Then Bianca was there, and Liz let her have it direct, with what she told me but more, expressed in potent language, at which Liz was quite good. And Bianca just stood there and took it, by the benches in the middle, while I kept on changing my clothes. And then lo and behold, who should be there but Tom. He looked hangdog and pale, but passably sober now that he had some coffee in him, and perhaps my slaps had knocked some of the drunkenness out of him as well. “What’s going on?” he wanted to know.
“What do you think’s going on?” Bianca answered. “I’m sorry, Tom. But the kind of help I get now, these things can happen, and do. Please overlook it, this once. It won’t happen again, I promise you.”
“I asked what’s going on?”
“She’s fired, that’s what’s going on.”
“No, Bianca, she’s not. Not over a smack or two.”
“A smack? She was giving it to you like Floyd Patterson in the fifth round, and not only you. She’d have decked me if I hadn’t stepped back at the right moment.”
“But you did.”
“Your friend didn’t, and got a right to the jaw.”
“From a southpaw,” Tom said. “He’ll recover.”
“Listen, Tom, I can’t have a girl in this place that treats you the way she did. Treats any customer like that, but especially you. That-”
“Goddam it, I said she’s not fired.” He advanced on us both and Bianca shrank away.
“She’ll apologize, and it won’t happen again. Isn’t that right?”
“She’s not apologizing for anything,” Liz shouted, but I put a hand on her arm.
“I was out of line, Bianca, and I’m sorry. I lost my temper.”
Liz was having none of it. “Joanie! I saw what-”
“Oh, he deserved it, and worse. But I still shouldn’t have done it.”
“Bianca?” Tom said. “I’m satisfied, are you?”
“Three broken dishes! And a stain in the carpet-”
“I’ll pay for it.”
“I can’t take your money, Tom-”
“I’ll pay for it.”
She looked as though this might finally be her breaking point, the time she put her foot down and wouldn’t be moved. But finally she muttered, “O.K., O.K., Tom. If you want it that way.”
“She stays?”
“If she controls that temper in the future.”
Liz snapped: “How about if Tom here controls his hands? And after I vouched for you, too!”
That began another round of it. It took us ten minutes to get it all settled down, with Tom leading Bianca back to the bar and Liz and I changing back into our uniforms. When Liz and I went back there, things were going as usual, only with Bianca serving the drinks as Jake mixed them. In a half hour or so we closed, but when Tom and his party went, he still hadn’t paid his check, never mind the extra for the damage I’d caused. “Don’t worry,” Bianca told me, still mad, it seemed. “He promised he will. You won’t be out anything.”
“You bet she won’t,” Liz told her. “Did you hear me?”
“Liz, I heard enough for one night.”
10
Next day nothing was said, by Liz when she drove me to work, by Bianca after I got there, or by Jake when I got ready his set-ups, about what had happened the night before, somewhat I confess to my relief, though the fact that nothing was said meant I was still in the doghouse. Things went along as though nothing had happened at all, until lo and behold, who do I see sitting there, around eleven o’clock at night, at the same table he’d been at, the one Mr. White always sat at, looking at me, but the man who had grabbed my leg. I asked: “Can I serve you something, sir?” as though I’d never seen him before.
“Fizz water,” he answered. “Seltzer. Straight.”
I brought it, and he said: “And, my check, please. From last night. I should have paid and forgot.”
I had it, under an ashtray, at the end of the bar, and got it for him. It was forty some dollars, almost fifty. He put down two twenties and two tens. I handed one of the tens back, but he pushed it at me again. “For you,” he said. “I forgot you last night, too. Or at least, forgot to pay you.”
I put the $10 down again, and told him: “I’ll get you your change,” and did, putting a dollar and something, forty or fifty cents in silver, on the change tray in front of him. He pushed it, with the $10 added again, toward me, telling me: “I said, that’s for you.”
“Sir, I’m sorry: I want nothing from you.”
“… That how you treat an old friend?”
“Sir, you may be Bianca’s old friend, but you’re not mine-not an old friend or any kind of a friend. I don’t care for your money, and frankly I don’t care for you.”
I went back to my station, but he followed me over. I noticed some customers had started to stare, as perhaps I’d been louder than I’d needed to be. Quieter, I told him: “Will you please go back to your place? You’re attracting attention here.”
“I have something to say to you.”
“You have nothing to say to me.”
“As an old friend, I have.”
I led on back to his table, and he followed, at last sitting down again. To put an end to the wrangle, I said: “What is it you wish to say?”
“I want to apologize, for not knowing you at first-last night I’m talking about. I’d never seen your face, you see, and didn’t know it was you till I took a flash at your legs, from where you’d tossed me on the floor. They’re so beautiful I knew you then. They’re the most beautiful legs in the world-anyway, the most beautiful I ever saw.”
I could feel my face getting hot, and asked him: “Can I serve you something else, sir?”
“After last night, I think I’d better stick to seltzer for a while.” Then, staring down at my legs-my bare legs, don’t forget, as I was wearing the chambray hot pants Liz had bought me the day before- he half whispered, as though really shook: “They’re really quite unforgettable, Mrs. Medford.”
“… How come you know my last name?”
“I said: We’ve met before.”
“We haven’t-I’ve never seen you before.”
“It’s possible you didn’t notice me that day-but we met, I assure you. You live in a bungalow, just up a ways from this place. I called for you there, took you home there, and stayed by your side in between.” “… When was this?”
He named the day in June, and I felt the blood leave my face, for it was the day Ron was buried. I stared at him, and suddenly asked: “Who are you? And what is this, anyway?”
“Barclay’s my name,” he said in a casual way. “Thomas Barclay- Tom. I took the place of a friend’s son, Jim Lacey’s son Dan, who couldn’t respond to the undertaker’s call because he’d been out with me the night before. We’d gotten to drinking, I’m afraid-and you’ve seen for yourself how that can end up. But if Dan had simply failed to show, he’d have gotten the one more black mark the school had told him he couldn’t afford-in a word, he’d have been expelled. So his father asked if I would sub in: go for you in the car, pick you up and ride you over to the cemetery that day, and then ride you back. I didn’t much want to, I’ll admit, but his father’s an important man and I did it. And I was awfully glad I did. When you waved me goodbye, then blew me a kiss from the porch-”
“I? Blew you a kiss? You blew one to me, I recall, but I did no such thing.”
“I’m here to tell you you did. I couldn’t see your face as you had on a veil. I never did see it, that day. But I saw your hand move, under it and out.”
“Do you hear? I did not blow you a kiss.”
“I’m sorry, I was sure you did.”
“I may have fussed with the veil.”
“But you did see me blow you one?”
“I couldn’t very well help it. And I confess I was greatly surprised. It seemed a piece of insolence, to a woman bereaved as I was.”