Daisy
Sometimes I close my eyes and imagine I’m standing on a tiny island in the middle of a still lake. I’m not doing anything. There’s nobody bothering me. I’m just standing there, unknown to the world, the world uninterested in me, just standing and letting a light breeze caress my face. Peace…is that too much to ask? I don’t need a lifetime of peace, but perhaps a few minutes of it, hell, a few seconds of it. Perhaps if I could just stand on this island for a half-second my life wouldn’t seem as hectic and insurmountable as it often does. But sooner or later, you have to stop pretending; sooner or later, you have to open your eyes. But I don’t go back to my hectic, hellish, debt-ridden life because I want to. No, I go back to it because, just like most people, I need the money.
I open my eyes and find myself in the cloakroom of The Lady Shack, hunched over a cheese-and-ham sandwich with the crusts cut off. Off to my left, Candice is pushing her massive D-cups into a push-up bra which leaves nothing to the imagination. Off to the left, Sarah and Jessica are tittering about something. Sarah keeps glancing at me with those long eyelashes, with those pouty fake lips. I have nothing wrong with plastic surgery. I just hate that I can’t see what Sarah’s thinking. I try and imagine her at the funeral of somebody she loves, but I can’t. I just see a collagen mold standing there. Candice struts out of the cloak room, shaking her ass at me, throwing me a wink. “Gotta get those tips, girl.” She giggles and leaves the room.
Sarah is tall, Jessica taller, both with deep bronze artificial tans and massive round artificial breasts. Don’t get me wrong. My breasts aren’t exactly on the small side. But these bitches could be hanging upside down bat-style and their tits still wouldn’t move. Jessica picks crumbs from her plate. Sarah doesn’t even go in for that pretense. She just sits there, head held high, not even deigning to sniff her food. And then they titter, and whisper. So much for peace.
I look down at my sandwich and try to ignore them. But ignoring people means distracting yourself, thinking of something else, and as I sit here, I find that there’s nothing I can turn my mind to. Working at The Lady Shack—Burgers, Beers, Boobs!—is not exactly a barrel of laughs, but then again waitressing isn’t great fun, either. But most people have the luxury of at least thinking to themselves: Okay, this shift sucks, this day sucks, this week sucks, this month sucks, but at least I’ll be able to buy X with all this suffering. Well, X for me means constant payments to my gambling-addicted father, who’s so far in debt he’d need an oil-drill to get out.
“Two jobs, and still no hope. Welcome to America.”
“What’s that, Duncey?” Sarah hisses, glee in her dull brown eyes. Dykey is Sarah’s hilarious and subtle way of rhyming my name with an insult.
Sarah’s the sort of woman who never understood the concept of high school ending. It’s like she was birthed into the world at fourteen and never grew past eighteen. I imagine she was the Homecoming Queen, and the Prom Queen, and the Queen Queen. And on the final dance of the final year of high school, she just stood there, in her Queenly dress, waiting for it to go on. Even in her Lady Shack tank top, breasts squashed to make the men’s minds go wild as all ours are, she sneers and snaps and giggles just like she’s in the cafeteria. And like all bullying high-school-minded women, she hasn’t had trouble recruiting a sidekick. Jessica just sniggers, covers her mouth, flits her eyes all over the place. A classic sidekick wretch.
“Nothing,” I say, walking across the room to the trashcan. I can’t be bothered to fight. There’s no purpose to it. At the end of the day, we’re all working at The Lady Shack. We’re all grope-meal for the men’s egos out there. “I need to get back to work.”
“We were just wondering about the last time you took a shower,” Sarah says, giggling. “We were wondering if it was April or May.”
“Today’s August,” Jessica adds stupidly, folding her arms like she’s just made a very good point.
“Congratulations, y’all,” I say. “You can read a calendar.”
The Lady Shack is perhaps the most hellish place in Texas, which, in summer, is itself the most hellish place in the States. The sun batters down on Austin as though it’s angry at the earth, making every piece of sidewalk a scorching misstep and every shadow a cooling relief. Sun cooks cars and makes men’s wives sweatier than usual. It makes their homes less appealing. It makes their one-bedroom apartments into mini-ovens. And so they come here, The Lady Shack, with promises of air conditioning and Wi-Fi and iced soda and sexy dead-eyed women smiling at them and telling them how funny they are whilst eyeing their wallets. I walk between the aisles to the waitress station, catching snippets of conversation.
“Oh, baby, you’re so funny…”
“Do you wanna get outta here, honey…”
“I know how to take care of a woman…”
“Oh, stop it, just stop it, you bad boy…”
“You alright?” Marsha asks. She’s second generation Polish, with barely the hint of an accent underlying her Texan. Marsha has been known to sit on men’s laps to get tips if she badly needs the cash. Right now she looks bored, as she often does when the hungry eyes of the customers aren’t on her.
“Fine,” I say. “Where am I?”
“Group F.”
“Okay.”
I look out to my tables. A few people are eating. One of the girls is leaving her shift, trying to get out of the door, but a drunk guy is laughing and blocking her way. The girl is laughing, too. If management sees her not laughing, she might be out of a job. Then I spot him, the lone man sitting with his back to me, facing the window. The Lady Shack looks out onto a street which might as well be named Corporate Street: coffee chains, electronics chains, fast food chains, and on and on, left and right. I can’t see much about the man from where I’m sitting, but I imagine he’s much like the rest of them.
I had dreams once, I reflect as I walk on six-inch heels toward him. Not specific dreams, exactly—I was too young for that when life set them on fire—but general dreams of happiness, and love, and contentment, and bras which didn’t squash my body into unnatural shapes. Dreams of a man and a family, sure, but most of all dreams that I could make things happen. Me, not my body, me, not my looks, me. But maybe I’m just a cliché, like a hooker in a movie who is secretly saving to become a veterinarian. I can’t even claim that, though. My account is ever empty and the only thing I’m saving for is to be saved: survival, plan one, two, and three. As I walk, I remember how earlier today I was going to quit, march right into Steve’s office and slam my hands down on the desk and tell him point-blank: “I’ve had enough.” And then I’d walk right out of here, with a strut so sexy even Candice would be jealous, and all the girls would clap me on the way out, cheering. Of course I didn’t.
I need the money.
I hardly see the man when I reach the table. I’m sure that would seem strange to somebody who’s never worked in a place like The Lady Shack. But when you’ve worked with the direct intention of making money based on your tits and ass and legs for long enough, you start to see the same man where once you saw many. Just a slack-jawed, stony-eyed, slathering man who’s going to stumble out some awkward pickup line and hit on you for the next hour or so.
“Hey, honey,” I say, my voice way, way chirpier than I feel. How can a voice be this chirpy when my ankles feel like they’re going to snap? I wish I could find the man who created heels and make him pay. “I hope you’re having a fantastic afternoon! You look like you could do with a beer.”
“Daisy.”
The voice is torn, dragged-out, the sort of voice you expect to hear from a homeless man who’s muttering, “Change,” not from some guy at a booby bar. I recognize the voice, despite how much I’d like it not to be true. I remember when the cancer ate through my mother like a pickaxe eating through rock, shattering her piece by piece until nothing was left but a coffin, how this voice struggled to find the right words. “It’s just…oh God…Tilly…oh…” I remember how this voice cried out at me, “It’s just one bet! Just one goddamn bet! Can’t a man have some peace?” I remember how this voice made me feel guilty for expecting more. And most of all I remember asking him to never, ever come here. I never wanted him to see me like this.
“Dad,” I hiss, my voice completely changed now. “What the fuck are you doing here?” My voice is shaking with rage. All the things that have happened to me in this place—slapped asses, groped breasts, one time a man trying to put a finger inside of me, beer all over my shirt, etc., etc.—and yet this is what drives me almost to madness. I find I’ve dropped the notepad and pen, my hands hanging at my sides in fists.
“Daisy,” Dad says. I hate how weak his voice sounds, how weak it always sounds. It’s like he’s always on the verge of tears. So many times I’ve tried to be angry with him. So many times I’ve wanted to go absolutely ballistic at him. I remember the time he spent a month’s rent on poker and I had to work doubles just so he wouldn’t get kicked out of his apartment, walking over to his place and rehearsing what I was going to say. But then he said my name in that horrible way and all the anger just deflated from me. But not now!
“You shouldn’t be here, you idiot! This is where I work. This is where I make it so you can go out and bury us in even more debt, you selfish asshole! It blows my mind that it isn’t enough for you to saddle us with all this goddamn debt, but you have to come by here and try and ruin the only way I have of paying it off!” I stop, panting.
He’s been trying to cut in, but I’ve just barreled on. But I keep my voice low, a sort of low shout, yelling without once raising my voice.
“I’m sorry,” he says, staring at me with those red-rimmed eyes, shot with blood.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Marsha watching me curiously. I know what she’s watching for. Some of the girls arrange to meet the men privately, performing what Marsha calls “illegal services” for some extra cash. I’ve never done that, and I don’t want Marsha to think I am.
“Order something,” I say.
“I need to tell you—”
“Fine, so order a drink and a piece of apple pie and then I’ll bring it here and take my time putting it down and you can say what you want to say. Do you want to get me fired?”
He seems to be about to speak again, but then bites his lip like a chastised child. A painful memory hits me, the way he would make that face when Mom teased him. But back then it was all in jest. Back then it was all good fun. Suddenly, I feel absurdly guilty.
“I’ll have a piece of apple lie and an orange soda, please.”
As I go to the kitchen, Marsha calls over to me, “All good, doll?”
I spin on her, forcing the anger deep down, and plaster a smile to my face. “It’s all great!” I beam. Like a Stepford Wife.
I busy myself with looking pretty and waiting for a bunch of sneering frat boys before Dad’s order is ready. When I bring it to him, I move in slow motion, each movement lengthened so that we have time to talk.
“What is it?” I say. “I don’t get paid for another week. You’ve used the money already? Fine, then maybe you should say bye-bye to Blackjack, and roulette, and whatever else it is you—What is it? What do you want?”
“I’m trying to say,” he whispers. “I just—” He stares at me with those red eyes again. I’ll never understand how I can still feel such guilt for this man when, after Mom died, he basically shoved all the responsibility onto me. Me, a sixteen year old girl at the time. And yet I do, all the time, guilt like razors under my skin.
“What is it?” I say, this time with a softer tone. I’ve placed the apple pie down. Now I arrange the cutlery.
“I can’t go home,” Dad says. “Back to my apartment, I mean. I just…I can’t, Daisy. There’s something—something bad has happened. You get it?”
I feel like my stomach freezes. The absurd idea to close my eyes and once again imagine I’m on that island comes to me, for a few milliseconds of peace.
“So what now? What do we do? What do you do?” My voice is as cold as my stomach, ice-cold, but not in anger or shock. Part of me must’ve known that something like this was coming.
“I don’t know,” he says. “I just…I thought I should tell you, right?”
That’s when the anger hits me. Not anger at the situation, but anger at him, at the way he’s looking at me as though I know how to solve all our problems. I grit my teeth.
“I have other tables,” I murmur, voice trembling. “I’m done in an hour. We can talk then.”
“No, wait—”
But I’m already walking toward my next customers.