Goin’ Dancin’

Author: Rowena Macdonald
Length: 3997 words
Genre/theme: Bittersweet comedy
Comment: One of a cycle of interlinked stories I have written set in Montreal entitled Smoked Meat. This story won 3rd prize in the Asham Trust short story prize and was published in Harlot Red by Serpent's Tail. Smoked Meat is looking for a publisher.
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“So, Rena, you got a boyfriend?” asked Carole, as we sat folding napkins into pointy hats.
“No, not really.” I didn’t bother to correct her over my name.
“No! Pretty girl like you. I don’t believe it.” The brittle way she said this sounded as if she believed it completely – but then everything Carole said had an underlying note of bitchiness. She knocked another menthol cigarette from her packet and lit up, regarding me through the smoke with a glint in her small brown eyes. It was a look I had seen before. Sometimes I would glance up from serving a table and find her eyes on me as if she was plotting something.
“Well, you and me should go out together sometime. Find ourselves boyfriends. What you doin’ on your days off?”
“Going to Toronto.”
“Toronto! Goin’ to Toronto? Hear that boss, Rena’s goin’ to Toronto.” Alex, our boss, carried on staring up the street and punching one fist into the palm of his other hand.
“Haven’t you ever been to Toronto?” I asked Carole.
“Me? No, I ain’t even been out of Quebec.”

Once everyone had gone we vacuumed under the tables and brushed the dead fruit flies from the placemats. We wiped the crumbs from the chair seats and polished the rubber plants with milk. The restaurant was fitted out in pastel colours - beige carpet, apricot tablecloths, mint green walls - neither downmarket nor sophisticated, merely bland. The only hints that it was a Greek restaurant were a badly painted mural of some unidentified Greek gods and a shelf of empty Metaxa bottles. We dusted the bottles and the “horizontal surfaces” according to Alex’s instructions and laid the tables for the following day, Carole placing the knives with the cutting edge outwards and me facing them inwards.
“Hey Rita, you’re doin the knives wrong. You gotta face them this way.”
“That’s not the way I was taught to lay a table.”
“Well, this is the right way sweetie. It’s more friendly to have the knives like this. More welcoming.”

Saturday breakfast was my next shift. Breakfasts were a new venture for Alex and he had hung a yellow plastic banner over the front of the restaurant, which read CALIFORNIA STYLE BREAKFASTS SERVED HERE.
“Boss said we gotta wipe down the terrasse, sweetie,” said Carole. This was my least favourite job. It involved wiping all the dust, ketchup and spilt sugar off the plastic terrasse furniture.
A strange heightened light bathed the street and the lime trees rustled in the breeze. A cacophony of barking resounded from the pet shop next door. The shop was holding a charity pet auction and there were several dogs in cages out on the forecourt.
“Ain’t he cute?” Carole leant over the fence to gaze at a rottweiler that was trying to chew through the wire of its cage. “He’s just too adorable. Shame I ain’t got enough room in my apartment for him. We used to have a rottweiler when I was a kid…Eh Rena, we used to have a rottweiler.”
“Oh yeah?” I carried on wiping. A smartly-dressed couple walked past and stood hand in hand looking at the menu board.
“Excuse me. Do you do breakfasts?” asked the man. I could tell by his thin whiney voice that he would be a bad tipper.
“Yep we do, sir,” said Carole, pointing towards the sign.
“What’s a California-style breakfast?” asked the woman, wrinkling her nose as if she suspected it might not be very nice.
“It’s basically the same as a Canadian breakfast except it has fruit on the plate. All the plates have fruit,” I replied.
“Fruit. OK. Can I just ask you something? Do you do egg white omelettes?”
“I’m not sure. I’d have to ask the chef -.”
“Course we do, sweetie. Egg white omelette – no problem,” interrupted Carole.
“Well, maybe we’ll come back tomorrow.” We watched them cross the road and inspect the flowers outside the Chinese supermarket on the corner. Garish carnations were on special offer at two dollars a bunch.
“Always tell ‘em what they wanna hear, sweetie – you unnerstand?…So anyway I was tellin’ you about our rottweiler wasn’t I? Called Sugar, he was – you know after Sugar Ray Robinson, that boxer. I wanted to call him Mohammed after Mohammed Ali but Daddy said it was a stupid name. Anyway it was really tragic ‘cos Daddy had to shoot Sugar in the end…”
A spot of water dropped on my arm. Within seconds rain was hammering down like a monsoon – we had to grab the salt and pepper shakers off the freshly-wiped tables and dash inside.
“Fucking weather. And those fucking dogs are driving me nuts.” Alex strode through the restaurant. “Gimme a beer.”
I fetched a Molson from the fridge. He took it into the bathroom, muttering that he had to “take a slash”.
The rain poured all morning. When it stopped the air steamed in the humid heat and rainbow puddles of petrol shimmered on the road.
During a lull Carole and I shared a cold Kraft cheese omelette, sent back by a customer who had wanted feta cheese.
“You eat the rest, sweetie, I’m dietin’.” Carole pushed her ketchup-drenched half towards me. “Hey I never finished tellin you ‘bout Sugar, did I?”
“Oh yeah, why did your dad shoot him?”
“Well, he bit my brother Roger. So Daddy said he had to be put down – the dog, that is. Roger’d been foolin’ around trying to dress him in a frock and make him walk on his hind legs and Sugar just bit his little finger right off. Roger’s been scared of dogs ever since. Crosses the street if he sees a dog coming along - even if it’s on a lead…‘Course, he is the sensitive type.”
She gave a knowing nod, angling for me to ask her why Roger was “the sensitive type”.
“Why is Roger the sensitive type?”
“He’s a little bit, you know…” She flapped her wrist. “He’s a gay. I mean he got married and all – he tried. But we all knew he was a gay right from when he was a kid. You know, Rena, he was like a mother to me. ‘Cos my mother, she was worked so hard – always out working. So he took care of us. Did all the cleanin’, all the cookin’ – boy, could he cook! And cakes! He was the best cake baker ever...his chocolate mayonnaise cake...mmm – to die for.” She raised her eyes to heaven. “And you know what, Rena? He used to wear red pants. Well! It was obvious – we all knew – I mean, boys just didn’t wear red pants in those days. And he used to wear his shirt tied – at the front, like a girl. Oh it was obvious…”
She laughed and the laughter turned into a coughing fit until she had to thump her chest with her fist.
“We used to go out dancin’ together – oh, he was such a good dancer. And we always ended up chasin’ after the same boys. It was so funny. Hey, we better not start chasin’ the same fellas, eh Rena?”
“When?”
“When we go out dancin.”
“Oh right.”

After we had polished the cutlery with vinegar and cashed up, I took off my waitressing shoes and slipped on my flip-flops.
“I just wanna say something to you sweetie.” Carole leant in close enough for me to see a few dark hairs that she’d missed on her chin.
“Yes?”
“Well, Alex asked me to tell you that you really oughta wear a skirt. The customers like it, see. It’s better for you too – you get better tips.”
“Why couldn’t Alex tell me himself?”
“He felt it was better coming from me sweetie. You know, ‘cos I’m your friend.”

I bought a cheap skirt from Le Chateau, which Carole pronounced to be “cute, but a little long“.
“Really you want something that shows off your legs, sweetie. Like my skirt. You get beautiful tips that way.”
Carole’s skirt finished halfway up her thighs. Her legs were hard from thirty years running around restaurants. They didn’t match the soft lumpiness of her upper body.
Alex had brought in a new waitress for a trial. He stood behind her, grinning broadly, and said, “Ladies, this is Suzi. Show her the ropes. OK?”
Suzi was tall and blonde with heavy make up and glasses that magnified her eyes enormously. She drifted between the tables with her back held very straight, her high heels clicking loudly on the floor.
“’Ow can I ‘elp you? Do you need any ‘elp?,” she repeated plaintively in a high-pitched Quebec accent, beseeching us with her huge eyes. We showed her how to fold napkins but she couldn’t get the hang of it and kept having to stop for a cigarette break.
“You waitressed much before, sweetie?” Carole asked her, as we ate souvlakis at the end of the shift. Suzi had refused food and was retouching her make up with great concentration in the mirror behind the bar.
“Of course. I was cocktail waitress in Miami. In a big ‘otel. I didn’t like it. And before that I was waitress at the Copacobana.”
“Oh yeah - the Copacobana. I know it.”
“I was there when it first open. It was the first club in Montreal to ‘ave dancers, you know, wearing nothing ‘ere.” She pointed to her breasts. “Not me, of course - I keep my clothes on. We ‘ad all the shows from Las Vegas. We ‘ad to wear short skirts and fishnets. Fifty dollar tips we get - you know, for looking at your legs.”
“Course I used to work in a go-go bar too,” said Carole. “Go-go girls on one side and me behind the bar. Used to make myself these little costumes - you know, with the fringin and all. And you know what? – I used to make more money than the go-go girls. Can you believe that?”
“Which bar?” asked Suzi.
“The Golden Nugget down on Réné Lévesque. It ain’t there no more. Country and western bar it was. Me, I worked every kind of place - bars, casinos, hotels, restaurants. Been workin since I was thirteen.”
“Thirteen! Didn’t you go to school?” I asked.
“I couldn’t sweetie! I mean, I was smart at school. Top of the class. But my Daddy left and Mom couldn’t afford to bring us all up on her own. Seven of us there were. Used to give her all my wages I did.”
“Seven kids!”
“Yep. Typical Quebeckers my Mom and Dad. All they did was drink and make babies. Ain’t that right, Suzi? Typical Quebeckers.” She cackled raucously, hacked and thumped her chest then spat into a napkin. “Excuse me ladies.”
“You OK, Carole?” I asked.
“Yep, sweetie.” After hawking into the napkin again she said, “Tomorrow I’m gettin a patch. I can’t take this no more.” She lit another menthol cigarette and inhaled so hard her cheeks caved in.
“I ‘ave to call my boyfriend,” said Suzi.
“So when we gonna go out and find ourselves boyfriends?” said Carole, when Suzi had disappeared to use the phone.
“I don’t know.”
“Soon as we get paid let’s go out dancin. How ‘bout that? You up for that Rhianne?”
“You mean – go out tonight?”
“Yeah, why not? No time like the present, eh Rena?”
“Right Carole.”
It was supposed to be pay day so I went to find Alex. He was in his windowless office, slowly tapping numbers into a calculator. As soon as I appeared he swivelled in his chair and leant back, barring my entry with his feet on the doorframe. For the first time ever I was relieved when he said we would have to wait a few more days for our pay.
“Guess we’ll have to go dancin another day,” said Carole, when I told her the bad news.
“Guess so.”
I noticed her staring intently at my legs. “You wearin nylons, Rena?”
“No, it’s too hot for tights.”
“You gotta wear nylons.”
“Why?”
“It’s against the law not to, sweetie. Unhygienic. Diners don’t wanna be eatin their food with your bare legs in their face.”
Suzi nodded, “I think Carole is correct.”
“I really hate wearing tights,” I said.
“You think I like wearin nylons in this heat?” said Carole, “You gotta wear ‘em. Alex won’t like it if he finds out you ain’t wearin nylons.”
Suzi wasn’t asked back after her trial. “Something was badly wrong in her brain. She was a little complexed,” said Alex, twisting his forefinger into his temple.

The following day I was cutting jello into one-inch squares when a red-haired woman walked in. I jumped up and moved towards her with a menu.
“Hey Rita, how ya doin?” shouted the woman.
“Carole! I didn’t recognise you. New hair.”
“You like it?” Carole twirled, patting her newly-dyed hair. She had gone from frizzy bleached blonde to sleek bright mahogany. “I did it myself. I used to be a hairdresser, you know.”
“Very nice.”
“I thought I'd better do my hair if we're goin out dancin.”
“Are we?”
“I thought we agreed. You ain't backin out on me now are you, Rena?”
“I thought we were going to wait ‘til pay day.”
“You mean you don’t wanna go?”
“No, it’s just that I don’t have any money.”
Carole marched behind the counter and began to change from her high-heeled mules into flat lace-ups. She fumbled in her handbag for her cigarettes and lit up. I noticed she had outlined her lips in dark red to make them look bigger. She poured a coffee from the jug that had been standing on the hot ring all morning and switched the radio to Oldies 990.
“I got some nylons, Carole.” I held up a leg for her to inspect. Carole nodded curtly and began to tidy along the counter in a brisk, irritable way.
As the day wore on she brightened up, wiggling her way through the tables with five plates on one arm and singing along to Diana Ross in a Tammy Wynette voice.
“Pretty good singer ain’t I?” she declared. The old Jewish ladies picking at their fillets of sole smiled indulgently.
When Elvis came on singing ‘Hound Dog’ she grabbed my hand behind the dirty dishes screen and showed me how to rock and roll. Ravi and Spiros, the chefs, laughed at us through the serving hatch.
“Not a bad dancer, eh Rita? Yep, Carole, she knows how to have a good time.”
Alex burst through the kitchen doors as if he was entering a cowboy bar. “Enough fooling around. You got clients.” Alex always referred to the diners as clients.
“We’re just havin a giggle, boss. Customers like to see a happy waitress,” said Carole, sashaying off towards her section.
Alex stood at the window rubbing his stomach, which was beginning to flop over his jeans. A boy in a red shirt with grass-coloured hair walked past.
“Hey check out the green hair.” Alex turned to me, “What you think of green hair...you find it attractive?”
“Not particularly.”
“I think it’s sick. You know what these people are? They’re very complexed. You know what it is they’re doing? – it’s trying to make a statement, that’s what it is. Sick!”
Disgusted, he marched out towards the Chinese supermarket, where he liked to sit with the owner drinking beer and watching TV when the restaurant was quiet.
I tried to avoid Carole by keeping to my section in case she mentioned going out dancing again. Nobody came in for a long while so I slumped against the wall and stared vacantly out of the window. The sun beat down and a kind of deadness hung over the terrasse and the empty tree-lined street. ‘Penny Lane’ came on the radio and I suddenly felt homesick. I wondered what I was doing so far away from England, working with a woman who didn’t even know my proper name.
“If you were gettin paid for smiles, you’d be very poor,” said Carole. “Customers like to see happy waitresses. It adds to the ambulance…”
“The what?”
“You know, the ambulance.”

Spiros sat with us when lunch was over. He chewed a match between his teeth and let Carole smoke his cigarettes.
“Like my hair Spiros?” she demanded.
“Beautiful. Sexy lady. How you get it go so flat?”
“Oh I just blow-dried it and lacquered it. Just gotta hope it don't rain else it’ll go all frizzy again. I gotta blow-dry it every day to keep it like this.”
She looked at me with her head on one side. “I could do so much with your hair, Rena. You really oughta get it styled.”
“I’m growing it out.”
“Yeah, but it has no shape, sweetie. It has no style. What you would suit is a short style with maybe some blonde highlights. Highlights would look beautiful. Make you look like Lady Di. What you think Spiros? Don’t you think she’d look like Lady Di?”
“Lady Di. Sexy lady,” said Spiros.
“You know what you should do, sweetie? Come round to my apartment and I'll do your hair and then we should go out dancin. Whaddya say?” Carole nodded encouragingly.
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Me and Rena're gonna go out and find ourselves boyfriends. Gonna get some sexercise. Ain’t we Rena, eh?” She cackled and started coughing and thumping her chest.
“Did you get a patch?” I asked.
“Not yet. I gotta get one. My doctor said I gotta quit 'cos I got sixteen cysts on my breasts. One of them’s cancerous, he thinks.” She took a deep drag on her cigarette and turned towards the wall as if her eyes were welling up with tears. None of us knew what to say but at least it had got her off the subject of dancing.

The next day we were paid. Carole kept rushing to the bathroom, hissing loudly in my ear that she was “bleedin”.
“God I’m bleedin real bad Reenie. It’s soaked right through my panties,” she informed me as we stood scraping unfinished moussaka into the bin.
A couple of men came in and ordered filet mignons, stressing the French words in a camp over-exaggerated way.
“Some kind of faggots over there,” muttered Alex, leaning in to my ear as if he was letting me in on a great secret. “Not that I got anything against faggots…”
“No, live and let live,” I replied.
“Exactly. Live and let live. That’s the best thing you could have said.... Are you a lesbian or something?”
“No.”
“Just the way you said that, I thought, maybe, you know, you were a lesbian.”
He pushed past me behind the counter and ran himself a pint of water. After downing it in one and wiping his mouth with his hand, he told me at length about a lesbian strip show he’d once seen on Ste. Catherine.
“...The two girls, let me tell you – they were knockouts. And I tell you something else – that show will stick with me for the rest of my life. Wooh, there’s some things you see that you don’t forget in a hurry…” He rubbed his stomach and slammed back through the kitchen doors pushing his beer belly before him.
Later a black guy came in and ordered pizza. He was excessively polite when I took his order and showered me with gratitude when his pizza arrived. From the corner of my eye I could see Carole leaning against the counter, chewing her lip and watching me.
“Rena, can I say a little thing to you sweetie?” she said as I walked past.
“Yep?”
“You shoulda cut a slice and put it on his plate for him.”
“Why?”
“It’s what you do when you’re servin pizza. It adds a little bit of class, sweetie, you unnerstand?”
“Nobody has ever done that for me when I’ve eaten pizza.”
“Well, they don’t do it at Pizzahut, sweetie, but in a classy place like this, that’s what you do. It looks nice. Presentation, you know what I mean?”
She sauntered off, humming a Shania Twain tune and I went behind the counter to fold a few more napkins. Alex burst through the kitchen doors, demanded a Molson and wandered over to have a chat with the black guy.
“Think you got an admirer there,” he said after the guy had left, “You wanna know what he said?”
“What?”
“We were talking about women and he said he was looking for a woman that’s not too thin but, you know – a good size – and then he said ‘Like your waitress over there’.”
“Sure he weren’t talkin about me?” Carole swished past with a tray above her head. “Lot of these young guys, they really go for me, you know? Sometimes I go out dancin with my son and I get all these young guys comin over. They like an older woman, see. For the experience, you know? They like the fact that I’m experienced.”
“Sure Carole, whatever you say,” said Alex, rolling his eyes behind her back. He swigged his beer and turned to me. “So whaddya say? You want me to fix you up with him? He lives up the road. Nice guy. I known him a while.”
“Me and Rena can find our own boyfriends. We don’t need to be fixed up. Ain’t that right Rena? Fact we’re goin out tonight, now we’ve been paid. Goin out dancin. Right Rena?”
“Right Carole,” I said weakly.
“Carole, I think one of your clients is calling you,” said Alex, barging back into the kitchen.

At the end of the shift we sat cashing up. I had to use a calculator but Carole added up her takings on the back of her order pad, filling it with long sloping numbers. She left a cigarette burning in the ashtray as she scribbled and the smoke drifted into my eyes.
“So where we gonna meet then?” she asked, licking the seal on the takings envelope with one swipe of her tongue.
“I don’t know. You choose.”
“How about La Cabane on St. Laurent? It’s right near Ballattou – you know, that reggae club. We can have a few drinks then head on up to Ballattou. Seein as you’re so hot on black guys.”
“OK. La Cabane.” I rubbed my eyes. “How are you feeling? You know…” I indicated my head in the direction of her groin.
“Oh it’s fine now. I’m still bleedin. But I ain’t gonna let that stop me goin out dancin. Can’t let your periods rule your life, eh Rena?”

La Cabane was almost empty so I sat at the bar to feel less conspicuous and ordered a gin and tonic. I had changed out of my white shirt and black skirt into a pink shirt and blue jeans. My toenails were freshly painted red and looked good against my white mules. The effect was only slightly spoilt by the plasters stuck to the blisters on my heels. I ran a few conversation topics through my head – though it was unlikely, knowing Carole, that there would be any awkward silences between us.
The bar began to fill up but there was no sign of her. I kept checking the door ostentatiously to make sure it was obvious I was waiting for someone and not just drinking alone.
After three gin and tonics I left. At home I lay in bed listening to the fireworks bursting over La Ronde and wished I had someone to go and watch them with. I felt surprisingly drunk and had to keep one foot on the floor to stop the room from spinning.

I never saw Carole again. The next day she didn’t turn up for work. Or the next day, or the next.
“She ain’t no loss. Plenty of other waitresses be queuing up to work here,” said Alex.