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Benny & Ray 118 Working Stiff Dee Gilles Rated PG

She was just another woman from the neighborhood. Brown-eyed and brown-haired. Average height and average weight. She was a waitress. A working stiff. Funny expression, she thought. Working "stiff". That she was, she supposed. She worked herself pretty hard. At night, when she came home, she was pretty stiff. Stiff and sore. Exhausted. Such is life, she thought.

She worked the lunch counter in the gleaming stainless-steel-clad diner. It was near the end of the dinner rush. Luce busied herself with wiping the counter down as the seats slowly emptied. She ineffectively dabbed at an unidentifiable stain on the front of her white polyester uniform with a dingy bar towel.

She glanced at the large clock above the door, its face yellowed with age, its glass sullied by a layer of grease and grim that probably couldn't even be sandblasted off at this point.

Once the counter was cleaned and cleared, she busied herself with refilling the napkin dispensers, and the mustard and ketchup bottles. Then, she went to the supply closet and got boxes for Coke syrup, hooked them up to the CO2 lines, and blew the lines out to purge them until the bubbly brown liquid flowed through the dispenser once more.

Luce cleaned behind the counter, doing her best to keep moving so she wouldn't feel how tired she was. She daydreamed of being on a Caribbean cruise, of having a sexy young bartender serve her a drink right into her mouth, like she'd seen in the movies once. Or maybe he'd spray some Reddi Whip on his taut young abs, and she'd lick it off. Luce smiled.

She glanced up at the clock once more. Three more hours. Three more hours until she could get off her feet, go home. Three hours and fifteen minutes before she walked through the front door. Three and a half hours until she had stripped down to her skivvies and collapsed into bed. And four and a half hours after that, she had to get up with the baby while her daughter prepared for her six a.m. shift as a pediatric nurse's aide at the Med Center.

At nineteen her daughter made her a grandmother. Luce was forty-one. A grandmother at her age! The very idea! Luce warned her daughter all the time from the time she got her period at age ten, to the time she got pregnant. DON'T get pregnant! She'd told Mina over and over again. You'll be sorry. Look at me! I should have stayed in college. I could have been somebody! I got A's and B's, for Christ sake, now look at me.

She could see the train wreck coming way down the track when Mina brought home Jo Jo. Shiftless, her daddy would have called him, God rest his soul. Shiftless and a ne'er-do-well. Mina was drawn to bad boys. Thought she was a missionary. That she could save them.

Jo Jo swore through the pregnancy he would be there for Mina. He came to the hospital on the day Mina had Justin, all smiles, loaded with diapers, clothes, stuffed animals. That was the last anybody saw of him for a while.

He would show up every once in a while, give Mina ten dollars, or twenty, and act like he was some kind of hotshot for it, then disappear into thin air once more.

Luce had had it up to here with men like him. `Men!' She meant boys like him. Mina wasn't the only one knocked-up and left behind. Her best friend Rebecca was in the same boat, with twins about to turn four already. You think Mina would have learned by watching Rebecca struggle, she thought. Mina had several other girlfriends and old high school buddies in the same boat. Goddamned epidemic is what it was. It was a shame. Back when she was coming up, the guy at least had the decency to marry you. She and Johnny stuck it out for a few years anyway, hung in there...

"I said `hello'!" came a woman's voice.

Luce snapped her head up. A pretty little Italian girl stood in front of her. She had big soft cow eyes and loudly chewed on a thick wad of pink gum like cud. The girl wore a black miniskirt, thick brown mules, and a white Lycra top stretched over her pregnant belly. Luce was taken a little aback. But that was the style now. The girls didn't wear the big maternity tops to hide themselves. They just let it all hang out. She wasn't sure if she was too crazy about this new sensibility.

"Can I getta root beer float?" the girl asked. She sat down on the wide steel vinyl-clad stool, swiveling herself in.

"Yeah, sure," she said. "Regular or large?"

"I'll take a large," she replied with finality. She swiveled side to side, letting her eyes roam around while she waited.

She snuck a peek downward at the girl as she scooped ice cream. She could see her belly button protruding through her shirt, the material was so tight. It had popped out of her abdomen like a little turkey timer. The girl looked like she could go any day now. Any minute. Luce dispensed the root beer, watching it quickly froth up, spilling over the sides of the glass a little. She served her dish with napkins and a spoon.

The girl seemed to be studying her as she absently stuck her long spoon in the tall frosty glass.

It gave Luce pause, this open, non-apologetic gaze.

"Let me ask you something," the girl said. "I'm looking for somebody." She looked around. "They told me he comes in here sometimes."

"Yeah, well, we get a lot of regulars in a place like this."

The girl leaned in. "Guy's name is Al Bonaventura. They call him Funny Face Al. You know'em?"

"What do you wanna know for?" she asked suspiciously.

"Look, I just wanna know if you know'em, that's all."

"He in some kind of trouble?"

"Oh, yeah." The girl emphatically clutched her belly. "Big trouble, if I ever catch up to him!"

Luce's blood began to boil. She clicked her tongue. "Yeah" she said, heat rushing to her face. "Yeah, I know that scumbag."

"You know where I can find him?"

"Yeah," she said. "Sure I do. Anybody in here can tell you where he hangs out."

"Oh, yeah?"

"Yeah." Luce leaned forward, glanced around, and told the girl where to find Funny-Face Al.

That'll teach him, the friggin' low-life, the rat-bastard.

"Thanks," the girl said. She dropped a fiver on the counter. "Hey, can I get this to go, instead?"

"Sure thing," she said. She grabbed a Styrofoam cup and a lid from underneath the counter. "And keep your money. This one's on the house," she said. The poor thing. She was going to need every penny.

Luce smiled at the girl, feeling bad for what she was going to have to go through. She sighed as she watched her leave. Such is life, she thought. Luce returned to her work.

FINIS