Whatever Bev’s Making
“Bev, I’m going to be honest with you.”
Chad didn’t sit down. He stood in the doorway of the little back office at Gus’s Diner with his arms crossed over his sleeveless puffy vest, leaning on the frame like a man in a cologne ad.
I was standing too. I’d been on my feet since five-fifteen. My coffee pot was still in my hand. I’d been on my way to top off the Miller boys when he called me back.
People only say I’m going to be honest with you when they’re about to say something they’ve already decided.
“We’re rebranding,” Chad said. “Younger crowd. Fresh energy. Customers want to see young faces out front.”
I just looked at him.
He had very nice teeth. Very white. The kind you pay for.
“I’ve got Madison on the floor now,” he said. “I need you on dishes.”
The coffee pot was getting heavy in my hand. I set it down on the filing cabinet.
“Dishes,” I said.
“Same pay. Fewer hours on your feet.” He smiled. All those teeth. “Honestly, Bev, it’s a favor.”
I’m sixty-two years old.
My knees are bad. My hands are worse. Arthritis in every knuckle. In the winter, I can’t close my fists all the way until I run them under hot water for five minutes.
The dish pit at Gus’s is a steel sink and a sprayer hose in a room with no window. It’s hot back there. Steam and grease and bleach. The floor is always wet. There’s a drain in the middle of it that backs up every time it rains.
I could have walked out.
I could have untied my apron right there and set it on Chad’s desk and walked out the back door into the alley and never come back. Thirty-eight years. I’d earned that much.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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