The Busboy part I

Friday, 13 February 1981

It had been a tough shift, an odd one for the opening of the weekend for Cyril Litton. Normally there were two busboys working during the week and three on Friday and Saturday, but the other guys scheduled weren’t there. And one of the bartenders was out, too. That left Cy as the only person bussing tables and he had to deliver ice and restock the bar. And, of course, the wait staff hadn’t bothered to help him out with any “pre-bussing,” getting plates and stuff off the table when patrons were finished. “Friday the Thirteenth, go figure,” he said to himself.

It was eleven-twenty and all he wanted to do was go home and go to sleep. He was off Saturday, but it had been a very long day.

“Cy, do you know anything about Atlas Shrugged?’ I have to write a report about it for school in the next couple of days,” Tracy Tapper asked him.

Tracy was THE hottest waitress in the restaurant. Every guy that worked there wanted to go out with her, although, aside from the one they nicknamed Adonis, every guy that asked her out was shot down. Adonis, Alex… something or other, he didn’t remember… had asked her out and she had gone on several dates with him before his father was transferred and he moved suddenly.

With her long, honey blonde hair, and a beautiful face, she attracted attention wherever she went. And when she was at work, her uniform skirt showed off her long slender legs and generous cleavage. And Cy was pretty sure that her tips from men were a little more generous as a result. She was always good to him at tip-out, which was the only reason he was still in the restaurant after closing. He’d finished his closing duties. If he left, though, magically all the wait staff would forget to tip him. Instead, he and the bartenders made sure to put themselves between the wait staff and the exit when it was time to leave.

“Yeah, I’ve read it.”

“Can you give me like the Cliff Notes on it?”

“Not in the next three minutes… It’s a long book. How about we sit down tomorrow evening and discuss it.”

“Fine… I don’t have to work,” she said with a little eye roll. She was pretty sure he was trying to wrangle a date out of it. And she had no interest in dating him.

“Give me your address and I’ll pick you up at six.”

She wrote it down on a napkin and handed it to him.

“See you then, Tracy,” Cy told her with a little too much enthusiasm.

Saturday, 14 February 1981

Cy desperately needed to wash his car. Yeah, it was a study thing, but he was going to take his best shot. If nothing else, it would be good for his image to be seen with a girl that looked like her. Other girls would wonder… hopefully positively… what it was about him that made her agree to a date.

At six, promptly, he pulled into her driveway. She was trying to get out the door before her mother figured out what was going on, but as she was headed down the sidewalk, the front door opened back up and Farrah Faucet stepped out… ok, NOT Farrah Faucet, but to Cy’s eyes, WOW. Might as well have been. Tracy’s Mom was stunning. The older version of Tracy was something to behold.

“Aren’t you going to introduce your date?” she shouted from the door.

“We’re going out to study, Mom.”

“Still…”

“Fine,” Tracy said with a giant eye roll. “Cy, can you come up and meet my mom?”

Cy was already out of the car; he had been walking around to open Tracy’s door. It was easy enough to divert up the walkway toward the door. As he approached, he put out his hand. The Farrah Faucet comparison was close. Like Tracy, she had long, honey blonde hair, a beautiful face and piercing blue eyes. She wasn’t dressed up, but Cy could see that she was slim and shaped just like her daughter. He guessed her to be about forty, but the years had been very kind to her.

“Hi, Mrs. Tapper, I’m Cy. Tracy needed some help with a Literature assignment, and I agreed to help her.”

“Ae you in school with Tracey?” she asked.

“No, Ma’am. We work together at Darryl’s.”

“That’s nice, Cy. It has been very nice meeting you. Don’t keep her out too late, ok?”

“Yes, Ma’am. I’ll have her home before it’s late. And it was nice meeting you as well.”

Cy and Tracy turned to walk down the sidewalk to the driveway, as Tracy’s Mom looked on from the doorway. Before Tracy could reach for the door handle on Cy’s Impala, he opened the door for her.

“Thank you, Cy,” she said as she slid onto the bench seat. She set her notebook and a copy of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged on the seat next to her, between them, as he entered from the other side.

It was only a few minutes to the Willow Oaks Shopping Center, where Capri was. After they parked, Cy quickly rushed around the car as Tracy gathered her study materials. He opened her door just as she was reaching for the handle. She rolled her eyes a little at his insistence on opening the door. As they walked across the parking lot, he offered to carry her books, but she politely refused. He was able to hold the door for her at the restaurant, though.

She was getting worried he was reading more into this than he should be. As they slid into a booth, she decided that she needed to make his expectations clear.

“Cy, you know this is just a study thing, right? It isn’t like a ‘regular date’ or something.”

“I know. You want me to help you get a good grade on an assignment, and I twisted your arm to get the appearance of a date.”

“Well, what do you expect to get out of this, Cy, if you know it isn’t a date?”

“Attention. Look around here. There are a bunch of people I go to school with. And I’m sitting here having a date… in their eyes… with an incredibly beautiful young woman. Girls that wouldn’t look at me at school yesterday will wonder what it is about me that got a girl that looks like you, to go out with me, on Valentine’s Day, no less.”

“So… you’re using me?” she said, a little offended.

“You’re using me, too. I would just say we have a mutually beneficial relationship. You want to bump up a grade, and it doesn’t cost me anything to help you do that. I want to bump up my social standing, and it doesn’t cost you anything to help me with that.”

Cy held his hand out across the table. Tracy shook it.

“Deal,” she said. And for the first time of the evening, she had a genuine smile.

They spent a couple of hours talking about the book, the relationships between Dagny and Francisco, and Dagny and John Galt, as well as the underlying themes of an overbearing government and a society that stops valuing individual ability.

Tracy was impressed by Cy’s depth of knowledge about the book. She ended up with a lot of notes. He was even able to help her outline her book report. He wouldn’t help her write it… he felt that crossed a line, but he did everything he could to help her understand, rather than just be able to parrot his opinion.

Cy wasn’t the first guy that Tracy took help from on things like this. But normally the guy wasn’t really interested in her learning about what they were studying. If he cared about anything past trying to get her to kiss him or something, it was just that she made it through the next test or quiz. And until she found herself defending positions on ideas of Cy’s that she didn’t agree with, she didn’t realize how much more helpful he had really been.

“Wow, Cy, this has been a lot more fun than I expected. I really feel like I know about the book rather than just took notes in order to make a passing report.”

“I’m glad I could help. And I’ll help you any time… same deal.”

Tracy put her hand across the table to shake his, “Deal.” She smiled again.

Cy paid for dinner, greeted a few people he knew as he and Tracy walked out, and walked with her to his car. Once again, he made sure to get the door for her. And she reached across the car to unlock his door as he walked around.

When he pulled into her driveway, he again rushed around to her side of the car to get her door. He walked her to her front door. She put out her hand to shake.

“Thank you, Cy.”

“Thank you, Tracy.”

***

Cy was right. There was conversation about him the following Monday at school. A couple of friends had heard about his date. He didn’t know how much impact it had on his reputation, though. It couldn’t hurt, right? He thought to himself.

Thursday, 12 March 1981

Cy once again found himself picking up Tracy for dinner and studying. This time it was The Fountainhead, also by Ayn Rand. Dinner was at Chi-Chi’s. Once again, Cy never let her touch a door. She found herself liking the way he attended to her, although she had a hard time admitting that to herself.

“So, Tracy, does your teacher have a thing about Ayn Rand or something?” Cy asked.

“I doubt it. Be we had a list this time. I kind of liked the last one, so I thought I would give her a try again.”

“Wait, I didn’t think you read Atlas Shrugged. That was why you needed help.”

“Well, I hadn’t. But after we talked, and I saw the passion you had for the book, I have to admit that I was intrigued. So, I read it after I wrote the essay on it. This time, though, I read the book first.”

“Color me impressed. Let’s talk about it. Oh, before I forget, what did you get on the last one?”

I got a ninety-five. That is the best grade I have ever had in that class. I was at a solid C, but now I am pushing a B. The teacher thought I might have cheated and started asking me questions about my report. I had to defend my positions. I’ve got to say, when we sat over at Capri and you and I debated a few themes from the book, you prepared me for that incredibly well. How about you… Did you get the attention you were looking for?”

“There was talk, but I don’t know if there is a long-term impact, yet.”

“Well, if you see people from your school, let me know. I’ll see if I can help you out,” she said with a grin. “And I’ll tell you what, if I get an A in this class, I’ll take you out to dinner.”

“Deal,” Cy said as he put his hand across the table.

They spent the next couple of hours talking through themes of individualism versus conformity and influence versus ability. Again, Cy helped her to formulate an outline, but this time she didn’t even try to get him to write parts of it for her or push beyond the outline.

Shortly before they were ready to leave, one of the “Popular Girls” came into the restaurant with her boyfriend and sat nearby. When Cy pointed her out, Tracy made it a point to turn up some flirting. As they left, she pulled his arm around her shoulders and slid hers around his waist as they walked past her table.

The big difference that Cy noticed was that when he dropped Tracy off, she hugged him at the front door instead of just shaking his hand.

***

There was a little more chatter at school, but he still couldn’t decipher whether it was positive or not.

Here is the next piece of this story.

This is part of a short story from my book Who, What, When, Why? part of the Dixon-Prince series. The date format is inherited from those books. If you enjoy the story, I'd love for you to check out the other stories in the book.