Kelly's Bar Read online

that someone might see he had carried a passenger. So a couple miles away he let Billie out at a city bus stop, told her the bus to catch, and how to get to Kelly's. She followed his instructions, and when she got to the bar it was right in the middle of the lunch rush.

  When Billie stepped through Kelly's door the scene she saw would have told anyone that lunch was not going well. But to her experienced eye it looked like the place was about to come undone. Dirty dishes were piled up on tables where people were sitting menus in hand, waiting to order. Other people were standing at the bar with checks in hand waiting to pay. But the bartender was running around the room trying to make places for unserved customers. There was only one waitress. She was at a corner booth, struggling to straighten out orders she had placed before the wrong eaters. But worst of all, the waitress, a young woman about Billie's own age, was wearing heels! Her feet had to be killing her.

  The man trying to clear tables and seat eaters seemed most likely to be the boss. So Billie approached him and without introducing herself announced that she'd bus tables for a meal. Lefevre looked at her with wide-eyed gratitude. At that point he probably would have traded his car for the help she was offering.

  "You're on!" he announced.

  Billie shoved her luggage behind the bar, opened her suitcase, grabbed and quickly put on a particular pair of shoes. Then without asking for directions she started clearing tables. In an amazingly short time she had removed all the dirty dishes to the kitchen where, again without asking for directions, she loaded and started Kelly's commercial dishwasher. Obviously Billie was highly experienced and knew exactly what she was doing.

  By the time the lunch rush slowed everything was running smoothly except for the heels-wearing waitress. This poor gal was visibly limping. Billie told her to sit down, that she would wait the remaining customers, and in obvious pain the poor girl slumped onto a chair. About ten or fifteen minutes later business slowed almost to a stop. Billie went into the kitchen and quietly asked Chico for some things. He pointed out what she wanted, she rounded them up and brought them to where the ill shod waitress was collapsed. Billie introduced herself then knelt down, removed the stylish high heel shoes from the other young lady, washed her feet off with the wet rag she had gotten from Chico and put the girl's feet to soak in a bucket of warm water she also got from Chico.

  Then Billie sat down beside the ailing waitress and asked why in the world she had tried to wait tables in heels. The gal answered that the shoes were very attractive. Billie didn't disagree, but she said that looks don't matter for a waitress's shoes. Only comfort does. It didn't take long for this conversation to reveal that the young lady had no waitress experience, had a regular nighttime job as a switchboard operator at a local hospital, and had taken the part-time job at Kelly's, a job she had held for only two days, more or less on a whim in order to make a few extra dollars with which to buy … What else? … fancy, stylish shoes, of which, like many women, she is particularly fond. Billie explained that working on one's feet all day, as waitresses do, they must have comfortable shoes. She showed her own. But when told what they had cost, the girl said if she had to spend so much for shoes to work an extra job, she might just as well spend the money on fancy shoes in the first place and forego the painful part-time work.

  And that's how, by the time lunch rush was finished, the girl had decided to surrender the job she didn't need and didn't like, and which was killing her feet, to Billie who both needed the job and knew how to handle it, and who wore the kind of shoes that cause no pain. Lefevre recognized Billie as an ideal waitress candidate and offered to provide all her meals as a fringe benefit. But Billie couldn't take the job unless she could find someplace to live, and Kelly's part-time job wouldn't pay enough for her to rent an apartment.

  Chico brought out to Billie the meal which she had so amply earned. Then he, Lefevre and the young lady with the aching feet sat around the table while Billie ate, trying to brainstorm a place for her to live. During this conference Stag came in for his usual work avoiding, pool shooting, beer drinking afternoon sojourn. He asked what the discussion was all about. When told, he announced that his house has a spare room he was willing to consider renting to Billie. So Stag and Billie went off to a side booth where they privately negotiated a rooming arrangement. They didn't tell anyone any of its details, and as we will see, those details became a matter of great concern to many people. But whatever the details, Billie had a place to live, Kelly's had the best waitress-helper it would ever have, the gal with the aching feet got a reprieve from a horribly unwise extra job decision, and everything seemed to have worked out splendidly.

  VI

  Billie and Chico hit it off right from the start. The main reason is her professional competence. She really knows her business, so much so she usually anticipates Chico's cooking needs and takes care of them without being asked. But the two also just genuinely and deeply like each other. Lefevre says they are like a perfect father-daughter team.

  Billie also gets on well with the customers. With one exception. She's an attractive woman. Though she always wears jeans, a reasonable and functional attire for her job, it's clear that in a dress and with some makeup she would be quite pretty. So all the unmarried guys, and not a few of the married men too, are always coming on to her. In one way or another, however, and without offending the man in any way, she always declines all these offers.

  The most likely reason why an attractive young woman who has an abundance of offers never dates is because she has something going with some other man on a permanent or at least a semi-permanent basis. But Billie was new to town. It didn't seem likely that she could have gotten into such a relationship so quickly. With one possible exception.

  What was the nature of her living arrangement with Stag? Billie only worked part-time. She couldn't be making enough to pay much rent. Was she covering some or all of the cost of her room some other way? Like the lady who works in the front office at one of the trucking companies, was Billie also shacking up with Stag? Nobody wanted to believe this. Nobody wanted to believe that the pain-in-the-ass braggart was in fact the sexual hotshot he claimed to be. Nobody wanted to believe he could have two women shacking up with him at the same time. But that seemed like the only possible explanation for Billie's refusal to accept any of the dates, or other less innocent romantic encounters, customers were always offering her.

  Since Chico conspicuously gets on so well with Billie, people thought he'd probably know if she had anything going with Stag. So many guys ask him. The cook always smiles in a way suggesting he probably is in the know, but he never answers such questions. Instead, in his affable way he says Billie's love life is something he has no business talking about. If they want to know if Billie is sleeping with Stag, the little Mexican-American cook would say in his thick accent, they should ask her. That is clearly the proper response for Chico to make, but none of these guys has ever been so insensitive and crude as to put the question directly to Kelly's pretty waitress.

  There was another person they might have asked: Stag. But there were two reasons why nobody ever did. The first was simply because nobody wanted to give the braggart the satisfaction of knowing that anyone else was willing to believe, even for a second, that Stag might be even remotely as sexually adroit as he claimed, that he might be simultaneously shacking up with two women. The second reason was that Stag never waited for anyone to ask. He never said so in so many words, but in every other possible way he let it be known that he had a harem-like thing going on at home.

  Nobody wanted to believe this. So they carefully studied how Billie and Stag interacted when he came in for lunch. However, nothing anyone saw then gave any hint one way or the other. She was more familiar with him than with other lunchers, but never anything to suggest they were sleeping together. And he treated her the same way. But everyone considered the couple's lunchtime interactions to probably not be very relevant. Even
if they were bedmates, Billie would probably not want to let on to others what she was doing. But also, during the lunch rush there is so much business in Kelly's that Billie doesn't have time to do anything but take orders, deliver food, and clean up tables for the next customer. Even if the pair were committed lovers, Billie wouldn't have any chance at lunchtime to show her affection in any way.

  Stag, of course, also was always in Kelly's after the lunch hour, drinking beer, shooting pool and bragging about his sexual prowess. But at these times Billie's partial workday is already finished, and she is not around. So these times also provide no opportunity to see if the two treat each other the way a couple who sleep together might be expected to. During the braggart's daily work truancy Stag struts around a pool table saying all kinds of things to imply he sometimes sleeps with Billie and sometimes sleeps with the woman who works in the trucking outfit's office. If Billie were around at these times, her reaction to all of these boasts would show if there were any truth in it. But Billie is never in Kelly's in the after-lunch period.

  VI

  One Monday morning a little