Page 5 of Another Last Call
The man looked at me, seething anger in his eyes as his face turned red. “Listen up, you little bitch, you—”
“Goddamnit, Maggie! Not again!”
My mom was there in a flash. Despite the look on her face and the way she yelled, she immediately put herself between me and the man, bumping me backwards with her hip.
“Again?” Peter repeated, livid. “You’re telling me this little cunt has dumped beer on customers more than once and still has a job here?”
Fred and Wanda inhaled sharply, and for good reason. Josie Myers—a.k.a. my mom, a.k.a. the owner and operator of The Sea Glass Bar and Grill, a Marble Beach mainstay since before I’d even been born—was not a woman to fuck with. And calling me—Maggie Myers, resident grumpy server and known despiser of misogynistic tourists, also since before I’d even been born because that was what my father had been—acuntcounted as fucking with her.
A lot of tourists thought they could get away with it because Mom looked like a hippie, but she was really more like the lovechild of a hippie and a Hell’s Angel. People said I looked like her, but I think they only said that to be nice. Other than the rose-beige whiteness of my skin, the auburn-kissed brown of my hair, and the somewhat distinctive shape of my nose, I didn’t see much of myself in my mom’s face. She had wild, puffy hair that she kept tied back with silk scarves, letting the ends dangle around her shoulders and join the silk scarves she wrapped around her neck. Peasant-style blouses were often covered with denim vests or leather jackets and she would stack her forearms full of bangles and cuffs.
Big earrings. Lots of necklaces. And tight, fitted jeans with shit-kicker boots or long, floor-length skirts with crocheted sandals—one or the other, there was no in between. Unfortunately for the men at the table, Mom had been standing behind the bar, so they hadn’t noticed she was dressed in her shit-kickers that day.
And she wasn’t afraid to use them, especially for me.
“This ‘little cunt’ is my daughter,” Mom growled, her voice low enough that only the men at the table and I could hear her. “And to date, she’s only done that when someone gropes her, propositions her, or on one horrific occasion, insinuates they’d like to bring both meandher to bed with them. So which was it,sir?”
Peter’s face went even redder, but some of the anger morphed to shame.
Typical. They never wanted to admit which one it was.
I plastered another sweet smile on my face, blinking innocently at Peter. He opened his mouth, then closed it and turned to Mom.
“I will get this shithole shut down,” he hissed.
“You’ve fucked with the wrong person,” said one of the others—Todd, if I was remembering correctly.
“Story of my life,” Mom said. “Now get the hell out of my bar.”
We stood there as he grabbed his jacket, then stalked out of the restaurant followed by his friends.
“Friggin’ tourists,” mumbled Fred from the next table.
“Jo, dear, could we get some more napkins?” Wanda asked, glaring at me.
“Of course.” Mom grabbed a stack from the cutlery station, then started towards the bar. “Maggie, office.”
“Mom, I—”
“Office.”
Sighing, I followed her to the back.
Four
Maggie
“Goddamnit,Maggie,”Momsaidafter pulling me into the small windowless room just behind the kitchen. She shut the door, cutting off the noise of the bar so all we could hear was the overloud buzzing of the fluorescents above us.
I settled onto the old green couch in the corner. Beside me, an old TV showed feeds from the two security cameras that actually worked. “He was being a pig, Mom.”
“Yes, but you need to remember that we are running a business here.” She sat down at the desk and put her head in her hands, the puffiness of her hair flattened beneath her palms. “Why can’t you just ask Big Tim or Steven to handle it?”
“I can handle them myself. Nobody wants the tourists in here anyway. This is the local bar.”
“We need the business, and never mind that you’re pissing off the locals,” she shot back. “That’s the third time Wanda’s gotten splashed after you’ve dumped something on a customer.”
“Well, you said I couldn’t pour coffee into their laps anymore. Beer on the head is really the only option.”
