The Girl Most Likely To

Sarah Freligh

Rita steals.

     Nothing big, not at first, just a few nickels and dimes from the community tip jar next to the cash register or the quarters the cheapskates leave on the bar. She tucks the change into napkins she wads up and shoves into her apron pocket where it rides heavy and comforting next to her thigh for the rest of her shift. 

     Before long, she’s moved on to bills—a dollar from an order that she under-rings, a ten that a busboy drops when he hoists a tray of dirty dishes. Or she’ll deliberately forget to ring up a check and pockets the money instead; during break, she’ll rip the check into confetti and flush the evidence down the toilet in the women’s room. No one notices. The other waitresses are busy grabbing iced tea refills or screaming at Maurice the bartender to step it up, for fuck’s sake. They threaten to call Bruce the manager who’s usually doing Roberta the lifer waitress in his office upstairs or is passed out drunk in the wine room.

     On her days off, Rita tidies up. She stacks the coins into paper cylinders and arranges the bills so that the Georges are with other Georges, the Abes with other Abes, and so forth. Soon enough, there are a lot of them, fat stacks of vinegary faces. Way back in ninth grade, she did a report on Washington and his wooden teeth for history class. The teacher, who was black, pulled her aside afterward and told her that Washington’s false teeth were real, that they’d been yanked from the mouths of slaves. History is a lie, he said, shaking his head. One great big whitewash.

     There’s one Benjamin that she likes to look at. He stares back at her, mouth pursed in what could be disapproval, though she came about him honestly, from a four-top that ordered a bunch of drinks at last call and stayed an hour past closing. When one of the husbands found out she’d missed the last bus, he left $100 for taxi fare. She was so excited that she walked the four miles to her apartment. It was nice enough out, in the forties and no wind, and she walked along the busiest streets so someone would hear her if she screamed. Sometimes, she practices screaming into her pillow at night in case she ever needs to. A waitress at the restaurant who’d been mugged in the parking lot said she tried to scream and couldn’t. Practice can’t hurt. 

     She shoves the money into an old shoebox that she hides under a stack of sweaters she never wears anymore. They’re fluffy and pastel, the kind of sweater a young girl would wear, a girl who still believed that presidents were kind and just. A girl who has plans for a future that’s more than a hazy horizon on a dismal day. A girl who hasn’t stolen anything yet. A girl most likely to, but no one knows just what yet.  

© Variant Literature Inc 2023