High Country- Pigeon 12 (5 page)

Cricket-the girl's given name was Charlotte but she was such a bouncy, chirpy individual she'd been called Cricket since grade school-recovered first.

"She did not say 'fire your sorry ass.' "

This set them off again. Anna finished dressing.

"What did she say?" she asked mildly when they subsided.

" 'Find other work,' " Nicky admitted. This was too banal to elicit laughter even from those primed for it, and the girls began stuffing themselves into the rest of their clothes.

Anna stopped at the door before she left. They were good girls, if silly.

"Straighten up," she warned. "A blind woman can see you're high. Keep a lid on it or you'll be looking for other work." Leaving them, it occurred to her how forgiving some occupations were. She could overlook coworkers loaded on this job. Worst case, a plate might get broken, a meal delivered cold. A stoned busgirl wasn't a threat to life.

Anna smiled. Not being a hard-ass was actually quite restful to the human spirit.

The dining room was quiet, most of the regular diners gone or finishing up. Tiny was waiting as Anna came in through the employees' entrance by the kitchens. In a building as old and fine as the Ahwahnee, even the regions behind the metaphorical baize doors had a sense of grandeur: hallways were spacious, ceilings high.

"The girls said you'd gone AWOL," Tiny said in a voice that managed to make an accusation out of every statement. "If you hadn't showed you would have been looking for another job."

Anna hated being lectured for doing right simply because another person had gotten their dander up thinking she might do wrong.

"I'm here," she said as she tied on Trish Spencer's short black apron with its many pockets. "Nicky and Cricket are right behind me," she added to save herself from a spirited recitation of what would be done to her roommates should they fail to report for duty. "A wedding party?" she asked to distract Tiny from fussing further.

"That's right. Thirty-two. Last minute. The bride must be eight and half months along to be doing this kind of thing at the last minute. Hah!" Tiny finished, the one word serving as personal shorthand to save her the bother of actually laughing.

She came and stood too close for Anna's comfort. Tiny was always infringing on one's personal space, standing so close it was hard to focus on her pointy little face.

"You smell like an ashtray," she snapped. "If you want to kill yourself with cigarettes have the decency to shower before you show up where people are trying to eat. If Chef Wither gets a whiff of you, you'll be-"

"Looking for another job," Anna finished for her.

"Don't be impertinent. You're not paid to be impertinent. You're paid to serve food and not stink up the place."

Tiny couldn't have been more than ten years Anna's senior, and some of her waitstaff were older than that, but she spoke to them all as if they were slightly retarded preteens.

"Where do you want to put them?" Anna asked. "The wedding party?"

Tiny strode away without replying. At least on a larger woman it would have been striding. Having too much energy for such a small frame Tiny Bigalo moved from place to place at a dogtrot.

Dutifully Anna followed and dutifully she stopped while the headwaitress surveyed the dining room with the air of a general planning troop deployments before battle.

"The alcove," she decreed. "They don't deserve it but it's dark, so they won't see much anyway. They'll be out of the way there."

Since the vast room had nearly emptied and the alcove was a significant hike from the kitchens, Anna could have wished she'd put the party closer, but it would have been more than her life was worth to suggest the change.

"Yes ma'am."

"Put tables together for thirty-two. Set up chairs. Count them. I don't want it turning out there's only thirty or thirty-one and us looking like idiots. Put out the cloths-clean, mind you. I don't care if the bride's the whore of Babylon, in my dining room she gets white. Then do the place settings and come get me to check it."

Anna survived the condescending list of details and began shoving tables together. The usual night shift was cleaning up. She wondered why none of them had opted to stay for the extra money. At least a fifteen percent tip was guaranteed. Big parties-oddly enough this included wedding parties, which one would think to be the cheeriest and most generous of customers-were notorious for stiffing waitresses. Like most other restaurants, the Ahwahnee automatically added the gratuity to the bill. Enlightened self-interest: it reduced the odds a hostile waitress would punch out a stingy bride in the parking lot.

Nicky and Cricket arrived. They were so stoned Anna had to redo their place settings more often than not. Periodically, fits of giggles dragged them into a far corner of the alcove where they could recover without attracting the wrath of the headwaitress. Anna considered killing them herself or at least knocking their empty heads together but, remembering her own misspent youth, satisfied herself with huffing and rolling her eyes.

Finally, the table was set. Tiny trotted down the long room to check it.

"Straighten it. God! It looks like it was laid by Hottentots," she declared, and trotted away.

"Must be some bigwig," Nicky whispered as they set about straightening the already straight and tidying the already tidy.

"Probably a movie star. Tiny's got major hots for Johnny Depp. Maybe she hopes he'll take one look at how beautifully the table is laid and get a stiffy for her."

"Oh gross," Nicky cried. Giggles descended once more.

"Get a grip," Anna snarled. There wasn't much use in yelling at the stoned, but she hoped to at least frighten them into being less irritating.

Mercifully, the giggling stopped. Anna turned her back to keep from thinking evil thoughts about their dewy little sheep's faces and soggy little sheep's brains.

An exaggerated gasp of horror-movie quality grated across her nerves. To calm herself she straightened two steak knives. Nicky laughed, then squeaked.

"Cricket's having a heart attack."

Anna gritted her teeth, moved the dish of butter pats a fraction of an inch.

"She's not breathing. Oh God."

"For Chrissake," Anna turned on them. Cricket was on the floor, her face slack and already turning pale around the mouth. Nicky, her mouth a perfect "O," was staring at Anna with desperately wide eyes.

"Holy shit," Anna muttered. Kneeling, she gently nudged Nicky aside. "Nicky, you call nine-one-one," she said firmly.

The girl nodded but didn't move.

"What are you going to do?" Anna asked.

"Call nine-one-one?"

"That's right. Go now. Call nine-one-one and come right back here to me. Go."

Nicky stumbled to her feet and began to run.

Ear positioned above Cricket's nose so she might hear or feel any stirring of breath, Anna slid her fingers onto the girl's carotid artery. She'd forgotten how soft the skin of the young could be. Cricket was a girl encased in supple velvet.

A heartbeat: weak and too fast. No breath.

Anna began rescue breathing. In all her years as an emergency medical technician she'd never seen a case of respiratory arrest caused by anything other than drugs or choking. As she counted twelve even breaths blown into Cricket's lungs and watched the reassuring rise and fall of her chest, she wracked her brain for causes. All she came up with was either the girl suffered a bizarre allergy or she'd been poisoned.

Lest in her zealousness she actually occlude the flow of blood to the brain, Anna moved her fingers from the carotid in Cricket's neck to her wrist. As oxygen was forced into the girl's lungs her pulse slowed, grew stronger.

"Hallelujah," Anna whispered.

After what seemed an excessively long time but, by breath counts, was under two minutes, there came the sound of people running the length of the dining room. With waitstaff in rubber-soled shoes and floors of polished concrete, there was no clatter, just the hushed pad-padding as of a horde of ghosts.

"The rangers are coming. The rangers are coming," Nicky shouted like a modern-day Paul Revere. Anna didn't look up.

"Good." Anna breathed for Cricket. Two. Three. Four. Five.

"What's the matter with her?" Tiny Bigalo. Breathe.

"Respiratory arrest." Three. Four. Five. Breathe.

"Oh," Tiny said as if that meant anything.

Others had come. They crowded too close, began to babble. "Back to work," Tiny ordered sharply. But for Nicky, the horde shuffled away.

"Let me stay," Anna heard her beg.

Tiny didn't reply. Apparently that was as close as she could bring herself to giving a "yes" answer to an employee request.

Nicky knelt on Cricket's other side and took her friend's hand in hers. "Is this okay?" she asked. Her voice had become that of a very little girl; she was abdicating responsibility for herself to the nearest adult. Anna hoped she wasn't going to require something in the way of care anytime soon.

"Okay." Breathe. Two. Three.

"Can I do anything?" Nicky asked.

"No." Anna kept breathing, counting, feeling the pulse.

"Is she going to die?" The voice had lost a few more years, edging toward baby talk.

Shock, maybe, Anna thought, but there was nothing she could do about it.

The reassuring sound of boots and ranger voices finally came down the vast hall. 'Bout damn time, Anna thought uncharitably. Eighty-four times she'd breathed for Cricket. Seven minutes. Not a bad response time.

Three rangers Anna didn't know by sight edged her to one side. Cricket was efficiently intubated, and one of the EMTs began squeezing the football-shaped plastic bellows that pumped air into her lungs. The other two lifted her onto a gurney, asking Anna questions as they worked. They were wheeling Cricket out when the chief ranger walked into the dining room.

"Who helped her?" she asked, looking at Anna.

"She did. The older lady," replied an EMT whom Anna had liked till that moment.

"Could you come to the clinic with us?" Lorraine Knight asked.

Anna looked to Tiny. Amazingly the head waitress nodded assent.

"Please," Nicky whispered, catching Anna's hand as she turned to go. "You've got to take me with you." Her face had lost color, and though her friend was in good hands, none of the terror had left her eyes.

"See if Tiny will let you go home. You need to lie down, get something hot to drink. Do you know Mary Bates? She's just down the hall. Tell her I said she was to keep you company, make you tea."

"No. Please. I've got to see the doctor."

Anna looked at her more closely. She didn't appear to be having trouble breathing. If anything, she was in danger of hyperventilating.

"Ah." Anna got it then. Whatever Cricket was on, Nicky'd taken, smoked, dropped or shot up the same stuff.

"Anna!" Lorraine called.

"In a minute," Anna said curtly then turned her attention to Nicky. "Where did you get it?"

"I don't know."

"Anna Pigeon. Come on." Lorraine again.

Anna would get no more from Nicky. Anyway, she was pretty sure the girl was telling the truth, part of it anyway.