There were three quarters on the booth table. I looked out through the front window of the diner, just in time to watch the old guy peel out of the parking lot. It was one of those moments when waiting tables could really suck. He owns a brand-new Corvette, I thought, and leaves me a crappy 75-cent tip. What an asshole. What a fucked-up shift.
Despite my frustration about getting stiffed by Old Vette Guy, I was mostly just tired and hot from a long, hectic day at work. I usually made pretty good tips and liked working with Janice and Mr. Aravni most of the time. Today, however, had been an especially busy Saturday. A drag strip about half a mile down the highway was hosting their annual, 21-and-over "Blues, Beer & Burnouts" event, which combined races and a car show with live music by a few regional blues bands. And beer β lots of cheap beer. It always drew a big crowd. By mid-afternoon, however, cloudless sun and temperatures approaching 100 degrees sent lots of attendees in search of shade and air conditioning β and straight into our parking lot. The "WELCOME RACE FANS" banner Mr. Aravni had hung facing the highway may have helped.
Despite the name,
Mr. A's House of Beef
was no upscale steakhouse, but a cheap, worn roadside diner in the middle of fucking nowhere. The current owner, Deepak Aravni, had bought it fresh off the boat from Mumbai: his chance to claim a little slice of the American Dream. During the week, customer traffic was light. Janice, the middle-aged waitress who worked here full-time, could handle the trickle of truckers, retirees, roofers and yard crews by herself. Business picked up on weekends, and I helped out on Saturdays and Sundays to supplement my grad school stipend and get away from my annoying roommates for a few hours.
As I cleared Mr. Asshole's dishes, I heard a loud, rumbling car pull up outside. I had no sooner wiped the booth down when a young couple came in and took it. They looked overheated, worn out from partying, and grateful to be in the cool, relative calm of the restaurant. He was black, tall and muscular, with closely trimmed hair. His basketball shorts and white tank top were soaked with sweat. She was thin, fit and firm. Her shoulder-length hair was dyed bright pink and looked cute, even with the ends matted with sweat against her neck and bare shoulders. I brought them menus and two large glasses of water. While I introduced myself, they both grabbed their glasses and took long drinks. Another car pulled up outside, but I barely noticed; my eyes were still checking out the girl's body. Her outfit made it pretty easy. She wore a 70's style bib halter β clearly without a bra β and a denim miniskirt that showed lots of thigh. If it hadn't been sweltering outside, I might have thought she was dressed a bit slutty, but people wear all sorts of things in the heat of summer that they wouldn't dare go out in at other times of the year. I offered to give them a couple of minutes to look over the menu.
I turned to check on another table. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw another young woman come in through the front door. In that flash of a moment, she almost appeared to be bare-chested, but my brain rejected that conclusion as absurd. Had I just seen what I thought I'd seen? I looked again and β sure as hell β it was an attractive young lady, clearly and unashamedly topless. In this day and age, when female nudity is so prevalent in movies, at beaches, and on the Internet, it's easy to underestimate how startling it is to see a woman enter a public establishment bare to the waist. I'd noticed women discreetly breast-feeding babies in the diner before, and I'd gotten a few downblouse peeks at women who'd deliberately left a few too many buttons undone. I once even saw a girl pull her shirt up in the parking lot to flash a trucker. But this chick was topless. No shirt, no jacket, no bra, no bikini top. TOPLESS. She wore only a pair of tight, short, faded cut-offs, leather thong sandals on her feet and a long silver necklace with a small pendant that dangled between her tits. I struggled to regain my composure while she casually passed me, ignoring my stare. She had the body to pull it off. Her tits were not large, probably a B-cup, but they were perky and pointed, with large, dark nipples, and they looked great. Subtle tan lines on her bronze torso suggested she sometimes sunbathed in a tiny string bikini top, but much of the time with her tits as bare as they were now. Her dirty-blonde hair was a short pixie cut and a pair of darkly tinted Ray-Ban aviators hid her eyes.
Several voices began murmuring and I heard Janice gasp. The topless babe took a seat across the the booth from the other couple. She casually moved her sunglasses to the top of her head, totally carefree and seemingly unaware of the commotion she was causing.
She had no sooner sat down than Janice strode over to the booth. "I'm sorry, young lady," she said loudly, "but you can't come in here like that. This is totally unacceptable."
The girl just shrugged. "What?"
"Don't act stupid. Your attire, or should I say the lack of it. It's indecent and offensive."
"Really? I don't find it indecent; neither do my friends, here. And frankly, I have no control over what you choose to get offended by."
"Oh, please! Don't argue with me, Missy. This is a family-oriented place, we don't put up with this sort of anti-social behavior. You can't justβ"
"What's going on here?" Mr. Aravni's voice sounded urgent and agitated as he appeared from the back in a waddling sprint. As for me, I was still just standing there motionless, struggling to comprehend the whole episode as it unfolded. All I could think at that moment was how the feeble air-conditioning in the diner was cool enough to make her nipples begin to stand nicely erect.
"Just look at her!" Janice said with indignation. "She's not even dressed!"
"Ma'am, we'll have to ask you to put a shirt on," Mr. Aravni said to the girl. His voice had an almost condescending calmness that came not only from growing up in a culture of reserved manners, but also from a long career dealing with the general public.
"Well, that's a problem," she replied. "My shirt is somewhere in a field next to the drag strip. And by now it's probably a ripped-up, muddy rag. I don't have a shirt."
"Well," Mr. Aravni said, his voice still soothingly calm. "We do need you to cover up. We have some extra polo shirts in the office for employees. I will be glad to get one."
"I don't want to wear your fuckin' polo shirt!" the girl said, more irritated now. "I've been out in the sun and hot as hell all day long. I don't have a shirt on because I don't WANT to wear a shirt."
Janice sighed with exasperation. "You want us to call the cops? Is that what you want?"
The topless chick shrugged again. "And they're gonna do what? Charge me with trespassing? No, because you haven't actually told me to leave. I hate to be the one to break it to you, but going topless is not a crime. In this state, it's as legal for women as it is for men."
Janice pointed toward the front door. "Well, see that sign as you come in? 'No shirt, no shoes, no service.' That also goes that goes equally for men and women."
"Fine. I'm okay with no service. Just let me sit here, cool off, and visit with my friends while THEY eat. I won't so much as steal a french fry. But I'm NOT putting a shirt on. Are we clear?"
"That violates Health Department regulations," Janice said.
I was finally recovering from my shocked stupor. "Actually, no it doesn't," I heard myself say out loud. "That's a common misconception. 'No shirt, no shoes' isn't a legal thing, it's justβ"
"You're not helping!" Janice cut me off tersely, then turned back toward the topless chick. "You need to be asked to leave? Fine. You need to go, now. And your friends need to go, too." She pointed at the other couple in the booth, who had been silent up until now.
"Why should WE have to go?" the other girl protested. "Just because we're sitting with her? Or do you find MY attire indecent and anti-social, too?" She gestured towards her top. "Does this show a little too much skin for your customers' delicate sensibilities? Or maybe its too thin?"
"Now, now, let's just..." Mr. Aravni started to say.
"Tell you what," the girl in the halter top continued, "If you're going to kick me out..." She reached behind her back and untied her halter top. Then she lifted it from around her neck and removed it completely. "There. NOW you can tell me to leave."
Her tits were rounder and larger than the other topless chick's tits, but her tan lines were more drastic, with much paler skin and a lot more of it. Think jog bras and tank tops, not string bikinis. Also, her nipples were tiny and pink. They looked slightly out of proportion to the size of her breasts: just not quite the dramatic payoff you hope for when a woman takes off her top. I decided the other girl's darker areolae and larger, pointier nipples seemed sexier to me. However, she'd had the initial element of shock on her side. As I compared and contrasted the two girls' racks, I realized I was unexpectedly staring at two fine, young, topless hardbodies. In the middle of the day. At work. Let's face it; tits are tits, and I was not about to complain about another exposed pair to stare at. This was getting more exciting by the minute.
"That's it," Janice said. "You're deliberately causing a public disturbance now. I'm calling the cops."
"That's hardly necessary at this point, and nobody is telling you to leave," Mr. Aravni said. "We just need to, ahhh..." Good old Deepak Aravni, I thought. It would be against his character to turn away a booth-full of customers with money in their pockets, no matter how they chose to dress or undress.
I spoke up again. "Hold on a sec. I have a suggestion." All five of them turned to look at me. "These are my customers. They sat down in my section. I don't have a problem serving them. How about I seat them in the banquet room, away from Janice and the other customers? There, they can dine privately dressed however they'd like, and nobody needs to see them but me." To be honest,
banquet room