The Promise of Paradise Read Online Free PDF Page B

side, she found herself in front of
a tall, narrow-fronted building with smoky windows. “Blues and
Booze” read the neon sign above the door. She shaded her eyes.
“Eleven to midnight,” announced a paper sign in the window.
Someone had scrawled “Help wanted” beside the hours.
    She checked her watch
and reached for the doorknob.
    “Hello?” The word
echoed in the space and fell away. To her right, a long bar stretched
halfway across the room, ending at a curved doorway. Beyond the arch
of the doorway opened another, larger room, draped in shadows. Chairs
sat upside down on tabletops, skeletons in the darkness. At the far
end of the restaurant she spied a thin strip of yellow underneath yet
another door.
    “Hello?” she called
again and took a few more steps inside. This time the door in the
dining room swung open, and a thin figure emerged.
    “We’re not open
yet.” A male voice, hoarse and curt, broke the stillness.
    “Oh.” She looked at
her watch again. “I thought you opened at eleven.”
    The man walked toward
her. Narrow-faced, with a chapped nose and black eyes, he peered at
Ash and coughed. A navy blue apron was tied over wrinkled khaki pants
and a flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Yellow teeth crowded
into a crooked row behind thin lips. Ash’s stomach crawled into her
throat, and she took a step backwards.
    This was a mistake.
Definitely a mistake. She wasn’t cut out for a job in a place
like this, a pampered girl from Boston’s west side, and she knew
it. Who was she kidding? She’d call home this afternoon and ask for
money, deal with her parents’ anger and disappointment somehow.
    “Sorry,” she said.
“I’ll come back later.”
    “No, wait,” he
said, and this time his voice was kinder. “You here for the job?”
    She hesitated.
    “Listen, you got any
experience at all, you’re hired. Hell, you don’t got any
experience, I’ll probably hire you. Got no luck finding help in the
summer when the college kids go home.” He untied his apron and
tossed it onto the bar. “So?” He pulled himself onto a barstool,
lit a cigarette and waited.
    Ash took one more look
around and swallowed what little pride still hid in her heart. “Yes,
I’m here about the job.” She hoped he wouldn’t try to shake her
hand in hello. She could only imagine where his had been. Thankfully,
he only nodded and blew a long stream of smoke toward the ceiling.
    “Great. You ever work
in a restaurant before?”
    “Sort of. I worked
behind the counter at a coffee shop for a couple of years.”
    The man took a long
draw on his cigarette and considered. “Okay. What’s your name?”
    “Ashley Kirtland.”
It became a little easier, every day, to say the made-up name. “Ash.”
She hoped he wouldn’t ask her for a reference. She could only ask
Jen to lie for her so many times this week.
    “Marty Evers. You
want the job, come back at five tonight. I got another sorta-new
girl, been here about two months. She’ll show you the ropes.” He
sucked at the cigarette until it was a reddened stump between his
fingers. “You available full time?”
    Ash hadn’t thought
about that. Did she really want to spend forty hours a week in this
place? “Days or nights?”
    “Some of both.
Course, you make more money at night. Tips ain’t so good during the
day.”
    “That’s okay. Yeah,
I’m available full time.” What the hell. It would keep her mind
off the messiness of the rest of her life.
    “Good.” Marty
grabbed his apron and retreated back toward the kitchen. “Five
o’clock,” he repeated.
    “Five o’clock,”
Ash agreed. She ran one finger along the dark wood of the bar. She
needed a job. She needed to pay rent without asking her father for
help or dipping into her trust fund. What difference did it make
where she worked? It was only for a couple of months, anyway.
    Your parents are
going to kill you. Jen’s words, as clear as if her best friend
had walked into the bar and stood beside