One Good Hustle

TWENTY-ONE




JILL TALKED ME into going with her to some government office this morning. We had to show our birth certificates and fill out forms and then they gave us each a social insurance number. Our permanent cards should come in the mail in the next couple of weeks.

Seems like every time I turn around, some government-type wants to suck out more information, assign me a number. I can’t get past the sensation that every new number is like another crack in me, another way for the whole world to come seeping in. Marlene doesn’t seem to care about this any more. Suddenly she’s living in the nuthouse, gabbing with her social worker—Margaret, she called her the other day, as if they’re best buds or something.

Before I left Oak Shore the last time, I noticed Marlene had an Alcoholics Anonymous pamphlet on her nightstand. I made a crack about it. She plucked up one labelled Alateen from underneath it and stuck it in my hand.

I let my lips move as I read. Alateen is part of Al-Anon, which helps families and friends of alcoholics recover from the effects of living with the problem drinking of a relative or friend.

“Pass,” I said. “I don’t think I need to snivel to a roomful of dorks about my f*cked-up childhood.”

Marlene inhaled and released the breath slowly. “You were exposed to many things that you shouldn’t have been exposed to,” she said. “Much of that was my fault. I apologize for that.”

I stared at her. “Oh really.” I couldn’t wait to see where this was going: A request to steal her some Valium? Get some cash together so we could have a fresh start? “And?”

“And you sound like you have some anger issues. Alateen might actually be a good thing for you.”

Anger issues? I threw the Alateen pamphlet in the garbage can down the hall on the way out.



Jill and I are in side-by-side change rooms in a second-hand store.

Looking in the mirror, I do up the last buttons of a dowdy white uniform. It’s Wednesday. Maybe Marlene’s already been released. Maybe she’s in her living room right now, sitting on the couch, staring at the walls. Maybe she’s at an AA meeting spilling her guts. On the other hand, it wouldn’t surprise me if she painted herself green again so she could stay a couple more weeks at Oak Shore.

Jill and I have filled out our applications at Pacific Inn Catering. They told us we could start this weekend if we wanted.

Jill said to me through the partition: “Wanna call in for hours when we get home?”

“Want is a strong word.”

I tie the white cotton belt. I try pushing the knot to the side to see if I can make it look jaunty or something.

F*ck f*ck f*ck. Look at me—a pathetic little dishrag. If you had told me two years ago in the cab with Marlene—before we even got to Las Vegas—if you had said to me, “This is going to be the night that sends everything down the tubes,” I wonder what I’d have done. Maybe I would have paid more attention to the little hairs standing up on my arms. Maybe I would have faked the whooping cough and said, Forget it, I’m going home. Vegas was the plan of someone who didn’t have her head on straight. It was a new-low kind of hustle, but I didn’t say so. Or maybe I did but I didn’t say it with conviction.

“What’s taking you?” Jill bellows. “Have you got it on?”

I pull the curtain aside and step out of my cubicle just as Jill steps out of hers. In front of the large mirror she tries to cinch her waist a little. The white cotton belt seems to sit right under her boobs. “Shit,” she whispers. “I look like a big white maggot.”

I raise one arm and check the tag dangling there. $4. “At least it’s cheap.”

She puts a hand on her hip. “Baby, I am a whole lotta woman. This uniform is not built for a body like mine.”

“Mine neither.”

Jill fidgets in the mirror. “Maybe if I put some darts in the waist.”

“I deserve to look like a maggot—just more karma.” I go back into my cubicle and drag the curtain closed behind me.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing.” I pull off the nurse dress.



Just before four o’clock Friday afternoon, Jill and I get off the bus outside the Pacific Inn. It’s our first night on the job. They load us and three other staff into the white and blue catering van and haul us with the food to a banquet hall in East Vancouver.

Jill and I are both in uniform. Each of us has her hair pulled into a ponytail, though Jill has managed to tease out some big curls to frame her face and the usual geyser of bangs jets off her forehead. We’ve each been handed a bibbed apron to wear over top of the nurse outfit, which I like, because it looks sort of Amish, which means that I can imagine I’m Kelly McGillis in that movie Witness.

While the rest of the staff set up the chairs and unload chafing dishes, Jill and I are given a service lesson by a fussy little man who says his name is Hugh Tink. Hugh Tink is the team captain for tonight’s service: a wedding reception for eighty.

“Knife on the right,” he says. “Forks on the left, followed by the teaspoon and soup spoon.” Then he moves on to the coffee cup, wineglass and water glass. When the place setting is down, he goes on to the next step. “To maintain uniform service, each of us must serve from the right and clear from the left. Understand?”

“Sure,” Jill says.

“Repeat please,” Hugh says.

“Excuse me?”

“How do we serve? Serve from the …?”

“Left,” Jill says. “And clear from the right.”

“No.” Hugh raises his finger straight up and down between his face and Jill’s nose. “Serve right, clear left. If you serve them right, you can clear what’s …?”

“Left,” we say in unison.

“Exactly. Remove dishes only when every guest at the table has finished eating. I’ll leave you girls to it.” He hurries back to the kitchen.

As the door swings shut behind him, Jill says, “Hugh T’ink he’s gay?” and the two of us giggle uncontrollably. Mostly, I suppose, because we’ve already forgotten what Hugh said.

We study his place setting and duplicate his example in front of each chair, at each table, seventy-nine times.



By seven o’clock, a blister on my heel has bloomed, busted and bled all in the space of three hours because I forgot to wear socks and these stupid white sneakers I bought at the second-hand store don’t fit properly.

Five minutes ago, the bride came barrelling into the kitchen with a cloudy-looking wineglass.

“Excuse me!” The hand that held the glass was inflamed, the skin cracking. There were scaly pink patches on her cheeks, and she’d covered a rash on her chin with chalky makeup that continued down onto her chest. She looked as if she wanted to beat someone’s head in. “I mean, for pity’s sake, it’s filthy! Do I have to go through the whole place and inspect every glass? That is not my job. That is not my job!”

“Of course not, madam,” Hugh Tink said. “This is your night.” He gazed at her as if she was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen.

“Well—well, maybe if you didn’t hire children this wouldn’t happen!” She waved her red cracking hand in my direction.

Hugh didn’t need to turn his head. He knew who she was talking about. “This is Samantha’s first night. But the rest of our staff are more than equipped to handle your every need. I assure you, you will see nothing but crystal-clear glass from here on in.”

Once she had hauled her lacy white train back out the swinging kitchen door, Hugh Tink turned on Jill and me. “Did it not occur to you to inspect the glasses as you set each place?”

“I looked, Hugh. I honestly did.” Jill’s voice was suddenly thin and high. “I’m really sorry.”

Hugh barely came up to Jill’s chin. He turned to me.

I glanced at the kitchen door. “Well, it’s not exactly screaming bright in there and my feet are blistered to hell.”

Hugh glared. “There are Band-Aids in the first aid kit. Part of your job description is to own a pair of comfortable shoes.” He walked away.

“Holy shit,” Jill said. Blood from a burst blister had seeped pink through the back of my white canvas shoe. “First aid!” she hollered to the kitchen brigade. “Who’s got the first aid kit?”



I’m all bandaged up, running back and forth from the banquet room to the kitchen. It’s quarter past eight and we’ve begun clearing. Hugh has told me to keep away from the bride’s side of the room. He wants the experienced “team members” to take care of the head table and, he said, he’d prefer she not be reminded of that spotty glass by catching sight of me.

I hate Hugh and I hate this hall and I really hate the ping-ping-ping-ping stuff. Every five minutes, we hear another jerk rapping his spoon against a wineglass, demanding the bride and groom kiss before he stands up and tells some boring, crappy story about their romance.

“She’s going to punch your lights out if you don’t stop staring,” Jill says to me as we rush back into the kitchen with more armloads of mucky plates. “He’s taken.” She’s talking about the groom.

“I’m just trying to figure out where I know him from.”

“Sure, baby.” She winks at me. “You gotta admit—he’s cute.”

I’m telling the truth, though. The bride is still miserable and rashy. The groom is tall and thin with blond hair and a pretty-boy face and he can’t stop refilling his wineglass. Dinner’s barely over and he nearly fell on his ass when he stood up for the last toast.

Once all the plates are cleared, and the chafing dishes are off the banquet tables, Hugh Tink wheels the wedding cake into the banquet room, followed by one of the other waiters carrying a tray of fruit, lemon tarts and Nanaimo bars.

My bandages are starting to work their way off my heels. One is sliding around my ankle; the other is slipping out the back of my shoe. “First-aid kit,” I yell when I’ve scraped off the last plate.

The door swings behind Hugh as he comes back into the kitchen. He gives me a sour look. “For God’s sake, Samantha, why are you barefoot in those sneakers? Wear hose and a decent pair of socks the next time you come to work and you’ll save yourself a lot of heartache.”

“For chrissake—” My mouth snaps shut.

Hugh looks at me, daring me to finish.

“I’m—I’m just trying to do a good job,” I say. “And I’m bleeding.” Standing on one leg, I bend my knee, reach back and take hold of my most wounded foot.

Hugh looks at the blood on the canvas heel. “Take that out back and deal with it. I don’t think the kitchen is really the place. Actually, just take your break now, please.”

I hobble out back to the loading dock and sit down on the top step.

It’s still light out. Staring down the potholed alley, I can see a scruffy bearded guy collecting bottles. I’d rather do what he’s doing than this. Social insurance numbers are for suckers. The only people with social insurance numbers are the jerks who carry a baloney bucket to work.

It suddenly occurs to me that we’re only about three blocks from Tenth Avenue Divine. Drew took me to Movie Night there once. They had their own projector and a screen set up in the sanctuary for the youth fellowship groups. The show was called A Thief in the Night and it was about this woman named Patty who wakes up and her husband is gone—his electric razor is still running in the sink. On the radio, the announcer says that millions of people around the world have suddenly disappeared the same way. Turns out the Rapture has happened and Patty was left behind when Jesus took all the real Christians up to heaven. The rest of the movie is about how Satanic forces now have control of the government and the people left behind must agree to receive a government number—666, the Mark of the Beast—or face the guillotine.

The soundtrack was cartoony and the actors sounded as if they were reading from a chalkboard. I started to snicker about ten minutes in. Drew gave me a soft elbow in the ribs, but soon he couldn’t hold back the giggles either.

“Where did these dorks learn to act?” I whispered.

“The Academy of Wooden Indians,” Drew said.

Mandy Peterson leaned over and hissed at us. “It’s not about the acting, it’s about the message.”

“They should’ve stuck the message in a bottle,” Drew said.

It was so bad even Mandy eventually lost it.

I miss that night right now. I miss it like a person. I wish that you could keep a certain day or night in your drawer and take it out every now and then and hold it up to your ear like a seashell. Or maybe I just miss Drew.

Inside the banquet hall, the deejay’s voice comes over the speakers telling everyone to lend a hand and pull the tables back to make room for a dance floor. It’s time for the first dance.

Some jerk starts banging his glass with a spoon again and then they all start up with the ping-ping-ping-ping. It sounds like a bunch of slot machines.

Big laughs follow.

I ease off my sneakers and cringe when behind me Lionel Richie and Diana Ross start into “Endless Love.” Just when you think it can’t get any worse.

I stare at the bloody mess of my heel and a flash of Marlene’s bleeding face comes to me, her scared eyes crying, on her hands and knees in that Vegas hotel corridor.

Her poor goddamned face.

This shitty, stupid song. And the ping-ping-ping-ping. Like Vegas all over again. Sometimes I feel like a walking haunted house.

“Aren’t you going to eat?”

I jerk around to see Jill standing behind me with a plate full of buffet food.

“I’m taking my break too,” she says. “I got an extra piece of lasagna for you. There’s hardly any leftovers, so if you’re hungry you better get a plate or you’ll be shit out of luck.” She sits down beside me on the loading dock and dangles a slice of beef under my nose.

I wave it away.

She stuffs it into her mouth. Talking around it, she says, “I can’t believe your friggin’ feet.” She chews some more and swallows.

I smooth new bandages onto my heels and rub the sticky parts against my skin, good and firm. The music from inside rolls on. Queen’s “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” makes way for Cat Stevens’ “Peace Train.”

“Folk music?” Jill gags a little. “Play some funk, not folk. Play some Rick James, man, play some George Clinton. Who can dance to this shit?”

“I like this song.” I pick up the extra fork she brought me and poke at the lasagna.

“You would,” she says. “You and your little hippie blouses. All you need is some flowers in your hair and a joint in your mouth and you could get on that dance floor and twirl till you passed out.”

“Cat Stevens is cool,” I snap. I mean it too. When I was a kid I used to sing along like a maniac when Cat Stevens came on the radio singing “Wild World” or “Peace Train.” He makes the kind of music that sounds like hope, even if it makes you cry.

“He’s a Muslim,” Jill says. “Packed it in and got himself a dozen wives.”

“He did not. Shut up.”

“You shut up. He did so, baby. I read it. He prays to Muhammad and shit now.”

Gripping the wooden step with my toes, I sigh and look down the alley. “If your parents are Christian, how come they don’t go to church?”

She shrugs. “We used to. Right around when they quit drinking. Christianity isn’t just about the building, you know. Mom and Dad believe in Jesus, but church people can get majorly pious—wouldn’t say shit if their mouth was full of it.”

“So, Christian yes, church no.”

“They just pray and try to do the right thing. I’m like that too. My mom thought it was a test of my convictions when Roman gave me an ultimatum and I kept my integrity. He can get bent as far as I’m concerned—because I’m still a virgin. I’m saving myself for Billy Dee Williams.”

I snort.

She giggles.

“Do you believe in hell?” I ask her.

“Yup.”

“Who do you think ends up there?”

“Why? You going to murder Hugh Tink?”

I look out to the main street and watch the cars pass. A couple walks down the slope of the sidewalk, the girl clipping along in purple suede platform boots and a dress that looks as if it’s made out of a hundred ripped kerchiefs. She stops and cups her hands around her mouth, trying to light a cigarette. Her long blond Barbie hair whips in the breeze.

The guy brushes it out of her face. “You’re going to set yourself on fire,” I hear him say, and he laughs.

His voice gives me a jolt. I lean forward to get a better look.

“They’re from the wedding party,” Jill says. “He’s okay. She’s a hippie-dippy pain-in-the-ass. She probably requested this shitty song.”

The wedding party? He’s been here the whole time? Maybe I sensed that he was here and that’s why he came into my mind. And who the hell is she?

I start to put one of my shoes back on but it hurts too much.

“How come you guys aren’t in there doing the chicken dance?” Jill yells to them.

Big mouth. Jill and Ruby have the biggest mouths on the planet.

“You first,” he calls back. He squints. Oh god. “Sammie?” He takes a couple of steps into the alley.

I give him a limp sort of wave. “Hey.” My voice echoes high and squawky inside my skull.

“Holy shit, that’s what’s-his-face, isn’t it—the guy who showed up at the door for you?” Jill hisses.

I nod, wish I could evaporate. Wish he’d come closer.

Drew looks back at the girl he’s with. She’s still on the corner, smoking. “It’s Sammie,” he says, and heads toward us.

“Who?” The blonde clomps down the alley after him.

“Hey, they’re playing your song,” he tells her.

“ ‘Peace Train’?” she screams. “I’m missing my song!”

Jill nudges me with her foot.

Drew grins back at the girl, his noggin joggling around on his skinny neck like he’s a bobble-head doll. His hands are like big bony puppy paws hanging out the sleeves of the jacket. Drew likes Cat Stevens. He played a mix tape he’d made when I was over at his house. There was Cat Stevens, Carole King and the Moody Blues and I loved all of it. Up in his bedroom, I watched Drew sing along to “Where Do the Children Play?” while we played checkers on his bed. His voice was so gentle and easy and I wanted to touch his hand so much. And then his mother came in to check on us again.

He stops at the bottom of the loading dock. “Hi,” he says to me, his voice soft.

“What are you doing here?” And then he stuffs his hands into his pockets as if he just remembered how uncomfortable the situation is. “Are you guys waitresses for the reception?”

I nod. “First night on the job.”

His blonde friend dances around in her purple platform heels and sings the last few notes of “Peace Train.”

Jill scowls at her for a second and then displays my sneaker with the bloody heel for them. “Super-Waitress, here, forgot to wear socks.”

“Sammie …” Drew looks as if it’s his blood he’s seeing.

The blonde stops swinging her flouncy kerchief dress and gawks at the shoe. “That’s harsh,” she says. “Man, I’d take the rest of the night off if I was you.”

She looks as if she’s our age. Maybe a year or two older.

“This is my cousin, Magnolia,” Drew explains. “The one I told you about with the horses.”

“Maggie,” she corrects him, and rolls her eyes. She’s hanging on to the strap of a purple suede purse with fringes that dangle to the pavement.

Maggie. I remember him talking about some cousin who lived on a farm in Langley and wore see-through hippie tops with no bra. “It’s hilarious when she’s on one of the horses,” he told me once. “Bouncing all over the place. And she’s not flat either!”

People kiss their cousins. They marry them sometimes. I wonder what he’s said to her about me. Sammie? Oh, she’s just some mixed-up jerk I used to hang around with.

“The groom’s my brother,” Maggie says, her face incredulous. “He’s the one who married that poor lady in the bridal gown. Did you catch her face? The entire experience has given her a rash.”

Jill hoots as if she knows the whole family from way back. I chew my lips.

“Didn’t you recognize him?” Drew asks me. “You met Shaye that time when we all went out on the boat. He was part of the College and Career group.”

Now I remember him, stretched out, sunning himself on the bow of the boat with his best friend, Maurice. Pale and thin, Maurice kept his shirt on and wore his black hair slicked back in a sort of 1950s style. Maurice had a voice and a manner like Liberace and he was the femmiest guy I’d ever met. Though, I don’t think I actually did meet him; he didn’t talk much to anyone but Shaye.

“How come I haven’t seen you all night?” Drew asks me.

“Because she pissed off the bride in the first ten minutes,” Jill says. Loud. She’s so damn loud. “She’s supposed to stay away from her.” Jill puts her dinner plate on my lap, takes a pack of smokes out of her purse and lights one.

“Ah, poor Trudy,” Maggie says. “Don’t take it personally. I’d be in a shitty mood if I had to marry into our family too.”

Someone stomps out onto the loading dock behind us. I turn to see Hugh Tink standing there.

“You girls have about three more minutes,” he says. “There are dessert plates to clear.” He turns on his heel and goes back inside.

“Bag your face, motherf*cker,” Jill says once she’s sure Hugh’s out of earshot. “I just sat down!”

I reach for one of my sneakers again, undo the laces and spread the canvas as much as possible so that I don’t rub my heel too much getting it in.

“Sammie,” Drew says. “Don’t. I—um—I got socks. Put mine on.”

“Don’t worry about it.” I put my toes into the sneaker. “I’m fine.”

“No.” He sits on the step below me to undo his laces.

I look at his foot as he lifts it out of a black Oxford dress shoe. “Why are you wearing jock socks with a suit?”

“Because I’m a goof.” He pulls one white tube sock off. “My mom just bought them for me. Brand new, see?” He takes off his other shoe and sock number two.

I can’t look at Drew when he’s this close. I stare at the socks in his hand instead. They look just like Ruby’s chocolate layer cake to me right now. So damn nice.

I’m afraid to let my face move much because it feels as if chunks of me will start breaking off if I do.

“I didn’t see your mom inside,” I say, and the words come out all hoarse.

“Don’t ask.” He exhales.

“Big fight with my mom!” Maggie says from the bottom step. “Battle of the battleaxes.”

I take my foot out of the sneaker while Drew slips his bare feet back into his dress shoes. He waves the socks in front of himself. “Lemme air ’em out a little for you.”

Stop being so kind. Stop it, stop it, stop it!

Jill leans into my ear. “I’m going in. I’ll tell Hugh you’re in the bathroom.” She takes a last drag off her cigarette, flicks it away and disappears inside.

“How’s your mom?” Drew asks.

“Fine. Better. I don’t know.”

He lays one sock on his knee and then he gathers up the leg of the other and readies it for my foot as if I’m three years old.

I laugh a little. “I can put it on myself.”

But I raise my foot and let him slip the cool damp cotton onto it. Setting my foot on his knee, he folds his white tube until it’s an ankle sock. My eyes well up as he moves on to the second foot.

Maggie smiles as Drew carefully puts my shoes on. Her face is gentle and her big blue eyes remind me of a doll’s.

“Better?” he asks me.

I nod and then whisper a thank you as I do up my laces. “I have to go back inside before I get in trouble.”

The two of us stand up.

“Hey, Sammie,” Maggie says. “You and Drew should come out to the farm and go riding this week.”

Drew turns to me, his mouth opens a little, and I can hear him breathing.

“I have to go,” I tell him, and start back up to the landing. “Thank you. And Maggie, too, um … nice to meet you.”

Drew stands where he is, halfway down the steps. One pant leg rides up a bit and shows a sliver of his bare foot. It looks so vulnerable, like the soft spot on a baby’s head.

I spend the rest of the night trying to stick with muck-work in the kitchen, scraping plates, dumping out chafing dishes, wrapping up leftovers.

Soon the music slows again. When the door swings open I see couples on the dance floor swaying to Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” She sounds as if she’s been crying all night and hasn’t slept in days.

It’s the slow songs that mess you up. It’s the slowing down that gives your mind time to sink into a cold sad sea.