Free Waitress Wanted (Kit Tolliver #5) (The Kit Tolliver Stories) by Lawrence Block Page A

apron on the peg. It’ll fit you. Last girl worked here, she was about your size, but I gotta say she didn’t have your shape. You got a real nice shape to you.”

    She’d drawn a few cups of coffee, served a couple of Blue Plate Specials, and had Steve brush up against her a few times, with an apology each time, always with an inflection to belie the words. And the next time she passed through the kitchen he dropped the accidentally-on-purpose pretense and ran a hand appraisingly over her bottom.
    “Very nice,” he said.
    Well, she’d thought she might stay a while in Phoenix, and that didn’t seem likely now, did it? Oh, she could deflect his pass and make it clear she wasn’t willing to play, but she didn’t get the impression Steve would take no for an answer. She sensed that making herself available to him was part of the job description, which might explain why the vacancy had existed.
    She could quit, of course. Take off the apron, throw it in his face, and tell him to save it for the next girl with a nice shape to come along.
    But the son of a bitch got her motor running. He was crude and crass, and you couldn’t call him good-looking, but there was a sexual magnetism about him that she couldn’t deny. Even the rank smell of him, all musk and sweat and a shirt that had gone too long between washings, was part of the package; she might wrinkle her nose when she breathed in his scent, but that didn’t keep her from getting wet.

    Now? Or later?
    Either course held its attractions. She could hurry the two customers at the counter, then turn the sign on the door from OPEN to CLOSED and return to the kitchen. Look at him through half-lidded eyes, part her lips a little and run her tongue around them. It wouldn’t be all that difficult to give him the idea, given that he already had the idea, had had it the moment he laid those muddy brown eyes on her, and let them linger.
    She’d take off her panties before she went in there. Then just pull up her skirt and bend over the counter, and he’d be on her like a mongoose on a cobra. She imagined his hands on her, his cock deep inside her, her nostrils filled with the raw smell of him.
    And in the afterglow, while he was catching his breath and thinking of all the things he’d soon get to do with his hot new waitress, she’d be well placed to finish what she’d started. It was a kitchen, there were knives and cleavers all over the place, and she’d grab one and put it where it would do the most good, and he’d be dead and she’d be gone. Back to her room and under the shower—God, she’d need a shower—and then goodbye Phoenix.
    But what was her hurry? He’d want her even more if she gave him a taste and made him wait for the rest of it. Why strike while the iron was hot when all it could do was get hotter?
    In the end, it was he who turned the sign from OPEN to CLOSED . “Okay, time to go,” he said to one old lag sitting with an empty cup of coffee and a newspaper another customer had left behind. And, as the old fellow got to his feet, “Hey, Joe, don’t be a cheap bastard. This is Carol’s first day, ain’t you gonna leave her a tip?”
    Shamed into it, the man put a pair of quarters on the table. “Last of the big spenders,” Steve said, and scooped up the coins, presenting them to her like a cat depositing a dead mouse at its owner’s feet. And, with the window sign turned and the door bolted, he gave her a grin and motioned her into the kitchen.
    She didn’t have to pretend to be excited when he handled her breasts and buttocks and ran a hand up between her legs. There was nothing artful about his technique, but the crudeness itself was exciting. Oh, one would tire of it soon enough, but for now—
    “Not tonight,” she said.
    He was a man who would indeed take no for an answer, but not until the fourth or fifth time he heard it. She’d fend him off and he’d go at her again, until at last he realized that no meant no. He let out a