His Name Was Death by Fredric Brown

Author:Fredric Brown [Brown, Fredric]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Her name was Rose Harper and she was happy and unhappy at the same time. She was happy because she was deeply in love and she was unhappy because she couldn’t sleep and it was midnight already. Midnight, three and a half hours after she’d got into bed at nine-thirty, and only four hours before she’d have to get up. That awful early shift. Why in heaven’s name hadn’t she told Mr. Howard she had other plans and couldn’t make it? And if he’d insisted she could have quit right then and there over the telephone and never have had to go to the restaurant again except once to collect what pay she had coming. If only she’d done that she’d have the whole week end free for Claude instead of—unless she could get to sleep somehow she was going to be dead tired, a wreck with rings under her eyes, when he picked her up tomorrow afternoon and that would spoil everything.

She was going to quit that job anyway, wasn’t she? It had been a mistake for her to have taken it, even though it did pay more money. She’d been greedy, that’s what had been wrong with her. But six months ago—it had been just before she’d met Claude—those extra dollars per week seemed important. She’d had a pleasant easy-to-do bookkeeping job at bookkeeping and billing in the office of a Santa Monica department store; although she hadn’t exactly enjoyed the work it hadn’t been unpleasant and the hours had been regular. But it had paid only forty dollars a week and Alyce Randall, who had been a friend of hers then (although she’d lost touch with her a month afterwards when Alyce had moved to San Diego) had told her, “Honey, you’re a sucker for that kind of dough. Be a waitress. With tips I’m making sixty sweet little dollars every week and you’re smarter than I am any day.” And Alyce had talked her into it and had shown her how, giving her private lessons for hours one week end so she could claim to have had experience and get away with it. And she’d got away with it, although she’d been a little awkward at first and had got a few bawlings-out from Mr. Howard before she’d really got the hang of it.

And she was making more money than she had at bookkeeping, although not as much as Alyce had predicted, not as much as some of the other girls were making on the same shifts. She was, by now, just about as efficient as any of them, but she was too shy; she just couldn’t do the kind of kidding around with the customers some of the other girls did, the kind of kidding around that upped tips more than quiet and efficient service could ever hope to do. Still, she was making more than she had at the department store. Instead of sixty a week she’d been averaging a little less than fifty, but still about eight dollars a week more than she’d made at office work.

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