the ghost of bettie page

"Hello, my name is Bettie" read the nametag on the apron of Family Restaurant's youngest waitress. What had started as a joke in her interview had spread until even her manager addressed her as "Miss Page" and payroll wrote half her checks in the wrong name. It had all been rather funny until the name flowed past work and into her private life.

Still, Bettie did her best to smile and survive until her cigarette break, cursing the new smoking ban all the while. Customers loved her perfectly styled black hair and her vast collection of fascinators, after all, and she raked in the best tips in the diner. She left red lipstick prints on every tab and fluttered heavily mascara'd lashes at good-looking young men to pay for school.

She felt like a whore.

Yesterday, one of her good-looking young men got a little too free with his hands; Bettie had to work to keep her smile up while she gave him a teasing rebuke that tore at her soul. Her manager hadn't noticed, but Bettie promised herself that next time, she'd give the customer something painful to remember her by. Possibly a fork in the back of the hand.

Today, Bettie lit her cigarette out back and inhaled deeply. The morning shift hadn't been too bad, so far as customers went. Mostly college kids out for a cheap hot meal before class and elderly couples on breakfast dates. One feisty senior had complimented her on her pearls before telling her about her sailor-chasing days. Bettie wondered whether her husband was one of those sailors and smiled genuinely for the first time in days.