Beebo Brinker

“Would you like to see me drive? I’m a good driver,” she said resentfully.

“How come you’re so tall, Beebo? Girls ain’t supposed to be so tall.” He put the paper and pencil down and turned to look her over, leaning jauntily on a linoleum-covered counter as he did so.

Beebo folded her arms over her chest in a gesture that told him to slow down, back off; a very unfeminine gesture that ordinarily offended a man’s ideals. “I can drive. You want a driver,” she said curtly. “Let’s talk business.” She had learned long ago to stand her ground when someone taunted her. Otherwise the taunting grew intolerable.

To her amazement, she made Pete Pasquini laugh. It was not a reassuring sound. “You’re a feisty one, ain’t you?” he grinned. “You—are—a—feisty—one.” He separated each word with slow relish, enjoying her discomfiture. For though she stood tall and bold in front of him, her hot face betrayed her embarrassment. She gave him a withering look and then turned and strode toward the door till she heard his voice behind her, accompanied by his footsteps.

“No offense, Beebo,” he said, “I’m gonna be your boss. I wanta be your friend, too. I don’t want people workin’ for me don’t like me. Shake hands?”

She turned around slowly, unconvinced. Maybe he really thought he was ingratiating himself with her. But she didn’t like his method much. It was the thought of her nearly empty wallet that finally prompted her to offer him her hand. He took it with a rather light loose grasp, surprising Beebo, who was used to the hearty grip of the farmers in her home county. But when he lifted her hand up and said, “Hey, that’s big, too!” she snatched it away as if he had burned her.

“Okay, okay, all you got to do is drive, you don’t have to shake hands with me all day,” he said, amused by her reaction. “I can see it ain’t your favorite game.”

It seemed peculiar enough to Beebo that they shake hands at all. They were not officially employer and employee yet, and even if they were, they were still man and girl. It made her feel creepy. She assumed that Pete had to get his wife’s approval before he could hire her. Marie was supposed to run the business.

“Well, come on, I’ll show you where things is,” Pete said.

“You mean it’s settled?” She hesitated. “I’m hired?”

“Why not?” He turned back to look at her.

“Well, I thought your wife? I mean—?” She stopped, not wishing to anger him. His face had turned very dark.

“My wife what?” he said. “You never mind my wife. If I say you’re hired, you’re hired. I don’t want no back talk about the wife. You dig?”

She nodded, startled by the force of his spite. She made a mental note not to press that sore spot again. He apparently needed and wanted the money Marie’s succulent concoctions brought in, but he hated surrendering control of the shop to her. Yet it was the price of their success. She knew what she was doing, in the kitchen and in the accounts, and he was afraid to interfere.

Beebo stood frowning at the sawdust floor.

“What’s the matter, kid? Something bugging you?” Pete asked.

She glanced up at him. It was strange that he should hire her on the spot without the slightest idea if she could drive worth a damn. “Do you want me to start deliveries this morning?” she said.

“I’ll take you around, show you the route,” he said. “First we got to make up the orders.”

He walked toward the back of the store with Beebo behind him. “Mr. Pasquini, there’s just one thing,” she said.

“It’s Pete. Yeah, what thing?” He handed her a large cardboard carton to pack a grocery order in.

“How much will it pay?” Beebo asked, standing there with the box, unwilling to start working till she knew what she was worth.

“Fifty a week to start,” he said, without looking up. He lifted some bottled olive oil down from a nearby shelf. “Things work out good, I’ll raise you. You want it, don’t you?” He looked at her then.

There was a barely noticeable pause before she answered, “I want it.” But she spoke with a sliver of misgiving stuck in the back of her mind.

Pete accompanied her on the delivery route that morning and again in the afternoon, watching her handle the truck, showing her where the customers lived. She had spent the night before with Jack studying a map of New York City and Greenwich Village, but what had seemed fairly logical on paper bogged down in colorful confusion when she took to the streets.

Pete swung an arm up on the seat behind her, his knees jutting toward her legs, and now and then when she missed a direction he would grab the wheel and start the turn for her. She disliked his closeness extremely, and throughout the day she was aware of his eyes on her face and body. It almost made her feel as if she had a figure, for the first time in her life, and the idea shocked her.

Beebo had broad shoulders and hardly a hint of a bosom. No man had ever looked at her appreciatively before, not even Jack Mann, who obviously liked her and enjoyed her company. She was not sure whether Pete admired her or was merely interested because she was so different from other girls.

He can’t possibly like me, she thought. Not the way men like women. The notion was so preposterous that it made her smile and reassured her. Till Pete noticed the smile and said, “What’s so funny, kid?” He looked too eager to know and she brushed it off. He let it go, but watched her more attentively, making her squirm a little.

It was a relief to climb down from the truck that afternoon—and a blow to feel the heavy clap of a masculine hand on her shoulder. “You did real good, Beebo,” Pete said, and the hand lay there until she spun away from him and walked inside to meet his wife.

Marie Pasquini was twenty-six, the overweight and overworked mother of five little Pasquinis. She did most of the cooking while Pete’s mother tended her kids, and the two women fell into several pan-rattling arguments per day. Beebo could hear the soprano squeals of young children upstairs in the apartment above the store, and a periodic disciplinary squawk from Grandma Pasquini.

Marie greeted Beebo with a big smile, revealing the shadow of the pretty face concealed beneath the fat.

“Your accent is French, isn’t it?” Beebo said.

“You got it,” Marie beamed. “Smart girl.” She moved about the kitchen while they got acquainted, eating, working, and talking incessantly. Pete slouched against the kitchen door chewing a wooden matchstick and watching Beebo.

Marie worked hard and she ate hard and she was going all to hips. But she was friendly and cheerful, and Beebo liked her.

“That’s a good boy, that Jack,” Marie said. “He comes in here two, three times a week, buys my food. Tells his friends, ‘Eat Pasquini’s stuff,’ and by God, they eat.”

“He gave me some last night,” Beebo said. “It’s good.”

“You bet.” Marie stirred her sauce and glanced at Beebo. “You live with him now?”

“Well—temporarily,” Beebo said, taken aback both by the question and by Pete’s silent laughter.

“About time he got a girl,” Marie said briskly. “Even one in pants.” And she glanced humorously at Beebo’s tan chinos.

Beebo colored up. “Well, it’s not quite like that,” she protested.

“Oh, don’t tell me,” Marie said, holding up two spattered hands. “A boy and a girl … well …!” and she gave a Gallic chuckle.

“What you want to do, embarrass the kid?” Pete demanded suddenly with mock anger. “She don’t sleep with no lousy fag.”

“Shut that big mouth, Pete,” Marie said sharply, without bothering to look at him. “She don’t want to hear dirty talk, neither.”

Beebo was burning to ask what a fag was, but she didn’t dare. She could hear in her imagination the cackling it would provoke from Pete.

Marie stirred in silence for a moment. “I never saw a boy put up with so much,” she said finally. “He got people in and out, in and out, every damn day, eating him out of house and home.” Beebo squirmed guiltily. “His only trouble, he got too big a heart. Don’t never take advantage of him like the others, Beebo.”

“What others?”

“You don’t know?” Marie looked at her, puzzled.

“Well, I’ve only known Jack a little while. I mean—”

“Oh.” Marie nodded sagely. “Well, he got too many fair-weather friends. Know they can have whatever he got they want. So they take. And he lets them. Can’t stand to see people go without. He’s a good boy. Too good.”

“He ain’t all that good, Marie,” Pete drawled, grinning at Beebo. “You just like him because he comes in here and gives you that swishy talk about what a good-looking dame you are. All that proves is, he got bad eyes. Now, Beebo here might have trouble with him, you never know. If I was her, I wouldn’t climb in his bed.”

“Pete, you got a mind even dirtier than your mouth,” Marie said. “Get out of my kitchen, I don’t want the food dirtied up too. Out, salaud!”