The Busboy

"It's not mine?" I asked so very desperately.

She shook her head. Then she started apologizing over and over, between sobs.

"How?" I asked in a tiny, defeated voice.

"A party." She looked so broken. "I went to a party with people from work. I got drunk, and I tried weed for the first time, and I... I..."

She was sobbing against my chest then. For the first time in my young life, I felt the conflict. I felt the grief, anger, and the damned conflict. I wanted to kill her right there, but I also wanted to soothe her - to somehow take her pain away. I wanted to unburden her. I wanted his name. Then something came to mind: a thought of what might help.

"Were you raped?" I asked, sitting up straight.

"No," she said ashamedly. "I wish I could say that. I was wasted, but I didn't say 'no.'"

The anger returned in spades. "So what now?" I asked determinedly. "Are you getting rid of it?"

"I can't," she replied, finally looking at me. "Mom and Dad say I have to marry him. They've already talked to his parents. She..." Lisa said, pointing towards the kitchen window, "said to tell you on the phone. I just couldn't do that to you."

"Who is the bastard?" I demanded. My rage was back to the forefront.

"You don't know him," she said quickly. She seemed genuinely frightened - of me, or of him, or of her parents, I couldn't rightly say. "He's a busboy from work. He's younger than us. He'd just turned eighteen the day of the party. I think it was partly for him."

God damn her, I thought. She's ruined everything. I couldn't stay any longer. I disentangled myself from my girlfriend - former girlfriend now - stood and started heading for my car.

"Where are you...? Don't go, David, please," she begged.

"I have to, Lisa... fuck!" my pace quickened as I told her that. "I don't... I just can't."

She followed me to my car, half-sobbing and half-wailing. "I'm so sorry, David. I'm so, so sorry for this!"

That was the end of it for me. I drove back to the club in shock. All of our plans were down the drain.

But what about my plans? We'd taken the summer off, on a break as boyfriend and girlfriend. I'd spent mine working, and I figured I had a good idea of how she'd spent hers. My apartment had one of the earliest message machines, as they were called then. Lisa kept calling at night, but I wasn't in my room. I was working during the day, and at night I was helping myself to alcohol, wherever I could sneak it.

Joe Haidar wasn't just my boss. He was also a functioning alcoholic, which I was too young to understand at the time. Joe drank hard booze in moderation, all day long. As the resident GM, he'd had his own apartment for years. He was also Fordie's former brother-in-law, and the only other middle-easterner working there. He'd worked at Ford's dealership, and then transferred to the club right after Ford purchased it. His wife, Ford's sister, had taken offense to him giving all his time to her brother. Joe had come home one night to a 'Dear John' - or in his case, a 'Dear Joe' - letter. She'd run off with the kids and a doctor from Rochester.

I'm sure he figured out I was sneaking booze, because I really wasn't trying to hide it. I also didn't realize the effects on my breath.

One night, not long after my talk at the picnic table with Lisa, Joe asked me to join him in the darkened and closed Grille Room. He sat in there most nights when the lights were off. The members' card room was completely surrounded on three sides by the Grille Room dining area. It was built that way so that if the club was ever raided, everyone would have time to react. It was usually full of guys until around two in the morning.

He got up as I sat at the table he was occupying, and he returned with two glasses of whiskey on the rocks. We took a few sips; it burned my throat more than the gin, which I'd learned had been the best bang for the buck on a five-finger budget.

"What happened?" he asked suddenly. "Was it that girl you were going out with?" Joe reminded me of my age, without intending to. He called all women 'broads,' but he'd called Lisa 'girl.'

I nodded, and then he asked me to tell him about it. I recounted the whole sad story, which was, of course, pretty good until the end. He could tell she'd gutted my heart, even if I was too young to understand what the feeling was.

"Tommy's leaving," he stated. "He's off to open his own submarine shop."

Tommy Esposito was the nephew of one of the club members; that's how he'd gotten the job. To me, he was a dirtbag, and we'd never gotten along. Tommy wore that Saturday Night Fever look long before the movie came out. His suit sported flared bell-bottom pants and oversized lapels. He wore a shag haircut, which was the style, but not on greasy black hair. He was constantly hitting on the good-looking waitresses, and even some of the underage set-up girls, all the while being married to one of the full-time servers. His only job was to place orders for and keep track of liquor inventory.

"I want you to take over his job," Joe told me. "We'll need to move all the liquor to the old liquor room outside of the cage." I knew where he was going.

Once again, my work life was going to put me at odds with the letter of the law. You had to be twenty-one in order to serve or handle booze, even though the drinking age was eighteen. We needed to move the liquor so I'd have time to react if somebody inconvenient came knocking.

"You need to forget about her," he lectured. "Go get laid. Some of the broads here would be happy to let you screw them. Maybe get with one of the older ones, so you can learn something at the same time."

Joe took a swig from his glass. "This..." he said, swirling the gold liquid around, "you have to stop that. I can't have you drinking all the profits."

Then, as if reading my mind, he added, "I do enough of that for both of us."

That was how I became a formerly well-paid busboy, turned bagman, turned utility worker and cook, turned assistant manager-in-training, who was illegally handling enough alcohol to sink a ship after just having gotten a taste for the stuff.

>

The holidays came and went.

I kept working, learning new skills, but I still thought about Lisa a lot. On Christmas Eve, I went home to a house full of relatives - including my grandmother, who I'd always been close to - and had a big dinner. Grandma dominated the conversation, telling everyone about all of her friends who had attended a function at the club and seen me in my three-piece suit. Those functions must have been on a weekday, where I'd also have to act as maître' d and MC. Mom looked as proud as she did.

After dinner, around eight-thirty, there was a knock on the door. It was Lisa. I stepped out into the frigid night air and stood with her on the porch.

She looked immediately sad as I closed the door behind me. "I'm not welcome anymore," she stated rather than asked.

"It's not that," I said, feeling a bit embarrassed. "There's a bunch of relatives here. I thought we might need some privacy."

"Can we at least sit in my car then?" she asked.

In the car with the overhead light on, I saw the black eye for the first time. It looked like she'd tried to conceal it for some reason.

"He do that to you?" I interrogated her.

Lisa broke down then, bawling her eyes out. Her body was trembling. I leaned across the console of her Mustang and comforted her as best I could. I had never really seen someone that hopeless, and wasn't sure that I was doing much good.

"I'm sorry," she finally said between sniffles, wiping her nose on her sleeve. Then she began crying again. "I didn't know where to go! I shouldn't have... your family is inside. I'll..."

"No you won't!" I yelled, which was the last thing I wanted to do. "You stay here and talk to me until you feel better, okay?" That earned me a wan smile.

"What happened?" I asked, trying to get her to talk instead of cry.

"He got mad." She started thinking about how to say it. "He's pissed because he says I've ruined his life. His mom and my parents were pretty tough on him. He came home late from work, high and drunk, and I told him to leave me alone and go sober up. Then we argued and I said some things... I told him to grow up and accept responsibility. Then he let me have it."

I also noticed Lisa's pudgy belly then. "How far along are you?"

"Four months," she replied, getting herself under control.

"So, just before we got back together, then?" My rage and anger were returning, and then it was me who was fighting for control. I still blamed her for ruining any chance we'd had of a future together. She deserved something, but not that - not a beating, not while pregnant, and not from the baby's own father. I decided to focus my rage on him.

"You married?" I kept the questions coming. "What's his name?"

"He's Brad," she answered. "His name is Bradley Smith. We got married the first week of November.

"Mom and Dad pretty much told me I was on my own. They gave us a little money for a mobile home that was for sale, but we both still have to work to make payments. He got a new job as janitor at an old folks' home, so he only makes a little. Dad said after the baby comes, he might get him a job in the machine shop."

Lisa's parents were loaded. Her father owned an engineering company that had drawn the plans for the original DeLorean. Her old house in the country, where she'd grown up, was twenty-five acres, with a barn and three thoroughbreds in the stall. I felt sorry for her. She'd gone from the penthouse to the shithouse, and her parents seemed even more disgusted with her than I was.

"Like I said," she continued, "I had nowhere to go. My parents and I aren't really on speaking terms. The last time he hit me, about three weeks ago, I told Mom, and she asked me what I did to provoke him. I wouldn't ask her for help right now if I was being murdered. Plus, I did this, so part of me thinks that I deserve it. I shouldn't be bothering you, but I was just trying to get away, and I couldn't think where to go. My only girlfriend is out of town."

"Okay, look, Lisa," I said, "you shouldn't be getting beat. You're pregnant, and that's on you. You already know that. But you can't let him do this. Next time, you come to me - or better yet, go to a shelter. Somewhere, anywhere, okay?"

She nodded, so I continued. "I shouldn't be involved in this. He's your husband now, which makes me the bad guy. But he can't hit you, understand? If it happens again, and you can't find anywhere to go, come find me - probably at the club. I live there now."

That seemed to shock her, but then she hung her head. She'd caused that too.

"Can I at least show you where I live, you know, in case of an emergency?"

She drove me by her house. Brad wasn't there. Part of me wished he had been, but that would have only made trouble for me. Then she took me back home.

"I'm..." she began.

"Yeah, I know, sorry," I said. My anger hadn't dissipated with time, and my sympathy for her was like a tide. At its ebb, all I could think to myself was, Why is her problem, my problem? "Stop saying it. I know you feel that way, but it doesn't help. Try to stay on his good side until the baby is born. Maybe he'll calm down. If you need me, you call me, alright?"

"Okay, thank you, David," she said in her tiny voice. "Please don't become a bitter person over this. It's not your fault. You didn't do anything wrong."

She leaned in for a kiss. It was such a natural move by then that I almost let her. Almost. I let her catch my cheek, and her tears returned.

"I'll always love you, Lisa," I said, opening the car door. "You'll always be right here..." I put my hand over my heart, "but that's all it will ever be."

I watched Lisa drive away, knowing it was probably for the last time. We'd found a closure of sorts, but I still wanted Bradley dead.

In truth, I was disappointed with her, and the decisions she'd made. I wasn't disgusted with her like her parents were. Mostly I was just frustrated. I had no control over any of the things that Lisa had done, and certainly none over the consequences she was enduring after-the-fact. Part of me wanted to take the risk, cross the line, and 'help her' with her 'problem.' That was the smaller part, though. The bigger part was feeling good about working at the club. Learning from and being around important men that I could look up to - bad guys who were good to and good for me.

Ironically, my voice of reason in that moment sounded an awful lot like the guys at the club who would whack somebody. They'd only do it, though, if there was something in it for them.

>

In January, life set me up for some changes, although it would be awhile before it kicked out the punchlines. Our new switchboard operator and general office person, Angela, joined the team. She was a beautiful woman and only a month older than Lisa. The similarities didn't stop there. Her height and weight were very similar to Lisa's - pre-pregnancy - but the way she carried herself was something else. She had 'it.' Indeed, I wasn't surprised to learn through the grapevine that Angela was competing in the Miss Michigan Pageant. She was a bit ditzy, though, which irked me sometimes. It was a stark contrast to her book smarts; she clearly had those. She may have had 'it,' but when it came to simple things, she didn't 'get it.'

That was my take on her, anyway. Did I 'get it' back then? I'm sure you'll have thoughts on that several times before this tale ends.

I was very busy staying up on my regular job while trying to get the alcohol moved to the new liquor room. Tommy was kind enough to spend some time with me, before he left, giving me the basics.

He taught me to begin by assuming that the bartenders were thieves twice over: outright, and over-pouring for better tips. Tommy's job - soon to be mine - was to make sure they had just enough alcohol on-hand to get their official job done. You were never going to get it exactly right, but it was all about shaving off that one extra bottle's worth of 'mysterious' losses.

I suppose that for the first month, I treated Angela much like her predecessor: the sixty-five-year-old Gayle, who'd worked the front office since the day I first started. Angela knew who I was because I was scheduling over two hundred banquet employees each week, and getting multiple calls from our vendors. In fact, never an hour went by on weekdays when I didn't hear her sweet voice over the intercom at least once.

The next new arrival, in the third week of January, wasn't a new employee, but Fordie's nephew. He was supposed to have come for a 'visit,' but, save for a few short hops back to Europe, he never actually left. Like the old joke goes, maybe I should've promised to miss him.

Pierre Khalil, like Ford, had been born in Lebanon. We all learned quickly that the more distant side of Pierre's family had a lot of money, because he flaunted it. It was 'just hop back to Europe' money, and then some. Pierre had used some of it to buy a company that manufactured and broke down the raw materials for use in the perfume industry. By the age of twenty-three, he'd refined the processes within the plant that refined the materials, allowing him to sell them for far less than his competitors.

At twenty-five, Pierre had bought his own perfume company in the south of France, and by the time he'd arrived in America - just four weeks before his twenty-seventh birthday - he'd already owned two of the top-grossing perfume companies in that region.

The five-thousand-dollar suit gave him the intended look, but didn't hide his shallow and pretentious nature. In the beginning, Pierre mostly stayed in the background. He spent much of that time getting the lay of the land. Many nights that first month, I'd find him in the card room, simply observing the members playing. No one seemed upset, and that was odd, because those guys played for big stakes; just a little 'tell' on someone's face could cost someone ten grand or more. To me, he seemed like a tourist, and so I ignored him. If I'd known then that he wasn't ever going to leave, I might've paid more attention from the start.

Angela had been invited to after-hours breakfast a few times - not by me, but by other employees that were trying to be friendly. I'd interacted with her a bit here and there, but we both seemed content to keep our distance. On February second, I was in my office by the delivery entrance when Angela came flying by down the back stairs of the office, crying. I jumped up and followed her out the door.

"Hey," I shouted to her back. She stopped and acknowledged me, but then kept walking at a rapid clip. "Where are you going, and what's wrong?"

"I have to go," she said through the tears as I caught up to her. "My father's had a heart attack."

I gently grabbed her elbow and turned her towards me. "I'm sorry," I said sternly. "And I'll let you leave as soon as I'm convinced you're okay to drive."

"Let go of me!" she screamed - partly angry, but also indignant that someone would lay hands on her and try to prevent her from doing something.

"I will," I said, "as soon as you tell me what happened. I assume he's in the hospital already or on his way. A few minutes of you talking and calming down won't do any harm. I don't want to hear later that you were in a car accident, and neither would your dad."

Angela broke down then, leaning fully into my chest. I couldn't help but hug her as she sobbed. I tried to think of something comforting to say. "Listen to me, Angela," I told her in a consoling tone. "I'm sure he's going to be alright. I know he will."

That seemed to stifle her agony a little. At some point, she realized we'd been in an embrace for quite some time, and quickly pulled back.

"Thank you, Dave," she said solemnly. "Thanks, I think I'll be fine now." I let her go then, warning her about the speed limit.

The next day, Angela wasn't at work. I figured she needed to be with family. She'd been very upset, so it was obvious she loved her father. Two days later, I began to worry, so I asked around. I found out that her father had been stabilized after the first heart attack, but that the second one, just after midnight, had done him in.

I felt like complete shit. I know it doesn't make any sense, but I'd promised her that her dad would be okay. Sure, I'd said it to calm her down so she could make the drive safely, but I'd said it. I kept imagining all the other things I could've said instead, and a part of me felt like I'd never be able to face her again.

She came down to my office after her shift on her first day back and handed me a card. At first, I couldn't even take it from her.

"I'm so sorry, Angela," I said, feeling worse with her in front of me. "I'm sorry for what I said."

"I know," she replied. "I know what you were trying to do, and I wanted to thank you." She held up the card again. This time I took it and opened it. She'd written a lot - actually, more like she'd poured her whole heart out. The last line she wrote was below her signature.

"Dinner sometime?" it read. I looked at her, and her expression was hopeful.

"You want..." I stammered, "I mean, dinner. With me?"

She nodded her head rapidly. "Sure, why not?" she said with a smile. "Do you have a girlfriend or something?" That was an easy answer. I shortened it to "No" from "Not anymore."

Angela insisted on paying, but she'd asked me out, so I had the upper hand; I wasn't going to let a pretty girl buy me dinner. She finally relented. That dinner turned into two, and then movies, and then, about a month later, meeting her mom and brother. Although things had moved along really quickly, we still hadn't talked about 'going steady' or being exclusive. I was pretty sure she thought it was a given, even though we never said the words.