Mildred Pierce by James M Cain

Author:James M Cain [Cain, James M]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General, fiction, Drama, Film & Video, Performing Arts, Restaurateurs, History & Criticism, Screenplays, Single Mothers, Triangles (Interpersonal Relations), American, Conflict of Generations, Mildred Pierce (Motion Picture), Biography & Autobiography, Mothers and Daughters
ISBN: 9780299083700
Publisher: Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research
Published: 1980-12-15T01:12:49+00:00

11

‘Baby, what are you doing about Repeal?’

‘You mean the Repeal of Prohibition?’

‘Yeah, just that.’

‘Why, I don’t see how it affects me.’

‘It affects you plenty.’

Mrs Gessler, having coffee with Mildred just before closing time, began to talk very rapidly. Repeal, she said, was only a matter of weeks, and it was going to stand the whole restaurant business on its head. ‘People are just crazy for a drink, a decent drink, a drink with no smoke or ether or formaldehyde in it, a drink they can have out in the open, without having to give the password to some yegg with his face in a slot. And places that can read the handwriting on the wall are going to cash in, and those that can’t are going to pass out. You think you’ve got a nice trade here, don’t you? And you think it’ll stick by you, because it likes you, and likes your chicken, and wants to help a plucky little woman get along? It will like hell. When they find out you’re not going to serve them that drink, they’re going to be sore and stay sore. They’re going to tag you for a back number and go some place where they get what they want. You’re going to be out of luck.’

‘You mean I should sell liquor?’

‘It’ll be legal, won’t it?’

‘I wouldn’t even consider such a thing.’

‘Why not?’

‘Do you think I’d run a saloon?’

Mrs Gessler lit a cigarette, began snapping the ashes impatiently into Mildred’s Mexican ashtrays. Then she took Mildred to task for prejudice, for stupidity, for not being up with the times. Mildred, annoyed at being told how to run her business, argued back, but for each point she made Mrs Gessler made two points. She kept reminding Mildred that liquor, when it came back, wasn’t going to be the same as it had been in the old days. It was going to be respectable, and it was going to put the restaurant business on its feet. ‘That’s what has ailed eating houses ever since the war. That’s why you’re lucky to get a lousy 85 cents for your dinner, when if you could sell a drink with it, you could get a buck, and maybe a buck and a quarter. Baby, you’re not talking sense, and I’m getting damned annoyed at you.’

‘But I don’t know anything about liquor.’

‘I do.’

Something about Mrs Gessler’s manner suggested that this was what she had been trying to lead up to all the time, for she lit another cigarette, eyed Mildred sharply, and went on: ‘Now listen: You know and I know and we all know that Ike’s in the long-and short-haul trucking business. Just the same, Repeal’s going to hit him hard. We’ll have to do something, quick, while he reorganises. That means I’ll have to do something. So how’s this? You put in the booze, and I’ll take charge of it for you, for a straight ten per cent of what I take in, plus tips, if, as,

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