Sunburn: A Novel(6)

Then again, they both knew she had to come home eventually.

Why couldn’t she leave that marriage as easily as she jumped from his car? Part of it was money, of course. Walking home cost her nothing, except a beating. To leave, she would have needed money. Leaving required planning. The jump from the car was the opposite of a plan. It was a moment of possibility. I’m not trapped. I come back to you voluntarily. A lie, one she told only to herself, but an essential one in those days. A lie that she finally made true, but it took a long time. Time and money. Everything worth having requires time and money.

Speaking of—she crosses the highway, and enters the High-Ho slightly after four. Early enough so it’s quiet, not so early that she seems unreliable. A lot of drunks like to work in bars. A man she once knew, a guy who fancied himself a real sage, liked to say, If you have a thing for elephants, you work in the circus. If you like little kids, you get jobs that give you access to them. Teaching, Cub Scouts, day care. Drunks like to work in bars. Polly has been chatting up the barmaid three nights running now, getting a rapport going, all the while ignoring the guy who’s staying at the motel same as her. Mr. #3, as she thinks of him, despite knowing his name. She overheard him telling the barmaid that his truck threw a rod, but he’ll be gone once they find the part.

“Any chance you can use someone else here?” Polly asks the barmaid.

“Maybe part-time,” she says. “On weekends and evenings, we need a waitress to help with the kitchen orders. But if you want work, you’ll do better going east to the beaches. No matter how much they load up on staff down the ocean in summertime, it’s never enough, and there’s always someone who can’t deal with the pace, the tourists. You’ll make better money, too.”

“Why don’t you work down there, then?” Polly takes out her pack of cigarettes, pushes it toward the woman, who helps herself to one. The barmaid has an apple-cheek prettiness, but she always smells of cigarettes, takes frequent breaks in the parking lot. Whereas Polly is that odd person who can take them or leave them.

“That hour drive is just that much too far. If I lived in Seaford or Dagsboro, maybe—but not from here. I hate driving these two-lane roads at night. Kids going too fast on the curves, old people going too slow, speed traps. Rather make just enough every week of the year, stay away from the tourists. They don’t tip well, anyway. Everyone’s passing through.”

Polly decides not to point out that she just said the money was better down the ocean.

“What would I make here, part-time?”

“Four nights a week, including one of the big weekend nights? Maybe two hundred dollars, mostly cash. But that’s if you’re good. Are you good?”

“I think so.”

“I wouldn’t mind having a deeper bench, that’s for sure. I’d like to take a weeknight off here and there. But it’s the boss’s decision.”

“What if I need to work off the books?”

The barmaid’s eyes narrow. “Why would you want to do that?”

“Not a matter of want. Need.”

“Someone looking for you?”

“Not for anything I did wrong. But—if I were to be found, yeah, it could be bad.” She smiles. “I’m not the first woman to make a mistake, you know?”

Don’t say too much and people will fill in the gaps, usually to your advantage. Polly has shown up out of nowhere, lives in a motel that rents by the week. She has a fading bruise on her jaw. That was actually from Jani’s head jerking up, head-butting her by accident, but all anyone knows is that there is a purple-green shadow on the right side of her face. She touches it now, absentmindedly, then snatches her hand away as if she doesn’t want to draw attention to it. Funny, touching the bruise is almost like touching Jani, smelling all those toddler smells. This is for the best, she reminds herself. Jani’s going to be better off in the long run.

“Let me talk to the boss. His name is Cosimo, but we call him Casper behind his back, Mr. C to his face.”

“Casper?”

“He’s white as a ghost. I’m Cath, by the way.”

“Nice to meet you, Cath.”

Cath goes into the kitchen, doesn’t come back. Time passes. Five minutes, ten. Two men come in, older guys. Polly’s seen them here before, drinking the cheapest draft beers. She walks behind the counter, pulls their drafts, writes down the transaction on a napkin. These guys always run a tab, she’s pretty sure.

When the barmaid returns with the boss, they find Polly still behind the bar. They don’t like her presumption, but they don’t mind it as much as they might. She has shown initiative.

“So you’re ready to start?” Cosimo/Casper asks. Mr. C. He is really white, blue white; his skin almost glows, although he’s not an albino. Maybe the closest thing you can be to one without being one. “Like right now?”

“I was just trying to help out. I know these guys don’t like to wait.”

“Yeah? What else you know about them?” That’s Cath.

“He’s Max and he’s Ernest.” Polly indicates which is which with her chin. “On weekends, they came in about five, but on weekdays they like to get started before the five o’clock news. They drink Natty Boh. They talk a lot about politics. And Agent Orange and DDT. They say food tasted better when they were allowed to use DDT, so I think one of them might be a retired crop duster, although maybe he just worked at DuPont. They also warned me that there’s a gun in your desk drawer, so I better not think of lifting so much as a dollar out of the till, Mr. C.”