By three days later, though, Barbara’s depression covered the apartment like a giant version of the eyeshades Barbara had started wearing, and Evelyn decided she had to get out, and she had to make some money. There was no secretarial school in Bibville, but there were stores. She mentally reviewed the shops along Main. The new wine shop? She still couldn’t figure out how to navigate cabernets, and they would probably reject her like the temp agency had. Bali High, but she couldn’t see herself selling batik skirts with any success. The Caffeiteria, down on the wharf, wasn’t the worst idea. Her summer friend Jane had worked there in high school and liked it well enough—the tips had been surprisingly good for a coffee shop whose food was little more than muffins and tuna salad on store-bought bread.
When she walked to the wharf, the Caffeiteria was in quiet early afternoon mode, with the windows shut and a PLEASE SHUT DOOR IT’S HOT OUT THERE! sign on the red door, which was thick with several generations of paint. There was no HELP WANTED sign. Didn’t businesses like this put up HELP WANTED signs when they needed someone? She pushed open the door and a bell dingled, and from behind the counter, a man with a salt-and-pepper beard and rimless glasses and the bright concentration of a chipmunk looked up. He looked familiar; Evelyn remembered him being very strict about no free refills on iced coffee from her high-school summers.
“Hi?” she said.
“Hi, what can I get you?” he said, shaking out his newspaper, the Bibville Tattle.
“I’m actually—I wanted to see if you had any jobs available. Here, I mean. Working here.”
He folded the Tattle away from him and smoothed the crease.
“I just moved back from New York, so I’m used to busy crowds,” she offered. This sounded ridiculous. “Uh, and I can work any hours you need. I’m just up the street, so, really, anything last minute, or if someone doesn’t show up.”
He scratched his nose. “Who are you?”
She didn’t know what he wanted to hear, so she threw out a bunch of answers. “Well, I was born outside D.C. but grew up in Bibville, out on Meetinghouse Creek, and my family—my mother, really—just moved into town—we sold our house, it was sort of an involved thing, so now we’re at the top of Main, up by the park. By the Sunoco. I had been in New York until July, but I had some family stuff I had to deal with down here, and so I came down. My friend Jane worked here one summer, in ’ninety-six, I guess it was, back when you guys were the Early Roost, and liked it. So.”
“I meant your name.”
“Oh! Oh. Evelyn. Beegan.”
“Evelyn. I’m Rick. I’m not going to shake your hand. Health inspectors could be watching. Do you have any experience?”
“I worked at a coffee place back in…” She stopped herself. To have to pretend like she knew how a commercial espresso machine functioned would end up with her spraying steam and milk all over herself and a lost job. “No,” she said in a low voice. “But I can learn.”
Rick put his paper down in careful parallel alignment with the counter. He intertwined his hands and put them under his chin and watched Evelyn as though he were waiting for a divining rod to tell him its read on her. Then, message apparently transmitted, he clapped his hands once. “Well, Evelyn, we do have to hire someone for the fall, since one of our workers is starting at Chesapeake, but you’re not going to start at the top.”
“Right. No, I understand. That’s fine.”
“You’re not gonna get to touch this baby”—he pointed at the silver espresso machine—“until I say you can touch her. You can do drip and iced and the basic food service and the cleanup, and by cleanup I mean cleanup, okay, the mop and everything.”
“I can clean,” Evelyn offered, though it came out like she was asking herself the question.
“We pay a living wage here. So it’ll be nine dollars an hour to start, plus tips.”
How, Evelyn wondered, was $9 an hour a living wage?
“Come in Friday at six, and Mia’ll show you the ropes. You don’t show up, you get fired. You show up drunk, you get fired. Okay?”
“People show up drunk at six A.M.?”
“You’d be surprised.” Rick picked up the Tattle, licked his finger, and with a brisk shake made the sports pages materialize neatly before him. Evelyn waited, wondering if he would give her a letter or have her sign something, but Rick was absorbed in the newspaper. She cleared her throat, and he looked up.
“Sorry—so—I have a job?” she asked.
He nodded, and turned the page.
So as not to disturb him and make him change his mind, she opened the door with the gentlest of force so the bell barely moved. She turned to look at the Caffeiteria sign, in a loopy cursive with an exclamation point. $9 an hour. In New York, she had occasionally thrown away dollar bills that had gotten wet or overly wrinkled because they grossed her out, and now she was going to be working for $9 an hour. She trudged back to the Marina Air and up the exterior stairs.