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“Are there retail places I can work where I can call customers names?”
“No, babe,” she laughed. “Not likely.”
“Well, damn,” I said.
“Hey, I have an idea,” Mom said, popping up behind the bar. “You could help us get reopened. Maybe get off your ass and help your sister and me? Do some work?”
I held up one finger and shook it side to side.
“I know where that leads,” I said. “I say I’ll work at the bar for a bit until I find something, and then I close my eyes one day and it’s been a year, two years, five years, and my career is now a barback. I’m not doing it.”
“Yah huh,” Mom said, wiping down the bar that was perennially getting dusty with all the work that was being done by the guys putting up the drywall.
“By getting a job, I will be doing more to help pay down the loans,” I said. “That’s way more important. Those loan payments accrue huge interest, Ma. Huge. If I’m not bringing in outside money and getting those paid off fast, you’re going to end up owing more a month in loan payments than you can make to pay the bills and survive.”
Mom huffed and walked away without saying anything else.
She had to know it was true. The loans she applied for right after the fire, before the insurance money could even begin to come in, were really high interest ones. I knew what was happening before she did. Investors saw the space, how well the bar did regularly, and knew this was their chance to get the property to open something of their own. They were going to make it as hard as possible to rebuild.
It was incredibly predatory, but I understood it. It was business. Gentrifying was the trend now, and as a Southie, it was easy to see where it was becoming the cool new thing to buy up cheap property and then renovate it into some hipster spot. They were so insufferable, but most of them were right on the edge of the invisible but well known division between the north side of town and the south side.
There it was shiny, bright, and corporate. Chain places everywhere and massive hotels that cost almost as much as normal rent for one-night stays. It was where the wealthy hung out, and as far as they were concerned, itwasBoston.
But Southies knew better. It was dark here. Gritty. People on top of people on streets that wound through town and cut across each other. Here, we didn’t have the trendy spots, we had dive bars and breweries and gas stations where people just hung out in the parking lot. We had rundown houses and apartments that hadn’t seen a coat of paint since Clinton, while they had mansions and perfectly manicured lawns. It was a different world.
This was therealBoston. And if the money guys came down here, they’d turn tail and run back to their safe, shiny buildings faster than you could sayBeantown. Those chowderheads would be the first to cover themselves in a Red Sox flag, but wouldn’t be able to drive through Roxbury without finding a way to get jacked.
I hated them. Spending time with them, trying to get a job from them, just made it worse. I couldfeelthem looking down on me, no matter how much I tried to hide where I was from. They could sense it, I felt. They just knew I was some dumb Southie trying to get above her station. Who was I to sit across from a legit billionaire and not grovel? From their point of view, I wasn’t even a person. It radiated off them like a wi-fi signal.
I had ducked back down to concentrate on the various applications I had up on the laptop and phone. Department stores, fast food, hell, I’d even seriously entertain the thought of being a meal-delivery driver. I was bound to get more tips doing that than I did doing rideshares, even with the same company.
Lena smacked me on the arm, and I brushed her off. She was always being clumsy. Probably wiping off the table next to me and just winged her arm around too far. While I was always athletic, Lena never seemed to catch that part of our genetics. Another notch on the fraternal twin tree rather than identical. She was great with artsy stuff, but her mile time was way behind mine.
Then she hit me again.
“Jesus, Lena, watch your arm. You’re gonna knock my laptop over.”
“Jules,” she whisper-hissed.
“Dammit, Lena, I told everybody when I came back, I’m not answering to Jules anymore. Call me Julia.”
“Jules! Julia! Whatever,” she hissed again.
“What?”
“Turn the fuck around, will you?”
“I’m busy,” I said.
“Jules!”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Lena,” I said, putting the phone down on the table and half turning toward her.
She was locked still, looking toward the front door behind me. So was Mom, back behind the bar. They were both staring like they had seen Larry Bird wandering by. Of course, I actuallyhadseen him once, but they didn’t believe me. He was royalty in town, and I happened to catch him getting fast food once. They swore he would never, but I watched that man get burgers and fries.
“What the hell are you two looking at?” I asked as I turned toward the door.
Then I saw what it was they were so transfixed by.
