Twenty Grand Read Online Free PDF

called in sick. I served all the regulars. They all seemed to know Dina well, and they all made me stand at their table while they talked about her: how she was so nice, how her son was ill, and how she had huge hospital bills because she didn’t have health insurance. The Swedish couple gave me a lecture about America that ended with the conclusion that Sweden was superior because in Sweden the streets were sparkling clean and everyone had health insurance, and I nodded because I thought if I did they’d tip me well. They left me two dollars and fifty cents.
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    I WAS WORRIED about money, but my waitressing did not improve. No matter how fast I ran through the restaurant, I couldn’t manage to get my parties what they needed when they needed it. One night Boris said he wanted to talk to me in the bar after work. In the bar he made me a drink. Then he said I was no good in the restaurant.
    I told him I’d do better. I said I’d been memorizing the menu. But he shook his head. He said some people didn’t have the brains to waitress. He said his restaurant was a dining establishment. He said he himself had seen me hold up a steak dinner and ask a table of twelve to hand it down the table to the person who’d ordered it.
    Okay, I said. I’ll stop doing that.
    He shook his head again, and put his arm around my back. I like you, he said. He had a habit of smiling like he’d just heard a secret. He was doing it now, and his teeth were narrow and long. I think his gums had receded.
    I like you too, I said.
    The twins, he said—they’re brats. Spoiled rotten. I don’t even want them here next summer in fact.
    I said I thought they had some internships lined up.
    He didn’t seem to hear what I’d said. He said the twins were vicious girls. Then he squeezed my shoulder hard and said that the twins had started life on third base and no one would ever look at me twice, the way people looked at them.
    Maybe if there were two of me, I said. I was kidding, but I guess he didn’t realize that, because he said, No, they still wouldn’t. Then he said he needed a cocktail waitress. Dina had been doing it. Between me and him, she was better in the dining room. He finished his beer. God love her, he said, but she’s too old to wear a bow in her hair.
    I said I didn’t want to take Dina’s job. Boris stared. He said I wasn’t taking her job, because he was giving it to me. He said I was lucky to have a job, the way I sucked in the dining room, and that Dina wasn’t my concern, she was his.
    Anyway, he added, she needs to spend time with her kids.
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    I N THE BAR I did well. It was easy—all I had to do was write down the drink orders, carry the drinks over, collect the empties, and get my tips. The bar’s triptych of glass walls faced the lake, its dark expanse and the pine-studded islands in its gray distance, and even though I often arrived before the sun had set, somehow the bar was always dim and I moved through it with the buoyancy and power of dreams. When I got home the first night, it was two a.m., and the twins were watching TV.
    I wouldn’t want to cocktail waitress, Jessica said.
    No offense, Jean said.
    He asked us if we’d work in the bar, you know, Jessica said. But it seems gross.
    Anyway, Jean said, we knew you needed it.
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    T HE NEXT NIGHT I saw Dina in the bathroom at the restaurant. It was nine o’clock, time for me to start work and for her to go home, but she wasn’t dressed to go home. She was wearing a shiny purple shirt and a tight black skirt, and was leaning across the counter and putting on purple lipstick. I thought maybe no one had told her she’d been fired from the bar. I felt embarrassed. Before I could back out, she waved me in.
    The purple lipstick was smeared above her lip, and her right hand was shaking a bit. She said she had a date—her first in eight years. She said the guy wore silver