THE FIRST FEW morning shifts were bliss, so different from lunch, quieter and faster. There were only men in the mornings, trying to catch a game before they went to work. They would come in, sometimes in pairs, sometimes alone, and consume their breakfast hurriedly, as if the plates would be taken away if they didn’t act fast. Maggie liked watching them as they hunched over their Wall Street Journals, imagining how snotty and shrewish their wives were, how spoiled their children would be acting if they were at home right now. This was their only escape, and they counted on Maggie, young, fresh Maggie, with the freckles and the sleepy eyes; a pretty little college girl, to provide them with peace and comfort.
This is where she belonged all along.
Maggie enjoyed her new schedule, too. She looked forward to going to sleep directly after dinner and getting up at 5:00 AM, every day, to feed her men, breezing past her father’s entreaties to play Scrabble with him, or at least watch the news with him, pass a little time, fill a void, before he left to go out with the newest student who was spending several thousand dollars for the privilege to get drunk and sleep with him that year.
There was always one who caused a big scene at the end of the summer, drank too much at a party and threw a drink on him, or proclaimed her intentions to follow him back to California. In the past few weeks there had been regular hang-ups on the phone when Maggie answered, a game she used to play in high school, and Maggie wondered if her father were dipping a little young this year. But then she saw her one night, picking up her father on the street outside their house, a woman just slightly younger than her own mother, but completely different, lush and blond and hippy, with pink-tinted lips. She wore sunglasses on her head even though it was pitch-dark, and her skirt was too short for her plump legs, and when she saw him she grabbed his arm and then intertwined hers with it. They shuffled off together slowly, linked, and she laughed immediately and loudly.
Looks like they’ll let anyone into this program, thought Maggie.
And then Joey Pollack Jr., husband of Miriam Pollack, father of Tyler and Amanda Pollack, son of that awful Mrs. Pollack, and heir to the Pollack frozen-food fortune, took his annual month off for the summer (He had an annual vacation for every season) and decided to spend every day of it at the club. He became the wrench in her plans for a serene summer. A big, noisy, shiny wrench.
He sat himself in the center of the room, the center table, every day. He was tall and tan and slender, and had an amazing crown of hair around his shining bald head. His teeth were huge and white like a movie star’s. His voice boomed like he was announcing a baseball game; it was impossible to ignore him. And every day, every morning, he talked about blowjobs with his golf partner.
“The wife and I rented Truth or Dare last night. Have you seen it? Have you seen what Madonna can do with a water bottle? The woman’s got talent all right, but forget her singing.”
“First date, I got a fantastic blowjob from my wife. Second date, also a great blowjob. The third date I asked her to marry me, and I never got head again. What’s up with that?”
“All right, I got one for you, buddy. What’s the best thing about getting a blowjob from an Ethiopian woman? You know she’ll swallow. Get it? She’ll swallow!”
Now him, she thought, I could cut.
The worst part was how he followed every comment with a winning, glowing smile, and sometimes a wink, too, to let her know it was only a joke, that she was in on it, too. He was only kidding with the constant cock talk, he was really her friend. Weren’t the rest of these guys duds? Wasn’t he the only one worth knowing? And wasn’t he the only one in this whole snotty place who recognized that she was alive? She was oddly attracted to him, too, even though she knew he was a lech and a perv, and probably a philanderer.
“What’s your deal, Maggie?”
He was eating his eggs, scrambled and runny, and a piece of whole-wheat toast, no butter.
“Mr. Pollack?”
She was topping off his buddy’s decaf.
“What are you, a college student?”
“Yes,” she said. “At Princeton.”
“Princeton, whoa! You must be pretty smart.” He looked up at her, swallowed his food.
“I do OK,” she said. “It’s a lot of work.”
“I went to University of Illinois,” he said. “Not as fancy as Princeton but you get a good education there. What are you studying?”
“English.”
“English! You should be studying to be a doctor or a lawyer or something. What are you going to do with an English degree?”
“I could be a teacher, or an editor. Or a writer.”
“Yeah? You going to write a book about all of us?”