than they thought she would. She also had an air of sophistication about her that made them realize she was no happy-go-lucky who wanted to turn the place into a tanning salon or a Starbucks or something. And she was cute, too, and with curves. The guys elbowed each other.
But the ladies weren’t so easily impressed. Mainly because she was a black girl and their experiences with black women in a town over ninety percent white was next to nothing. So, they relied on old tropes and stereotypes about the loud, aggressive black woman looking to take over the world. And the fact that Alex Drakos, the most successful man ever to live in Apple Valley, married a black woman of all the women in town he could have picked, stuck in their craw too.
But Shirley, the manager, a woman who needed that job like she needed air to breathe, was willing to give her a chance.
She stood up when Gloria walked in, which caused the other employees to rise too. “Good morning, ma’am,” Shirley said.
Gloria smiled and hurried over to her. “You must be Shirley?”
“Shirley Dingle,” she said, shaking Gloria’s hand. “Nice to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you,” Gloria said and then looked at the others. “Nice to meet you all. Have a seat, please.”
They all sat back down. She then asked each of them to introduce themselves and how long they’d been working at the diner. But as they talked, Gloria felt pain in her heart. Every one of them had been there for decades. A couple had been there longer than she had been alive! She was certain each and every one of them had better dreams than that. She could see it in every line of their aged faces. The disappointments in their lives. The heartaches and heartbreaks. The hope that dashed long ago. Now that diner was their family. Their steady mate. Their life as well as their livelihood. A livelihood, she now realized, that was in her young hands.
In truth, after studying their files over the past few weeks, she was ready to walk through those doors this morning and make clear to them that no way was she, the daughter of a black woman, going to own a business that had all white employees. And she still wasn’t going to allow that to be. But seeing the fear on their faces, and hearing them say their names and their length of employment as if they, too, knew they should have done better in life, gave her pause. They might be prejudice as hell and deserved termination. She knew that. But she was going to get to know them, each one of them, individually, and then she’d make up her own mind.
When they finished, Gloria put on a pair of reading glasses, making her look as if she had brains with her beauty, the males of the group decided, and then she opened a folder she held in her hand. But before she began reviewing the folder, she looked at them. “My name, if the former owner hasn’t mentioned it to you, is Gloria Sinatra.”
“Like Frank Sinatra?” Carlton, a snaggletooth older man, asked, and they all laughed. “Are you related to Frank Sinatra, my favorite singer of all time? Rat pack forever!”
“Oh, Carlton, please,” said Pearl. “How in the world is this girl going to be related to Frank Sinatra? Last I looked, Frank Sinatra was a white man. Italian, but still white.”
Although Gloria’s own father was also a white Italian man, she ignored Pearl’s dig. “No, I’m not related to Frank Sinatra,” she said.
“Have you ever owned a diner before?” asked another employee.
“No, ma’am, I have not.”
“Then what experience do you have,” asked Pearl, “to run an operation like this?”
“I have executive experience,” Gloria said. “I ran a department that was a hundred times larger than this diner, and I think I ran it well.” She didn’t mention that the department she ran was in her own father’s company, but that, she felt, wasn’t their concern. “I think I can handle it,” she added.
“What we really want to know,” Shirley said, “is about our employment. Are we all going to keep our jobs?”
Gloria exhaled. “As of right now, yes.”
They all sighed relief.
“But I’ll be honest with you,” Gloria continued. “There’s no entitlement here. If you’ve been here for decades and you’re a good worker, your job is absolutely safe. But for those of you who aren’t good workers, I don’t care how long you’ve been here, you will be fired. Point, blank, period. But, hopefully, we don’t have that problem here.”
“Are we going to remain Lucinda’s Diner, or will we become Gloria’s Diner?” asked another employee. “Or a Starbucks or something?”
Gloria smiled. “A Starbucks, no. Will the name change? Probably. And I may do a small expansion. But we’ll see. But right now, I want everybody to get to their stations and let me know what we need or what we don’t need. We open our doors in a week. I want our customers to feel that all the changes they see in the place are positives. Like the paint job and the furniture. And who I am or the direction of this diner is not up for discussion during business hours. Especially not to be discussed with our customers. Understood?”
They said that they did. And then Gloria called the meeting to a close.
When the meeting was over, the youngest worker walked over to her. “I see you have a folder on each one of us.”
Gloria nodded. “I do. You’re Elsie, right?”
“That’s right. And I know they got all kinds of write-ups on me in that folder. Like I’m just a natural born screw up.”
Gloria smiled. “I w
ouldn’t go that far, but yes. There’s some areas of concern.”
“Like what?”
“Like you cussing out your manager and your fellow employees.”
“I know it looks bad, Miss Gloria, but it’s not a true representation of who I am. It’s like they made up their mind about me as soon as I was hired, and it frustrated me. So, I became who they said I was. But I’m not really like that. I’m really a hard worker who need this job. I guess what I’m asking for is a chance to prove to you that I can give you a hundred percent. I guess I’m asking for a clean slate, if that’s even possible. If you give me a clean slate, I’ll prove how good an employee I can be.”
Gloria smiled, and then extended her hand. “It’s a deal,” she said.
Elsie was surprised that there was no pushback. And she gladly shook Gloria’s hand. She was so thrilled, in fact, that she gave Gloria a hug.
“Now get to work,” Gloria said with a smile.
“Yes, ma’am,” Elsie said, smiling too, and hurried away.
None of the other employees, however, were as thrilled as Elsie about the outcome. They weren’t exactly comforted by the answers Gloria gave to them. But at least she didn’t appear ready to fire them all. Those who worked hard, which was most of them, were safe, she said. That was all they were hoping for: a fair shot.
But there was also a leeriness that such a young girl could deliver it. Time, they decided just as Gloria had decided about them, too, would tell.
But after the meeting, as Gloria sat in her office arguing with a vendor about how his cost for hamburger buns suddenly flew through the roof after the change in ownership, and she angrily hung up in his face, a knock was heard on her door. She didn’t need the intrusion. She was already behind with vendor follow ups. But she also knew, for the first time in her life, the buck stopped with her.
“Come in!”
When the door opened and Shirley walked in, she exhaled. “What’s up?”
But Shirley saw the stress on her boss’s face. “You okay?”
“Not really, no. We need a new vendor for our buns.”
Oz Drakos: Loving Mick the Tick's Daughter Page 5