Swimming Sweet Arrow by Maureen Gibbon Read Free Book Online Page A

girl or woman. I served Roy’s food as fast as I could, but still I heard him say, “Do you give good head?” when I put his plate in front of him.
    I knew I had to change if I was going to keep working. I had to learn to take people’s shit and not let it bother me. So I started looking at every person who came in the door as money in my pocket, and I forced myself to make conversation. I’d lie and pretend to care how people’s kids were, or I’d talk about the weather, or I’d just say, “What do you think of this crowd, now?” I said anything, just so it looked like I was friendly. I did it even with the rude sons of bitches. I did it all without meaning it, but no one seemed to care if I was just pretending. They wanted to be served by a pleasant person who brought the food while it was hot, and I don’t think they cared if my friendliness was real or not.
    “You see, honey?” Lorraine said after watching me operate for a while and seeing our tips go up. “It pays to be nice to people.”
    I knew Del and I would need a chunk of money to move in together, so I started doing everything I could to squeeze a dollar out of people. One night I sat down and hemmed all my skirts up short. I figured if men like Roy were going to say stuff to me, I’d give them something to say. After that,when I had to lean into the ice cream chest to scoop out desserts, my skirts just barely covered my ass. I took to wearing underpants over my pantyhose so that if anything showed, it was only cotton with little flowers, or nylon with a little lace. I made a couple of short, ruffly aprons, too, and I thought they added to my look. The ruffle was just enough to cover the swell of my belly, and the aprons made me look like a cocktail waitress, or so I thought. Some nights, at the end of the evening, I took my hair down out of its ponytail and let it lie long on my shoulders. I’d started dyeing it with Lady Clairol, and it was a deep golden color close to my scalp and whitish gold toward the ends. Women complimented me on the color, and men just looked. One of my regulars, an older man named Bill Mahlon, told me I looked like Veronica Lake. I didn’t know who Veronica Lake was, but I could see Bill Mahlon thought I was pretty.
    “She was the Peekaboo Girl,” he told me. “You ask your dad.”
    “I don’t see my dad too much.”
    “Oh,” he said, and I knew I was getting to him: a young woman without a father. Boo hoo.
    “Well, you look just like her,” he said. “She wore her hair long, and it kind of hung down over one eye.”
    He left me a dollar tip that night and every time after, even if all he had was a twenty-five-cent cup of coffee. It was all right. If men wanted to see my long hair or my legs or the flowers on my underpants, I’d let them.
    Once I convinced myself nothing mattered but getting tips, the job got better. I became a different, harder person atDreisbach’s, and I knew that hard person stayed with me at other times, but I told myself it was good for me. Whenever I found myself thinking of certain things that I did not want to think of, I pushed them away and concentrated on the task at hand. It was not a bad skill to have, and it was the price I had to pay if I wanted to go on working. Since I did not have a choice, I decided to pay.

7
    A s it turned out, June moved in with Ray before I got my second paycheck from Dreisbach’s. The two of them moved in with Ray’s older brother. The brother, Luke, was renting a house on the road to Church’s Mountain, and he invited Ray and June to go in on it with him so they could all save money on bills.
    I couldn’t believe it. I asked her, “Don’t you and Ray want to be alone?”
    “It was Ray’s idea. He needs a new car.”
    When I told Del about it, he said, “Their bedroom has a door on it, doesn’t it? Then it’ll be all right.”
    He was right. No one was handing June or Ray a truck,even if it did have 87,000 miles on it, and they were at least