Posted by PK on November 20, 2001 at 16:57:32:
Like magic, the job was done. Donna was displayed to her best advantage on the dining
table, surrounded by glittering cutlery and hungry people. That's not Donna, she reproved
herself. Yes it is, herself argued.
"Still don't see why you dragged us here just to see you eat some bimbo's cunt," a disgruntled
adolescent whined.
Gina took an instant dislike to the girl.
"Don't speak to your father like that," said a dark haired woman in her late twenties
entreatingly.
"I'll say whatever I fucking well want."
Gina caught the dark haired woman's eye as she turned her head away in exasperation. In an
instant, Gina saw a young stepmother dealing with her older, rich husband's spoiled children.
Poles apart, but there was a flash of contact. The woman turned back and said "And she's
not a bimbo."
"How the fuck would you know?"
"How would you?"
The younger man was ignoring the conversation studiously. His attention seemed to be
divided between a desire to get on with the meal and ogling Gina's crotch. Gina gave him a
quick, polite smile and turned her eyes away.
"If you wish to know, I'll tell you," the older man said. "If you don't get your diploma you'll end
up working somewhere like here. I'm out of patience, Cody."
Oh my, baby's gonna cry tonight, Gina thought. He's cutting her off. Poor bitch. Hee hee.
Why was she still here? Oh yes, wine list. "Would you like anything to drink with that?" she
asked tentatively, as if reluctant to intrude. There was a bottle on the table but it was empty.
"Another of the same, please," the patriarch replied, without looking at her. He was using a
serving spoon to transfer Donna's filet to his plate and douse it with some of the juices from
the rump steaks. Blood and wine...
The same. Which was what, exactly? Nobody had told her. She leaned over the table to pick
up the bottle. At this, the patriarch shot her a sharp, enquiring look.
"Sorry, Sir, but your previous waitress didn't make a note of the vintage," she murmured in
explanation. The man shrugged and sketched a permissive nod. As Gina retrieved the bottle
she could feel the moist warmth of the platters of food on her skin.
"That's all right," the dark haired woman told Gina out loud, with the friendly if condescending
smile of one reassuring a servitor who knew her place. It was the height of déclassé vulgarity
to be rude to the lower orders, after all. She had claimed a golden-brown, fragrant breast and
was slicing into it with a sharp knife. It yielded easily to the blade after a token resistance, like
a soft fruit.
"I don't suppose we can ask her now," the younger man agreed with a conspiratorial smirk,
helping himself to the biggest rump steak. Not a breast man, then. Or not high enough in the
pecking order? Gina favoured him with a cool smile. Cody glared at him and then at her as if
suspecting she was being ignored or made fun of: like any egocentric brat she thought
everything was about herself. Gina didn't respond to that, letting her gaze slide past her
without contact.
"Make that two," the patriarch said, before forking a delicate piece of girlflesh into his mouth.
His eyes closed in gastronomic ecstasy.
Gina gave a brief nod of acknowledgement and turned to go. She replayed the scene in her
mind's eye as she walked back to the serving area. Just people eating, enjoying a family
dinner. "Nice ass," somebody said behind her back. It was a girl's voice, with a waspish edge
to it. "Maybe we should..."
Gina tuned it out. She delivered the wine without incident, the family were engaged with their
dinners and their internal preoccupations. The young man gave her a lecherous look, nothing
out of the ordinary. Cody was eating with overstated relish, perhaps defiantly. One of the
other girls gave Gina a furtive stare, an odd expression on her face. What was it?
For the next hour or so, Gina lost herself in routine work, helping the others ferry food from
the kitchens to the tables. A lot of it was fresh Donna, now she'd 'lost her cherry' she was
being snapped up piecemeal. Even the punters who'd already ordered something less exotic
were abandoning their earlier selections to join the feeding frenzy.
"She's going like hot cakes," Mercy put it cheerfully as their paths crossed. "Primo tips for all
of us. You'll make out big time." She had magnanimously put aside her envy now that she
was on the gravy train too. "Look at this. One a them kinks, right? I mean, feet? Don't look
now, it's the weird looking geek on eight."
Gina looked anyway. The 'geek' was a young man in black with a saturnine mien, Johnny
Depp playing a tragic vampire. Gorgeous, if you go for brooding angst with a hint of
necrophilic perversion. A Goth girl's wet dream. Mercy's serving tray exhibited Donna's small,
elegant left foot, severed above the ankle bone. Barely cooked, the open end was pink and
bloody.
"Takes all kinds," Gina said absently.
Time flies when you're busy. Soon enough, her own table asked for the check. She delivered
the accounting and awaited payment. It wasn't long in coming, though the patriarch insisted
in writing out a bank cheque rather than simply offering a card. Gina waited patiently,
allowing the young man to eye her up again without reacting. It didn't bother her, it would
have been more surprising if he hadn't, only an idiot or an old style radical feminist
(assuming that's not a redundancy, as Sam Clemens once said of Congressmen) would
expect anything less, given the way she was almost dressed. He'd have to be gay,
undersexed or dead not to.
The patriarch offered her his payment with a subtle flourish. Gina gave it a perfunctory
glance that missed nothing: he had added a substantial tip. "Thank you, Sir," she said.
He gave that a dismissive nod. "Please convey my personal compliments to the Chef," he
said. "The meal was quite satisfactory."
High praise indeed. "I'll be sure to tell him."
The petty monarch's face almost cracked a smile. "Perhaps we'll see you again." The
implication was almost obvious.
Gina, drawing on her vast experience as a waitress, smiled back with simulated warmth. "I'll
look forward to it," she lied shamelessly. The polite condescension of these pretentious,
dysfunctional, overprivileged assholes didn't bother her at all. Standing there, more than half
naked, slightly sweaty and superficially subservient, she felt superior to all of them.
The girl to Cody's left gave her the look again, more intensely. There was something of the
trapped animal in it and something else. Gina ignored it.
"What are you doing here?" the Chef snapped testily.
"Table seven sends compliments," Gina said shortly, unperturbed. "I said I'd tell you, I just
did." She showed him her back and started to leave.
"Wait a minute," Mr. Surly called out. Had the routine arrogance dropped a micrometer? He
almost said 'please'. "Take these back to the locker room." He handed her a strip of blue
fabric and a pair of leather sandals.
Hey, Donna, Gina addressed the shoes and skirt - they felt and smelled still warm and alive
to her - on her way back, how about that? Did you get off on it?
"Get off on it?" Donna said, grinning wickedly as she spoke in Gina's mind. "Sure,
sometimes, most everybody does. After being scared shitless for a couple of days you have
to or you'd freak. What the hell, it's just like Las Vegas, right?"
"Right," Gina said aloud, but sotto voce, "But that was then, this is now. Did you really?
When you went through the door, were you getting off then? Were you scared? Why did you
take your shoes off last?"
I'm talking to a pair of shoes, Gina thought. My brain is toast. I'm away with the fairies.
"Maybe the floor was just too cold?" Donna suggested posthumously.
Fried, Gina thought. I'm freaking. What does that leave? Me. I'm leaving, she concluded.
Leaving right now.
A hand clapped her shoulder just as she stood before the locker room door. "I always knew
you had it in you," Eddie said jovially.
"Huh? Ha?" Gina responded brilliantly. "Did you? What?" Where the hell had he sprung
from?
"Great job. Well, maybe I didn't. Who knows, who cares? That was yesterday, this is today. I
mean, you really came through. Great job, they loved you out there. You gonna wear that or
what? Good choice, suits you. Always said so." He stared at her crotch for a second,
unabashed - nothing furtive about good old Eddie - and took his cigar out of his mouth.
"Fuckin' shame to cover that up though...."
It doesn't, really, Gina thought. I doubt if it covers anything much. She pictured Donna in her
mind, wearing the microskirt. A belt with frills and delusions of adequacy. Perfect bare
breasts, long legs, blonde hair and a fringe over her crotch that revealed everything with
every movement of her body. Had she been trying to get herself eaten? Or was she just
playing it for bigger tips? Dancing on a tight rope, she thought. Walking on the edge. Her
near-eidetic memory kicked in as it sometimes did, producing a vivid image of Donna as
she'd admitted to enjoying the thrill, the wicked glee on her face. She'd loved the game,
every minute of it.
But the last few minutes, when she knew it was over? Had she loved that too?
"You okay, babe?" Eddie's tone was solicitous, the sentiment an echo of Charlotte's. How
nice of them to worry.
"I'm fine," she half-lied. "But I won't be needing the costume." Such as it is. "I'm quitting,
Eddie. Sorry to leave you short, but I'm out of here."
Eddie's face was a comic mask of puzzlement. "Quitting? Why, babe? You're doing great."
Gina stared at him, mouth half open. If he really didn't know, what could she say? "How
about the fact that I might be the next plat du jour?" she said with leaden irony. "That could
put a girl off."
"Platt doo what? Oh, I get it French, right?" Eddie was no scholar but he wasn't slow on the
uptake. "Okay, sure you might get yourself cooked, but what's new?" he went on reasonably.
"You already knew that. It's what you call an occupational hazard, right? Like with gold
mining. Or robbing banks, or whatever. No quick bucks without you take a chance, or
everybody'd be rich."
He had a point, Gina had to admit. Still: "It's not exactly the same," she said lamely.
Eddie shrugged. "Sure it is. People got killed looking for gold. Or they got rich. Damn few of
'em, what I hear. You girls, you take the big risks, that's why you get the big bucks. Nobody's
gonna pay what you get here for flipping burgers."
All of that was true, of course. Gina glanced at the garments in her hand.
"Look, okay, I'm sorry about Donna, she was a nice kid, we'll all miss her. But she knew the
score, same as you. Them's the breaks."
Gina shook her head doubtfully.
"Look, tell you what, don't make up your mind now. Help me out, finish the shift. That way
you get paid for today. You still want to quit, tell me at closing, I won't ask for notice, you get
paid up in full." Another shrug. "You walk now, you lose it. Sorry, babe." His spread hands
suggested that business was business, he didn't want to be a hard guy, but you know how it
is.
It wasn't long until closing time. Too late for any more 'specials'. Just routine table work. Gina
sighed softly. "Okay, I'll finish up today," she said.
"Attagirl," Eddie said, "Knew you wouldn't let me down."
Gina returned Donna's outfit to the locker room and went back to waiting tables. Most of
them were nearly done, some of the customers were leaving. On one long table she saw
Melanie laid out naked, having seafood eaten from her body by a drunken and excited party
of Japanese. They were picking off the delicacies with their mouths, licking the sauces from
her skin. Harmless fun. She relaxed and got on with the work, refusing to give in to her
morbid musings. Her feet were getting tired of her decorative footwear so she kicked the
shoes off and worked barefoot.
Eventually, all the revellers left and it was time to go. Back in the locker room, she pulled off
the flimsy garment she'd become accustomed to wearing and donned her own clothes as if
returning to an older, more mundane reality. The others were chattering.
"You squeaked," Adrianne said. "I heard you. Five bucks."
"He bit my nipple!" Melanie protested. "They're not supposed to do that! No fair!"
Adrianne examined Mel's chest. "I don't see a mark. Pay up. Anyway, you giggled."
Melanie rolled her eyes. "One of them was sucking prawns out of my pussy! I'd like to see
you keep your yap shut when they're doing that."
"You liked it," Adrianne teased.
"I did not!"
"Yes you did."
"Hey, Gina?" It was Mercy. "How'd you make out?"
Make out? Oh, yes. The promised harvest. Big tips. "Okay, I think."
"Wanna go get a drink? I'm buying."
"No, I..." I have to go home to my cheap room and watch crap on TV until I decide it's time to
lie awake in bed for hours brooding. It was the weekend, why not? "Okay."
Half drunk, and halfway home, Gina remembered that she hadn't been to the office to
confirm her resignation. She'd have to go back early tomorrow to give Eddie some notice.
The realisation triggered one of her memory flashbacks, just one image: the discarded blue
skirt lying unnoticed on the kitchen floor. A remembered sense of missing shoes. Associative
memory, evocative as scent and taste. Loss and something else.
You get used to it. You really do. Gina told herself that so often that she almost believed it,
all the way home. As she drifted into sleep another hypnagogic image resurfaced. A girl's
face with an unreadable expression. A vivid impression of repressed desire, almost lust.
She fell asleep.