Mildred Pierce - James M. Cain [95]
G E S S L E R
LONG & SHORT DISTANCE
H A U L I N G
DAY & NIGHT
S E R V I C E !
Mrs. Gessler looked at it intently. "He's on call all the time, too. All he needed was a chance. Next week he's getting a new truck, streamlined."
"Is everything all right upstairs?"
Mildred had reference to the terms of Mrs. Gessler's employment. She didn't get $30 a week and 2 per cent of the gross, as Ida did. She got $30 and 1 per cent, the rest of her pay being made up of free quarters in the upper part of the house, with light, heat, water, food, laundry, and everything furnished. Mrs. Gessler nodded. "Everything's fine. Ike loves those big rooms, and the sea, and the steaks, and—well, believe it or not he even likes the flowers. 'Service with a gardenia'—he's thinking of having it lettered on the new truck. We're living again, that's all."
Mildred never cooked anything herself now, or put on a uniform. At Glendale, Mrs. Kramer had been promoted to cook, with an assistant named Bella; Mrs. Gessler's place was taken by a man bartender, named Jake; on nights when Mildred was at Beverly or Laguna, Sigrid acted as hostess, and wore the white uniform. Mildred worked from sun-up, when her marketing started, until long after dark; she worked so hard she began to feel driven, and relieved herself of every detail she could possibly assign to others. She continued to gain weight. There was still something voluptuous about her figure, but it was distinctly plump. Her face was losing such little color as it had had, and she no longer seemed younger than her years. In fact, she was beginnmg to look matronly. The car itself, she discovered, took a great deal out of her, and she engaged a driver named Tommy, older brother to Carl, who drove the truck. After some reflection she took him to Bullock's and bought him a uniform, so he could help on the parking lots. When Veda first saw him in this regalia, she didn't kiss him, as she had kissed the car. She gave her mother a long, thoughtful look, full of something almost describable as respect.
And in spite of mounting expenses, the driver, the girl Mildred engaged to keep the books, the money kept rolling in. Mildred paid for the piano, paid off the mortgages Bert had plastered on the house; she renovated, repainted, kept buying new equipment for all her establishments, and still it piled up. In 1936, when Mr. Roosevelt came up for reelection, she was still smarting from the tax she had paid on her 1935 income, and for a few weeks wavered in her loyalty. But then business picked up, and when he said "we planned it that way," she decided she had to take the bitter with the sweet, and voted for him. She began to buy expensive clothes, especially expensive girdles, to make her look thin. She bought Veda a little car, a Packard 120, in dark green, "to go with her hair." On Wally's advice, she incorporated, choosing Ida and Mrs. Gessler as her two directors, in addition to herself. Her big danger, Wally said, was the old woman in Long Beach. "O.K., she's crossing against the lights, Tommy had his brakes on when he hit her, she's not hurt a bit, but when she finds out you've got three restaurants just watch what she does to you. And it wQrks the other way around too. Sooner or later you're going to have those five people that got ptomaine poisoning, from the fish, or say they did. And what those harpies do to you, once they get in court, will be just plain murder. You incorporate, your personal property is safe." The old woman in Long Beach, to say nothing of the five harpies on their pots, fretted Mildred terribly, as many things did. She bought fantastic liability insurance, on the car, on the pie factory, on the restaurants. It was horribly expensive,