“My what?” she exclaimed.
“Pasquini needs a delivery boy. Can you drive?”
“I can drive, but can I be a boy?” she said with such a rueful face that he laughed aloud.
“You can wear slacks,” he said. “That’s the best I could do. The rest is up to you.”
His laughter embarrassed her, as if perhaps she had gone too far with her remark, and she said as seriously as possible, “I learned to drive on a truck with six forward gears.”
“This is a panel truck.”
“Duck soup. God, I hope he’ll take me, Jack. I have exactly ten bucks between me and the poorhouse. I didn’t know what I was going to do with myself.”
“Well, you haven’t got the job yet, honey. But I told Pasquini you had lots of experience and you’d do him the favor of dropping by in the morning.”
“Some favor!” she grinned. “Me, who couldn’t find Times Square if my life depended on it, making deliveries in this tangled-up part of town.”
“You’ll catch on.”
“What are the Pasquinis like?” she said.
“You’ll like Marie. She’s Pete’s wife. Does all the cooking. It’s her business, really. It was just a spaghetti joint when Pete’s dad ran it. After he died Pete took over and damn near went bankrupt. Then he married Marie. She cooks and keeps the books—like nobody can. She used to be a pretty girl, too, till she had too many kids and too much pizza.”
“What about Pete?”
“I don’t know what to tell you about that guy. I’ve known him slightly for the past ten years, but no one knows him very well. As far as Marie’s concerned, he’s her number one delivery boy. As a husband and a father, he’s her idea of a bust.”
“You mean he cheats?”
“He’s out every night of the week with weird girls on his arm. As if he were proud of it. He picks out the oddballs—you know, the ones who haven’t cut their hair since they were four years old, and wear dead-white make-up and cotton lisle stockings.”
“Lousy taste,” Beebo said, but when Jack smiled she looked away. She wasn’t going to give him the chance to ask what her own taste might be.
Jack paused, sensing her reticence, and then he went on, “Pete used to run a gang when he was in his teens. He was our local color.”
“You mean he’s a juvenile delinquent?” Beebo asked naively. “Are you sending me to work for a crook?”
“He’s an ex-j.d.,” Jack chuckled. “He went on to better things the day they broke his zip gun.”
“My God! Is he a criminal, Jack?”
“No, honey, don’t panic. He’s just a kook. He’s more of a loner now. It comes naturally to him to skulk around. But as far as I can tell, he only skulks after dark. And after Beat broads. He hasn’t been arrested since he was nineteen, and that’s been ten years.”
“He sounds like the ideal employer,” Beebo cracked.
“You could do worse; you with ten bucks in your pocket,” Jack reminded her. “Besides, he’s lived here all his life. He may be odd but you get used to him.”
“Just how ‘odd’ is he?”
“Honey, you’ve got to be a little odd down here, or you lose your membership card,” he said. “Besides, I’m not asking you to cut your veins and mingle blood with him. Just pass out the pizzas and take his money once a week.”
Beebo shook her head and laughed. “Well, if you say so,” she said. “I guess I’m safe as long as I don’t wear cotton lisle stockings.”
She got the job. Pete Pasquini had more deliveries than he could handle alone. Marie’s sauces, salads, preserves, and pastas were making a name and making a pile. The orders were going up so fast that it would take a second driver to deliver them all.
Beebo, dressed in a clean white shirt, sweater, and tan slacks, faced Pete at eight in the morning. She was somewhat intimidated by the looks of him and by Jack’s thumb sketch of the night before. He was a dour-faced young Italian-American with blue jowls and a down-turned mouth. If he ever smiled—Beebo doubted it—he would have been almost handsome, for his teeth were straight and white, and he had a peculiarly sensual mouth beneath his plum-dark eyes. He looked mean and sexy—a combination that instantly threw Beebo high on her guard.
“You’re Beebo?” he said, looking up at her with an order pad and pencil poised in his hands.
“Yes,” she said. “Jack Mann sent me. I—he—said you needed a driver.”
He smirked a little. Probably his smile for the day, she thought. “You’re as tall as I am,” he observed, as if pleased about it; pleased at least to make her self-conscious about it.
“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