He put me on in the bar as a cocktail waitress, saying the restaurant was harder than drinks, plus in the bar you made better tips. But I had to learn, and fast, how any of it was done. I’d hardly been inside a bar, and never one in America. I had to learn what the drinks were, how much they cost, and what they came with. I had to learn to smile and be friendly enough without letting it go further, how to rebuff the customers when they went too far too fast; men asked me out nearly every shift, even though half of them had wives and children at home. I had to learn how to remember who’d ordered what drink, and not give the whisky sour to the gentleman who’d ordered a dirty martini or the gin fizz to the one who’d ordered a glass of beer. I learned to balance my tray on five fingers above my head as I manoeuvred through a crowd. I learned which shoes I could stand in for six hours without blisters, and how good it felt to sit and take them off at the end of the night. I learned that sleep came easier after those long shifts with a drink—or two. Charlie poured them for us at the bar while we counted our tips, and they were on the house. We always gave him twenty per cent of our tips, because a good cocktail waitress is nothing without a good bartender, and if you tipped the bartender well your drinks were quickest to hit the bar.

I worked with Maryanne and Jessamyn, with Esther and Ava. The friendly ones showed me how to use seltzer to get a wine stain out of a white shirt, how to make lipstick stay put longer by powdering your lips first. Maryanne taught me to watch my back in a crowded room; she’d snap up my tables when I wasn’t looking—saying they were desperate for a drink—and take home tips which ought to have been mine.

Time took on a funny sort of quality then, it either flew past when I was working, or crept like cold honey when I wasn’t. I left the hotel and found a room in a boarding house near the zoo, and sometimes I heard the lions roar late at night, a sound which made my hair stand on end even though I knew they were caged. I wrote letters home, pretending I was still in Roanoke with Roy. I got a PO box in DC for them to send replies to, telling them it was more reliable. Hoping they wouldn’t look at a map and wonder at the distance between Roanoke and DC. I couldn’t bear the questions they would ask if they knew the truth. Why did you leave him? Why, then, haven’t you come home?