We started off bussing tables at the Ponderosa—walking around the wooden picnic-style tables, picking up plates dripping in excess mushroom sauce, meat grizzle, and baked potato peels, then scraped it all into green garbage bags hanging on the sides of our trolleys. Afterwards, we loaded the plates into grey plastic tubs on our carts, slid silver coins from the tables into the tip jar, and wheeled the dishes over to the kitchen to be washed.
After a few weeks, Gina and I were both promoted up to the cafeteria-style food-order counter, where patrons lined up behind glass to choose from a variety of steaks with sides, pictured on a giant menu board. We stood on either side of Martin, who was training us how to take orders. We asked each customer what dressing they wanted on their salad, then scooped it on; whether they wanted bacon bits or chives or sour cream or butter with their baked potato; we asked how they liked their steak cooked and if they took mushroom sauce; if they did, we put one of those little brown plastic tents on their tray.
“D’ya wanna know what a girl in the youth hostel told me about how you can tell how much a guy likes sex?” Gina whispered into my ear on our first night as servers.
I looked at her blankly.
“By how he takes his steak. If he’s rare, he really likes it, and if he’s well-done, he’s a dud. Not into it. He probably wears thick leather shoes—the kind that lace-up—and reads science books every night.”
Gina started a game where she tried to guess how a guy would want his steak cooked as she watched him come down the line-up towards us. Thumbs up for rare and down for a dud.
One night a couple of guys came in wearing western hats, and we heard the chubby, more boisterous one, talking and laughing loudly. His buddy was quieter and maybe a bit of a bookworm, tall with long blonde curly hair, a pleasant face. A musician, perhaps? We gave the boisterous one a thumbs down and smirked when he ordered his steak blackened. When his friend said, “he’s black, and I take mine blue,” we broke into a fit of giggles. He caught our titters and, maybe thinking Gina liked him, grinned back at her, then flushed red.
Rome was sitting in the corner with Dave that night, drinking coffee and waiting for Gina to get off her shift, and she kept eyeing over to his table. She was worried that Pascale, one of the pretty waitresses, was flirting with Rome. Pascale kept passing by his table, seeing if she could get him anything. She could tell he was interested. When Gina saw Rome touch Pascale’s hand, her face flushed hot, and she steamed through the rest of her orders.
When it got slow, Martin sent us out onto the floor to help bus the rest of the tables. The musician-looking guy with the western hat—Gina dubbed him Mr. Blue—hadn’t been able to stop staring at her all through his dinner, and she went over to their table and started chatting him up, occasionally glancing over at Rome. I cleared off their table while they were talking. Mr. Blue was all over Gina with his eyes. She was telling him what time she got off work. I scraped the other cowboy’s leftovers into the garbage, and when I turned back to the table, Mr. Blue was holding onto Gina’s hand. She gloated in Rome’s direction and told him they’d offered her a ride home. Rome’s face fell, but he wasn’t going to show her he cared. Gina wouldn’t look at Rome or speak to him the rest of the night. Finally, he walked out in a huff, leaving the butt of his cigar smouldering in the middle of his baked potato.
So much for my hopes of a carefree summer with friends, I thought. Instead, I’d begun to feel as though I’d walked from one melodrama into another, captive to the consequences of someone else’s bad choices.
Gina didn’t come home from the pub until very early the following day. She flew in just as I was waking up. She fell back on the bed, face flushed, and spread her arms and legs apart like she was going to make an angel in the snow. She was still wearing her Ponderosa uniform and reeked of beer and cigarette smoke.
“I’m in remorse,” she told me, but she was smiling when she said it. She didn’t say why or who she’d been with.
I glared at her for quite a while, but she said nothing more. “Why would you?” I said, finally.
“…I don’t know,” she said. “Because he wanted me to, I guess.” Gina looked up at me from the bed, suddenly shy and girlish. “It was nice,” she said softly. She twirled a string of hair around her right index finger like a child. “He said my name again and again as he made love to me.”
We were silent for a few minutes. “Rome said it didn’t mean anything, you know.” I wasn’t sure what else to say. “He said he was stoned.”
Gina’s face fell. “Well, nobody said I have to marry him.”
“I thought that was what you wanted?” I paused, waited.
“Ah, what do you know?” Gina scoffed. “The last of the virgins.”
“Yeah, well, Kahlil Gibran says, ‘Love is the blind ignorance with which youth begins and ends,’ I quoted. So, I think you’re off to a pretty good start.”
I didn’t say what I was really thinking—that if he’s unfaithful or can’t commit that he isn’t good enough, that he can’t really be “the one.” I thought this applied to Gina too. But maybe I was young and arrogant because I hadn’t been in love yet, had never known what it might mean to walk away.
Gina didn’t speak to me for the whole shift that day. Instead, she kept looking around nervously. I figured she must be watching out for Mr. Blue, but he never showed. I looked in the back room when I finished work, but she’d left without me, so I decided to hitchhike home. That’s when I met the Polish guy for the first time. His real name was Ivan, but later Gina dubbed him ‘Mr. K.’ When he pulled over, he eyed me, shyly, I thought, from the corner of his eye. Mr. K. looked to be quite a bit older than me—about thirty, I’d say, maybe more.
My habit when I hitchhiked was after a car pulled over, I opened the passenger door and checked the driver out, saw what kind of vibe I got, and if I didn’t feel comfortable, I’d say, “no thanks,” and shut the door. The first time Mr. K. pulled over I could tell right away that he was a real gentleman. He drove a Plymouth or Cadillac or one of those long, expensive-looking Sedan-type of cars that he kept immaculate. Unfortunately, one of those deodorizers shaped like a Christmas tree with the scent of Pine-Sol dangled from his dashboard, and the odour made me feel sick.
Mr. K. always wore a suit—navy blue jacket with grey slacks and a crisp white shirt and navy tie, black lace-up shoes that always looked like they’d just been polished. That first time he picked me up, he told me he was coming home from the office where he worked. He said he had his own business, but I can’t remember now what he told me he did—insurance maybe? He said he still lived with his mother in a house in a lovely part of town.
The first time he picked me up, he leaned across the passenger seat and threw open the door for me with his long arm, and after I slid in next to him, he said, “I’m only picking you up so no one else will.” When I said nothing and sat in the passenger seat with my hands folded in my lap, waiting for him to finish, he said, “Young girls shouldn’t be out hitch-hiking alone.”
“I know,” I said, “but I’m late for work, and the next bus isn’t for an hour.” I stole a glance at him and blushed a little, then dropped my eyes when he stole a glance back at me.
Gina was already there when I got home. She was still in a bit of a sullen mood because of what I’d said about Mr. Blue. She took her blanket and pillow and went to sleep on the couch. She kept me awake, out there tossing and turning and trying to stifle her sobbing. For the first time, I began to worry about Gina. I thought she might not be able to cope, living on her own without an adult.
The following day, she awoke in an even darker mood, and there was a deep sense of hopelessness about her. However, by the time she got dressed and ready to go to work, she seemed suddenly calm. She still hadn’t spoken to me, though, and then she left without saying goodbye.
After that, Gina and I avoided each other and started making our own way to and from work; Rome would usually drive her, and I hitchhiked instead of taking the bus because I was always running late. I was sad that we weren’t talking anymore because I’d thought we’d started to become good friends. But Mr. K. took to being there, before I’d even stuck my thumb out. Each time, he asked me when my next shift was, and then, out of the blue, there he’d be.
Mr. K. was a real gentleman, just like I thought he would be. He spoke politely, and asked me about my job and what subjects I liked at school as my father would. Of course, he always wore a suit and tie, as my father did too.
I could tell, over time, Mr. K. was getting to like me, but he never asked me on a date or anything like that. But he was beginning to get a little possessive because he said things like he didn’t want me to take rides with anyone else. That he didn’t want anything “unfortunate” to happen to me, that I was to wait for him. But he never asked where I lived or came to the house.
A week or two later, Gina and I were talking again. I woke up one morning, and she was putting away the toilet paper and serviettes she’d pinched from the supply room the night before. She was in a foul mood. She looked agitated. She and Rome had another big fight when he picked her up from the Ponderosa after her shift. Somehow, he’d found out about Mr. Blue. He knew that she’d slept with him.
It was Saturday, and Gina wanted us to clean the apartment. My parents were driving to London from Scarborough to check up on me and see our new pad because we still couldn’t afford a phone. I didn’t really care, but Gina wanted to get the place tidied up before they arrived to create a good impression, and we were up early. I was sitting at the table in my caftan and hockey socks and wanted to finish my game of solitaire first. And I was preoccupied. I’d had a stormy night with Mr. K.
Somewhere along the line, Mr. K. started mentioning that maybe we could get married. That he owned his own house, the one he lived in with his mother and had a good job, and he wanted to take care of me. The evergreen deodorizer in his car swung back and forth from the dash as we wound around a corner and made me feel nauseous.
“I’m not old enough to get married yet,” I said.
Then, as I got out of his car, he grabbed hold of me by the arm, and the touch of his fingers on my skin shivered down through me. I leapt out the door, and after I was on the sidewalk, I wiped his breathy kiss from my mouth. “Ugh,” I thought; it felt like a lizard had licked my lips.
That’s when the real trouble began. After that, Mr. K. not only waited for me to drive me to work, he asked if he could pick me up after my shift too. Of course, I kept saying no, he didn’t have to, that Rome or the manager usually drove me home, which seemed to make him jealous.
“Must have been the Goddamned kiss of the century,” Gina said afterwards, and that’s how we came to call him Mr. K. For Mr. Kiss. For Mister Kiss of the Century. Gina was always calling everybody Mr. something. Mr. Black. Mr. Blue. Mr. K.
Afterwards Mr. K. started to ask me out and asked if he could pick me up after I finished my shift. I kept repeating that I was too young to get married; he persisted, and I lied and told him I already had a steady boyfriend.
The night before, after our shift at the Ponderosa, I’d gone into the back room to get my backpack, and Gina came waltzing in, giggling, and she said, “you’ll never guess who’s waiting for you.” So I took off out the back door before he could see me, and she and Rome drove around to the back, and they gave me a ride home.
That following morning, as I was waking up, the day before my parents were set to arrive, I heard Gina bang her backpack onto the counter. Then I heard nothing. Then the lid of the pail clinked against the tap. She turned on the water and started to fill the bucket. I turned to look as she removed items from her bag and set them on the counter. A sponge. Industrial cleaner. A container of Comet. She went to the hall closet and pulled out the mop.
I’d been so worked up about Mr. K. the night before that when I got home, Rome and Gina and I started drinking as soon as we got in and by the end of the night, we were all pretty drunk. Before bed, I ran myself a hot bubble bath to sober myself up. When I stood up from where I’d been sitting on the toilet and reached across to turn off the taps, my foot slipped on the shiny marble tiles, and I fell face-first into the tub of hot, soapy water. And now, I didn’t feel well. I was worn out from working nights at the Ponderosa and nursing a hangover, and I didn’t feel like doing anything. I was trying to quell my anxiety too. I’d had this uneasy feeling since I’d first woken up that something was going to happen. It was that same sense of foreboding I’d had when I’d first arrived, that inner instinct that came from constantly having to look out for myself. Alert to any whiff of danger.
“Well?” Are you just going to sit on your ass all day?” Gina commanded as she slopped a bucket of soapy water onto the floor and jammed the mop in.
When she spoke, I jumped. Rundle stopped purring at my feet and ran off, ducked underneath the bed.
I was sitting at the kitchen table with the cards laid out, playing solitaire, ashtray in the corner of the table, cigarette in hand as I held up my cards. I was still wearing my caftan and woollen hockey socks. “I’m almost finished this game,” I said, not bothering to look at Gina.
I was about to lay down my next card when I heard a sharp, violent sound. Whir. Whir. I looked up and spotted the ashtray through the corner of my eye as it whizzed past the top of my head. Gina had picked it up off the table and thrown it, in a flash, towards me.
I shielded my head with my hands as fear raced through me and my heart started to pound. “You could have killed me.”
“Something has to wake you up,” Gina said. She slopped the mop on the floor, winging it around my feet to wash underneath the table.
Anger was the only emotion I ever saw on her stoic face, hidden deep down in her irises. I thought I saw a quiver there that afternoon. A faint flicker of fear or rage or hate or evil or madness. Wild black.
All I could think was that she came by it honestly. When I felt that heavy ashtray hit the wall beside me, I wondered if she hadn’t picked up her mother’s tendency towards violence. I’d half expected her to swear the way her mother did too—“Fungoula, la merda, la fica, pisciare”—but she didn’t.
Come September, I enrolled in Grade 12 at H. B. Beal during the weekdays and still worked nights 25 hours a week at the Ponderosa. I was falling asleep in my morning writing classes but I was loving living on my own and prepared to put up with it despite Gina’s moodiness. Gina was working full-time by then. She liked the money so she’d quit school.
One Saturday, Gina, Rome, Dave, and I decided to meet at the Western Fair. I’d moved so many times while growing up that we’d never lived anywhere long enough to go to a fair, and I was excited to see the agricultural displays, the arts and crafts, the midway, and the rides.
We all arrived at the fair at the same time. It was dusk. Harried parents dragged sleepy children by the hand or carried them over their shoulders, and the night already had the feeling of an ending. None of us spoke. I watched the top of Rome and Gina’s hands get stamped, and their tickets get torn in two. I stood behind like a schoolgirl, looking at all the rides, while Dave got a spot in line. It felt nice, being there next to him, the comfort and familiarity. It was a lightness compared to living with Gina. I smiled up at him as we walked through the gate.
After the Ring of Fire and the Crazy Mouse Coaster, Dave and I went on the Zipper. Then we walked towards the kiosks and found Gina and Rome, standing side by side, shooting it out for a Panda Bear. Rome won the shoot-out and tossed the Panda high into the air in a celebratory victory. Gina scowled, even as Rome handed her the bear. I recognized that look on her face. It was really all about the winning.
