Bea’s Worry
I shoved the door open to arrive in the dining room behind the long, walnut bar. Bea sat on the customer’s side with a stack of paperwork, an open ledger, and her electric adding machine. The fingers of her right hand flew across the keys of the machine. It made a harsh, buzzing, grinding sound as it accepted her entries and printed them in purple digits on the ever-lengthening receipt tape.
A cigarette stub smoldered between the first two fingers of her left hand. It left individual flakes of grey ash on the green ledger sheet as she used that same hand to point to the numbers which she entered.
I moved behind the bar. Bea held her left hand up tell me to remain silent while she finished the sheet she was working on. She drew on her cigarette while her right hand continued to strike the keys of the adding machine. She stubbed the cigarette out in a glass ashtray as she finished her entries. The adding machine ground out the answer and printed it on the receipt tape.
She tore the tape from the roll and compared the machine’s figures to her own. Apparently satisfied by what she saw, she made a mark on the ledger in pencil and raised her pretty blue eyes to my brown ones.
She started to smile until she remembered she was angry with me, then she frowned. She seized a cigarette from a bright red pack on the bar and lit it with a wooden match. “What do you want?” She crossed her arms under her small bust and let her cigarette hang between her lips.
I snatched the dangling cigarette with a rare burst of speed from my painful fingers. I drew on it and coughed the smoke from my chest. I stuck my tongue out over how awful tobacco tasted since I quit using it and stubbed the fresh cigarette out in the full ashtray. “You smoke too much.”
She reached for her pack again, but I was too fast for her. I made a grab for the pack, but my hand failed to close on it. All I managed to do was to knock it off the bar and onto the floor on my side. I picked it up and slipped it into my shirt pocket. “No more. These things are no damn good for you.”
She sprang from her bar stool and pointed the first two fingers of her left hand at me. She always pointed with two fingers because there was almost always a cigarette between them. “A heck of a lot you care about me!” She clacked her high heels across the dining room to the alcove near the main entrance. She dropped a quarter and a nickel into the cigarette machine and yanked out the plastic handle to vend another pack. She stalked back toward the bar while she opened the pack and coaxed the first cigarette from the cellophane. “What are you even doing here? Who’s taking care of Walt? If you left him up there all alone, Law Edwards, you and I are finished!”
I raised my hands to show surrender. “I hired a nurse that Walt thinks is a housekeeper. She’s looking after him.”
“What about his sister? Doesn’t the fact that he had a heart attack mean anything to her?”
I shook my head sadly. “The heart attack didn’t make Walt any less of a fag.”
“Miserable BITCH!” She stuck her cigarette between her lips and talked around it while she took a matchbook from a nearby table. “Her brother is alive, and she treats him like a leper.” She lit her cigarette and pointed it at me. “You should let me talk to her! I’d tell her how lucky she is to have a brother like Walt. Nobody knows better than me how hard it is to do without!”
She ran out of venom and seemed to collapse in on herself. She puffed her cigarette and made a face like she hated it. She stubbed it out in the clean ashtray she’d taken the matchbook from. “I miss my brother every single day. He’s been dead for twenty-four years, but every time I get the mail, I look for a letter addressed in his handwriting. Every time I see a tall, blond man in a grey suit, I look to see if it’s him. It’s not fair.”
She dusted her hands from the fragments of tobacco her cigarette had left behind and turned her body in my direction but didn’t raise her head. “Damnit, Law, don’t you know when a woman needs a hug?”
I hesitated because I didn’t know how serious she was. She’d just been scolding me, now she wanted a comforting embrace. I baited her to see which Bea I was talking to. “I don’t know anything about women.”
“Like hell you don’t. You and your damned old-fashioned chivalry melt a woman’s heart. That’s why your nieces all love you. You dote on every single one of them.”
“I never doted on you.”
“Yes, you did. You and Walt looked after me like I was your own daughter. I know you couldn’t afford to let me have the apartment and the office for free when you opened the restaurant. I know because I did your books.”
“You never took a dime for keeping the books. Even all these years later you never have.”
“And I never will. If I kept your books every week for a hundred years, I could never pay back what you and Walt gave me. Your kindness set me free.”
A tear ran down her face. I didn’t know if it was prompted by the memory of her brother, or the memory of the kindness Walt and I showed her when she wanted to get out from under her father’s oppressive thumb. Either way, I was certain she needed the hug she’d asked for.
I hurried around the bar and went to embrace my old friend. I gathered her tall, lean body into my arms and drew her close. My hugs with Bea were always awkward. She was taller than me, even before my loss of height. The heels she wore increased the difference between us. I could barely see over her shoulder. I felt ridiculous, but she appreciated my effort.
“I’m sorry to make this about me.” She said to the top of my head. “It’s not about me, is it? It’s about you and Walt. You must be falling apart.”
“I am.”
“And as much as he means to me, he means ten time that to you.”
“A hundred times.”
“A hundred times. You’re doing your best, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Then it’s my job to help.” She pushed us apart.
“I’m glad you’re my friend. I need all the friends I have right now. I’m scared, and I hate being scared.”
“I’m scared too. You and Walt are my family. If not for you…if not for the both of you, my life would have been very different.”
I didn’t want to get emotional, but I was about to. I didn’t want to cry again. I tried to get the conversation moving onto other things. “Owen wants to buy the restaurant.”
“I wondered if he would tell you.” She carried her new cigarette pack to the bar and rifled through the papers there. She brought out a folded ledger sheet and showed me a calculation she’d done to establish the value of Walt’s Special. She walked me through all the figures, explained the knowns and unknowns, and detailed each aspect of the building and the business including the real property and the movable property. When she reached the end, she pointed to what I thought was a massive figure.
“No way this place is worth that much. Even if it was, Owen could never afford to pay that.”
She took another cigarette from her pack and stuck it between her lips. I snatched it away when she reached for her matches. She stomped her foot in frustration. I held the unlit cigarette up. “You’re quitting these. There no good for you. I’ve kept my mouth shut for a long time, but I’m done. You’ve got to give them up.”
She took a long step out of my arm’s reach and put another cigarette to her lips. She lit up and blew smoke at the ceiling. “There are a few things you need to consider.”
I perched on a barstool while I waited for her to have her say. I thought she was going to justify her smoking habit. Instead, she went back to talking about the price for the restaurant. “You’re partially right about the building and the contents, what’s called the ‘real property.’ That’s not worth very much. The largest part of the value of Walt’s Special is its reputation, and the earning potential associated with the reputation. You and Walt have been doing very well, especially for the last ten years. It’s the earning potential which Owen would buy into.
“It’s very important, as part of any deal with Owen, that Walt stays on as one of the principles. His name needs to remain part of Walt’s Special. The Firestone Stars are a big part of the customer draw. The stars are awarded to the owner, not to the business. If the owner sells, the restaurant is stripped of the stars and has to earn them again. If Walt stays on as a partner, even a silent partner, the stars stay as well.”
Bea puffed her cigarette and took a seat two stools away so she could enjoy it without interference. “As for the price, there are a few ways for Owen to pay it. He could get a loan from the bank and pay the whole thing in one lump. The other way he could do it would be for him to buy into the business as a partner. If he buys in as a partner, he can either stand pat at his buy-in percentage, or he can use his share of the profits to purchase additional shares of the business on an annual or even a quarterly basis. That way he buys you and Walt out over time, up to an agreed upon value.”
Bea finished her explanation and her cigarette at the same time. She crushed the cigarette out and stood from her stool. “How do you think Walt will take this?”
I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry at Bea’s question. “How do you think he’ll take it? He’ll be devastated. I hate that we’re talking about this without him. We don’t have a choice. If he doesn’t slow down, he’ll die.”
“We have to do this. Which option do you think he’ll hate the least?”
I didn’t need to think about the question at all. I already knew. “The partnership one. The one where Owen buys us out over time. That sounds like it’s better for us and better for him. Owen gets to keep the stars, and Walt gets to stay involved. It’s likely the only way Walt would sell. He’ll never stand for being bought out completely.”
“Alright, I’ll get the paperwork started.”
“Will your husband draw up the contracts for us?”
“Ex-husband.” She insisted with extra emphasis on the ‘ex.’ “And, yes, he said he would.”
The ink wasn’t even dry on Bea’s divorce. The split between she and her husband, Kirk, had been amicable, or at least as amicable as those things ever are. The couple didn’t exactly part as friends, but they parted without becoming enemies. Bea had full custody of her children, her 14-year-old son, Kirk Junior and her 12-year-old son, Preston. She also kept the house over in New Jersey and one of the cars. Kirk moved into a rented town house and took his car with him.
The couple was married for fourteen years when they decided to divorce. Walt had said the split was ‘a shame,’ but I’d seen it coming for a while. Kirk Oliver was a corporate lawyer Bea met when her one-woman accounting firm landed its first big corporate client. Baskin Coal was having trouble with embezzlement. Baskin’s president, a young man named Colin Baskin, who had inherited the firm from his father, reached out to Bea in the hopes that she would be able to find the embezzlers.
Baskin’s idea was to hire an auditor for their books. He wanted someone who the embezzler wouldn’t take seriously, so he chose a young blonde woman named Bea. Bea found the embezzlers, and with a little advice from me, she set an accounting trap to incriminate them. Along the way, she met her future husband, Kirk Oliver. He was one of the attorneys for the firm.
Bea and Kirk courted, then married, then had children, then divorced. The biggest difficulty between the two was the topic of Bea’s independence. Kirk assumed that once they married, Bea would give up her accounting firm and be a homemaker. She never had any such intention. She’d spent too much time earning her CPA and building her business to give it up so easily. She reduced her client load while she raised her children, but once her youngest was ten, she went back to work full-time.
Kirk couldn’t handle having a working woman for a wife. Friction built up between them until they either had to stay married and live in resentment, or divorce so they could remain friendly. They divorced.
I was glad that Kirk had agreed to draw up the papers for Owen to buy into Walt’s Special. I liked Kirk and trusted him. He always treated Bea well, and he never balked at letting Walt and me visit his wife and children. As far as Kirk Junior and young Preston were concerned, Walt and I were their favorite uncles. The fact that we were queer didn’t even enter into the matter.
I kept my opinions on Bea’s attitude toward her ex-husband to myself. Their relationship was none of my business. Instead, I addressed something which was very important to me and something I thought I might be able to influence. I thanked her for her work on the books and with working out the numbers on the partial sale of Walt’s Special, then I brought up her smoking.
I took out the pack I’d snatched earlier and laid it on the bar. “I want you to give these up. I worry about you.”
She took a fresh cigarette from her pack and played with it. She let the paper tube of tobacco roll across her palm. “They help me relax.”
“I know. I smoked for most of my life. I know how good it feels when you’re under a lot of pressure and you reach for a cigarette. I also know how good it feels to take a deep breath and have your lungs work the way they’re supposed to because they’re not filled with smoke all the time. I know how good food tastes now that my mouth isn’t filled with the flavor of tobacco.”
“I’ll cut down.” She blurted to interrupt my dissertation on the joys of being smoke free.
I shook my head. “No, you won’t; not really. You’ll cut down for a few weeks, but the first time one of the boys tries your patience, you’ll be right back to two packs a day.” I got off my barstool to stand very close to the woman who was one of my best friends in the world. I crouched down so I could meet her downcast gaze. “Please, Bea. You’re so young and you’ve got so much to live for. Take care of yourself. Do it for your sons. You want to be around to meet your grandkids, don’t you?”
She shrugged and let her shoulders hang. “It’s going to be hard.” She slid the cigarette she’d been playing with back into the pack.
“I’ll do whatever I can to help.”
She shook her pretty, blonde head and smiled. “No, you won’t, silly man. You’ve got your hands full with Walt. I’ll be alright. Giving up cigarettes is just another challenge.”
“And you love a challenge. Thanks…thanks for being willing to listen to me. I am a silly man, but I’m a silly man who loves you dearly.”
She nodded to appreciate my words of love, then she asked me another question. “Why are you wearing that terrible suit? Grey is not your color.”
I ran my thumb behind the lapel of my jacket and inspected the fabric. “I thought I’d be doing inventory and working on books today, so I put this old rag on.”
“What will you do now that your chores are taken care of?”
I dropped my face in my hands and rubbed it to hide my embarrassment at what I was about to say. “I bawled Doc out last night and he left. I have to find him and apologize.”
“What happened?”
I shrugged helplessly. “You know how I can be. I’ve got a lot on my mind, and him and me were drinking, and he was asking me a bunch of questions about being queer, and I popped off. A minute later I regretted it, but he was already gone.”
She perched on the barstool near her paperwork and adding machine. She folded her arms under her small bust and cocked her head in a thoughtful attitude. She opened her mouth to say something, then seemed to think better of it. “Good luck.”
I thanked her and gave her another hug. I went through the kitchen to the alley, got the car out, and left on my errand.
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