‘Got it.’
‘Any questions?’ Gil asked, but she had already disappeared, walking into the back.
He realised he didn’t even know her name.
Dina set her back to it. Dimitri, the brother, was fat, made good food and cooked it fast. He shouted out orders and she tried to get the hang of it. Aella cursed her and jostled her and tried to make her spill platters, but Dina was quick and focused. She dropped two plates and served three customers the wrong orders.
‘I guess it didn’t work out,’ she said, at the end of the shift.
‘Are you kidding? You were great. Can you work tomorrow?’
By the end of the first week, Gil was really pleased. This girl was something else. She showed up on time and learned quick. Plus, she actually smiled at the customers, passed the time of day.
And, goddamn, she was pretty.
Women gave her tips. Men gave her even bigger tips. Plus, they started showing up on off-times, just to catch a glimpse of her.
Dina Kane was a real gorgeous girl. More than that, she had a certain way about her. She wore form-fitting, minimal black clothes under the diner apron, just a little make-up, so that she always looked smooth, but not a drop more. She wore her hair high, in a clean bun. It made her look out of place. It made her look expensive.
He knew she needed money. She was grateful for every tip – thanked the customers personally. Gil was afraid to lose her. He offered her more work, the pick of the sessions. Aella and Katrina bitched, but bad waitresses were a dime a dozen.
‘I can’t. I have to look for a job,’ Dina said.
‘You have one.’
‘I mean a real job. I need to make rent. So I have to take time out for that.’
Gil sighed, but he couldn’t push things. He didn’t want Dina Kane to leave completely.
Dina worked her shifts diligently, collected her money, went home and slept. In her off hours, she tied on her trainers and her cheap running clothes and worked out every day, following the streets down to the Hudson River and racing alongside the water. Men whistled at her, stared; she ignored them all.
She was running – from her mother, from her heartbreak, from a tiny life.
The waitress job paid enough to feed her, buy her make-up and clothes. It couldn’t touch the rent, and Dina was scared. She had assumed the money from her mother would buy space and time, and that she’d get a real career, a foot on the ladder.
School had been easy; work – not so much.
‘I’m sorry; you need experience to be a paralegal.’
‘Our internships are unpaid.’
‘Assistants at our company all have college degrees.’
‘When did you graduate college, Miss Kane?’
‘Nanny? Do you have referrals? A child-related qualification of some kind?’
‘Babysitter? Our agency only takes girls currently at university. Which is yours?’
Great jobs all had something in common – Dina wasn’t qualified to do any of them.
Some men at the diner had advice for her.
‘Get a boyfriend – he’ll look after you.’
‘Baby, if you’re nice to me, I can do you favours.’
‘Lots of girls who can’t afford college go dance in the clubs. I know a guy—’
‘I’m not a stripper,’ Dina said. She smiled at the customer, but her eyes were ice.
‘Who’s talking stripper? This is exotic dancing – like, artistic shit. They make the real money over there.’
I hate you, Momma, Dina thought.
Desperately, she tried to make something more of the job she had.
‘Dimitri, maybe you could experiment. Cook some more authentic dishes.’
‘What?’ Her boss stared at her blankly. ‘People come for diner food.’
‘There are lots of diners. Lots of delis. Not too many Greek restaurants, not proper ones. I reckon, if you made some real stuff, people would come. You could try adding a few items to the menu. And a promotion.’
Dimitri looked at Gil. They’d already learned to listen to Dina Kane. Her simple suggestion of photocopying colouring pages and bringing in a stack of crayons in plastic cups had led to a real surge in moms with kids. Now the dead times between lunch and dinner covers had a healthy number of tables occupied with spaghetti and meatballs, coffees and cookie plates. Even better, Dina had sectioned off a corner of the diner, and they sat all the happy families there. Working men went the other side, away from the coffee klatches, where they could ogle the waitresses.
‘What kind of promotion?’
‘Get it grandma tested. Do a one-day promotion. Seniors eat free if they bring one younger paying adult.’
‘That will cost.’
Dina wasn’t listening. ‘See, you print a flyer – but you only print it in Greek. Put it up in the Orthodox churches, the community clubs. You want to get the community in to talk up your place. Like – it’s a small market, but not much competition. What do you think?’
They tried it. It worked like a dream.
‘I want a rise,’ Dina said.
Gil sucked it up and gave her another fifty per cent. It still wasn’t enough.
One evening, about a month later, when Dina was looking at another three weeks before she defaulted on her rent, an older man came into the restaurant. His suit was beautifully cut, and it was clear he didn’t want to be there.
Dina ran over to seat his party. She knew the lady he was with – Olga Markos, one of their first senior customers. Olga loved Dimitri’s gavros marintos, small, spiky fish fried with spices and served with ouzo.
‘Wonderful to see you again. Your usual table?’
The man snorted, and Dina returned his contempt with a smile.
‘Oh, sir, this lady prefers to sit right by the window.’
‘I do.’ Olga nodded emphatically. ‘So I can see the world, Alexander. Young Dina remembers.’
‘First name terms,’ the man said, dryly.
‘Oh, it’s Dina – everybody knows Dina round here.’
‘Do they indeed?’ he said.
Dina showed them to their table. It was clean, with a fresh white rosebud in a jar on the table. Those got changed twice a week. Another Dina innovation. The restaurant stood out.
As she worked her covers, Dina noticed the man watching her. She was used to that. All the men liked to stare, but she couldn’t let it get in her way. Saturday night was their busiest, the ouzo and retsina flowed, and the tips were fantastic.
At the end of the meal, she brought them their check. Olga tipped her normal ten per cent. Dina smiled brightly, to hide her disappointment. The man seemed rich; she’d hoped for a couple of extra bucks from him.
But he caught her glance at the dollars on the change tray.
‘You wanted a tip?’ he said.
She flushed, embarrassed to be caught out.
‘Oh, no, sir. The lady already gave me a tip, thank you, ma’am.’ Dina scooped it up. ‘You have a great day.’
‘Here’s your tip.’ He took a business card out of his wallet and handed it to Dina. ‘Call me tomorrow.’
‘I certainly will. Thank you.’ She slipped it into her apron pocket, without looking at it. She got a hundred of those come-ons a night.
‘I mean it,’ he said shortly. Then he stood up, ignoring her, and helped Olga from the restaurant.
That night, just as she was about to clear the paper waste into the recycling, Dina paused. She fished the small card out of the recycling bag and read it again.
Alexander Markos, it said. Mount Java.
She started. Mount Java was the newest, hottest chain of coffee shops to hit Manhattan. They sold their coffee like Baskin-Robbins sold ice cream – forty-five flavours, all lined up in urns, freshly brewed every two hours. And tiny pastries, from every country in Europe: French macaroons, Italian biscotti, Greek baklava, German strudel, jam tarts from England.
The company was founded and run by an American – Alex Markos.
&nbs
p; New York was lapping it up. A coffee there cost eight dollars – not one – and New Yorkers couldn’t get enough of it. The city was rich, and it paid for quality.
Dina clutched the card to her chest. Her heart was pounding.
‘New boyfriend?’ Gil said, hopefully, although he knew what the answer would be.
‘New job,’ Dina said, tears in her eyes, like any other girl would have when she announced her marriage. Gil didn’t understand the kid at times. She worked like a machine; she just wasn’t normal. Jesus! The boys died for her – so did the men. She could have had her pick.
She passed the card over. Gil studied it for a second, then made the connection. He whistled. ‘Goddamn. Guess he wants you for more than a waitress.’
‘I hope you don’t mind.’
Gil knew when he was beaten.
‘Go with God.’
Chapter Four
The office was located on the thirty-fourth floor, and Dina had to pass through four sets of security guards just to reach the executive elevator.
The lobby had marble floors and high ceilings. The guards wore designer suits. The reception desk appeared to be carved from solid ebony. Dina’s heartbeat quickened as she walked. The scent of money was in the air.
The elevator was brass, with velvet carpet, a mirror and a padded bench – bigger than her little bathroom at home – and it went straight to Alex Markos’s office.
She breathed raggedly. This was her big chance to get exactly where she wanted to be.
The doors hissed open and Dina found herself in a dazzling palace of glass walls and sweeping views. Behind the sound-proofed window, the city went about its business. Dina walked up to the kidney-shaped desk of Mr Markos’s secretary, an elegant fifty-something wearing what was unmistakably a Chanel suit.
I want to be like that, Dina thought, only sitting in the inner office. Working for a big company. Chief Executive. Visions of success danced in her head.
‘Can I help you?’
‘Dina Kane for Mr Markos.’
‘He’s expecting you. You can go right in.’
Dina walked up to the main door. The sound of her footfalls was muffled by carpet an inch thick, but the sound of her heartbeat crashed again and again in her ears.
She pulled the door open and walked in, trying to look more confident than she felt.
Markos was looking at a computer screen, his oak desk a small island in the vast room. Behind and below him, she saw the New York traffic crawling through the city’s concrete canyons, flashes of sunlight glittering on the windscreens. This was money; this was power. Dina Kane felt it as a sexual thrill.
‘Have a seat.’
There was a large chair right in front of him. Obediently, Dina sat, smoothing her dress on her lap. Steady. Don’t look nervous.
‘Thank you.’
‘You impressed me yesterday. I asked my aunt about you. She told me some of the things you’ve done at that restaurant. How old are you?’
‘Eighteen,’ Dina lied.
‘Why aren’t you at college?’
She winced. ‘It’s a long story.’
‘I see a lot of young people work tables. I make it my business to notice quality. It’s pretty rare.’
‘Thank you, Mr Markos.’
‘What are your goals for yourself, Dina?’
‘To make the rent next month. And then to go to college, when I have enough money.’
‘And then?’
She grinned. ‘I like your office, Mr Markos.’
He laughed. ‘This job is taken. Found your own goddamned company. I have an opening for a junior manager in my new restaurant uptown. It pays thirty-five thousand a year, with a Christmas bonus.’
Dina quickly did the sums. That was almost three thousand a month. But, of course, there were taxes. She would need the bonus.
‘Do I get to keep the tips?’
He raised a brow. ‘The words you’re looking for are “thank you”.’
‘Thank you. Sir.’
Markos waited till she’d shut the door behind her. Maybe this was a mistake. They’d never hired a manager that young. Oh, and there was the question of her looks. Eighteen and all kinds of sexy, with a face that could stop traffic. As a waitress, she was an attraction. As a manager? Would they take her seriously?
He almost felt a stirring. Ludicrous. She was practically jail-bait. And he’d taken a fatherly interest because the kid reminded him of himself.
Guiltily, he tilted the black-framed picture of his wife, Athena, towards himself on the desk. She was the love of his life. He’d lost all interest in women when she died. All interest in everything, except the game of business: the thing that kept him sane.
His wife’s forty-year-old face – so lovely, so classic – stared back at him, frozen in time, in that blessed year before she got sick.
Gently, he calmed himself. He would never take advantage of Dina Kane, teen beauty alone in the big city.
Other guys will do that, said the voice in his head.
‘Susan –’ he punched his intercom – ‘get me the manager of the store at a hundred and twelfth. He’s got a new colleague.’
Edward Johnson was a golden boy.
He was in his second year at Columbia – Ivy League – studying pre-med. His plan was to become a plastic surgeon, one of the most upmarket in the city. He wanted offices on Park Avenue and a string of starlets and news anchors begging him to perfect their faces and tits.
Not that he needed money. Edward, smoothly handsome with his dark hair and even features, was an only child. He was close to his mother, Penelope, and stood to inherit everything from his daddy one day – Shelby Johnson was president of the hugely successful Coldharbor Bank. They had a townhouse on Eighty-First Street and Amsterdam, close to Central Park, Zabar’s and the best delis in town. Edward had already succeeded to a portion of his trust fund. There would be more when he turned twenty-one.
Edward Johnson liked pretty women. He was clever – the Columbia place proved it – but he was easily bored, too. Finding cute girls to fuck was his hobby. When everybody you knew was rich, how else could a fellow keep score?
Edward’s family voted Democrat, like all middle-class New Yorkers, but he was strongly conservative. He believed in social strata. Edward Johnson had been to the right prep school. He worshipped on Sundays at a smart, Presbyterian church. He relished his parents’ social acceptability and their place in the world.
After all, wouldn’t it be his place too?
Edward dated occasionally – girls with parents like his, girls he treated with respect, took to dinner, to the private dining clubs in town. But he didn’t want to get married yet; marriage was for a few years down the line. So dating was nothing special. And if those girls slept with him, neither of them talked about it. Edward was respected. The future was looking good.
No, when he wanted something, he was careful.
Edward Johnson liked downtown girls – girls he picked up in late-night clubs; girls he could hit on, working checkout at the supermarket; girls from the bridge-and-tunnel crowd; young Jersey chicks with big hair and big tits and too much make-up; girls he could wine, dine and bang once or twice and then drop without a trace.
‘Hell, man, you’re a stud.’
‘Ed, you are such a player.’
‘Jesus! Look at that piece of ass. How does he do it?’
‘Watch and learn, boys,’ Edward crowed. ‘Watch and learn.’
He loved it – the notoriety. They called him a pussy-hound, a babe magnet, a player, the king of clubs.
And if the girls called him, crying, after he dumped them, so what? Edward cut them off. What the fuck? They gave it up; that was their problem.
‘Jesus, honey, give it a rest. I’m not interested.’
‘What are you bothering me for, Camilla? We’re done.’
‘Mercedes, you were a one-nighter. OK?’
‘No, it’s not OK! You bastard! I thought you were different!’
‘I don’t see no ring on your finger,’ he said, with an accent, mocking her. Then he’d laugh and hang up.
Edward felt no guilt. Why should he? The girls were easy – not his problem. They sold themselves for the price of a meal or two in a nice restaurant, some flowers or a bottle of champagne. He was sowing his wild oats, like they used to say, working it out before he got serious. Edward Johnson believed that girls like that – low class, gullible girls – were the natural toys of men like him. They wanted to ride in the fast car with the rich guy, eat at places they could never afford, go to the best clubs in town. And he wanted a lay he could show off to his friends.
‘It’s the four Fs,’ Edward told the admiring guys who hung around him in the coffee shops as they nursed their hangovers. ‘Find ’em, feel ’em, fuck ’em, forget ’em.’
And they all laughed their heads off.
Dina settled into the new job. It was steady pay, and she waitressed on the side.
‘But you’re a junior manager,’ her boss, Mike, told her. ‘You don’t have to be out front.’
‘I need the tips.’ Dina smiled. ‘And besides, that way I can hear what the customers are saying.’
She did everything she could. Showed up on time, worked hard, smiled, tried to remember the regulars. On the plus side, she was finally making her rent. There were no more night shifts and every couple of weeks, she could afford to take the subway out to Westchester to visit her brother at college. But she was no closer to her dream. With rent and food, she was still tapped out. College seemed a world – galaxies – away.
And Dina was frustrated. Helping run a coffee house like this was about half of a white-collar job. She did some accountancy, double-checked the takings, wrote up careful reports on what pastries did and didn’t sell. But after she’d supervised staff – getting them to show up on time, be polite, follow procedures – there wasn’t too much left to do.
Dimitri and Gil had listened to her. She’d made things happen at the Greek diner; she’d been innovative. But Mount Java was already a major company. It was expanding nationwide and Alex Markos didn’t need much from her. There was only room to execute his ideas well – not bring in her own.
Dina knew she wanted more. Was she ungrateful? She hoped not. She was learning, soaking it up like a sponge. The simple importance of quality was what Markos’s store taught her. They imported the best beans, ground them finer than most, used all-natural flavourings and changed the water often. That was the secret – sound expensive; be fresher than the other guy.
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