Mildred Pierce - James M. Cain [23]
"Girls! Girls!"
"I caught her! She's been doing it right along, stealing tips off my tables! She stole tea cents off eighteen, before that lady sat down, and now she stole fifteen out of a forty-cent tip right here—and I seen her do it!"
In a moment the place was like a beehive, with other girls shouting their accusations, the hostess trying to restore order, and the manager flying out of the kitchen. He was a rotund little Greek, with flashing black eyes, and he summarily fired both girls and apologized profusely to the customers. When the two of them suddenly paraded out, in their street clothes, a few minutes later, Mildred was so lost in her reflections that she didn't even give her girl a nod. It was not until the hostess appeared in an apron, and began serving orders, that she woke up to the fact that she was face to face with one of the major decisions of her life. They needed help, that was plain, and needed it now. She stared at the water glass, twisted her mouth into a final, irrevocable decision. She would not do this kind of work, if she starved first. She put a dime on the table. She got up. She went to the cashier's desk, and paid her check. Then, as though walking to the electric chair, she turned around, headed for the kitchen.
CHAPTER IV
THE NEXT TWO HOURS, to Mildred, were a waking nightmare. She didn't get the job quite as easily as she had supposed she would. The proprietor, whose name was apparently Makadoulis, but whom everybody addressed as Mr. Chris, was willing enough, especially as the hostess kept shrilling in his ear: "You've got to put somebody on! It's a mess out there! It's a mess!" But when the girls saw Mildred, and divined what she was there for, they gathered around, and passionately vetoed her application, unless- Anna was taken back. Anna, she gathered, was the girl who had waited on her, and the aggressor in the fight, but as all of them apparently had been victims of the thefts, they seemed to regard her as their representative in a sense, and didn't propose to have her made a goat. They argued their case in quite noisy fashion, letting the counters pile up with orders while they screamed, and making appropriate gestures. One of these gestures wiped a plate into space, with a club sandwich on it. Mildred caught it as it fell. The sandwich was wholly wrecked, but she put it together again, with deft fingers, and restored it to its place on the counter. The Chef, a gigantic man addressed as Archie, watched her exhibition of juggling with impassive stolidity, but when the reconstructed sandwich was back on the counter he gave her a curt nod. Then he began banging on the steam table with the palm of his hand. This restored quiet as nothing else had been able to do. Mr. Chris turned to the girls. "Hokay, hokay."
The question of Anna being thus settled, the hostess hustled Mildred back to the lockers, where she unlocked a door and held out a menu. "Take off your dress and while I'm finding a uniform to fit, study this menu, so you can be some use. What size do you wear?"
"Ten."
"You worked in a restaurant before?"
"No."
"Study it, specially prices."
Mildred took off her dress, hung it in the locker, and stared at the menu. There were fifty-five- and sixty-five-cent lunches on it, as well as appetizers, steaks, chops, desserts, and fountain drinks, most of these bearing fancy names that were unintelligible to her. In spite of her best concentration most of it was a jumble. In a minute or two the hostess was back with her uniform, a pale blue affair, with white collar, cuffs, and pockets. She slipped into it. "And here's your apron. You furnish your uniform; it comes off your first check, three ninety-five; you get it at cost, and you keep it laundered. And if you don't suit us, we charge you twenty-five cents' rent on the uniform; that comes out of your check too, but you don't have the whole uniform to pay for unless we really take you on. The pay is