TOM HANDLED ALL of the staffing for Bagelville’s two locations, the original here in the student ghetto and the far less desirable (cleaner, newer, friendlier) annex in a strip mall near the highway, because his parents hated students after twenty years in a college town. Though Tom would shake his head in empathetic disgust when his mom ranted about the mysterious juice deficit (“Tagalong is a Girl Scout cookie,” he barked, when Betsy asked him to translate and help her defend herself when Tammy accused her of giving it away, “Tagalog is a language. What the fuck are they teaching you here?”), he was mildly entertained by the antics of his employees, a scruffy lot of pretty young women who tried hard not to look like they were trying, and knew they were good for business. English Lit TAs and bored fifth-year seniors didn’t come here and stay for hours, past breakfast into the less satisfying pizza bagel territory, just for free coffee refills.
When Betsy was arrested for using a fake I.D., Tom gave her an advance on her paycheck to cover the fine so she wouldn’t have to tell her mom. She was grateful, and she trusted him. And though he would never admit it, she knew he liked her. She was routinely fifteen minutes late, critical of customer’s orders—when Betsy’s favorite professor, Dr. Loman, a patient man who taught Shakespeare to auditoriums full of sunburned students in flip-flops and tank tops, would order his “usual” tuna melt on a cinnamon raisin bagel, she made a gagging sound as she placed it in a waxed-paper-lined plastic basket more than once—and had a murmured, smart-ass retort for every one of Tom’s requests. But she worked hard without too much complaint, and she was grateful for the job. Over the year and a half she’d been there, Tom teased her for being a flake and she mocked him for his complete lack of a social life and terrible taste in music, all while making $5.25 an hour.
Once, as she fed handfuls of oranges into the gaping maw of the industrial juicer, Betsy tried to explain the local employment hierarchy to Tom.
“Your job is like your shoes,” she said. Tom was about to hire a very tan sophomore from Fort Lauderdale who wore slouchy socks pushed down over white Reebok high-tops. “Like those girls over at Armando’s next door? They have tattoos, like a marine does, hearts with thorns and anchors and stuff. You know, they’re brunettes. They’re Doc Martens. They’re more like us, the Bagelville crowd, not into Rob Base or pastels. But we’re Converse, Chuck Taylors. Low-or high-top, it doesn’t matter.”
There was an unspoken allegiance between the women of Armando’s Pizza and the Bagelville employees. At least once a week, a sixteen-inch veggie and a pitcher of lite beer was bartered for a half-dozen sesames, a pint of lox spread, and a quart of fresh-squeezed liquid gold in the alley that connected the two buildings, and no one was the wiser.
“That girl with the big socks?” she continued. “Maybe she could iron her pleated khakis and work at Blockbuster? Or if she bought a pair of Birks she could try Joffrey’s, that overpriced vegetarian place in the old Victorian house on the corner? Her calves are tan enough. She might need to wrap her hair in a bandana, though, maybe a patchouli-scented bandana? And she could pick up some of those dangly Indian earrings from the kiosk at the natural foods store.”
“This is profound, Betsy, truly. Real senior thesis shit here,” he said. “Thank you for sharing your insights on microeconomics.”