Chapter Two #3
I thought back to where I was twenty years before.
At the age of ten, I was traveling all over the country with Frank so he could gamble.
He said he was homeschooling me, and I had the books and took the online tests to pass each grade.
But dear old Frank did little to nothing to help me from the time I was eight and my mother died.
At eighteen I took and passed my GED test. By that time, I had been using my phony ID and living on my own for two years.
We barely had time to sit down and have a quick bite of lunch before the rush hit us.
Scarlett had not stretched the truth one iota.
The Greyhound bus pulled into the parking lot a few minutes before noon, and people of all ages piled out of it.
Some had the look of winners at the slot machines or card tables.
Others had a hangdog expression that said they were going home broke.
Still more were families, most likely going home to Dallas after visiting relatives over the holidays.
I had seen both kinds on my travels with Frank, and then again when I went out on my own.
Some of the new customers stopped long enough to read the day’s special written on the blackboard inside the door, but most of them headed toward the bathrooms.
“I’ll take care of the tables, and you do the bar and payouts.
” Scarlett handed me an order pad. “Write down the barstool number when you take their order and then pin it on the thing over there.” She pointed at a carousel in the service window.
“Rosie is really fast at turning out orders, and she’ll set them on the shelf right there.
It’s going to be hectic for a little while.
We’ll have to keep on our toes to get the tables cleared before the next busload hits us.
I’m always glad when they don’t pull in at the same time. ”
I picked up an apron from a hook behind the bar, tied it around my waist, and slipped the order pad into my pocket. Six elderly ladies had each claimed a barstool with much grumbling as they settled, so I had a full house right off the bat.
“Good afternoon, what can I get you to drink?” I asked.
“We’ll have sweet tea,” the one at the far end answered. “Put it all on one ticket. I am treating.”
I turned around and started filling six tall glasses with ice and tea—close enough that I could hear every word that was said.
The one sitting to her left gave her a sideways hug. “Thank you for this, Linda. That’s so nice of you to pay for our dinner.”
“You are welcome, Ellen Mae,” she said. “I’m telling the assisted-care place that I only won twenty dollars more than what I took with me.”
“Shame on you,” the one next to her said.
“Don’t judge me, Myra,” Linda snapped. “You have more money than God, so you don’t have to worry about whether you’ll have enough to go on the next trip.”
“As long as you go to confession on Sunday and do your penance, everything will be fine,” Myra said.
I set a glass of tea in front of each of them. “Y’all ready to order?”
Myra brushed an imaginary bit of dust from her rhinestone-studded jacket. “I’ll have the special, and Myra, I’ll go with you on Sunday. I lusted after that sexy young waiter at the last place we ate.”
“If we have to repent for that, then we’d best all go to confession,” Ellen Mae chuckled. “The special for me, too.”
“Well!” another lady huffed. “I would have done more than lust if I could remember what to do if I did sweet-talk him up to my room. And as far as Linda goes, she did win twenty more than she took with her, so she’s not lying.
They don’t need to know about the two thousand above that.
She’s already offered to pick up the ticket for our meal, so she’s putting the money to good use. ”
“Thank you for standing up for me, Gloria,” Linda said. “Whatever I’ve got left over will go in my piggy bank for our next trip to Vegas. And I’ll have the special also.”
I bit back a smile when the rest of the ladies ordered the same thing.
I wrote out the orders on tickets and hung them on the carousel.
Miz Linda was smart for squirreling away her winnings.
I knew that because I had learned to hide a portion of my own winnings rather than giving everything to ol’ Frank.
He was a decent player, but not great. After he’d bought my first fake ID, I won most of what we had to live on.
“I’m so glad y’all are serving the traditional New Year’s meal today,” Myra said. “Hopefully, eating our greens will bring us good luck next time we go to Vegas.”
“That would be wonderful. What do you like to play? Slots, cards?” I could hear the wistfulness in my own voice.
“I hit the slots, but Linda is pretty good at blackjack,” Ellen Mae said. “I came away with a fifty-dollar profit after my bus ticket and hotel was paid for, so it was a good trip.”
“And we got to see the fireworks, didn’t we, Stella?” Linda asked.
That was five of their names, but I didn’t need to remember them any more than any of the folks who had sat around a poker table with me. In an hour or so, these sweet old gals would be gone and another group would sit on the barstools.
“It was beautiful,” she answered. “I hate to go back to the center, but at least we all get to live in the same place, and we can talk about the fun we had until we start planning the next trip.”
“Order up!” Rosalie called.
I shifted plates from the shelf to the bar. “Y’all been friends long?”
“Since we were in kindergarten,” Ellen Mae answered. “We have done crazy things, all got married within two years, and even had a bra-burning one night.”
Myra patted Linda on the shoulder. “We were all drunk, or we might not have thrown every single one that we owned into the bonfire.”
“I was not drunk,” Linda protested. “Maybe a little tipsy, but I had to be semi-sober to drive all y’all home.”
“You were drunk as a skunk,” Ellen Mae argued. “If you hadn’t been, you wouldn’t have gone to bed with that good-looking soldier.”
“My sorry-ass husband cheated on me first,” Linda declared.
I was almost green with envy. Friends were a luxury I had never had before in my life. Folks needed to put down roots to make lasting friends. From trailing along with Frank all those years and then striking out on my own, I had never stayed in one place more than a couple of days.
When the café was empty, Scarlett brought a fistful of bills to the bar and shoved them into a small wooden box under the counter. “We put all our tips in the box and split them three ways each evening.”
Pulling my last ten-dollar tip out of my pocket and putting it in the box with all the rest of the day’s tips was the hardest thing I had done in a very long time.