But the recession was on, and few could afford even this simple elegance anymore. Some nights, even on the weekends, the restaurant was completely empty, and on most weeknights, Kariotis’s was closed by eight. George Kariotis eventually had to fire one of the cooks and all three busboys. The fired cook, whose name was Teddy Dendrinos, got drunk on wine and tried to start a fight with George in the kitchen, yelling awful, hurtful things and cursing in the native Greek George had encouraged him to speak for all those years. Then Teddy wept and, in accented English, apologized for being so disrespectful.
“What do I do now?” he said.
George had his arm around him. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know, Teddy.”
Teddy Dendrinos moved back to Greece and luckily got a high-paying position in a five-star Athens hotel. He sent postcards with this good news, postcards George Kariotis tacked on the wall above the cash register, right below the framed newspaper articles that made George sad to think how quickly success and prosperous times could be taken away.
In his final attempt to save his business, George Kariotis emptied his savings account — all of it. And with this money he hired two belly dancers, put an employment advertisement in the papers for “Lot Security,” since “Bouncer” might have scared off what few patrons he had left, and ordered a big expensive sign surrounded with blue and white lights that he hung on the front of his restaurant. The sign read: Where Beautiful I Julies Dance for You, and this was the first thing Ray Dwyer noticed when he got off the bus that Monday afternoon to apply for the security position he read about in the paper, a job he was sure he wouldn’t get.
But this fellow who owned the restaurant, George Kariotis, this expressive, tough-looking little man with peppery hair who shook Ray Dwyer’s hand and looked him in the eyes when he spoke, took one look at him and hired him on the spot.
“Isn’t there an application?” Ray Dwyer asked: he thought this good luck might be some kind of mean trick.
“You want an application? Okay. Make a muscle.”
Ray Dwyer flexed his biceps; George Kariotis couldn’t even fit both hands around it. He whistled once and laughed. “Holy moly! You passed the application. What is it. Ray? You been to prison or something?” George laughed again and winked, and when Ray Dwyer paused, swallowed, then admitted that he actually had been to prison, George’s smile slipped away behind a wisp of cigar smoke, and he offered a sincere apology. “I’m sorry, Ray,” he said. “I didn’t know. I didn’t mean to make a joke. That’s not my business. But this is,” George Kariotis said and, with his cigar, motioned toward the darkened restaurant, the empty tables and chairs. “This is my business,” he said.
And then George Kariotis gave Ray Dwyer a cigar and, over the course of two hours, told him everything there was to tell about his restaurant, his business, the many things big and small he’d done to make it the place it once was. He showed Ray Dwyer the speakers, the records, the plates he’d bought downtown, the kitchen where the cooks and busboys argued in Greek, the newspaper articles, and the postcards from Teddy Dendrinos.
“You know it made me sick to have to fire that man,” George explained. “It even made me sick to let the busboys go.” Then George Kariotis got quiet for the first time since Ray had accepted his handshake; he got quiet and stared at the empty tables and chairs. And then he looked at Ray and said:
“I can’t make any promises, Ray. My new idea, these dancers. Well, it might work, and it might not work. I may have to let you go, too. Maybe next week, next month, I don’t know. Or maybe you’ll work here forever. Okay?”
“Yes,” Ray said. “I understand.”
The two men shook hands on it, and Ray Dwyer agreed to start that night.
It was hard for Ray to believe he was actually getting paid to do what he did: stand around with his arms crossed and make sure none of the men tried to touch the beautiful ladies, the belly dancers, as men sometimes did, especially when they had too much to drink.
And it was hard for George Kariotis to believe he hadn’t thought of bringing in these dancers six months earlier. Within a week of hanging up his new sign, George’s restaurant had a steady, nightly stream of men who came to see the dancers, and who, more importantly, came to spend money on appetizers and drinks — lots and lots of drinks. Some men came in small groups, but most came by themselves, and the reason they kept coming was because there was no other place in Tinley Park, Orland Park, or anywhere else nearby where men could sit and eat and drink and watch beautiful ladies dance — no other place.
“I can’t believe it,” George said to Ray one night, beaming. “So they can’t afford to take their wives and children to dinner, but they can afford to look at her,” he said, and nodded toward Rita, the older, larger dancer who wore dangerously revealing purple silks and captivated her audience with a series of slow, flowing movements, an arrogant, hesitant half smile, and a stare that would linger only for a moment’s contact before vanishing in a betrayal of suggestion.
Karima, on the other hand, was much younger, and moved quickly with a wide, teasing smile she shared with each man for longer than he probably deserved. Ray always had to be on his toes when it was Karima’s turn to dance, once every hour for fifteen to twenty minutes. The men seemed to believe Karima truly wanted them, and this often provoked them to stand when she came by, to grab her when she came by, to offer catcalls and whistles and large tips when she came by. And when a man did grab Karima, Ray only needed to appear from a corner of darkness, shake his finger, and the man would sit back down and behave himself for the rest of the night.
Ray didn’t know too much about the dancers. They were foreign and dark like George, but Ray had no idea what countries they came from. They might have been Greek, but since they always spoke to George in English, Ray decided that didn’t make too much sense. He’d tried briefly to talk to the dancers, and, for some reason, they’d ignored him.
“Hey, that was real good,” he’d said to Rita after the first time he’d watched her dance, but she only blinked and walked right past him and into the kitchen, where she stayed between sets.
And when Ray had complimented Karima’s silver-sequined outfit as she left the floor followed by whistles and claps, and holding a fistful of bills. Karima only glanced at him with a look of disgust and marched into the ladies’ room, where she usually stayed between sets.
Sometimes the two dancers seemed to hate each other, and sometimes they talked and laughed like sisters. Ray decided they were impossible to figure out, and that he wouldn’t waste any time trying. Who cared? He had a good job, a good boss, and had been able to buy some fancy new clothes that he wrote about in letters to his three sisters, all of whom had invited Ray to live with them when he first got out of prison.
I can’t tell you how much I appreciated your invitation to come and stay with your family, Ray wrote to each of them. But I wanted to prove to myself and to all of you, that I could get hack on my feet by myself And that’s what I’m starting to do. My boss treats me real good, and I get to dress up in a tie when I go to work. Imagine that. Me working at a tie job!
Ray didn’t tell his sisters about the rat droppings he’d often find in his room, or the roaches, or his crazy old woman neighbor who pissed in the hallway. He didn’t tell anyone about these things, and nobody knew Ray Dwyer was living in such a shithole, until George gave Ray a ride home one night about a month after he’d started working for him.
“Oh, Ray.” George squinted through the windshield. “You can’t live here. This place is a dump.”
Ray wanted to say that he couldn’t afford anything better, and this was true, but he was so grateful and happy with his job that he didn’t want George to think he had to pay him any more. So Ray shrugged and lied. “It’s fine, George. I don’t mind it at all.”