Free Boulevard by Jim Grimsley Page B

office, the rumor going around that Curtis was hiring another waiter.
    When Curtis went out of his way to say good-bye to Newell in the coldest tones possible, in front of Stuart, Newell left the restaurant fearing the worst. In fact, it was as bad as he expected, because the next morning, a Sunday, a new bus boy was on duty when Newell came to work, and Curtis called Newell to the office and fired him very first thing. Almost a week’s pay for the days he had worked since the last payday, plus an extra fifty for getting fired, as best Newell could understand it.
    â€œWhat did I do?” Newell asked.
    Curtis shrugged, looked down at his desk.
    â€œYou were too disruptive,” Alan said, passing the door. “Nobody could get along with you.”
    â€œWas this because I wouldn’t go out with you?” Newell asked.
    Curtis never answered at all, going back to his books, and Newell asked, “Well, what am I supposed to do now?”
    â€œLeave, honey,” Alan said. “It’s just that simple.”
    In a daze he headed back to his room. He went upstairs immediately and counted out two hundred fifty dollars from what he had. This was the rent; he put it aside. He had enough to keep him alive till he got another job. He had a couple of cans of soup and some crackers left from when he had been unemployed. Curtis could have fired him after breakfast, he could have waited thatlong. Could you really be fired because you didn’t respond when your boss flirted with you? Newell ate a can of soup slowly to make it last longer, counted his money again, discouraged that the folded bills and precise stacks of coins added up to such a tiny sum. The hot soup calmed his belly, and he felt less anxious and tried to lie across the bed, but when he did, with the afternoon sun slanting across his belly through the slats of the blinds, when he drifted toward sleep, he felt his belly rumbling as if hungry and turned over on his side and counted his money again, worried that it would not be enough. He had meant to stay in the room but, with thoughts like these churning, he sprang up from the bed and splashed water on his face, folded the money into his pocket and went out walking along Bourbon Street. But whenever he saw a sign for help wanted, he first surged toward the door of the business and then away from it. Sunday, it wouldn’t do any good to ask, most places the managers didn’t even work on Sundays. His heart pounded, and he talked himself out of each opportunity, and walked away, and finally drifted toward the bars again.
    He went into a bar and ordered one of the cocktails that had worked so well to dull his thinking before. He moved from bar to bar. Late in the evening, in the Bourbon Pub among a lot of men dressed like cowboys in flannel shirts, cowboy boots, and belts with ornate silver buckles, Newell felt a wave of nausea pass through him and sank to the barstool and hung his head down. There was a drink in his hand, somewhere distant, and he concentratedon that, because he knew if he failed to sustain the thought of it in his head he would drop the glass, and that would be unpardonable, to drop the drink glass, with the whole bar watching. The bar was spinning and the music was making him dizzy, but he thought he was okay sitting there, he thought the nausea was going away and he was acting pretty normal, he thought he blended in pretty well, until someone leaned into his face and asked, “Honey, are you all right?”
    â€œI’m fine,” he said, or tried to say, and some sound did come out of his mouth, but he was mostly focused on the kindness of the face in front of him, a flabby, pale, man’s face, with big eyes made bigger by makeup, a line along the eyelid and mascara, but he was a man, needing to shave. Newell took a deep breath and said again, slowly, “I’m fine.”
    â€œYou’re about to fall off that stool, honey.”
    Newell nodded, and he