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 you’re hired, you’re hired. I don’t want no back talk about the wife. You dig?”
She nodded, startled by the force of his spite. She made a mental note not to press that sore spot again. He apparently needed and wanted the money Marie’s succulent concoctions brought in, but he hated surrendering control of the shop to her. Yet it was the price of their success. She knew what she was doing, in the kitchen and in the accounts, and he was afraid to interfere.
Beebo stood frowning at the sawdust floor.
“What’s the matter, kid? Something bugging you?” Pete asked.
She glanced up at him. It was strange that he should hire her on the spot without the slightest idea if she could drive worth a damn. “Do you want me to start deliveries this morning?” she said.
“I’ll take you around, show you the route,” he said. “First we got to make up the orders.”
He walked toward the back of the store with Beebo behind him. “Mr. Pasquini, there’s just one thing,” she said.
“It’s Pete. Yeah, what thing?” He handed her a large cardboard carton to pack a grocery order in.
“How much will it pay?” Beebo asked, standing there with the box, unwilling to start working till she knew what she was worth.
“Fifty a week to start,” he said, without looking up. He lifted some bottled olive oil down from a nearby shelf. “Things work out good, I’ll raise you. You want it, don’t you?” He looked at her then.
There was a barely noticeable pause before she answered, “I want it.” But she spoke with a sliver of misgiving stuck in the back of her mind.
Pete accompanied her on the delivery route that morning and again in the afternoon, watching her handle the truck, showing her where the customers lived. She had spent the night before
