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Show in my father's house/ 189 He cleared his throat. "It's - uh, it's a place where you can talk during the movie." Then he confided he had a girlfriend. "But don't tell Mama. You know why I like her?" "Why?" "Because she hardly ever talks. I like a girl that keeps her mouth shut." It was hard, but I kept my mouth shut the rest of the way home. I picked up a few tricks of my own to increase our sales and tips. So far I hadn't told anyone that my father was dead, and I was still getting big tips. I searched out winners and learned to pick genuinely rich from middle-class tourists, generous from stingy. I read people's features and mapped my approach to them. Men and old ladies - they shared their luck without making me feel like a beggar. But I hated selling in the big casino where I got my first ten-dollar tip because an old man with a hooked nose and a tan felt hat hung around in front of the stuffed polar bear. He wasn't a wino - too mean and beady-eyed - and when I tried to sneak past him into the casino he grabbed my arm. "You ain't supposed to be in here, kid." Since Danny made me go in anyway, saying, "Just don't pay any attention to him." I ducked into the ladies' and waited a few minutes, watching the cocktail waitresses, change girls and show girls as they stood in front of the mirror clotting their black lashes with more mascara, slicking their lips red, throwing a hip this way and that, necks craned to watch their bottoms wiggle in the mirror, as they walked out the door. |