A Romantic Occupation

At first, the bartender told her the price of drinks as he poured them but she had them memorized soon enough.

Her problems started almost immediately. When she asked a thirtyish man in a business suit if he'd like another beer, he said, "Sure. But I'd like it served by the pretty woman who brought me the last one."

"Her shift is over," Helen said. "I'll be serving you now."

He looked sour.

"What are you drinking?" she asked.

"The pretty waitress knows," he said.

She looked at the glass. The dregs were dark. "You'd like another Guinness, then?"

"I'd like a better-looking waitress," he said.

The other three men at the table, also wearing business suits, snickered.

She could feel her face grow hot.

One of them said, "I didn't know that the Slipper was so hard up that they were scraping the bottom of the barrel." He was staring at her midsection as he spoke.

She was keenly aware that he was staring at the roll of flab that protruded beneath her navel. It was not big but clearly visible beneath the yellow leotard.

The other men laughed again.

"Let me know when you're ready to order," she said and walked away.

"Hey," the first man called out to her back. "Hey, I want my beer."

She ignored him and kept walking.

There would be no tips from that table tonight.

The next two tables were better. One was an older gentleman who was reserved and polite when he ordered another single malt, neat. The other table held two young men, barely of legal drinking age, who looked like they were afraid that she would inspect their ID too closely and find some flaw.

The table after that, though was another bad one. Three four-tops had been pushed together to accommodate a party of nine -- apparently a stag party for the man who was wearing a plastic top hat and a dozen strings of Mardi Gras beads.

When she asked the man in the plastic hat if he'd like another drink, he guffawed and nudged his friend beside him. "This is a joke, right? You're setting me up. Where's the real waitress?"

"No, man," his friend said. "This is our waitress now, I guess."

"No way," the plastic-hat man said. "They don't let dogs serve drinks here. This is some kind of joke, isn't it? The dancers wait tables between acts, right?" He scanned Helen's body from tits to toes. "This is no dancer. I can tell you that. What's the punch line?"

"No, sir," Helen said. "The waitresses just serve drinks and the dancers just dance. I'm your waitress so I'll get you a drink, if you'd like."

"You better get me a drink," he said, "because I'd have to be a lot drunker than this to want a lap dance from you."

"What are you drinking?"

"Tequila," the man on the other side said. "He'll have another tequila shooter."

As she left to fetch the shooter, she could hear the men making other snide comments about her appearance, each trying to outdo the others in cruelty.

She could hear their laughter all the way to the bar.

Her eyes filled with tears. She couldn't go back to the table with her mascara running.

"Hey, you all right?" the bartender asked as he set the shot in front of her.

"Yeah, I'm fine. You got a spare napkin?"

She blotted her eyes as dry as she could, told herself that the men were drunken assholes, and took the drink back to the table.

"Thanks, Lassie," the man said.

A man at the end of the table muttered something to guy beside him. She made out the word, bitch. Both men laughed.

"Six-fifty," she said.

"I'll get it," the man on his right said and handed her a ten.

He waited while she gave him the change. He didn't throw even the two quarters on her tray for a tip.

No bone for Lassie.

Life can be a bitch, all right.

The rest of the night got no better. Some guys were more polite than others but they all made a point of staring at her floppy bits.

When she cashed out, she was left with ninety-eight dollars in tips. She remembered Lilly Ann's warning so she slid a ten across the bar to Rick, the bartender.

"What's that?" he asked.

"It's ten percent of my tips," she said.

"Like hell!" he said. "No waitress makes less than two hundred a shift. Not even on a slow night."

"I did."

"That's not my problem. I didn't sling drinks for you all night for a lousy ten. Cough it up."

She took back the ten and replaced it with a twenty.

He took it. "Don't try that shit on me again."

She went looking for the John, the head bouncer. She handed him a twenty without any discussion. She didn't want to be set up for a very long, very bad night with some creep. Her night was already long enough and bad enough.

"Thanks," he said. "I'll walk you to your car."

"I don't have a car. I'll walk home."

"Nobody walks home from here," he said. "Ever. Or takes a bus, either. If you don't have a car, then you'll take a cab. Wait in the dressing room. I'll come and get you when it arrives. It'll only be a couple of minutes. We've got a few cabbies that we trust who make themselves available when our shifts end."

As she waited for the cab, she calculated how far in the hole a six-hour shift in this hellhole had put her. After paying off Rick and John, she'd cleared less than sixty dollars in tips. She would have to spend another ten on a cab ride. The leotard had cost her forty dollars and the tights another fifteen. And the shoes had been ninety dollars.

She was almost a hundred dollars poorer than this morning. If she had stayed home and watched the snow on her television set, she would have been further ahead.

* * *

"I can't keep this up," Helen told Suzie. "I've worked three shifts at the Lady's Slipper and I don't have any more money than I had before I began. They're going to evict me tomorrow. The super already said that he'll call the sheriff if I haven't either paid up in full or vacated my apartment."

"How much are you short?"

"A hundred and sixty-two dollars."

"I'll make you a deal."

"What?"

"If you can patch things up with Ken and start getting work back at The Fisher House, I'll lend you the money."

Helen stared at her friend. "You won't lend me the money unless I agree to sleep with Ken's friend?"

"Sleep with him. Don't sleep with him. I don't care. You have to talk to Ken and figure out what it's going to take to get back to work at a job that pays enough for you to live on. I want to lend you the money. I really do. But I can't take that much risk if you're not working. You know what my finances are like. I live from one paycheck to the next. All my credit cards are maxed out. If I lend you a couple of hundred dollars and don't get it back in a couple of weeks, I'm the one who'll get evicted. You understand, don't you? I want to help real bad but I can't do it unless I'm sure that you're working."

"I understand."

"Even if you get more shifts at the Slipper, it would help. I know you don't get much in tips there, but maybe it'll get better if you work longer. You know. If you figure out how to approach the customers some way that's more..." She let her sentence trail off.

"I can't," Helen said. "I've tried everything that I can think of. Smiling and sucking it up. Giving them lip back. Ignoring them. Everything I try just makes it worse. It's hell. I come home and cry myself to sleep every night. They make me feel so ugly. I've never seen men treat a woman like that. I don't understand it."

"I don't know, either," Suzie said. "Hey, it's your friend Lawrence." She waved at him. "He's a man. Maybe we should ask him. Get a man's point of view."

"No," Helen said. "I don't want anybody that I know to know that I'm working there."

Suzie ignored her. "I have a hypothetical question," she said when he sat down with his tall cappuccino.

"I hate hypotheticals," he said.

"Then it's not hypothetical. Why would men treat a waitress worse at a strip club than at a regular restaurant?"

"Worse? In what way?"

"Make comments about her appearance. Call her ugly."

"I don't know that they would."

"They would," Suzie said. "They do."

"How do you know? Do you work at a strip club?"

"That's not what I'm saying. I'm just asking why men act awful at strip clubs."

"All men? All clubs?"

"I don't know. At the Lady's Slipper over on Highland Avenue."

He shrugged. "I've never been in there. In fact, I've never been in any strip club, so I'm just guessing. I'd guess that it had to do with expectations and social norms. All the customers are men, right? All the women in there are putting themselves on display, right? What else would you expect? The men are going to look at the women and talk about what they see, the same way that they'd talk about paintings in an art gallery or automobiles at a car show."

"But women are people, not paintings or cars," Helen said. "They have feelings."

"If a woman is sensitive about the way she looks, I expect that a strip club is a bad place for her to work. Just guessing, of course, being that I'm not a woman and don't have any actual experience." He shrugged. "I don't think that any woman should be treated like an object but there's not much that I can do about women who volunteer for it. Strip clubs may as well have a sign over the door that says, 'Women will be treated like objects in here.' If you go in, you pretty much have to abandon all hope of being treated like a person."

He was right. Helen abandoned all hope.

* * *

"Ken?"

"Speaking."

"This is Helen."

"Oh, Helen. I'm glad you called. It's been a long time. I missed you."

He sounded genuinely happy to hear from her. But she was keenly aware that he knew her number and could have called her any time if he had wanted.

"Me, too," she said.

"So what can I do for you?" he asked.

This was it. There was no way to avoid the next step. "I was wondering if your friend, Carl, would like to meet me for a drink," she said.

"I don't know," Ken replied. "He was rather hurt that you rejected him. He may not look like it, but he's a sensitive guy."

Her stomach knotted when she said, "He won't be disappointed again. I can promise you that."

They both knew exactly what she was promising. She had crossed another line.

"I'll tell you what," Ken said. "I'll give him your number and he can decide if he wants to call you or not."

"I'd appreciate that," she said.

"Thanks for calling." Ken broke the connection without waiting for her to reply.

Carl did not call that evening but Don Kosnov did. He said that her shifts at the Lady's Slipper were cancelled for the remainder of the week.

The next day, she called Mr. Starr to see if he had any shifts at The Fisher House. He did not but suggested that she keep in touch.

The message was clear. She was not going to earn another penny until she had fucked Ken's friend Carl.

And that would happen at Carl's convenience, not hers.

The following evening, when she answered her cell and a man's voice said, "I'm Carl, Ken's friend'"

Helen almost cried in relief.

"Hi, Carl," she said. "Ken told me that you wanted to meet me. I was wondering if we could get together for a drink sometime soon."

"A drink?" Carl said.

"Sure. You know. It's kind of customary to offer a girl a drink."

"Oh. Right. Sure. I get it. How... Where? Where would you like to get a drink?"

He was hopeless. No wonder Ken said that he was having a bad time in the romance department. He couldn't even pretend that he was seducing her. She was going to have to do all the heavy lifting here. This was a new level of degradation.

"How about the bar at the Marriott Hotel?"

"The Marriott?"

"The Marriott Hotel. Downtown on Third? They must have a bar there."

"I guess. When?"

"When can you meet me?"

"In an hour?"

"I'll see you there at seven-thirty."

She hung up.

She had a few minutes before she had to go to the Marriott, so she called Suzie.

"Suzie? Helen. I wanted to let you know that I caved. I'm meeting Ken's friend at the Marriott Hotel downtown in an hour."

"That's great," Suzie said.

Helen laughed. "I'm turning a trick and you think that's great?"

"Don't look at it like that. You're doing a favor for Ken. It's not like you do this for a living. You're a waitress. You're going on a date with a customer. That's not so unusual, is it?"

"Some date. A drink in a hotel bar before I go up to the man's room for a quickie. An unattractive man that I don't know and don't want to ever see again."

"Don't be such a downer. It's an adventure."

Helen had nothing to say to that.

After a pause too long, Suzie said, "Do you want me to go with you? It might be better if you have a wingman."

"You don't have to do that."

"I want to. Really. I won't get in the way. I'll just be there for you. I'll see you in the Marriott bar in a little while."

* * *

"You're wearing your waitress uniform," Suzie said.

Helen looked down at her white blouse and black skirt. "I wasn't sure what to wear. I probably should have worn my dress, but I figured that he got the hots for me when he saw me waitressing, so maybe he has a thing for waitresses and he'd rather have me dressed like one."

Suzie looked at the conservative blouse and giggled. "Ooh. Appealing to a man's kink. That's getting into the spirit."

Helen looked around before she sat down. "He's not here yet."

"We're early. It's only seven-fifteen. You have time for a drink. You want a vodka-cran?" Suzie gestured to the glass in front of her. "We can order one for you."

"No, thanks. If I'm going to get drunk, I'll do it on his dime."

"You won't have to wait for that. He just walked in."

Helen didn't bother turning to look. "He's early. Eager beaver, isn't he?"

"I don't blame him. You're hot."

"What's he doing?"

"Looking around. Oh. There. He sees you. He's looking confused because you're sitting with me. He doesn't know what to do. He doesn't know if he should come over here or not."

"Maybe I should let him stew about it for a while."

"Maybe you should put him out of his misery."

"I don't know how long this is going to take. I might have to spend all night with him."

"I'll wait around for a while, then go home. If I'm not here, call me. Even if it's the middle of the night. I want to know you're all right."

"Okay."

"Really. As soon as you can, call me. I'm serious."

Helen stood and turned.

Carl smiled at her.

She walked over to him. "Buy me a drink?"

"Okay," he said. He looked at Suzie. "I didn't know you'd have a friend here." He sounded uncertain.

"She was just keeping me company for a minute. We can get our own table."

He looked concerned. "Okay," he said. He didn't move, just looked at Helen with open longing in his eyes.

"Everything all right?"

"It's okay." He paused. "I don't have much time." He swallowed. "I have to get back home by nine-thirty."

Helen glanced at his left hand. "What did you tell her that you were doing?"

"Business meeting."

"Is this business?" she asked.

"I..." He looked like a rabbit caught in the open. "I... I've never done anything like this before," he said.

"Neither have I," Helen replied. "I worked in a department store since high school. Getting a job as a waitress was a step up. But they won't let me keep my job unless I do this so let's get a room and do it and then I'll be able to go back to work."

"You don't want to do this?" He looked surprised.

"Would you like being forced to do something like this? Even if I knew you and liked you, I wouldn't want to be forced to do it."

"I'm sorry," he said. "I thought... The way Ken said it, I thought..." He paused, at a loss for words.

She put her hand on his arm. She didn't know what he had been about to say. She wanted to know what kind of impression Ken had given him about her. "Tell me what you thought, please. Be honest. It'll be okay."

"I thought that you wanted to make love to me. That you were impressed by..." He laughed softly and bitterly. "That you were impressed by my CV."

"I don't know what that is," she said.

"What?"

"CV."

"Oh. My curriculum vitae. My resume. My list of academic accomplishments." He shook his head. "How foolish for me to think that you'd care about how many papers I've published or how many awards I've won."

This was an unexpected turn. Ken hadn't told Carl that she was a hooker or a slut, as she's expected. He'd told him that she was impressed by him.

"I didn't know that I was being forced on you," he said. "I'm sorry. You should go home."

"Buy me a drink, Carl," she said. "You don't have to have sex with me if you don't want. But I do want to hear a more about you. You've really won awards?" She had never before met anyone who had won any kind of award.

She led him to a table and waved to the waiter.

"Not a Nobel Prize, but I've been awarded a couple of significant awards from international economic associations." He sat down across from her. "It's nice to be recognized by your peers."

"Ken said that you taught at a university. Harvard?"

"Yale. When I was younger. I was being considered for promotion to full professor but I left academia. A hedge fund made me an offer that I couldn't refuse. The amount of money those funds can throw around is unbelievable. It's obscene, really. They could endow a half dozen university chairs for what they pay me every year. That would do a lot more good for humanity."

The waiter arrived and Helen ordered a vodka-cran. Carl ordered Perrier with a twist.

"If they pay you a lot, then you must be important to them," Helen said when the waiter left.

"I am. I have a model of market behavior that, under certain conditions, gives them a thirteen minute advantage on fluctuations greater than a quarter of a percent for three percent of the stocks listed on the NASDAQ, fifty-eight percent of the time." He laughed at the expression on her face. "I know how it sounds. An incomprehensible description. I'm saying that, every so often, I can guess which way a few stocks are going to move a few minutes ahead of time. It doesn't sound like much but the amount of money involved is enormous. The funds that have access to my model can make billions of dollars every year. It's quite unbelievable."

"They should pay you billions, then."

"They don't pay me quite that much, but, like I said, they pay me more than I could refuse." He looked a little sad. "Maybe I should say more than my wife would allow me to refuse. She likes the money."

"You don't?"

"Not so much. There's guilt attached to every dollar. My model doesn't create wealth. As far as it's concerned the market is a zero-sum game. Every billion dollars that my clients earn is a billion dollars taken out of other people's pockets. Some days I feel like an very subtle, incredibly successful thief."

Helen frowned. "Are you breaking the law?"

He laughed. "Not a bit. It's all perfectly legal. But that doesn't make it right or fair. The people that I work for can justify it to themselves. They say it's just the rules of the game. Smart people should win. People who aren't so smart deserve to lose. I have a problem seeing it the way they do."

"Are your bosses as smart as you?"

"Not even close. They can't understand the math that I'm using. Not even when I try to dumb it down for them. They call me a quant and pretend that means that I'm not so smart in other ways. Like I'm some kind of idiot savant freak of nature. They're not even internally consistent. Half the time they act like I'm some kind of soulless computer and the other half the time, they make fun of me for caring about the people we're taking money from."

"Other rich people?"

"Ordinary people's retirement funds, mostly. The market is a giant casino. The wealthy own it and they get the house percentage. It's the ordinary person who has to play the sucker's game. But people lose their money in such a complicated way that they can't understand how they're getting ripped off. Promise me one thing."