Chapter Seven

Me and Melvyn Douglas

In the morning I had to leave the house early, to pick up my laundry before work. When I got to the laundrymat I was wor­ried the Scrub-a-Dub laundry man might of already took all my clothes and threw them in the trash can. But the attendant was a Pentecostal lady with a tall hairdo, and my clothes was still sitting in the bottom of dryer Number B-4. The socks and towels was damp, the shirts was wrinkled, the whole mess should of gone right back through the washer, but I had no time. I run the dryer one cycle to see if the wrinkles would come out of my shirts, but it didn't work. At least the towels got dry. I stuck my wrinkly clothes in the basket. I put the basket in the back seat of the station wagon. When I pulled out of the parking lot, there was three minutes to go before I was late to Joy's.

I pulled up the alley and parked next to the back door. After I got my apron off the nail on the soap shelf, I swept the kitchen floor and mopped all around the grill. Then I took a wet rag over to the prep table. I wiped the table down so I would have a nice clean place to work. But while I was pushing crumbs off in my hand, Guy banged in the kitchen door.

"You've not got time for that," he said. "I need you out front, Helen can't come in, she's got a headache."

"By myself?" I said. Guy was already across the kitchen, at the grill. I had to chase him down. "Do the lunch tables by myself?"

"Helen does it,” said Guy. He took a piece of newspaper and made a twist to light the oven with.

"But when - ” I started, but I stopped. Guy knew I helped Helen, I come out and put out the salt shakers and all that. If I was Helen today, who was going to be me? Helen thought she was the one with the headache.

I got the salts and peppers and took them out to the tables. All them tables, twenty tables, four chairs to a table.

Oh shit, the courthouse clock was dinging eleven times al­ready and I didn't have my coffee made. My ice tea glasses needed ice in them, all my spoons and forks and knifes was still back in the dishwasher rack. I didn't have a pencil to take my orders with. I didn't even know what we had to eat. I put the coffee on first, I needed some to clear my mind. While the coffee was perking I run back and asked Guy what our specials was.

He was scraping the grill off with a charcoal block. "Fish sandwich, or pork tenderloin on a bun," he said."Mixed vegeta­bles or cole slaw."

"Okay," I said. I turned my order pad around and wrote it down on the cardboard. I felt a big rush of cool air, then I heard the screen door slam. When I looked, there was Mary Lou tak­ing off her jacket and hanging it up by mine. I cheered up, but I didn't have time to even say hi, I had to run out to the dining room.

The coffee was done so I poured myself a big cup. It was strong and went in my blood fast. I got all my set-up done by 11:15 and started taking my orders. But by 11:20 I was getting behind already, by 11:30 the whole thing was crazy. I only had two minutes to spend on each person. Two minutes to see them, bring them coffee, wait for them to decide what vegetable, bring their food, go get catsup and extra bread, bring the coffeepot around two or three times, bring the check, run the register, clear the table.

The next trip in the kitchen, I peeked to see what Mary Lou was doing. Maybe she could come help me, when she got caught up. But she had three things going at the same time. Dishes was piled up in the sink, half a cut-up onion and a knife was laying on a counter. Over at the grill, Mary Lou was flip­ping over Guy's tenderloins for him. No way she had time to help me.

If I was going to make it through lunch, I had to cut out half the work. Either asking them what they wanted, or bringing it out. If they ordered it but they didn't get it, they'd really be mad, so I decided I better bring it out and skip taking orders.

I took my order pad and made out eight tickets, each one said TEND, MIX VEG, COFFEE. Then I took the stack of tickets back to Mary Lou. "Here," I said. I run out front, scooped up ice in my ice tea glasses till I got a trayful, then I made out six more tickets that said TEND, SLAW, TEA, and took them back. Guy was working the grill again. I picked up the first eight plates and hustled out front. I started at the front window and worked my way back, I started setting down plates in front of custom­ers. The men at each table looked like they was confused or maybe mad, but I just told a lie. "Out of fish," I said. "That's what we got." They all picked up their fork and started in. They had been sitting there long enough to get grateful.

When I come back in the kitchen, Guy had my next six tickets ready and he said, "All of them want tenderloins?"

"Yep," I said. "Here's six more," I give him my tickets and hurried on out.

When Guy run out of tenderloins and mixed vegetables about twelve-thirty, I give everybody after that fish and cole slaw. I got a good plan going on the drinks. I give two tables coffee and the next two ice tea. If they wasn't happy, they could reach across the aisle and trade with somebody.

I didn't make nothing on tips, but I wouldn't of anyway. If Helen had of been there, she would of beat me to my tables. At least I was all caught up. I felt pretty smart till I looked out the front window and seen the giant tour bus.

It was painted white-and-blue, and it had "Star Travel Tours" on the side. The door folded back and people started stepping out. And stepping out. And stepping out. Tourists, a bus full of tourists, all wanting lunch. The regular lunch customers was gone, just two or three retired guys sitting over half a cup of cold coffee. When the tourists crowded in the door, the old guys put down their quarter and went out through the kitchen. I guess they was scared of anybody that would come from out-of- town to eat at a dump like Joy's.

They was a pretty grim-looking group, the bus people. If I could of caught them at the door, I would of told them about the lunch special at Enrico's House of Fine Spaghetti, crabby people served for half-price on Wednesday. But the tourists got inside too fast. When they got all their behinds planted, there was only seven empty tables left. Then the driver come in and sat by himself. Now six tables was empty. Fourteen tables was full, four chairs each.

I put my head in the kitchen and said, "Uh, Guy, can you come out here a second?" Once he seen fifty or sixty people waiting for lunch, he'd tell them he didn't have enough fish sandwiches to go around. They could go get them a burger, there was a Dairy Queen in Sheltonville, just a ten-minute drive.

Guy come out and looked around. He cleared his throat. "Be just a second on lunch, folks," he said. "We're a little short on help. Carol, get the folks some coffee. You all like spaghetti?"

They all nodded their grim faces.

Guy banged out into the kitchen. "Hey," I said to the swing­ing doors. "Hey, Guy?"

When I hit the kitchen Guy had already opened up six huge cans of tomato sauce, and he was spinning the can opener around a can of mushrooms.

"Guy," I said, "we don't even got enough plates for this. Tell them quick, before they get settled. If sixty people wanted to eat here, they could of called."

Guy give me a sad look, and kept on opening up cans. "Helen's off sick," he said, "I got to make all this food, Mary Lou's working her butt off washing dishes, and you won't even take a few cups of coffee out to them tired people that's been on the bus all day."

I looked at his face and I seen he believed himself. Guy wasn't mean, his brain just had a short in the figuring-out sec­tion. He come in early and worked all day, he just wanted to make a dollar. He had big puffy bags under his eyes, Helen probably kept him on the run.

"All right," I said. "How long's it going to be on the spa­ghetti?"

"Ten minutes," said Guy. "Ten minutes at the most. Take their coffee out."

Mary Lou was throwing silverware in the racks, crash and rattle, rattle and crash. "Hey, Mary Lou," I said, "we got enough plates for all these people?"

"Dream on," said Mary Lou, but she give me a smile. "We ain't got enough anything. Here's how many we got." There was about twenty clean plates on the drain counter, and four dirty ones. "Look up on top of tire soap shelf," said Mary Lou. "There's some paper plates up there. That’d help me out on dishwashing, too."

When I come out of the waitress station, with the coffeepot in one hand and a tray of ice tea glasses in the other, there was one more chair taken. Evelyn Price had come  in.

"Oh, hey, Evelyn," I said. "You come in to eat?"

"Yeah," said Evelyn Price. She looked at the ice tea tray. "What are you doing?"

"Everything," I said.a

"Looks like it," said Evelyn. 'Where's your help?"

"Don't have none," I said. "You want coffee?"

"Yeah," she said. 'When you got time."

I brought her coffee and ice water. "Be back," I said. But it was ten minutes, or maybe fifteen, before I made it back to Evelyn's table.

"Here I am," I said.

Evelyn had took a menu out of the holder, and she was hold­ing it open. "Let's see, what am I going to get?"

"Ptomaine poison, probably," I said. "Anyway, all we got's spaghetti."

'Well, then I'll have the spaghetti," she said.

I brought her a plate of spaghetti and a glass of milk, and then I had to run to the register to take somebody's money. Finally the place cleared out, and the tourist bus zoomed off.

When I got back to Evelyn's table, she had drunk her milk and coffee, but there was a lot of spaghetti still laying on her plate.

"I was kidding about the ptomaine," I said.

"No, if s not that," Evelyn said. She had a milk mustache. "I just had a big breakfast."

She didn't either, she never ate breakfast except maybe a piece of toast.

"No need to save my feelings," I said. "I didn't cook that greasy stuff." I took her check off the table and tore it up, I wasn't being Guy's accomplice in the crime.

"Well, thanks," Evelyn said. "Hope you don't get in trouble."

"Nah," I said. "Nobody knows what's going on around here."

"They must pay you pretty good, then," said Evelyn.

"Not really,” I said.

"Then what are you doing it for, honey?" Evelyn said.

"Beats me," I said. "I started out trying to pay room rent."

Evelyn said, "Why don't you try over to Reed Rest Home? I have a friend who lives there. Ruthie's always saying they're short on help. You could start tomorrow, I bet."

"I'm ready to try it," I said. "Anything'd be better than this. I just got to run the vacuum cleaner out here real quick."

"Ain't you done enough?" said Evelyn.

"Yeah," I said. "I have." I went to the kitchen door and called in, "Guy, I'm leaving."

He come out to the doorway, carrying two dirty potatoes in his hand. "You haven't swept yet, have you?"

"Not just leaving," I said. "Leaving leaving."

"Oh," said Guy.

"Guess you'll have to run the sweeper yourself," I said. I thought of something. "Don't make Mary Lou do it."

"She went on home," said Guy. "She just works a couple hours on Wednesday."

I looked him in the face. He was tired of all his help quitting. If he would of turned his brain on, he might of figured out why. He was so depressed and everything, I didn't want to ask him for my paycheck. Hell, let him keep it, he had to put up with Helen.

"Ready?" said Evelyn. "You just following me home?" She got out her car keys, ready to go.

'"Yeah," I said. But I didn't move. I really needed my pay.

"You want your money?" said Guy. He stepped over behind the cash register and hit Total. When the cash drawer popped out, he pulled out some dollar bills. Then he started sliding out dimes and nickels, but he let the change fall back in the drawer. He pulled out another dollar and laid it on top of what was already in his hand.

"Here," Guy said.

I took my money and said, "Thanks." Me and Evelyn walked out the front door. That was the end of my job at Joy's. I felt great, except I wished I could of said bye  to Mary Lou.  

* * *

The next day, Evelyn drove me  over to the Reed Rest Home, she had to go over anyway to visit her friend Ruthie. She walked me up to the front door, then she went down the side hall to see Ruthie. I waited in front of the reception desk, at first I was leaning my elbows on it, but that looked kind of sloppy. I stood up straight, to make a good impression. I snapped up to attention but that was overdoing it. Now I looked like a soldier. Just when I worked myself down to a good normal position, the receptionist popped up in my face like a jack-in-the-box. She was there all the time, bent down putting supplies away in the cabinet underneath of the desk. The receptionist had one of those real tight permanent waves like a old-fashioned movie star. She had the same kind of dark red lipstick too, so thick and red it looked like she put it on with a crayola. "Good afternoon," she said. "May I help you?"

"Yeah, I guess so," I said. "Who do you talk to about a job?"

"You're looking for work?" said the desk lady.

"Yes," I said.

"When can you start?" she said.

"Oh," I said. "Well, now, I guess. I mean not right now, I need to go home and do some stuff. But I mean, tomorrow, should I start tomorrow?"

"Probably," the desk lady said. "Let me send you in to Mrs. Reed." She picked up the phone and dialed. After a second she said, "Colette? There's a new orderly here, do you want to speak with— Yes, that's what I thought. Just a second, I'll send him in."

"Her," I said. "I'm a her."

"Oh, I'm sorry," she said. "I thought you were a young man. Colette, I'll send her right in." She put down the phone and swung open a little wood gate in the reception desk. "Mrs. Reed's office is back this way, hon."

I went through the little gate. The receptionist pecked on Mrs. Reed's door a couple times. Then she turned the doorknob, pushed the door open, and said, "There you go."

I felt like it was cr-e-e-eak, Inner Sanctum. But being broke made me brave. I walked in and looked Mrs. Reed in the eye­balls. Man, what a pair of eyes. Real heavy dark eyebrows over dark brown eyes. They made me feel like a teevee camera was looking at me, not mean, not friendly. I felt like she knew how old I was, that I grew up in Indiana, about Rusty and Joy's and Marlene and the biscuits-and-gravy I ate before I set out for Colorado.

"Hey there," I said.

"Hey there yourself," Mrs. Reed said. "Is that how you say hello in—let me guess, Indiana?"

She was a good guesser. "Yeah," I said. "I mean, yes."

"You can sit down if you'd like to," said Mrs. Reed. "It isn't necessary to be polite unless you enjoy it."

"You mean I can decide to be polite?" I said.

'It's much nicer that way," said Mrs. Reed.

"Okay," I said. "Whatever."

“I take it that Marjorie hired you at the front desk?" she said.

"Marjorie?" I said. "The desk lady? Well, yeah, I didn't fill out any application or anything."

"We don't need any applications,” Mrs. Reed said. "We have Marjorie." She was laughing, she laughed enthusiastic like Rusty's Aunt Shirley. "Marjorie can tell a face, since she's been choosing our employees we've never had a problem. Can you begin work tomorrow?"

"Yeah," I said. "When? I mean, when would you like me to come?"

"Choosing to be polite, I love it," said Mrs. Reed. "Go on out to the front desk, Marjorie takes care of the schedules."

When I come out of Mrs. Reed's office, Marjorie wasn't there but I seen Evelyn standing with another old woman by the re­ception desk. "Hello," she said. "Everything going all right?"

"Yeah," I said. "I'm not quite ready to go yet. I have to get my schedule and all."

"That's fine," said Evelyn. "Ruthie and I'll just go down to the reception room. Come get me when you're ready."

Marjorie come back to the desk and give me a blue smock. Then she took me back to the nurse station to get a T.B. shot. After that we went back up front and she give me my work schedule. I was supposed to come in at five-thirty the next day. Five-thirty in the morning. I caught myself thinking, "At Joy's I didn't have to be in till noon." But then my mind said, "Forget that shit right now."

* * *

That night me and Rusty was both sitting up in our room. Rusty was down on the floor, polishing her shoes. I was fidget­ing. Rusty said, "You nervous about starting work in the morn­ing?"

"No," I said. "After Joy's, no job could bother my nerves. I'm just restless." I couldn't tell her what I was really thinking. Like why did I come out here with her, we was never going to get to Colorado. Redskin Brooms wasn't really too bad of a place. I missed Elsie Pelton.

I even had a new Photoplay, but I didn't want to look at it. I tried laying down, but I was too fidgety. Evelyn Price was prob­ably watching teevee downstairs. Maybe I could go down and watch too. Hell, my legs would be jittering and I'd have to get up and go in the kitchen about fifty times. Evelyn Price would be watching me instead of the teevee. The Bad Nerves Show, starring Carol Frehardt. I better just stay upstairs. I laid down on my bed.

When Rusty got done polishing her shoes, she put them on a piece of newspaper and slid them underneath of the bedside table. She'd took the old gray shoelaces out, they had little black stripes from going through the holes. She put the shoelaces in the trash and then she went downstairs. When she come back up, she had a couple of bottles of beer with her.

"Here," Rusty said. "One's for you."

"I better not start," I said. "I have to get up at five."

"Okay," Rusty said. 'Til drink yours. You sleeping or fidget­ing?"

"Fidgeting," I said.

"Thought so," she said. She reached over to the top of the bedside table. "Here." Rusty give me the station wagon keys. "Maybe if you go drive around, you'll get the sleepies. Roll down the window, drive slow." She put her beers on the dresser where she could reach them, and settled down on her bed.

I was already so tired I was ready to fall over. But I was too nervous to sleep good, and if I had bad dreams, I wouldn't get my rest. I could feel the bad dreams coming on. I took the keys and went downstairs.

Evelyn Price was in the living room, eating crackerjacks and watching Perry Mason. I heard the criminal say, "Your evidence is in the river. You got nothing on me, Mason." Evelyn Price was already about asleep on the couch, she wasn't too worried about Perry losing the case.

I went out and got in the poor old beat-up wagon, and drove, slow and steaming, through New Naples. There wasn't nothing to see but a Chevy full of high school boys that yelled, "Pull over, honey, we'll give you a ride!" I just acted like I didn't see them and pulled out on the highway.

I went past lots of fields, corn and wheat fields. I seen head­lights every so often. I had to stop at a railroad crossing while the train cars went clicking and clacking down the tracks. My headlights was like show lights, spotlights on the train car names. Santa Fe, Santa Fe, L&D Lines, Speed King, another Santa Fe. After the caboose rolled by, I drove across the tracks and I started to see a few houses. Then there was a few more, a town was coming up. I missed the sign so I never got the town name. The main street was called Main Street. There was a barber shop, a funeral par­lor, a variety store, and a furniture store. I didn't see a hardware store or a grocery store, so I knew there was another drag strip besides Main. I turned right, at the comer by J and E Variety, onto First Street. First Street had the library, Owings Handyman Hardware, and Bell's IGA. The grocery store had a S&H Green Stamp sign in the window.

There wasn't nothing else on First Street except a movie the­ater. There was one of them big theater signs in the front, you know, a marquee or whatever. But there wasn't any letters on it, just lit-up empty lines, I guess everybody knew what was show­ing already. I turned the station wagon around in the parking lot of Dr. R. W. Hastings, Family Dentist. When I come back up First, I seen the other side of the Royal Theater marquee. It said THURS. IS OLD MOVIE NITE. BRING GRANDPA AND GRANDMA. I guess they used up all their letters on just that one side.

It was Thursday. I pulled over to the curb across from the movie house and tried parallel parking. I couldn't get the station wagon in the space between a Ford pickup and a Dodge Dart. I give up and moved up the block to a big empty space. I shut the car door and walked up to get a movie ticket. There was a chalkboard in the ticket booth, behind the ticket lady. It said

        Grandpa and Grandma saw this one on their first date!

        Greta Garbo, Melvyn Douglas. “Ninotchka”

        Next week: “The Guns of Navarone”

        Shows at 8:30,10:00.

I couldn't believe it. "Ninotchka," my favorite movie in the world. I had seen it on teevee four times, but I never thought I would see it in a real theater. By my watch it was two minutes till eight. I was way too early for the eight-thirty show, but I didn't want to wait around on a strange street.

The ticket lady looked at me funny when I said, "One, please." Forget her, I could go to the movies without a boyfriend, it wasn't a law. I bought my ticket, and went on in. In the lobby, I passed up the popcorn. I didn't want the popcorn lady looking at me too.

I had my pick of seats. I picked fourth row, fourth seat. Any­time I went to the movies I always tried to get fourth row, fourth seat, it was like a little game I had. Back home, if I went to the movies with Rusty, for a joke she would try and sit in my special seat. But I always said "My seat" and she moved.

There wasn't but one other person in the Royal Theater, sit­ting right in front of me. It was boring to sit there and wait by myself. Once in a while a family and their Grandma come in, or two people on a date. I could tell how many come in by their voices, I didn't turn around.

When the lights went dark, not too many seats was full in the Royal. Nobody wanted to see old movies, I guess, except me and a few Grandmas, and boyfriends that wanted to take their date someplace dark. The cartoon started, it was Daffy Duck. Daffy was going to the moon in a rocket ship. The moon people wasn't too friendly. Then the rocket ship got blasted off into Outer Space. The End.

During Daffy Duck, the person sitting in front of me, the same one that was there when I first come in, was real fidgety. Sitting up straight, sliding down, squeaking the seat, crunching popcorn. Reminded me of me.

After tire cartoon was over the movie screen went black, then a sign said No Smoking. Then dark again, till the MGM lion roared, the picture wiggled, and the sound went r-r-r-r. I thought, "the projector's going to break" but the picture got focus and the movie started. Greta Garbo, Melvyn Douglas, Ina Claire ... in ... Ninotchka. The seat squeaker in front of me had a big wiggly fit and then stuck a box of popcorn over the seat at me. I didn't know what to do, the box was just hanging there. I took some to get it out of my face. "Thanks," I whispered.

Somebody behind me said, "Shh." I hated getting in trouble for being polite.

On the movie screen, Melvyn Douglas was talking on the phone about this royal jewelry. There was a Russian rich lady in a hotel, and these three Russian peasant guys had her jewels. Melvyn Douglas was going to get them back for her. He looked like a guy that knew jewels, Melvyn Douglas. He wasn't very handsome and he was named Melvyn, but he had that movie star look.

The person sitting in front of me got up, all bent over, and moved out sideways toward the aisle. I thought, "Good job, seat squeaker. Go to the restroom. Stay a while." But oh no, here was feet scooting along the row, right toward me. I never should of took that popcorn. If a hand come out at me, I was going straight out the other aisle and get somebody, the popcorn lady or somebody.

I acted like I didn't notice the seat squeaker had sat down next to me. When the popcorn box come at me again, I didn't even turn my head. Somebody else might of left, but I couldn't leave a Greta Garbo movie, she was going to get off the train any second. My favorite scene in my favorite movie, no creep was taking my eyes off Greta Garbo. When she gets off the train, she's supposed to be real Russian and mean, so she has this gray lady's suit and no makeup and she has normal straight- down hair, no fakey curls. And she won't let the bellboy carry her suitcases, she carries them by herself. Greta Garbo, she might not of been a real actressy actress like Olivia de Havilland, but she was the most beautiful woman that ever was alive. Anybody that didn't think so had never seen Greta Garbo get off that train in her Russian clothes.

The seat squeaker leaned over toward me. I got ready to run for the aisle. "It's me," said Mary Lou. "Didn't you know it was me?"

"No," I said.

"Shh," somebody behind us said.

The movie come out good. The dumb-looking Russian men opened up their own cafe and Greta Garbo did love Melvyn Douglas after all. When the credits was still going up, Mary Lou got up and started moving toward the aisle. "I guess she's leav­ing now," I thought. I wished she'd stay and talk to me, but anyway I had to get up early, so okay. I was dying of thirst, I went and got a Coke from the popcorn lady. She was closing up her counter and she didn't want to sell nothing else but, like I said, I was dying of thirst.

I made a big mess when I was walking out of the movie theater. I was trying to push the straw down through the Coke lid, and the lid popped loose from the cup. Drops of sticky cold Coke sprinkled all down my front.

The glass door popped open in front of me. Mary Lou was holding it for me. Her hair was dark brown, pushed back be­hind her ears. She had on a man's shirt, dark green plaid, with the sleeves rolled up. The tails was hanging out over her blue jeans. Her jean legs was wrinkled up on top of her sneakers, cause she bought her pants too long.

I didn't want her to know how happy I was to see her. I didn't even know her. Sure, when we worked at Joy's she helped me out, but Betty Tow Truck helped me out too. I wouldn't have felt dizzy and happy walking next to her.

"Going back to town?" said Mary Lou.

"Town?" I said. We already was in town. "Oh, town,” I said. She meant New Naples. "Yeah. You?"

"Yeah," she said.

We didn't say nothing else for a while. We was walking up the sidewalk, in about two seconds we was going to be next to the station wagon. We got there. "Well, this is my car," I said.

"Oh," said Mary Lou.

"See you," I said, and I got in. I drove back to the boarding­house, and about a minute after I got in the door, I fell asleep.

* * *

I was kissing Mary Lou in the front seat of the station wagon. It didn't seem funny at all, it seemed normal. I was so happy. I always thought I didn't have feelings. It made me feel so alive, caring for somebody. And she was so pretty, those green eyes. I felt so happy.

Then I woke up. I felt like a crazy person. It took me a second to remember I was staying at Evelyn Price's. I went down the hall to the bathroom sink and washed my face off. I looked at myself in the mirror. I looked the same but everything was dif­ferent. I come back and got in my bed.

"Something the matter?" Rusty said, out of the dark.
"Nah," I said.

"What is it?" Rusty said. "You can tell me. If you want."

"Well," I said. "It's..." My words was so dry in my throat they wouldn't come out. "It's, I don't know what to...well, there's— It's Mary Lou."

"Who's Mary Lou?" said Rusty.

"She worked with me in the kitchen," I said. "At Joy's."

"Oh," said Rusty. "You love her?"

"No," I said. "How could I? I don't even know her. Besides, I'm not...that way."

"You're not?" said Rusty.

"I wasn't,” I said. I turned over in bed and pulled the sheet up around my neck. "I wasn't before."

"You just never cared for anybody before," Rusty said.

She was right. But starting up that kind of life, to always be different, who wanted that? But never caring for nobody, that was worse. But all this deciding was going nowhere. Mary Lou was normal, not like me.

"She wouldn't have me," 1 said.

"That part don't matter," said Rusty. "I mean, you know what I mean. It's you that does the loving, anybody can love anybody. It's better if they love you back, but hell, that's only...that^''s sometimes, but you can't wait to love them till you see what they're gonna do. You have to just go ahead, or nobody will—care for anybody. Or whatever."

She went right to sleep. I couldn't believe it. Here I was, tell­ing her my most secret feelings, and she was sawing logs. Rusty was used to love, it wasn't new to her. I turned over on my right side, I always slept on my right side.

Later on, right before it got light outside, I woke up cause Rusty was laughing. She was asleep in bed, laughing. "C'mere," she said to whoever she was dreaming about. "C'mere." Must of been nice to have fun in your dreams.

                                               * * *                                                  

I talked Rusty into getting a job at Reed Rest Home. The first day I was there, I seen they were real short-handed, and asked Marjorie if Rusty could come talk to Mrs. Reed. Marjorie made me wait at the front desk while she went into Mrs. Reed's office, then she come out and said, "If your friend wants a job, bring her with you when you come in tomorrow. She has a neat ap­pearance, and she's honest?"

"Yes," I said.

"All right, then," said Marjorie, and that was it.

The worst part about going to work at Reed Rest Home was getting up at five o'clock, it was still dark outside, I would look out the window at the moon and my body said, "Hey, you got up by mistake, it's still night.  Put me back in bed."  Rusty was the opposite of me.  As soon as the alarm bell started ringing, she popped up like Dracula when they pull the stake out.  Once Rusty got awake, I had to hit the shower fast.  If Rusty got in the shower first she would stay twenty minutes and I might as well go on down to Evelyn Price's Frigidaire and pour some ice cubes over my head.  

Usually Rusty and me would have Cheerios and coffee down in the kitchen, it was too early for the paper to come so we had to look at each other.  Rusty's hair always got try on the top first, the top of her hair would be sticking straight up and the sides would still be wet down and slick.  

"If you had a sweater with a A on it, you would look just like Alvin the Chipmunk," I told her one morning.

"Which one are you? Simon?" she said. She scraped out her soggy leftover Cheerios in the trash and rinsed her bowl clean. "No, wait, who was the little chubby one that giggled? That's you. Shit, I can't think of his name—no, wait, Curley!"

"That's Three Stooges," I said. "We better go. We got one of our stupid-ass meetings this morning. Got your smock?"

All the orderlies had to wear a blue smock. Mrs. Reed had Marjorie give us just one each so we had to run sink water over them and hang them up on the towel rack. If you didn't take time and stretch them out even while they was wet, in the morning it was Wrinkle Time and you had to plug in the steam iron.

Rusty forgot her smock about once a week so we had to turn the station wagon around and come back. Before I got the sta­tion wagon fixed, we had to pull over and cool down the car every six miles. My first paycheck from Reed, I drove to Noble's Sunoco and for thirty-six dollars, Roy Noble done something to the radiator that fixed it. He told me what he done, but all I understood was "That'll be thirty-six dollars." After it got fixed, the car could make it to Jefferson without steam pouring out of the hood. It took me about twenty minutes to drive to Jefferson. It took Rusty eleven minutes.

Jefferson was bigger than New Naples, it had two big grocery stores and a coffin factory and a radio factory and Reed Rest Home. When we pulled in off Speer Road, we come down a little slope of a hill and into the parking lot of Reed. The rest home was set way back, Mrs. Reed had money, she could afford three acres. She had the parking lot paved and striped every summer, so the yellow lines was always bright on the black asphalt.

The main part of the building was made of red bricks, and the rest was wood painted white. The Main Floor was long and sideways, as wide as the whole parking lot. No sign in the yard, just a metal plaque up over the front door that said REED in silver letters.

Sammy Hunt was usually on the front porch when me and Rusty got there. Sammy was mentally retarded, he always stayed on the porch from six o'clock in the morning until seven- thirty at night, and if anybody went in or out, Sammy opened the door for them. He would of been a good usher except for yelling, "Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!" He wanted to tell you stuff but usually he forgot what he was going to say. He just started yelling "Hey!" There was only two things he never forgot to say, one was "What for supper too-night?" and the other one was, "You tear up your sta' wagon?" He always seen the side with the wood ripped off.

I said, "Don't know what's for lunch, Sammy" and Rusty said, "Yep, we tore up the station wagon." Sammy held the door for us and we went in past the front desk. We walked past Marjorie at the Reception desk, past Mrs. Reed's office, past the guest restrooms. Then we cut through the New Dining Room to the back hall where the time clock was. Reed got patients from three counties so it was big, four wings, forty-five beds in each wing.

Me and Rusty hit the time clock a couple minutes early, so we could beat the crowd at one minute till. If the clock clicked us late before we could punch in, we got a little grouchy note in our pay envelope. As soon as we clocked in, we went down to the employee lounge, where everybody else was at. Nobody wanted to be in the activity room, for the weekly meeting, till we had to be.

Marjorie come over the loudspeaker and said, "Attention. At­tention. First shift to the activity room, please. First shift to the activity room. Thank you." Some people didn't move a muscle yet, but I put out my cigarette and got up. "Coming, Rusty?" I said. She said "in a minute" but she lit up a new cigarette.

The meeting was on good attendance. If you came in six months without missing a day, Marjorie announced your name on the loudspeaker during Daily Almanac in the morning, and you got a parking space near the front door. Big deal, you got eight feet of their asphalt for a month and Marjorie said your name once. If they wanted to impress me, they better give me something that cost money

After the meeting, Rusty give me her lunch sack. I took her lunch and mine on my way through the kitchen. Rusty worked in East Wing and I was in West. I stopped and put our brown bags in the walk-in cooler and said hi to Rebecca the night baker. Then I went out the door by the ice cube machine,

through the Old Dining Room to West Wing. All the people with catheters was in West Wing, and the ones with bedsores, and the ones with feeding tubes. Rusty was in East Wing with the alcoholics and the confused ones that wandered outside if somebody forgot to shut the door.

Really, at first the people just seemed like their problem. After I was there a while, they seemed like people. Some people, it was hard to tell what was wrong with them. Before I worked at Reed, I always thought a rest home just had old people. But there was lots of medium-age people, not too many young ones but lots that was only forty or fifty.

Rusty had to run around more than me. She had to chase down Frank or Mary or Olive if they was trying to sneak out­side or hiding in the Guest Lounge or somebody else's room. When she wasn't chasing patients down, she was trying to make them stay underneath the shower water, or stay in their dining room chair, or stay in bed during Rest Period.

I didn't have to chase nobody, West Wing patients never moved at all. But I had to pick them up to change their bed, and take away their drainage bags when they got full of pee, and go get stuff for the nurses, four-inch gauze and tongue depressors and syringes. And fill out Symptom Sheets and Report Sheets, the nurses wrote down if anybody had a fever or a bedsore. Then the last thing of the day, we had to take their Nurse's Notes and copy them off on a Symptom Sheet. Then we took a Report Sheet and put down if anybody wouldn't eat their breakfast or if they bit somebody.

Me and Rusty ate lunch at different times, East Wing ate theirs from eleven-thirty to twelve and we had ours from twelve to twelve-thirty. One day at lunch I got so bored I took a walk. Usually I didn't eat in the lunchroom. The first couple days I did, but the other orderlies talked about their boyfriend or beauty parlor haircuts or new shoes. I didn't have a boyfriend, my hair was cut in a short pixie, and I had one pair of white uniform shoes for work and one pair of sneakers for home. Nothing to blab about.

So this one day I walked down to the Jefferson Public Library.

I never was too much of a reader, you know, where I would just get a book and sit down with it. But I had a hour for lunch, so I went up and down the book shelfs, looking, till I seen some­thing I heard of, Moby Dick. I took it up to the desk, and the woman said I had to get a library card. It was pretty easy. All they wanted me to do was fill out a paper, and they let me check out a book right then.

I didn't like Moby Dick, it was boring. So the next day I turned that in and I got out Pride and Prejudice but that Jane Austen just went on and on, I should of known by how thick it was. When I shoved Pride and Prejudice down the return slot, the library lady looked at me. "You must be a fast reader," she said, cause I had Moby Dick one day and Pride and Prejudice tire next.

"No," I said. "Moby Dick was boring, I only got to page 31."

So she said, "How about non-fiction?"

"I'll give it a try," I said, so she took me over to Biography. I got out This I Remember, by Eleanor Roosevelt. I took it back to the lunchroom at Reed and started on the first chapter. It was pretty interesting, about being tire President's wife and all the strange letters people wrote her and what lies the reporters put in the newspaper. I never had thought about how the paper might have lies in it.

I read one chapter every day, it took almost three weeks. Dur­ing lunchtime I always ate my sandwich and Oreos fast, so I could do my chapter. But the other workers in the employee lounge had to bring it up. Every day. They asked me when was I going to Harvard or they asked me if there was any good parts. Dirty parts is what they meant. But I told them it wasn't a nasty book, the wife of the President wrote it. They said Oh.

I had to renew Eleanor Roosevelt after Chapter 13, but I made it all the way through. After I was done, I was planning on moving out of Biography into Adventure. But then somehow I got out Madame Curie instead, that was really great. Before she was a famous scientist, she had to take care of her little sisters and brothers at home, then she had to go be a governess of somebody else's kids and send the money home. She finally went to Paris but they wouldn't let her in the college, so she just had to sit on the edge of the room and try and memorize every­thing. And she didn't have a science laboratory, she had to work in an old junk shed. But she discovered radium anyway.

One night after work, I was laying on my bed, reading the last chapter of Madame Curie. Rusty was laying on her bed, drinking a Pabst Blue Ribbon. She said, "Whatcha reading, Ein­stein?"

"A book," I said.

"Yeah, I see it," said Rusty. "What one?"

"It's about Madame Curie," I said.

"Who is she, a movie actress?" Rusty said.

"No, she was real," I said. "She was a woman scientist from Poland." I held up the book so she could see a picture of Ma­dame Curie. "She discovered radium, it was this big deal cause of X-rays and all that."

Rusty said, "A Polack discovered some big science thing?"

"Yeah," I said. "I guess Polack jokes are fake, she was real smart. I'm going over to the library tomorrow so I can take this back. You want to go with me?"

"I don't know," she said. "They got anything I want to look at?"

"They got Adventure," I said. "They got Sports."

The next day she went over with me, and picked out a Sher­lock Holmes book. She wouldn't read her book at work, she didn't want the other orderlies watching how slow she was. It took her a long time to do one page. But Sherlock Holmes was worth it, I guess, one night when I come upstairs, Rusty was sitting in bed with her book, frowning over it.