The Lesson (5 page)

Yes, George. I’m sure your mother is a very nice lady, too.

Gina set Kevin’s order on the table in front of him. He didn’t need anything more so she left him to enjoy his lunch and newspaper while she tended her other customers. Every once in a while, though, she looked in his direction.
My, he looks sharp in that uniform.
But then she remembered the pants and sweater he wore on Wednesday night and the corny jokes and was embarrassed to be thinking of Kevin in that way.
Like Jekyll and Hyde, only Dr. Jekyll dresses better
. One time when she looked toward his table she saw him watching her. Their eyes met and she glanced away. After that she stopped looking in his direction and kept her attention solely on her five other tables. She’d have to get back to him eventually, though, because she had to give him his bill. But she tallied his order before she got to his table so that she would have no reason to linger.

“How was everything?” she said, placing his bill on the table.

“Perfect, thank you,” he said, looking directly at her and ignoring the bill.

She wanted to rush away from his table but she had to remember to treat him like an ordinary customer, though she was certain there was nothing ordinary about this customer. Before she could think of an appropriate exit line he spoke again.

“You like nice in your uniform.”

“Thank you.”
You do too.

“You like working here?”

“It’s convenient. The university is just across the street. Makes it easy to work a shift between classes. With tips it probably pays more than an office job. I could do worse, I suppose.”
Though some days waiting on lecherous old men who think they’re God’s gift to women is more than I can bear.
“The lunch counter…“ She lowered her voice and motioned with her eyes toward the front of the restaurant where a group of middle-aged men munched silently over their plates. “We’re not allowed to be rude to them.”

Kevin raised an eyebrow as if to say he understood, and then he wordlessly folded his newspaper and set it on the seat. Somehow Gina already knew what was coming. The Big Question. She should have avoided the small talk like she planned.

“Are you busy tonight?” he said.

“My feet hurt an awful lot after a shift.” She stalled. She wasn’t scheduled to work the dinner shift and she didn’t have a date. Homework always had to be done but that was true of other irritants such as hand-washing pantyhose and mopping up dust bunnies under the refrigerator. She wouldn’t insult him with such lame excuses. He was too sweet. But she wouldn’t lie either. She decided to walk down the middle of the road: truthful but vague. Her feet really did hurt after a shift—a dinner shift, that is—because it was twice as long as a lunch shift.

“We’ll go someplace where you can sit down.”

“I’m sure I’ll be working all evening, Kevin. Every Friday night one of the girls gets a hot date and calls in sick at the last minute. Then one of the owners calls me in a panic, begging me to come in. When that happens I take the shift for the extra money.” Now that probably
would be
the truth by six p.m., but Gina felt guilty, as if she had told a lie.

“You could be the girl with the hot date.” He smiled that innocent smile again.

He sure made things difficult. He was too sweet. His polyester pants were too awful
. Hot date? Lord, forgive me for laughing.
She had caused all this, and now she didn’t know what to say. But then she remembered with small relief her commitment to stick to business. After all, Big Bick’s paid her to wait on customers, not date them.

“Can I get you anything else?”

“If you work tonight, what time will you get off?”

“Would you like a refill on your soda?”

He declined. Gina wished him a nice afternoon, he returned the sentiment, and then she turned away to serve her other customers. She could feel his eyes following her as she moved from the dining room to the kitchen and back again, but she was determined to make him think that she had dismissed him from her mind, so she avoided looking in his direction. After a few minutes, while she lingered behind the ice cream case where she could observe him without his knowledge, she saw him get up, pay his bill, and leave. She waited until he had exited the restaurant to clear his table. He had left her a ten-dollar tip for an eight-dollar lunch.

She was happy for the ten dollars, but it didn’t change anything. She wasn’t impressed by big tippers; she’d learned that they often wanted more than just a refill. And she certainly wouldn’t have her head turned by some guy just because he looked like a dreamboat in uniform. She wasn’t like those silly girls back at Buchser High who swooned over senior high boys who enlisted, and then fresh out of boot camp came swaggering back to campus on a pretense to parade around in their official-looking duds and funny haircuts. Some girls would fall in love with a uniform worn by a guy they wouldn’t give the time of day to in civilian clothes. Gina was smarter than that. She had a career in her future. And if a man played a part in her personal drama, he would be educated, sophisticated, and well off. In short, he would be nothing like the strange bird that was Kevin.

As she predicted, before Gina’s lunch shift ended, one of the owners, the wife, pulled her aside to say that a waitress on the dinner shift had called in sick. Gina agreed to come back at five. She wasn’t particularly happy about it. Friday night meant five hours on her feet, and sometimes her section was too full of demanding customers for her to even take a fifteen-minute break. But she needed the money. Dinner tips were always larger than lunch tips because of the higher cost of the dinner menu.

#

The Friday night dinner shift was more nightmarish than usual. Even with Gina there they were short-handed. By nine forty-five, fifteen minutes before closing, Gina was exhausted and famished. She ached with fatigue and her feet were on fire. She hadn’t had time to eat a meal at the restaurant on either shift, and though there were several places on campus to get a bite to eat between classes, she wouldn’t dream of spending her precious tips that way. The fall quarter had begun and she still didn’t have all her textbook money.

She encouraged herself as she wiped down tables that she would fix something to eat the minute she got back to her apartment. But that thought led to another, equally troubling one: she had walked to campus this morning, expecting to walk home again midafternoon after her last class. Now that she’d agreed to work a dinner shift, she’d be walking the seven blocks to her Lincoln Street apartment in the dark. The neighborhood of tidy, older homes between Big Bick’s and her apartment wasn’t particularly dangerous. But walking alone at night, anywhere, gave her the willies. She decided it would be best to avoid Homestead Road, with all the traffic and attention that would bring, and instead walk down quieter, less traveled Monroe Street.

Her aching feet and empty stomach continually pushed her thoughts toward closing time. She was trying to remember what, if anything, was in her refrigerator that she could camouflage with peanut butter to call a meal when she saw Kevin walk through the swinging door of Big Bick’s.

He startled her, but at least this time she didn’t mistake him for an officer. That would have been impossible, actually, because no (sober) sailor would follow orders issued by an officer who wore mud brown polyester slacks, a butter yellow T-shirt with I FOUND IT! printed in big red block letters across the chest, and a lime green ball cap with DIRK’S “WE EAT DIRT” CLEANERS screaming across the front in lavish black embroidery, all accented nicely by rose-tinted, wire-rimmed glasses.

Kevin took a seat at the lunch counter where Gina was tidying up. Pilar, who had been doing the nightly clean-up of the freezer case, set down her water bucket, leaned against the counter as if she had nothing in the world to do, and watched.

“Thought you might like a ride home.” Kevin smiled as he took off the ball cap and laid it on the counter, clasped his hands, and waited.

“How do you know I didn’t drive?” Gina gave him only a cursory glance so that their eyes met, enough to be civil but without a drop of warm and
fuzzy. She wouldn’t return the smile or stop cleaning. She just continued to wipe the counter, the damp gray dishrag swooshing back and forth, back and forth. She was stalling. It was so difficult to know how to deal with persistent guys like Kevin who couldn’t take a hint. Where was the blonde bombshell best friend when you needed a distraction?

“You walked.”

Gina stopped wiping the counter. He was annoyingly confident. Now she was mad.

“You don’t have to be an FBI agent to drive by a girl’s apartment to see if her car is parked out front,” he explained.

Gina shook her head in disgust. “I’m sure there must be a law against stalking girls you hardly know, and if there isn’t, there should be.” As she said this her eyes rested briefly on the screaming ball cap. How could a guy who was such a lady-killer in uniform be so clueless about civilian clothes? Was he that artless? Or did he simply not care what other people thought?

She struggled. Maybe it was time to just get it over with. She wasn’t interested. He was a lot of fun but he wasn’t her type—especially when he dressed like a stoplight—and he would keep coming around if she didn’t make that plain. She would do anything she could to keep from hurting him, but she had to speak the truth. In an effort to be as diplomatic as possible, she decided to keep the emphasis on herself, not him.

She stood directly in front of him. In her side vision she could see Pilar, who was still making no pretense at getting any clean-up done. At some level below the surface, Gina was annoyed at both of them. She was beginning to feel like the star attraction in a dog and pony show. All she lacked for the part was a big ruffled collar.

“Kevin, I think you should know that I just came out of a hurtful relationship six months ago, and I don’t think—”

“Well then,” he interrupted. “Isn’t that why God gave us ice cream? Let’s go get some.”

He waited, his eyes on her, while she stood, immobile and speechless, her wiping rag still in her hand. This was not at all the response she had expected. Her girlfriends delivered their lines far better, administering the customary sympathy she had come to expect, but not Kevin. She had just said the words that normally evoked pity and understanding looks from every quarter, but Kevin ignored all that. He saw only an opportunity to get his foot in the door—again. He sure made things difficult, though she smiled to herself in spite of it all: she had to admire the guy for being such an opportunist. But still, he wasn’t her type. It was time to be blunt or this nonsense would go on forever. Aware that Pilar was still listening and not wanting to humiliate Kevin publicly, Gina leaned into the lunch counter close to his face and sotto voce, to soften the effect, she said:

“Kevin, I’m not interested in dating anybody right now.”

“Oh, I see.” Kevin studied her eyes for several seconds. Then he said in an exaggerated, sing-songy way: “
Ooh, it hurts so good. Stop it some more.” Then he leaned forward on the counter and looked directly into her eyes, challenging her.

Gina had never heard this little ditty before. “And what’s that supposed to mean?” though she had an idea. Too angry to
be reasonable now, she set down her wiping rag and stood with her arms crossed on her chest.

“A girl who’s not interested doesn’t show up at a Bible study dressed like a ruby goddess. Nor does she invite guys into her apartment to spend half the evening socializing.”

Gina opened her mouth and then shut it again, burning with embarrassment. Why was her life one sticky guy situation after another? Gina’s Law: Be friendly to some guys—especially those who wear polyester pants—and they stick like glue. She knew she’d been unwise to let a guy she hardly knew into her apartment. Dumb, dumb, dumb. She heard Pilar snickering behind the freezer counter.

“My reasons for dressing up for Wednesday’s meeting are not what you think.”
Not exactly, anyway. It’s more complicated than that.
Why she had worn her killer red dress was none of his business. And besides, he was a guy. He wouldn’t understand why a girl felt a need to break out of the stifling cocoon she had spun for herself six months ago. And he certainly wouldn’t understand why she had felt the need to spin one in the first place.

“Furthermore, I didn’t invite you in, Kevin. You invited yourself.” She didn’t like the unfriendly way that sounded. “But I did have a really good time.” She delivered this last, tacked on thought hoping to soften the delivery. After all, it was true. She’d had a wonderful time. His stories and jokes were very entertaining.

“You can’t walk home in the dark alone. And you can’t eat scrambled eggs
every
night.” He said this without a trace of a smile. He wasn’t making fun, and she sensed no triumph in his voice. She looked at him, poker-faced, hoping he could not see from her eyes that he had scored a bull’s eye—twice.

Maybe she was just hungry and exhausted. Maybe she was tired of doing nothing but work and study. Maybe she’d had too many long and lonely weekend evenings since Michael left. Maybe it was all these things combined with Kevin’s persistence and her trepidation about walking seven blocks back to her apartment alone in the dark. Maybe she was weary.