Adrian's Girls

Amy was the earliest to show up for her shift, per usual, but unusually she saw a white piece of paper taped to the restaurant’s front door. Something about the paper put her off, and rightfully so, for when she snatched the page off the door, it read, ‘Restaurant permanently closed until further notice by the Internal Revenue Service.’ Then, on the bottom, a phone number, an address, and an official-looking government seal.

“You have got to be kidding me,” Amy said with a scoff, turning the page over in her hands as if it would reveal a hidden clue.

“What’s that?” Asked Barb, coming up the walkway behind Amy, positively dripping with tote bags.

Amy revealed the paper to Barb, whose eyes widened, then thinned. She gently dropped her array of bags, lifted her reading glasses, and tucked the paper from Amy’s hand to examine it for herself. She, too, turned it over in her hands after the investigation. Perhaps if they put their minds together and rubbed the paper, a genie would pop out, but no one so easily solved their problems around here.

“What does it mean?” Amy asked. “Are we out of a job?”

Barb shrugged, unsure herself. “Internal Revenue Service, is that the IRS?”

“Guess so,” Amy said, letting her claw clip out, seeing as she likely wouldn’t be working that day.

“So what does that mean? Andy skipped out on his taxes?” Barb suggested, making a tutting noise of disapproval with her tongue. “The restaurants making good money, packed every night. It’s certainly not that he can’t afford it. Why wouldn’t he pay his taxes?”

“Who isn’t paying their taxes?” Vicki’s raspy voice emerged on the scene.

“Andy,” Amy told her, again displaying the paper with showmanship until Vicki snatched it.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Vicki said, examining first the door and then the dark room behind the smudged windows. “Does that mean we’re closed, ladies?”

Amy and Barb shrugged and shared a glance.

“Has anyone called Andy yet?” Vicki asked.

The women shook their heads, and Vicki slid out her telephone and listened to it ring until she heard the familiar tone of a voicemail box. “Hey Andy, it’s Vicki. Amy, Barb, and I are standing outside Adrian’s, and there’s a note from the IRS out here. Says we’re closed. We were just wondering what we should do and if we were supposed to work today. Alright, call me back, hm bye.”

“Maybe he isn’t awake,” Barb said bullishly when Vicki got off the phone.

“It’s 11 o’clock,” Vicki said, fixing her eyes on the worn wooden tables inside, gears turning over in her mind. “He’s usually here by now.”

Amy leaned against the cool brick, glanced at her watch, and confirmed with a nod. “He is.”

Vicki tried calling again, then Barb, but both calls rang for some time, then went to voicemail. When Amy conceded and tried calling, the call no longer rang and went straight to voicemail.

“He turned off his phone,” Amy said, striking the same line of suspicion as Vicki while analyzing plausible explanations, some reasonable, some unreasonable, for Andy turning off his phone.

“What?” Barb asked, showing a hint at being behind the times.

“It went straight to voicemail. That means Andy turned off his phone.” Amy said, staring out into the parking lot, mouth slightly agape.

“Why would he do that?” Barb asked.

“Because he doesn’t want to talk to us.” Vicki supplied, pulling out her phone one last time and impatiently dialing. “He doesn’t want to talk to us because he saw this coming.” The call went straight to voice mail, and an irritated smirk darkened Vicki’s face. “Rats fleeing a sinking ship.”

“Hey Andy, Vick again. The girls and I are out waiting by the door of the restaurant. Your restaurant.” She said, positively vexed. “Or maybe I shouldn’t call it that anymore. We want you to get off your lazy ass and get down here to explain what is happening.” She almost hung up but added. “At least be man enough to tell us you fucked up to our faces.” Vicki elected to hang up before anything crasser slipped out of her mouth on a recorded line. “Helpful as always.”

Vicki slipped her phone into her purse and traded it for a frayed packet of Marlboros. She slunk down to her heels against the wall and fished out a lighter, offering her spoils to the other women.

Amy accepted the cigarette, then plunked down beside Vicki. Barb watched with a preoccupied fascination.

“Does this mean we’re out of a job?” Amy asked again, allowing Vicki to light her cigarette and drew a long puff.

Vicki did the same. “Suppose so.”

Amy sighed miserably. “God, Andy is such a sleazebag.” She recalled a scene from the previous night. “Do you think he knew this would happen, like for real? Because last night I saw him sell some old woman two $50 gift cards right before we closed.”

Vicki snorted. “That’s probably not even the sleaziest thing he’s done.” She took another puff on her cigarette, blowing the smoke out her nose while she spoke. “Remember when he slapped Heather?”

“Well, I’d slap Heather,” Amy said, laughing, and the other women laughed. Even Barb, who was standing over them like a patient grandmother, with her glowing coy smile.

“Remember that little vein in his forehead that would pop out when he’d yell at us?” Vicki said. The recollections they shared of their boss were nowhere near funny. Still, the humor of their circumstances bound them together now. “Bout popped off his face that day when Mary broke the ice tea maker.”

“Mary didn’t break the ice tea maker,” Amy said.

“I know, but Andy sure seemed to think she did. That day I gave that little vein in his forehead a name.” Vicki paused for a beat, never shying from a building moment. “Fefe the ferocious.” She performed a small modified jazz hand at the reveal, which made Amy and Barb laugh.

“It’s hard to think of that man as ferocious when he looks like a little rat dropped in a pomade bottle,” Vicki said.

They roared with laughed, and finally, Barb did something that surprised both of the other women. She inclined two experienced fingers and reached for Amy’s cigarette. She took a long drag while the other ladies watched with awe.

“And what about that ridiculous hairpiece?” Barb said.

Watching Barb smoke with them was akin to seeing a glimpse of youth in an old, worn face. You wouldn’t know it from looking at her, dressed now in a patterned fall sweater and reading glasses that dangled around her neck on a delicate chain, but there was once a young woman in Barb.

They giggled like schoolgirls about Andy until the mood had grown somber. The reality that they were without a job settled in, and each woman stared off at some fixed point on their horizon.

“It was a mighty fine pleasure working with you, ladies,” Amy said.

The two women nodded; the autumn sun hung high in the sky, and it was clear Andy was not coming by now. He was always in by now. If it had been an average day, they would have called the police and assumed he was dead in a ditch somewhere, but today, he probably just wished that he had been.

Customers had been showing up since 11, and the waitresses, still stationed out front, had taken turns turning them away. Rumors were indeed flying all over town. Some people came just because they had heard the stories. Small-town folk were like that. However, most of Adrian’s clientele were geriatric, and they hadn’t heard a peep from the rumor mill.

“I doubt we’ll find a better place to work. Even with Andy, the tips here were better than elsewhere in town. It’ll be a massive pay cut, no matter what.”

“Have you girls ever thought about doing something besides waitressing?” Barb asked.

“I don’t know. It just doesn’t feel realistic to me.” Amy said colorlessly. “Have you, Barb?”

She swatted playfully at them. “I’m far too old for a career change. Hell, I’ll probably retire.”

“Crazy to think about having the kind of money you need to retire. I’ll be working until the coroner comes to pick me up for my funeral.” Vicki said.

Barb shrugged. “My husband has a pension from the water company. I waitress for the extra spending money. Only started working to help put my girls through college. I’ll be alright.” She tapped the cigarette on the edge of the ashtray. “My K-Mart trips will take a hit, though.”

“My kids will keep me working until the skin falls off my bones,” Amy said.

“Hear! Hear!” Vicki said, clinking her cigarette against Amy’s like flutes of champagne.”

“They’ll grow up one day, and time will clear itself up for you, and soon it will feel strange that there were ever tiny humans living in your home in the first place and that you were once young enough to keep up with them,” Barb reassured them. “It will get easier.”

She looked at Vicki, “What about you, Vick? Do you have any big dreams?”

Vicki shrugged. In all their years working together, she never expressed wanting anything more than what she had. Perhaps it was a serene sense of realism or life beat those dreams out of her long ago, but she was once a little girl, and little girls hardly dreamt of growing up to be waitresses.

“What did you used to want to be as a little girl?” Barb asked.

Vicki looked at Barb, eyes young inside an aged face. “A nurse. My mom was a labor nurse. She helped to deliver babies. I always wanted to be just like her, but,” she trailed off, looking into the wooden paneling above them.

“But what?” Barb asked.

“But I couldn’t make it through school. I dropped out after my first semester in Kent Liverpool, and,” she shrugged, “it was just too hard. Then I got pregnant, and it was just out of the question.”

Barb nodded solubly. “And what about you, Amy?”

Amy smiled down into her lap at her clasped hands. “I always wanted to be a mom. My mom was always busy growing up, my dad wasn’t around much for us, and we were poor. She worked all the time, and when she wasn’t working, she slept or drank with her friends. She didn’t have much time for me.”

Her voice was full of self-reflection and doubt. It was clearly the first time she’d told anyone anything of the sort. Perhaps the first time anyone had asked.

“It was clear that we were an inconvenience to her. To her, we were always just another fee she had to pay, another mouth she had to feed, and more people to clean up after.” Amy said. “It wasn’t her dream, but it would have been mine. I wanted to sit around with them and play dolls all day, and I said I would never yell at them or do anything wrong.”

“When I was young, I wanted to be there for my kids. I still do.” Amy said, sadness dripping off her words. “My mister got his hours cut at the plant, and he doesn’t seem to be in any rush to get them back. Doesn’t do much to take care of the kids. He’d rather sit around with his beer buddies drinking and hollering. I wouldn’t say he was much of a father, but he was more than I ever had.”

She turned angrier. “He lets me work myself to death, picking up his slack. Someone has to keep the lights on, someone has to pack the lunches still, and it isn’t him!” Amy looked back at the dark restaurant and frowned. She almost started crying, but she held herself together. “Now I’m out of a job, and Sierra has homecoming next week, and I promised I would buy her a dress from the JC Penny when I picked up my check today, and now-” She gestured her hands towards the restaurant, coming a bit more undone.

Barb put her arm around Amy’s shoulder. “There, there, we’ll get our checks.”

“Do you believe, Barb, that someone being shut down by the IRS will have money to fork over to us?” Amy said, finally beginning to cry. “I took extra shifts this week to pay for her dress. It was supposed to be a big check. My bank account is already overdrawn.”

Heavy sobs racked through Amy, and Vicki threw an arm around her when they did.

“Cheer up,” Barb said weakly. “I have some old dresses from when my daughter was in school. They’re awful dated, but I could spruce them up a bit. Make them a bit more modern?”

Amy sniffled, feeling warm at the gesture. “Would you really do that?”

“Sure would. It’d give me the chance to use my sewing machine for the first time in forever.” Barb said, and while they drew up plans, a man in an ironed suit came to the door.

“You ladies work here?” He asked, looking into the dark restaurant.

The women nodded.

“Any clue where your boss might be?” He asked.

“Do you think we’d hang out here if we knew where he was?” Vicki said.

“Personally, I’m surprised you’re here at all. It’s nearly 1:30. You were supposed to open two and a half hours ago.” He said, looking at his watch. “I would’ve been long gone by now.”

“We’ve been reminiscing,” Barb said.

“And smoking.” He pointed out.

“Don’t be a spoilsport. Let some old ladies get their kicks in before they’re back on the job hunt again.” Barb said.

The man sighed, tapping his polished shoes to glide in front of them. “Well, I was expecting your boss to be here. The office needs to talk to him rather urgently.”

“Tell them to get in line.” Vicki laughed, lighting up another cigarette. Offering one to the other women and even the tax man, which he declined.

“What did he do?” Amy asked.

“He owes the state and the federal government over $160,000 back taxes, and that’s saying nothing of the unpaid unemployment benefits Mr. Adrian owes.”

The ladies stared off in shock. “How can that be? We’re packed every single night.”

The tax man shrugged carelessly. Andy’s case was not unusual or surprising to him. “It’s not unheard of that people don’t pay their taxes, ma’am.”

“Then what happens now, since you’re so familiar?” Vicki asked.

“Well, if Mr. Adrian can come up with the money by the end of the week, we’ll let him off with just a warning, but given we’ve been after him for nearly a year and a half, I doubt he’s had the chance of heart to just pay it now.”

“How could anyone come up with that amount of money?” Barb asked.

“We’ve worked with him several times on payment plants. Sometimes people just have other vices.” Said the tax man.

“So we’re finished?” Amy asked.

The tax man nodded. “Sorry, ladies.” He fished a business card out of his tailored pocket and passed it off to Amy. “Give me a call if he shows, and you’re still here. Maybe we can get this all straightened out.” He turned doubtfully on his polished shoe and left.

Amy flicked the card back and forth against her palm. Letting silence hang for a moment before asking. “What did you want to be, Barb?”

Barb smiled. “I went to a teacher’s college when I was young. I made it about halfway through when my mom got sick. My father drank himself half to death, and there was no one to take care of her.” Barb shrugged. “It took more money than I would have liked to take time off to care for her, but I don’t regret spending all that time with her.”

Barb breathed, “When she died, I didn’t have enough money to re-enroll in the teacher’s school. I could have gone back. Mike wouldn’t have cared. He would probably support me doing it now if I wanted to, but that ship has sailed.”

“Were you always just a waitress after that?” Vicki asked.

Barb shook her head. “None of us are ever just a waitress, Vick.” She put her worn hand on Vicki’s knee, rocking it back and forth. “I’ve been one million things since. I’ve been a wife, I’ve been mother of the year, I’ve been the most well-read woman in my book club, the woman with the best chili at the potluck, and the best Avon seller in Columbiana County in March 1999.” They chuckled.

“And I’ll be a million more things after that.” Barb smiled a warm glowing smile at the other ladies. “And so will you.”

Barb propped herself to stand, then offered her worn hand to the other women and the other to gather her tote bags. “Come on, ladies.” She said. “It’s time for the next thing.”