I DON’T LIKE to admit it but women are the worst tippers. They put their heads together to divide up the bill and actually figure out exactly fifteen percent without taking into consideration how much they made you run around. Men don’t talk about it. Each one peels a dollar off his billfold and quietly leaves it by the side of his plate.
It was a tough day at Herbie’s because Momma was ragging on all of us. Joe and I were drinking rum, trying to stay out of her way. Some cooks make you feel tired, others are plain annoying, but Joe charmed me somehow into being more feline. With gold chains shining on his brown skin and a toothpick hanging from his lips, every favor he asked was a service, and his smile, approval. The way he’d say, “Got it, babe,” when I called in my order, no matter how busy he was, always reminded me that he was my pal.
“Rum is good,” he said in his Caribbean accent, “but it can betray you. When you get the shakes, you’ve gone too far. Don’t go that far, you’re still a lovely girl. You’re a sweetheart.”
Then he looked both ways and poured some more into my coffee cup.
“But,” he sighed. “What can you do? The world is so full of pain.”
Then he’d scratch his big stomach and laugh.
“I’m going home to Brooklyn and smoke some cocaine and turn on the television. Oh, I’m getting fat from all the sugar in the soup.”
When Joe left, I hung out with Dino, who was on the grill until closing. He was telling his war stories again because there was nothing at all happening on the floor.
“I was all over the Pacific during the war,” he said. “They sent me to islands I didn’t even know the names of till I was on ’em. Then we got two weeks of R and R in Hawaii. That was nice. Hotel, everything.”
“Did they have segregated regiments then, Dino?”
“Yep. And drill sergeants of both colors. All of them ugly as homemade soup. Oh-oh, check out Rambo. Thinks he’s so sly, that jerk.”
Rambo was busy being the big man and giving away food for free to a cute Puerto Rican clerk from the hardware store. She was playing coy and hard to get. But Rambo had picked the wrong moment to get off the register, because the place was too empty and Momma was keeping her eye on everything. That’s when I realized that for all his tough-assed talk, Rambo didn’t even know how to steal and get away with it. He was putting on his whole show right out in the open, wildly flagrant without choosing to be.
“That turkey is so overt,” Dino said.
Rambo ran rampant all over the kitchen. He whipped up a plate of the rarest roast beef while Dino sat there chuckling and covering his eyes. The slices were so red and bloody that Momma could spot them from a block away.
“Thief,” she shrieked, with a shrillness that made the orange wallpaper tremble.
“What’s the matter, bitch?” he said under his breath.
“Do you have a ticket for that? Where is the ticket? Thief, you steal the food out of my mouth.
“Fuck you, twat,” he was screaming all of a sudden. He was screaming louder than she was. “Fuck you and your dead meat.”
“Get out of here,” she yelled. She yelled but she didn’t move, like she had been firing people from that chair for forty years. Taking someone’s job away involved such a natural sequence of events for Momma that it didn’t require any energy anymore. Rambo picked up the roast beef and smashed it against the wall, which broke the greasy mirror. Up until that point it had been pretty interesting, but I didn’t like it at all when the mirror cracked. A curse by Rambo would be hard to shake.
“I’m gonna kill you, you bitch. Watch your ass. I’m gonna kill you.”
But he didn’t kill her. He just walked right out the front door. The clerk from the hardware store kept sipping her 7-Up as though she didn’t care about anything one bit. Me and Dino stood there without making a move. I did not want to touch that meat, lying in the crud on the restaurant floor, but I knew it would be me.
“Come on,” Dino said. “I’ll help you.”
He started picking up the pieces of plate and beef and putting them in the garbage. Momma walked over, real slowly, watching us like we had been the ones who broke it.
“Dino,” Momma said. “Those garbage bags cost thirty-five cents each. Don’t use so many. Smash the garbage down with your feet. Don’t be lazy. Be strong.”
“I’m not lazy,” Dino said calmly.
“And you,” she said, pointing to me. “Find a doctor with a good practice and everything will be under control.”
“That woman loves money,” Dino said after she waddled away.
“She called you lazy.”
“Don’t pay her no mind. She loves money too much.”
He picked out a penny from the garbage.
“I’ll give this to Momma. Then she’ll be happy.” And he smiled at me. “Don’t let it get to you, there are beautiful things in life.”
But for some reason, I just started crying and crying.
“You got to get a grip on that drinking,” Dino said.