of last month combined.”
“Is that a fluke, or did you do something?” he asked.
“That’s my work,” Dolly said with a big smile. “I was a dancer for a few months after my divorce. I know a lot of the girls on the circuit. When I got the promotion to manager here, I called all seventeen of the club mothers – you know, the women who manage the strippers in the clubs. I know most of them and told them that they’d get real good prices if they shopped here.”
“Good prices – you mean you’re giving discounts?” the manager asked, a quizzical look in his eye.
“You bet I’m givin’ dancers a discount. It says in the Fantasia Lingerie Sales Manual, page 17, ‘Store Managers are authorized to grant discretionary discounts up to 10 percent to preferred customers who spend at least $200 a year in the store.’ Heck, the typical dancer who shops here spends $500 to $800 a year, and some of them twice that. Our basic markup on everything except movies is 200 percent – twice the cost. An outfit we sell for $75 costs us $25. We can afford giving a ten or twenty percent discount to a dancer who spends a lot of money here. A 10 percent discount makes the $75 outfit a $67.50 outfit, but we have only $25 in it. That’s $42.50 profit on a $25 cost, or 170 percent markup. We only need an average 150 percent markup to meet all of our profit goals, as long as we do $440,000 a year in gross sales. I only give the discount to the top 5 percent of our customers. About half of them are local regulars, and the rest are strippers. If what I’m doin’ holds up, we’ll do $600,000 this year.” Dolly permitted herself a modest smile, though she felt like the cat that swallowed the canary.
“I like that,” the district manager said. “It shows initiative and understanding of the market. Keep up the good work, Dolly. Keep sending in the reports on time every week. See you next month.”
He wasn’t out the door five minutes before a call came in for her. “Hey, Dolly, this is Ruthie at Captain Willie’s. Can you come in early, say, 2:00? Coupla girls called in sick. Yeah, the usual. They probably got fucked up at some bar last night. They said they’re sick, but they’re probably just hung over. In any case, they ain’t gonna show. Be a doll. Come in at 2:00, OK?”
It was already 1:15. Dolly sighed and shook her head. This was the third time in two weeks Ruthie had called with the same request. Why can’t Willie keep reliable help in the place? she wondered. And why am I the one who always has to bail him out? Dolly was still tired from last night, not to mention holding down her two jobs. Now April was acting up, and her father was no help at all. April was supposed to go off to study nursing at Horry-Georgetown County Technical College after graduation. Dolly needed the money from her second job to put April through school. “Yeah, Ruthie, I’ll come in,” she said with a sigh. Lord, I’m pushing forty. When will it get easier? Dolly thought.
She dialed April at the apartment, but the line was busy. Shoot, girl! she thought. I need to get through to you. Get off the darn phone.
Working at Captain Willie’s wasn’t the pits, and it was certainly a step up from her former night job as a cocktail waitress at The Pink Zone, one of Myrtle Beach’s all-nude strip clubs. At Willie’s, she at least got to wear decent clothes: white shorts and a navy blue “Captain Willie’s” golf shirt.
At the Pink Zone, all the cocktail waitresses wore sparkle stockings, garter belts, pink thong bikini panties, and tight white push-up bustiers with pink laces. Even though the servers – unlike the dancers – were supposed to be totally off-limits to the customers, they still got groped and propositioned almost every night. The hassles came mostly from jerks playing grab-ass, but occasionally, a drunk wanted to see more boob than the costumes displayed and literally took matters into his own hands. A bouncer usually appeared to keep him from doing any serious damage, but fun, it wasn’t.
The first time a new server complained to the management about the grabbing and touching, she was told the two basic rules:
1.Never piss off a paying customer.
2.When propositioned or groped, duck it, live with it, or work somewhere else.
The majority of the servers were single mothers or college students paying their own way. The base pay for servers was minimum wage, but a hard-working waitress at the Pink Zone could make $15 to $20 an hour extra in tips. Most of them just gritted their teeth, smiled at the customers, dodged the hands as best they could, and hung in there until closing time.
Dolly rolled into the parking lot behind Captain Willie’s at 2:20. Willie’s was one of the dozens of carbon-copy, all-you-can-eat seafood places that lined Myrtle Beach’s two-mile-long Restaurant Row. Atop Captain Willie’s, a simulated lighthouse with a simulated rotating beacon beckoned to passing tourists. Inside, fiberglass replicas of trophy fish lined the walls of the lobby. In the main dining room, fishing nets were draped on the walls. Heavy ships’ mooring lines separated the lobby from the dining area.
Red, green, and blue spotlights sprayed dots of light off a 1980s mirrored disco ball whose motor had burned out several years earlier. Nautical paraphernalia – oars, compasses, barometers, chronometers, and ships' nameplates – were displayed on every supporting beam. The walls were decorated with mass-produced beach scene paintings. At each table, a seashell arrangement framed a small oil lamp. It wasn’t much, but if Dolly could get a crowd of non-Canadian golfers, singles, and small families, she could make decent tips there on a good night.
Dolly immediately set to work. Most of the lunch crowd had cleared out, so she went to the empty front section and started to prepare for the dinner hours. Side work was the part of the job every waitress liked least: all labor, low pay, and no tips. First, Dolly collected all of the condiment carriers, condiment bottles, and oil lamps and assembled them on one table. From the storeroom, she brought two-pound cans of salt and pepper, a gallon can of ketchup, a funnel, and lamp oil. For the next hour and a half, Dolly worked on autopilot. First came the ketchup. She opened all the bottles, put a funnel in the first, poured in the ketchup, and moved on to the condiment tray as the ketchup was filling the bottle.
Her mind drifted back to the previous night at White Lightnin’ and Ron Pawley. On a zero to 10 scale for looks, he was a solid 8, maybe even pushing a 9. About 6’2”, she guessed, maybe 190 pounds. Not muscled, but firm, and definitely not soft. The deep tan showed that he spent a lot of time outdoors, but the 450 SL convertible and the designer shades made it clear that the time he spent in the sun wasn’t in a tobacco field.
He said he was in real estate and condos. Showing those to customers would account for the tan. And if he was good at it, that would account for the 450SL and the boat. So far, so good, she thought. It was obvious he had plenty of free time because he was a really good dancer, and that only came from lots of practice.
She took the tops off all the salt and pepper shakers, filled them up, and screwed the lids back on. Then she started to refill another jar of ketchup and went to the salt and peppers. When everything was full, she cleaned all the containers with a moist cloth. Next she restocked the sugar and sweetener packets, and refilled the bottles of steak sauce and the oil in the table lamps. Finally, she rolled 120 sets of cutlery in cloth napkins. By the time she had set the tables in her section with condiments, cutlery, and lamps, it was 4:15. The early diners would be arriving at 5:00. She looked around to see how the other servers were doing with their sections.
There were no other girls. She looked over to Ruthie, who gave Dolly an embarrassed shrug. “Will you....?” Dolly sighed in disgust. She picked up her cell phone and tried calling April again. Still busy. With another sigh, she started the entire table-cleaning procedure all over again in the outdoor deck section.
As soon as she settled into the side-work routine again, her thoughts went back to Ron
