by Dale Bailey
He lifted his coffee, still steaming, and drained it in a single long swallow. He set the empty cup on the table—gently, oh so gently—and then, surveying his companions, he said: “Gentlemen.”
They stood as one.
Eleanor drew back to let them pass, but the man from the subway—she could see the coffee stain on his tunic now—wheeled back to face her, lifting his hand. She recoiled, thinking that he was going to strike her—something broken inside her almost welcomed it—and then she saw that he had magicked a sheaf of papers out of some hidden pocket. He folded them with one hand, his fingers dexterous and swift, once, twice, and then again, a neat packet the size of a business card. Leaning toward her, he tucked it down inside her breast pocket. His fingers lingered there, skating the rim of her nipple. Her cheeks flamed with impotent rage.
“We can take you away from this . . . place,” he said, the disgust audible in his voice; without another word he turned away. Outside a gray rain poured down—Eleanor could smell it, the gusty wet and the damp smolder of the pit beyond it, when the door swung jingling closed behind them.
The airless bubble that had formed around her burst; the clatter of the diner—the clink of silver and the muted babble of conversation and Tank bellowing Order up! from the kitchen—rushed in to fill it. Eleanor looked around, mystified that no one—
—not even Carl not even your precious loverboy—
—had noticed anything amiss: the world was as it had been always, spilling over with things to do and never time enough to do them, the clock by the serving window propelling her willy-nilly onward, onward, into a blind, imperious future where someone somewhere faraway was always wheedling her, “Excuse me, ma’am, excuse me, but is there any chance we could get some refills?”
She looked around at the grimy windows, the cracked vinyl benches, the stained and scarred formica tabletops, and there was nothing at all for her there, nothing but a phrase rolling through her thoughts like a stone: We can take you away from this place.
Then it was late.
Philippe headed home, the street wound up its business for the night and still the rain came down, the dining room empty but for a couple of blue uniforms at a table, male and female, lovers maybe, whispering over pie and coffee. Eleanor was restocking the soda coolers when Tank stuck his head in the service window.
“Can I see you when you get a minute, Eleanor?” he said.
“You go ahead,” Noreen told her, “I got this,” so Eleanor slipped back through the kitchen to the office, a cramped cell jammed with furniture: a pair of battered filing cabinets, an oversized desk, and two chairs, Tank’s capacious leather throne and a rickety monster of molded yellow plastic that looked like he might have fished it out of a dumpster. Eleanor stood, shivering—Tank kept the window unit running full blast year round, as if to compensate for the constant blistering assault of the kitchen—and when she saw what he had on his desk, the temperature seemed to plummet another ten degrees.
He’d pulled the till and arranged the cash in neat stacks on the blotter in front of him. “How you doin, Eleanor,” he said, flipping methodically through a sheaf of yellow receipts, a pair of wire rim reading glasses perched at the tip of his nose. The fingers of his other hand danced over the keys of the adding machine. Eleanor stared at it as she tried to work up the spit to speak, watching in doomed fascination as the extruding tongue of white paper stroked out line after damning line of faded purple figures.
“Fine—” she said. She said, “I’m fine.”
“That’s good. I’m glad to hear that. And what about that little girl a yours, what’s her name, Hannah—”
“Anna.” Eleanor swallowed. “Her name’s Anna. She’s okay.”
“Is she? I know she’s been sick, Noreen says—”
“She’s as well as can be expected.”
“Well, I’m sorry to hear you’re having trouble. Seems like all we get is trouble sometimes.” Tank thumbed the last receipt face down on the desk, picked up a pencil, made a note. He rocked back in his chair.
“You want to sit down, Eleanor.”
“I’m fine.”
Tank shrugged—have it the way you want it—laid his glasses on the desk, and rubbed his eyes, thumb and forefinger, sighing like he didn’t want to do what it was he had to do. Then he looked up at her. Looked her square in the face.
“You stealing from me, Eleanor?”
“Someone say I was? Darla maybe? You know she can’t stand me, Tank.”
“Wasn’t Darla and you know it. I mean, don’t I got eyes?”
She said nothing.
“Thing is, I do most of the cookin’ myself, specially on days when Frank doesn’t come in. I know what goes through that serving window, I know what it costs, and I got a head for figures. I’m not stupid. How you think I got to where I am today.” Eleanor, looking around the ugly cell of an office, had to suppress a bark of hysterical laughter. To think of such a place as a destination, rather than—rather than what? The last station on a long doomed journey to . . . where exactly?
Once again, those words pinballed around inside her head:
We can take you away from this place.
Tank said, “You tipped out yet?”
She swallowed. “Yeah.”
He leaned forward and drew the money toward him with his forearm, clearing a place on the desk. “Why don’t you empty your apron for me, Eleanor.”
“Tank—”
“Tank nothing. You ain’t stealing, you got nothing to worry about.”
Eleanor stared at him, hating him suddenly with a white hot resentment—
—I want Mrs. Koh—
—that burned inside her like the sun. She stepped to the edge of the desk, and upended her apron. Coins scattered everywhere—Eleanor watched a dime roll spinning to rest on the battered oak veneer—a handful of pens and paper-wrapped straws, her order booklet, a much-creased photo of Anna, and a damning clump of folded bills. The stack of bills collapsed in an untidy heap. In the silence that followed, Tank whistled.
“You done alright for yourself today, didn’t you?”
He reached out, pushed most of the mess back at Eleanor—he didn’t even glance at the photo—and picked up the cash, tapping it sidewise against the deck, like a poker dealer edging up a deck of cards. He leaned back, licked the ball of his thumb, and began to count. Once, twice, a third time. Then set the stack of money down on the desk, where it lay between them like a bomb.
“Get your stuff off my desk, Eleanor,” he said, not ungently. But when she reached out for the money, he laid his big hand over it.
“How long’s this been going on? How much you stuck me for? Three or four grand? More?”
“I didn’t— I don’t—”
“You telling me you tipped out at two-hundred fourteen dollars, when Noreen—yeah, I asked Noreen—tells me she’s lucky she clears a hundred dollars a night. You telling me that for real? Don’t you bullshit a bullshitter, girl. What I asked you was, how much you stuck me for?”
Eleanor opened her mouth to speak, but—nothing. No words came.
“Let’s call it five grand, what do you say?”
“You going to call the cops, Tank?” she asked, thinking of the pit, those smoldering depths spiraling down into the bowels of the earth.
“I don’t want to call anybody, Eleanor. I know about that girl of yours, I don’t want nothing bad to happen to her. But I can’t just let you steal from me, can I?”
Eleanor didn’t respond. She just stood there, feeling like the floor had slipped out from underneath her feet, like any moment now she might slide right off the daylit surface of the planet and into some black abyss where everything was weightless and still.
It was Charlie all over again, kicking back at his favorite table with the new spotlight dancer, Lena, his brand-new best-girlfriend-ever, the love of his life, lithe and high breasted and barely twenty if she was even that, guzzling his lies and his liquor both and cutting out hi
s share of her stage money every night, blind to Eleanor, blind to the future incarnate standing right there in front of her, the clock already glutting itself on the beauty that wasn’t hers to keep: Charlie saying, you’re a sweet girl, Elle (and had anyone else ever called her that?), but this ain’t no job for a woman of your age, you know what I’m saying. Since the baby you know. Don’t get me wrong now, you still look damn good, but—
“Eleanor.”
She looked up. “What do you want, Tank?”
He ran his tongue across his lips.
“A man has his needs,” he said.
“What are you trying to say?”
“I’m not trying to say anything. What I’m saying is you’re a fine looking woman. We could work this thing out between us, the two of us. I don’t have to begrudge you the money, that’s what I’m saying.”
It was like he’d been sitting there this whole time, listening in somehow on the run of her thoughts. It was like something had been caged up inside her, some small fierce animal, furious and impotent, gnashing at the bars of her heart. Her voice broke when she started to speak. She hated the sound of it, the words hanging helpless and weak in that icy air.
“You’ve been good to me, Tank. Don’t do this to me now.”
“Me? I haven’t done anything, Eleanor. You done this yourself.”
Then: “Look, we’re all of us damned in this place, Eleanor. We every one of us going to wind up in the pit, one way or the other. Why not have a little fun along the way?”
“It wouldn’t be fun for me, Tank. Not this way. Can’t you see that?”
Tank said nothing.
Eleanor bit her lip, swiped in fury at her eyes, hating the tears that trembled there unspilled.
“Please.”
Tank heaved his bulk up behind the desk. He leaned over splayed hands, thick fingers mashing aside the neat stacks of bills.
“Don’t do me like this. What I’m saying, it ain’t nothing new to you, Eleanor. I know what you used to be. A leopard don’t change its spots.”
He straightened, picking up the stack of cash. Then he leaned over to tuck it down inside the pocket of her apron.
“You worked hard to steal this today, so you take it home with you, you hear. You take it home and you think things through. Think about that little girl of yours. You think about her real hard. We’ll talk this over again in a day or two.”
He lowered himself into his seat, put his glasses on, turned back to his paperwork. Eleanor just stood there, silent before him, fists dangling at her sides, that animal inside her heart hammering so hard at its cage that for a moment she thought she might just keel over. Without looking up at her—it was like she wasn’t there at all—Tank reached back to adjust the air conditioner, kicking the window unit into higher gear. Chill bumps erupted on her forearms, tiny hairs shivering themselves erect.
Then Tank did look up, peering over the tops of his spectacles at her like he was surprised to see her still standing there, he thought she must have left hours ago.
“You can go now,” he said.
The tears came the instant the bathroom door swung closed behind her, an onslaught that drove her into the last stall. Eleanor thumbed the lock and put her back to the wall, drinking in the soothing chill of the cinderblock, like water drawn up from some untapped well in cool depths of earth, to slake a thirst she hadn’t even known she had. She couldn’t say how long she stood like that—five minutes, she supposed, maybe ten, but it felt like forever, it felt like some central line had burst inside her and the tears wouldn’t ever stop. Except they did finally, wearing down in stages: sobs, then sniffles, then nothing but the hollow aftermath, her breathing labored and her makeup shot, her nose plugged with snot.
She leaned over to tear off a length of toilet tissue. The sheaf of paper—forgotten—crinkled in her breast pocket. Eleanor blew her nose, folded the tissue, blew it again. Dumping the soggy mass in the toilet, she took a breath. Settled herself. Dug out that neat rectangle in her pocket, memory stinging her, the humiliation of it, the way he’d touched her. As she unfolded it, a little flume of paper, it must have been folded up inside, sprayed out like it had been spring-loaded and fluttered to the floor at her feet: the familiar yellow rectangle of the ticket and something else. Three bills.
Eleanor knelt to retrieve them. Counted them out, one two three, and then again. Three one hundred dollar bills. Enough to cover the tab ten times over. She dropped to the filthy tile, her legs abruptly boneless, folded the cash, slipped it into the pocket of her apron. She leaned her head against the tile and closed her eyes, trying to think things through.
When she opened them, she turned her attention to the other paper, the one he’d wrapped everything up in: a heavy stock, textured and creamy, folded over three times like a letter and gummed closed, Application for Employment printed neatly on the outside.
Eleanor laughed.
She shook her head in disbelief. She didn’t bother unsealing it, just shoved it down into the apron’s pocket with everything else. Her finger brushed the scalloped edge of the photograph, her personal talisman, a snapshot of Anna two years gone, the last one she’d ever taken before their life had turned itself inside out, not so much a life at all anymore but an endless campaign, a battle waged against photographs and mirrors and panes of night-drowned glass, a war to protect her little girl from understanding what it was that was happening to her, and maybe to protect herself as well.
She pulled the snapshot out, the lacquered surface creased with a thousand touches. Held it there before her with trembling fingers, Tank’s words—
—think about that little girl of yours—
—unleashing a torrent of memory. Anna hunched over the toilet, her narrow shoulders heaving. Anna in agony, her face limned red by the digital clock on her night stand, whittling down the hours until she could have another dose of morphine, twisting with skeletal fingers her threadbare sheets, her drug-dulled eyes unseeing. She thought about the hair, clumped anew in the teeth of the comb with every fresh pass, the wastebasket in the bathroom already brimming over with the stuff, all that beautiful, beautiful hair. She thought about Anna’s labored breathing in the deepest slough of night, about the ammonia stench of the treatment center and the avalanche of unpaid bills claiming inch by inch the kitchen table and how long it had been since she’d had even a little bit of anything for herself, a drink or an hour alone or the touch of a man’s hands and when would it end, God, when would it ever end?
And something else: Anna’s face twisted ugly with fury, smashing the pills out of her hand, the glittering shower of tepid water.
I don’t want the pills! I want Mrs. Koh!
Eleanor’s fingers, unbidden, crumpled the snapshot. Then she was crying again—or trying to, anyway—as she struggled to smooth out the fresh creases in the photo, but it was too late. Too late. Somewhere along the way the tears had dried up, some microscopic internal plumber had gotten around to patching up that burst line at last. She felt nothing. She felt nothing at all. And so, still holding the snapshot in her hand, Eleanor climbed wearily to her feet and unlocked the stall and headed back out to work.
As Eleanor turned the corner into the corridor, still staring at the photo, a voice broke her reverie—
“Careful, miss—”
Startled, she looked up too late. She had a confused impression of a shadow looming before her, backlit in the fluorescent glare of the dining room. A heartbeat later, they collided. She stumbled back, overbalanced, and for a single panicky moment she thought she was going down. Then hands reached out to steady her. Strong hands, work roughened, with corkscrews of dark hair at the knuckles.
“You okay?”
She looked up.
Gray eyes, knotted nose: her friend the voyeur. Loverboy.
Carl.
He released her, smoothing down her sleeves where his grip had rumpled them and she pushed herself back, away from him, shoulders to the wall. He knelt before her, an
d when he stood, she saw that he was holding the photo of Anna. He studied it for a moment, trying to smooth out the creases himself, and then he extended it to her.
“Sorry about that,” he said.
Fingers trembling, she took the picture and tucked it away in her apron.
“I’m off. Noreen’ll take care of you.”
“Actually, I came back here hoping I’d run into you. In a manner of speaking.”
She let the joke pass unremarked. “What do you mean?”
“You’ve got to be worn out. Let me buy you a cup of coffee.”
He coaxed her into the dining room, empty now, and as she slid into a booth, split red vinyl rasping against the backs of her thighs, Eleanor realized that she was tired, and not just tired either: weary, a bone-deep weariness bigger than the exhaustion of fourteen hours on her feet, so big it stretched all the way back past Anna and beyond, to Charlie and the club, almost seven years now. Sighing, Loverboy—Carl, she tried to think of him as Carl—slid into the seat across from her. She turned away. Beyond the transparent mask of her face in the window, steady gray rain slanted down.
Noreen flounced up to the table, winking at Eleanor. “Tell you what,” she said to Eleanor after he ordered—coffee, nothing more, “I’ll go ahead and clock you out. We’re about done anyway.”
Then she was gone, leaving them to the rain and the hum of the soda coolers back of the counter, the steady beat of the clock by the serving window, chewing down the hours. Funny how you never noticed that when the place was hopping; now each bite the second hand took sounded like the detonation of a tiny bomb. Then Noreen reappeared with the coffee and time vanished once again, swallowed up in the ritual bustle of sugar and cream, the clatter of spoons. He picked up his coffee and blew across the top of it.
“You afraid of me?” he said. And when she didn’t answer: “People are, you know. This . . . uniform”—he pinched the blue fabric at one wrist—“all you have to do is walk in the door when you’re wearing it and you see it. You see it in every face.”