Big Girls Get the Blues by Mercy Walker Page A

worked with Tammy Fay for nearly three years, and the one thing I knew for an absolute certainty was that Tammy Fay didn’t bluff.  She didn’t mints words, she didn’t exaggerate, and she didn’t threaten: she just did it.
    “On the count of three!”  Tammy Fay called out.  “One…Two…”
    When I yanked the door open I expected to see her holding a flaming Molotov cocktail.  But instead she had a casserole dish in one hand, a lit Virginia Slim in the other.
    Tammy Fay’s cold blue eyes glowered at me as she looked m e up in down, just once, with contemp.  “You look like shit,” she said, smoke coming out her lips like a dragon, and then pushed past me to clomp down the hallway in her cork heeled platform shoes. 
    She dropped the casserole dish on my kitchen counter with a loud clatter and flicked her cigarette ash in my sink.  She turned and gazed at me as I lagged behind, only now getting to the kitchen.
    “You need to get your lazy, oversized butt back down to the club…pronto.”
    Nice to know some things never changed.  I’d been visited by half the staff in the five days since I’d quit Frisky Kittens strip club.   Each one of them had tried to play on my love and affection, even throwing in a little guilt for good measure.  That had been Shirley on Tuesday.  She’d said that Nadia (aka Crystal) had lost five pounds off her already emaciated frame—the girl was on a new diet she read about in Cosmo .  No one had yet been able to get her to eat anything more than three oyster crackers a day.
    That had made me waver…but I just threw it back in Shirley’s face.  “Just order a D’Carlos pizza from Brookline.  She’s from there, so she won’t be able to resist.”
    But Tammy Fay was anything but tactful or subtle.  She was like a sledgehammer…or maybe one of those big wrecking balls they demolished buildings with.
    “Did you hear me?” she yelled loud enough to wake the dead.  “You’ve gotta get back to work, and now!”
    “I’m not deaf,” I said as I wobbled on over to my Mr. Coffee and started filling it with my favorite Columbian special roast.
    “Well you look and move like a fucking corpse, I just thought you’d lost your hearing too.”
    I turned and bared my teeth at her.  “Boy I’ve missed you.  So how the hell do I get you to leave my house?”
    Tammy Fay looked around her and made a face like she smelled something rotting.  “Don’t worry, I’m not staying.”
    “Thank go d.”
    She smiled at me, and her predatory baring of teeth was better than mine.  She really looked like she ate small, living animals for breakfast.
    I felt a shiver roll up my spine.
    “Mr. Magoo walked out last night.”
    O -o-o-o h…so that was it .  Mr. Magoo was Tammy Fay’s best tipper.  She walked out with a hundred bucks extra every night the bespeckled octogenarian sat in her section.  Hi s walking out had seriously cut into her tips.
    “And I care why?”
    Tammy put her cigarette out by dropping it in a cup I had in my sink.  It sizzled shortly as it met with the remnants of yesterday morning ’s coffee.  I hadn’t done dishes in a few days.  A very not me thing, but I was busy …l ooking for a new job …n ursing a broken heart.
    I shook that last thought out of my head and felt my headache stiffen to a migraine. 
    “You care,” she said with a n uncomfortable certainty.
    I looked up from my pounding headache and found her staring into my eyes.
    “You’re a sap, and you’re going to regret it someday, but you care about everyone at the stupid shithole.”
    I bristled when she called Frisky Kittens a shithole.  It had kept a roof over her head and food on her table for three years.  Where the hell did she get off —?
    Oh…
    O-o-o-o-oh. 
    “You’re good,” I said, leaning back against my well worn kitchen counter.  “You just about had me there.”
    Tammy Fay took a step closer and the air in the room literally dropped about ten degrees.