David Shapiro's Editor's Pick:
The writer's skillful use of details to evoke time and place drew me into this story and held me tight.
In the spring before the war, one of the acts was an old style magician with rabbits and hats and rings that would snap into each other and the bored girl sawed in half. He would hang out by my station after his set, trying to get me out to a little place he knew in the Village. Why me, I guess his pretty assistant had mastered the art of disappearance too well. He showed me some of his astounding tricks, betrayed all his secrets. All of them turned out to be perfectly simple and store bought. It was all show biz banter and sequins that made them marketable, but not for very long. Magicians and ventriloquists never lasted. The people wanted syrupy dance combos with syrupy singers. Or slick haired comedians who no one laughed at, but they talked fast and smiled slick.
And there was us hat check girls and the cocktail waitresses, but the waitresses could keep their tips so they looked down on us, we were gratuities b-girls. I know what you're thinking, that I'm wrong, you saw us there in our low cut blouses and leering tip jars. But it was all a ruse. We were salaried workers, like any assembly line job. 15 bucks a week. Hat checks were no more than a store bought magic trick. I was the box sawed in half. Not the girl in it screaming peril, but the box. I was the prop to make the trick work.
Here's the trade secret. The hat check room was a separate concession the club rented out to entrepreneurs. The hat check men would hire young silly girls with long legs and cleavage. Girls who looked available. He would put a large tip jar that no one could ignore. All the money from the jar was the profit for the Hat Check Man, not for us working his concession. He could take in 3 to 5 hundred a night from the tips that were never tips.
Because tips would be going to us, to thank us, to impress us, to make us swoon, Because we have never seen such a thing as a Ulysses S Grant 50 before, oh my. If you ever thought we were unimpressed by your gratitude, we were. You were suckers. Large mouth bass falling for bait. The silk stalking lure. The hat check man would be watching us, making sure we would forget our place and try to keep our hard earned cash. Because it was hard earned. We had to be leered at, bragged at, have our fannies patted. For a flat fee we were your dream and your coat and hat would be well looked after.
On slow nights, or when the hat check man got greedy, he'd removed the jar and put up a sign saying Thank you for not tipping. The tips would be double that night. Because the drunken business men would need to let us know that they were above rules. That they could do what they pleased, and they pleased to give me a hundred, that I would be forced to give up to my keepers.
It was better to be a waitress. Better still to be a mistress. Don't laugh, the hours were better and there was less standing on uncomfortable shoes. . There you would be kept in an apartment and told when to be available and when you were free. It was all a trick. All done with smoky rooms with mirror. The war changed that. We all worked in munitions factories and then were married to returning GIs, living in semi detached houses in Nausau county, watching the Ed Sullivan show on Sundays. With TV Dinner trays before us. Whenever Ed would introduce a magician, I would excuse myself to the kitchen because I could always see the trick. And could not help but be filled with disappointment and longing.
David Macpherson is a writer from Worcester, Massachusetts.