Copyright 1991 Aya Katz
Nothing yet from The New York Times. I wonder what's taking them so long.
Today David came in for lunch and sat at Pipa's station. When he was paying the tab, he passed her something else, too. I couldn't make out what, exactly.
In the kitchen, she stuffed it into her pocket.
"What was that?" I asked.
She pursed her lips. "Oh, just a little love note, I expect."
I gave her an odd look. "Well," I finally managed. "He's a busier man than I thought."
Pipa giggled. "Made you jealous, didn't I? It's not for me, silly."
"Oh."
"It's for Abby."
Well, I must say a waitress's duties are much more complicated than I had ever imagined.
I've been thinking about David a lot, lately, ever since the judge threw him in jail. And I'm not the only one. That has been coming up quite frequently in conversations at the Brown 'N Serve.
Pipa and I were cleaning out a room together tonight, and I asked her about it. "Is there something the matter with the Judge?"
"How do you mean?" she asked, throwing me a used sheet for the bin.
"Isn't he behaving a little strangely?"
"Not really," Pipa said. "Hand me that other end, Verity."
I did.
"The Judge is just behaving like a Judge," she said. "That is what judges do, you know. Send people to jail."
I laughed. "Lawyers?"
"Whoever happens to be handy, I suppose," Pipa answered. "Like Abner says, it's a dirty job but somebody's got to do it."
I can't imagine Abner actually saying that. Not unless there was a gleam in his eye.
I turned to emptying the wastebasket in the bathroom and Pipa joined me, placing the towels on the shelf there. "Does the Judge not like David?"
"Oh, no," Pipa said. "He likes him very much. With a great love."
"Then I don't understand."
"Oh, this has been going on for a couple of years," Pipa said. "Actually, it may have been Cabeza de Vaca's fault, the whole of it."
I was confused. "Nabal's fault? How?"
"We-e-ll," Pipa dragged on the vowel and trilled her l's. "He didn't get involved in politics and he wasn't really a part of the community, you know, like he was not involved in charity and he didn't go to the Baptist Church, you see, and he didn't attend any of the big picnics, and that's what brought it on. Mind, it's not that he had to go to the Baptist Church, he could have gone to the Catholic Church like us, and it wasn't so much that he didn't attend the fourth of July picnic, if he had made it for Labor day, but it was real pointed, he thought he was above that sort of thing. Real stuck up he is. My father says, a patron who doesn't bother to ... how do you say that in English, to patronize, is big trouble."
It took me a while to figure out what she meant. Pipa just kept going. "Anyway, the Reverend Beck, Dr. Beck we used to call him, he felt that was not right. So, he was suggesting to the Judge that maybe the heat could be put on Cabeza de Vaca to get in on the action ..."
"Get in on the action? What does that mean?" I asked.
Pipa shrugged. "Search me. That's what Abner called it."
I waited for her to keep talking. Pipa kept folding laundry. "Anyway, the Judge said no, he owed it to Caleb to look after his son and he wasn't going to give Nabal any trouble."
"Who's Caleb?"
"That's Cabeza de Vaca's father, who was just as bad as Nabal. Maybe worse. I don't really know. I never met him. He died before I was born.Anyway, that made Dr. Beck pretty angry. He was getting on in age, and he had been County Chairman for the party these many years and he had seen Judges come and go, and he was the one who got the Judge his job in the first place, and like as not he felt like he could take it away, too. So he looked round for a worthy replacement, and lo and behold, there was David. Like Abner says, as real as life and twice as natural." Pipa began to put a pile of linen into the closet. "Not that David wanted it or anything. Dr. Beck started announcing it at all his sermons, without even so much as asking David. It put him in quite a pickle, what with him being newly married to that princess, Mickey."
"But your allegiance is with Abner, isn't it?" I asked her.
"What do you mean, allegiance?" Pipa rolled her eyes. "I don't have allegiance. I go with what I feel. Abner and I are friends, but just because he works for the Judge doesn't mean I can't like David." She paused. "Actually, I think Abner likes David, too. Everybody likes David. And it's not that I don't like the Judge. The Judge is a good man." She shrugged. "It's just that David is better."
I suppose in a way the fact that Pipa takes no sides is admirable. I mean, that she can sleep with Abner and run errands for him on the one hand and then serve as a little cupid for Abby and David as well. Maybe it's stupid of me to try to make sense of it, to try to figure out who's in the right and who's in the wrong. But the thing I can't quite accept about Pipa is that for her, there doesn't seem to be any right or wrong at all.