The Cocktail Waitress Read Online Free PDF

about Mr. Four-Bits. One girl’s tips are strictly no other girl’s business, and girls don’t tell what they get, even to other girls. Just the same, I happened to see what he gave you—a lot more than he ever gave me. Well, all right, you’re less than half hisage and pretty as hell, he’s entitled to like what he sees. But, I notice you took it.”
    “… Well? Wouldn’t you have?”
    “Are you being funny?”
    “Well, you would have, wouldn’t you?”
    “The point is, you did. And of course I wondered why. I mean I have that kind of mind. So, I get to it. Joan, do you take a broadminded view? I mean, when he ups and propositions you, you’re not going to smack him down?”
    “I hadn’t got that far with it.”
    She stopped talking and kept on driving, but then started up again. “What I’m leading to, Joanie: I get propositioned, myself. Time to time, I mean. And some passes I don’t turn down. Well? It’s fifty bucks. So what I’m leading to: Often, the guy, the one that likes my looks, has a pal, and wants to know if I have a sidekick, some girl who would care to make it four. Well, Joanie, what do you say? The comment I got tonight, you stirred up plenty of interest, and the subject is bound to come up. So, hit the nail on the head, what do I tell that pair that asks? Do I have a sidekick or not? Or in other words, it’s nice work if you can get it, and does it appeal to you?”
    “You catch me by surprise. I never thought about—” Then: “You really do this? Let a man take you out and, and…”
    “When opportunity presents, Joanie, and assuming I don’t mind his looks.”
    “But don’t you ever get … in trouble?”
    “If you mean what I think you mean,” she said, throwing my words back at me, “any girl can, whether there’s money involved or no. You just have to know where to take care of it if it happens.”
    I thought back to my situation three years earlier, my ignorance of such matters. I’d lived a lot since then, and not all of it good, but I still was an innocent on some topics. “You can get that done here?”
    “Here? No, of course not. But up in New York, if you know thedoctor to call, and I do. But if you’re careful it never comes up. Hasn’t for me but once.”
    “I … I don’t know what to tell you.”
    “O.K., take your time. Think about it, Joan.”
    And then, after perhaps three seconds: “O.K., you’ve thought it over, what do you say? Yes or no? You want one of them dates or not?”
    By now, she had pulled up in front of my house, and sat there looking at me. And I sat looking at her, with a mixed feeling of love and terrible pity, that she’d even think of such a thing, and wondering why. In the bar she must have done well, as I was doing so far, and she was certainly good-looking enough to have a man of her own, without having to be dating strangers on the basis of passes made in a bar, by men she barely knew. And then suddenly, I thought I’d better tell her how things were with me, and why I couldn’t say yes, “at least at this time.” So I started off: “Liz, I couldn’t. I just buried my husband today. I’m Joan Medford—the girl that was in the papers this week, that put her husband out, and—”
    I got no further.
    “… Oh! Oh! Oh! The one who died in the car wreck? And they said his wife was—oh!”
    She was warm, tender, and wonderful, taking my hand in hers, kissing it, patting me on the knee, doing the things you would want. “I read about it,” she said. “You don’t have to tell me the rest —and you’re her? You came down today, and worked ?”
    “Liz, I had to. I had to get money, quick.”
    “Well you got some, Joanie. I’m proud of you.”
    “I tried to do as you showed me.”
    “You did wonderful. Now Joanie, would it help if I came in with you? I mean, put you to bed? Made you a cup of tea? Or—you got some Scotch in the house?”
    “I don’t drink, Liz.”
    “Me neither. I got weaknesses, but not