T-Bo tells me the most powerful person in Southern California is not the governor, or a studio head, or some CEO who decides how much gas should cost.  “It’s the guy who’s got your car keys,” he says.  “The valet.” 

We are standing in front of the Pan-Pacific Hotel, its palm tree logo twenty stories up in blue, green and aqua neon lights.  Upon the captain’s hat T-Bo wears, the same logo is forged in metal—gold and matching the tassels dangling from the shoulders of his tan jacket.  His khaki pants and shiny black shoes make him look like the president-slash-general-slash-dictator-for-life of some day-old African nation.  

The tassels sway as T-Bo points out cars in the parking lot behind us.  “If you don’t have a car in Southern California,” he says, “you don’t exist.”

I am listening because this is my first night as the most powerful person in Southern California.  I’d laugh if that ridiculous logo weren’t stitched to the tan polo shirt I’m wearing.  If my khaki shorts and black running shoes weren’t reminding me this isn’t a joke.  I am trapped here for the next three months—since my parents decided getting a job was a better use of time than a non-paying internship with the Anaheim Heritage and Historical Society.  “The summer I drove a bakery truck,” my father told me, “made me who I am.”

“A computer analyst?” I said.

“I learned a lot about people,” he said.

T-Bo warns me I’ll get stiffed on occasion.  “Happens to everybody.  But don’t take it as an insult.  It’s just an indication of how retarded some folks’ values are—how little they know about the world they live in.” 

These are the kinds of things I am going to learn.  A summer course in the finer points of parking cars, Professor T-Bo to lecture.  This, my parents inform me, is the real world.

As T-Bo leads me to the far edge of the front drive, across lanes of red bricks interrupting the asphalt, he asks me why I think the Pan has a five-lane front drive.

I am thinking, I can connect dots; do I need to prove it?  “This is a big hotel.  That means a lot of cars.”

 “There you go.”  He points back towards the curb, where the valet desk sits.  “Tell me about that desk.”

 As far as I can tell, it’s actually a counter, low on the valet side and raised up high on the guest side, a place for people to come with their tickets, maybe lean against while waiting for their cars.  “I guess that’s where you keep the key pouches and luggage tags.”

He nods.  “Okay, but what else?  What’s it made of?”

 “I don’t know.  Wood?”

 “Oak and marble,” T-Bo says, flattening his hand and smoothing the air like he’s feeling the hard, cool counter as we speak.  “You like it?’

 I shrug.  “Sure.  It’s nice.”

 “Nice?  It’s more than nice.  It would look good inside don’t you think?”

 I don’t know what to think.  It’s L-shaped with drawers and slots everywhere, like a Colonial roll-top.  The marble does make it look important, but I really don’t care where it goes.

 “Why you suppose they put a desk like that outside?” T-Bo says.

 “Because that’s where valet desks go.”

 He rolls his eyes.  “Am I wasting your time?  Because you won’t be wasting mine if you take a moment to think.  Why is a desk that nice on the outside of a hotel?”

 “I don’t know,” I say.  “Maybe because it makes the hotel look more impressive.  More professional.”

 He pokes me in the chest with a finger so big it looks like it has its own biceps. “There you go.  You a professional now; don’t forget that.”

 T-Bo points to the top of the tower, then lets his finger sweep down to the first floor.  “Look at the brim of that hat.”  His finger traces the roof extending from the sliding-glass front doors of the hotel, over the smooth red tiles and past the bell desk, past the valet desk, reaching all the way out to the second lane of the drive.  “A good hotel wears a hat with a big brim,” he says.  “People don’t like to get wet when they get out of their car on a rainy day.  A good hotel says, ‘You want dry, we got dry.  You want wet, we got a pool.’”

He points up and down the edges of the wide front walk to the shiny, wood-slat benches every few feet.  Behind them, shrubs and flower beds surround palm trees jutting from rock formations.  “Look at that landscaping.  Looks like a damn rain forest.” 

I laugh though I do not mean to.

 “But right here is the moneymaker:  five lanes.  You know what that does to people?”  At first, he is looking at me, as if he is waiting for an answer, then his eyes drift somewhere else, seeing something I cannot see.  “Confuses the hell out of them.  They don’t know where to go, which lane to be in.  Then they see me, Captain of the Drive, and they’re ready to do anything I say.  Go wherever I point.”  His eyes return to me.  “That’s when you slide up with your luggage cart and as far as the guests are concerned, you an officer in Captain T-Bo’s army.  You got it all under control.” 

 I nod like this all makes perfect sense.  Like I care.

 “That’s how the Pan tips her hat to the people,” T-Bo says.  “And when the Pan tips her hat—”

I know where he is leading me now, and I finish the thought:  “The people tip back?”

T-Bo’s eyes squint into a smile.  “There you go.”

 *

 In a week, I have learned there are two types of guys who work at the Pan-Pacific Hotel, and I am neither.  There are guys like Urge who never had any delusions about college and came straight to this job knowing that a valet makes a decent living and eventually becomes a Captain or a bellman who makes a slightly better, decent living.  He comes back from his days off talking about all the work he did on his truck, about how he can’t wait until he’s saved enough money for performance shocks.  Then he goes and asks for tips like a caricature of a valet, almost nudging guests in the chest with his open hand:  “Is there anything else I can do for you, sir?”  “It’s been my pleasure meeting you, madam.”  It’s embarrassing.  

The other guys are like Kennedy.  Guys who think they’ll be white collar some day just because they go to a community college and have heard you can transfer credits.  But I know these guys.  They take a couple classes a semester so their parents won’t charge them rent or pressure them to grow up.  Then they meet lots of other people like themselves, people who really just want to party and not think about the future.  People who spend every spare second of their summer at the beach.  I don’t know how someone can live like that, but guys like Kennedy are more relaxed than anyone I know.  And he doesn’t ask for tips; he takes them.  He smoothes his spiky hair and says things like, “Okay Mr. Jones, I’ve taken care of your car, I’ve tagged all your luggage, and I’ve got change for a twenty unless you want me to keep the whole thing.”  He laughs like it’s a joke, to make the guest relax, but he’s not kidding.  I’ve seen Kennedy direct guests to the ATM in the lobby.  I’ve heard him let nickels and dimes slip through his fingers and rain onto the drive, the ring of someone too cheap to give the valet a measly buck.

This is exactly what I don’t want any part of.  On my first two days off, I read a biography of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  But I didn’t tell the guys that.  Instead, I told them how I keep a library of books like that in the trunk of my Cavalier so my parents won’t know I’m still a history major.  That’s the kind of thing they respect:  subversion.  And money.  I can’t talk about tips, though, about how much bank I’ve made, because I really don’t care.  I didn’t take this job for the money.  Urge and Kennedy disappear when a family in an old car with out-of-state plates comes limping up the drive.  They know that’s either a stiff or a few coins and some homemade cookies.  Suddenly, Urge has paperwork to do behind the desk, Kennedy has bags to log in the luggage bin.  T-Bo gets on them when he notices, but he doesn’t always notice.  That leaves me popping open hatchbacks to the scent of fast-food trash and spilt juice, heat-dried into a dizzying sweetness.  Diapers, changed on the fly and not quite wrapped up well enough in plastic grocery bags.  I don’t mind pampering people who never get pampered; I don’t even mind the stiff too much.  It’s the smell that makes it all so thankless.

 *

At nine o’clock every night the fireworks across the street at Disneyland start popping and thudding overhead.  They bloom in reds and purples and golds, a garden of light that stops every guest at the hotel right where they stand for the next ten minutes.  This is when T-Bo holds office hours.  He calls people out to lane five for a skull session—to tell you to get your head on straight, or together, or to put your head together with his to solve whatever it is he called you out there for.  Tonight, I am in the office.  T-Bo informs me I am on probation because of my performance the first two weeks.  “You got to show me more,” he says.  He does this without yelling, and that is the only thing that keeps me from quitting.

I can park anything.  I can drive a stick-shift and give good directions to LAX, including shortcuts for rush hour.  I can remember that a Japanese businessman won’t kick down a Yen for lifting his suitcase, but lift a finger for a cab and it’s two bucks every time.  I can do everything a good valet at a good hotel needs to do, but I will not ask for a tip that is not offered.  It makes me feel like I’m begging from the rich and stealing from the poor.  Not exactly heroic. 

 “Is this your career?” T-Bo says.

 “Well, I want to do a good job.”

 T-Bo watches the fireworks.  “I didn’t ask if you was committed, Paige.  Is this your career?”

I can’t answer.  What are you supposed to say when the answer is, “No, I’m just hoping to survive the summer.”  Nobody wants to hear that.  Especially guys who make a living doing what you can’t wait to leave.

 T-Bo nods, like he knows all about me.  “You a college boy, right?  What do you study?”

“History.” 

“History?”  He looks me over real serious.  “That going to be your career?”

I’ve had this discussion so many times at home, the battle of “What are you going to do with a history degree?”  I’m not about to be lectured by some guy who went straight from high school to a hotel and thinks his faux captain’s hat makes him important.

I look T-Bo square in the eye.  “Yeah, I’m going to get a Bachelor’s degree, then probably a Master’s.  Then I’ll teach, or write books, or make documentaries.  Anything with history.”

T-Bo nods slow and steady.  “Good,” he says, like he was waiting to see if I’d get the answer right.  “Don’t forget that.”

“I won’t.”  I say it fast, like it’s the start of something more, but that’s all there is.

“Then you see my concern, Paige.  You got dreams, and this is just one rung on the ladder, saving money for the next semester.”  T-Bo pushes back his Captain’s hat and dabs his forehead with a wad of napkins.  That’s his hanky.  He looks up at the fireworks and puts the hat back on straight and tight.  “But some of us, we at the top of the ladder.  So you may not care for yourself, but I can’t have guests thinking they can stiff anybody.  Ain’t no room for Chump Change James on my drive.” 

“But I am Chump Change James,” I say.

“Then you got to find your alter-ego.  Your Big Money Sonny.”  T-Bo still does not sound angry.  “Leave Paige home with James, and let Sonny work the tips.” 

The fireworks crackle through a grand finale, momentarily turning night into dusk before retreating in smoke and silence.  Office hours are over and T-Bo jabs me lightly in the ribs, sending me back to the curb.  “Remember, it’s always sunny when you’re Sonny.”

 *

They call you by your first name around here until they respect you.  It’s one of those things no one ever says; it’s not written down anywhere.  It just is.  You don’t notice at first; then one day it all comes together, how a guy named Eugene, shamelessly asking for tips at any and every opportunity, became Urge.  How a confident, good-looking guy named Neil, asking not what he can do for you, but what you can do for him, became Kennedy.

We do not know when or how Terence became T-Bo.  It predates everyone, so he can shape the story however he wants.  All he’ll say is that he is the original Big Money Sonny.

From the curb on a Friday night, I watch Kennedy roll his luggage cart past a family in a mini-van for a couple in a sport utility vehicle.  I figure I’m stuck with the kiddy-wagon until I see T-Bo on the passenger-side, opening the door for the mom while asking the dad, “Last name?”  He fills out the valet pouch and asks where they’re coming from.  Then, on the sly, he asks the mom what she needs the kids to do when they get to the room:  Eat?  Sleep?  Settle down?   

She looks at him the way a guy in a Ferrari looks at a valet, wondering if he can be trusted.  “Sleep, I guess.”

T-Bo moves to the back of the mini-van where the two kids are touching the luggage cart, fascinated with the round, gold bars rising up on both ends, probably hoping they can ride on it.  T-Bo lifts the back door, pulls out a little pink bag and says, “Whose suitcase is this?”  

“Mine,” the little girl says.

“And who are you?” he asks her, his voice saying, “Sit here on Uncle T-Bo’s lap and tell him all about it.”

“Brianna.”

T-Bo sets her bag on the cart like it’s filled with china.  He looks at the little boy watching him from the other end.  “Is this your little brother, Brianna?  What’s your name little brother?”

“Trevor.”

While T-Bo pulls the bigger suitcases from the mini-van, he asks Brianna and Trevor what brings them to his hotel.  They say Disneyland, because kids always do, and T–Bo frees his hands to scratch his chin.  “Wait a minute.”  He leans over like he needs to take a better look at them, then he straightens up and says, “You’re not Brianna and Trevor Ordlock are you?”  Their heads bob up and down real fast and excited.  T-Bo’s eyes get big and round like he can’t hardly believe who he’s talking to.  “Brianna and Trevor Ordlock from San Diego?” 

They giggle and nod, eyes transfixed and wanting more of The World According to T–Bo.  He points to an empty bench on the red tiles, the rain forest right behind it.  “Not more than fifteen minutes ago, Mickey Mouse himself was sitting on that very bench saying, ‘Where are Brianna and Trevor Ordlock?  Are they here from San Diego yet?’”  T-Bo squats down eye level with them, like the biggest secret ever is coming.  “Mickey told me to tell you he’s sorry he couldn’t wait any longer.  He’s got a big day planned tomorrow, and he needed to get straight home to bed.” 

Brianna and Trevor nod, their eyes following T-Bo as he stands all the way back up and begins filling out luggage tags.  Without looking at them, T-Bo says, “You better get right to sleep tonight.  Mickey said he’ll be looking for you in the park tomorrow, bright and early.” 

Mrs. Ordlock takes Brianna in one hand, Trevor in the other, smiling at their smiles.  Smiling at T-Bo.  Mr. Ordlock comes around the luggage cart, happy to leave T-Bo with his car, his bags, and a wad of cash.  T-Bo waves and continues filling out luggage tags as they walk away.  Then he glances at me on the curb, and I know who I’m looking at:  Big Money Sonny.

*

 T-Bo says the only good thing about Tuesday is that it’s one day closer to the weekend than Monday.  Every week, it’s boom and bust:  Friday through Sunday, we all make a C-note.  Whether you’re a beggar like Urge or a closer like Kennedy, you go home with at least a hundred dollars.  Even I do.  On Mondays, you usually get some leftovers, and on Thursdays you get a little taste of the weekend.  But on Black Tuesday, everyone’s starving for tips.

A couple hours into my shift, I’m hitting record lows:  nine bucks in two hours.  Then I see this guy pull up in a tricked-out Toyota—tinted windows, racing spoiler, lowered, chrome on everything but the seats, and a thumping sound system.  I’m at his door before he’s out of the car.  All he has is an overnight bag, and you don’t try that Mickey Mouse stuff on people your own age, so after I get his keys I tell him, “You want to roll right out of bed and into the pool?”  I look around real fast and lower my voice a little.  “Tell the front desk you have a friend in a wheel chair stopping by; they’ll set you up.  All our handicap accessible rooms are pool-side.” 

I give him a nod and quick grin.  That alone is worth a few bucks, and even though he nods back, all I get is, “Thanks, dude.”

 At first, you forget the names of people who stiff you; it usually evens out in the end.  So after the dinner rush, seeing the name Hayosh on a key pouch doesn’t mean anything to me.  Not until I get out to spot F-211 and see the tricked-out Toyota.  This is good, I think, he’ll hit me on the way out.  He’s changed from shorts and a tee to a clubbing shirt and some slacks.  I hop out of the car and say, “Looks like you got it all under control.”  It’s the subtle way to say he’s styling, and it opens things up in case he needs directions or a dinner recommendation. 

“Thanks, dude,” he says and climbs into the car.  The door shuts and he’s gone, leaving me with nothing but an empty key pouch in my hands.

 T-Bo sees the whole thing and consoles me.  “You went down swinging, Paige.  Can’t do much more than that.” 

An hour later, after T-Bo has gone home, I’m ready when the guy pulls up with a couple friends.  It’s just me and Kennedy now, and there’s no way I’m giving Kennedy a chance to take credit for my work. 

While I open the passenger door for his friends, I look across the roof and say,  “Hayosh, right?” 

He flicks his head the way people do when they expect you to know them. 

I hand him the ticket as he comes around the front of the car.  “Did you get that pool-side room?”

“Yeah,” he says, taking the ticket and walking away without looking at me.          

Kennedy sees the whole thing.  “Spoiled little shit.”  

I park the Toyota far away, rows of empty spots between it and the next closest car.  Mr. Hayosh might as well have a reason to stiff the next valet. 

Kennedy’s shift ends at midnight, and I’ve been counting the minutes.  We haven’t seen a car in over an hour, so he’s been counting and recounting his money:  53 bucks; a ten, four fives, and twenty-three ones.  “And this,” he says, holding up the ten, “was for making change.  ‘Just give me back nine,’ the guy said.  Gee, only nine?  Jackass.” 

Even though I’ve got just 28 bucks in my pocket, I let Kennedy have the Cadillac that pulls up two minutes before midnight.  At first, I think he’s in for more frustration because nobody gets out of the car.  They keep the engine running and the passenger-side window rolls down as Kennedy walks up.  A guy in a suit and tie asks him to kick down directions for a good strip joint.  Kennedy starts talking, pointing in the air, a left here, two lights and then a right.  Before the window goes up, the guy hits him with some cash and Kennedy thanks him professionally, which means without looking at the money right away.  He walks back to the curb with a grin on his face, and I’m expecting him to say he sent them to a gay bar or a church.  He walks past me to the ramp between the valet desk and the bell desk.  The ramp leads down to the locker-rooms, like a tunnel in a stadium.  Kennedy pauses a second, then he holds up a bill without looking at me and starts marching down the ramp, shaking his fist like he just won the Super Bowl. 

“Made my C-note,” he yells.

“You got a Grant for that?”

Kennedy knows our response if it’s true, and it is.  “Surrendered right into my hand,” he says.  I watch him continue down the ramp until his head disappears behind the valet desk.

I laugh at first.  Then it hits me:  I probably won’t make five bucks the rest of the night.  But Kennedy, he made fifty in about two seconds because he knows where girls get naked.  

Not long after Kennedy leaves, Mr. Hayosh is back out with his friends.  I bring the Toyota around and get, “Be back in a few,” for my efforts.  Another car comes up the drive in his taillights, a couple getting back from a night out.  That’s not usually a tip, and it’s not this time either.  I leave their car on the drive for over an hour, until I recognize the headlights of the Toyota coming through the front gate.  I scramble into the couple’s car and drive to the top of the parking deck, three floors up.  Instead of hustling back after I’ve parked the car, I lean over the railing, look down at Mr. Hayosh standing by his open car door.  The Pan looks lifeless with all five lanes of the front drive empty, with the graveyard bellman away from his desk and me away from mine.  Mr. Hayosh keeps waiting, looking around, probably thinking he’s too good to self-park.

This could go on all night and I’d wait, but then the graveyard bellman comes back from wherever he’s been and scurries over to take Mr. Hayosh’s keys and write him a new ticket.  I return to the Toyota, annoyed as I slip inside, thinking about reprogramming all his preset radio stations.  I consider stealing all the change in his ashtray, but as I slide it open I find something better:  sticks of sugarless bubble gum.  Kennedy says sugarless gum melts easier in the heat, especially inside a car sitting in direct sunlight.  I unwrap sticks of gum and feed the CD player as I pull onto the roof of the parking deck.  By nine tomorrow morning, the inside of this car will feel like Phoenix.  My name and handwriting are not on the key pouch, and with the radio tuned to a good station, Mr. Hayosh won’t discover a problem tomorrow until he’s on the freeway.  By then, the hotel is no longer responsible for the car.  “We can’t control what happens off property,” my manager will say.  “Don’t try to blame us.” 

I am thinking, you don’t fuck with the most powerful person in Southern California.  Tomorrow morning, when I go to the beach with Kennedy, I’ll tell him I finally used the gum trick.  He’ll be proud and ask if I remembered to take the wrappers with me so only a stereo technician can piece the story together.  As I walk down the ramp to the locker-room, I crinkle the wrappers into my pocket. 

 *

 Two weeks into July, this is what I do:  sleep until ten, go to the beach with Kennedy until three, come home, shower, get to work by five, get home by two, watch TV, and go to bed by three.  On days off, I go to beach parties, hotel parties, house parties.  I spend my money on shiny shirts and new CD’s for the new sound system that’s worth more than my Cavalier.  I faithfully read the sports page and weather so I can talk baseball with T-Bo and tell guests things like, “Take a light jacket if you’re going to be out past ten.”  I stand on a curb forty hours a week talking about cars and sports and girls.  I laugh every time Kennedy glances at the wad of bills in my front pocket and says, “You got good bank, or are you just happy to see me?” 

I have been dreading July 9^th, not because it is a Wednesday night shift, but because it is the start of a baseball card convention.  T-Bo says we’ll get a handful of retired ball players and their agents, and they will tip well.  We’ll also get a few hundred collectors hoarding every last cent for some baseball card they can’t afford in the first place.  Chump change, at best. 

As they started trickling in tonight, it was exactly as T-Bo said:  a dollar here, a stiff there, and I didn’t see one famous ball player.  Now, with the dinner rush over, it’s completely dead.

I’m on the curb with Kennedy and T-Bo, watching the fireworks fizzle out as a Lincoln Continental pulls up.  T-Bo steps on to the bricks and says, “Watch me turn this Abe Lincoln into an Andy Jackson.”  He sweeps his hand downward as if he’s bringing the car to a stop (that’s his move), then he opens the passenger-side door to an old man, his hair gray and thin like his body.  He has those old man glasses with the huge lenses.  From two lanes away, where Kennedy is giving me dating details about a girl we met at the beach, I can see how thick they are.  His slacks are nice but not the tailored kind you see businessmen wearing.  He probably calls them trousers.  And even though it is 78 degrees with a nighttime low of 70 expected, he’s worn his sport coat in the car.  At first, I think it is the wrinkles making the coat look slightly off, but it is actually a lighter black than the pants.

 Kennedy abandons his story and affects an old man voice, “Here you are, junior, a bright, shiny quarter for all your help.”  

The old man struggles out of the car, but when T-Bo offers a hand he won’t have it.  “I got it, young blood.  It’s just not as fast as it used to be.”

Kennedy and I laugh because T-Bo is not a young man.  He’s got to be thirty-five, maybe forty; he won’t tell us for sure. 

As T-Bo walks to the trunk he says, “Welcome to the Pan-Pacific Hotel, gentlemen.”  His voice sounds like a smile.  “I assume business is your pleasure?”

The driver, a white guy about T-Bo’s age, pulls his own sport coat from the back seat and slips it on.  “We’re here for the card show.”

With a suitcase in each hand, T-Bo nods and takes a quick, closer look at the old man.  I do too, and he looks about as famous as the two guys who rode with Paul Revere.  

The trunk is unloaded in seconds, and T-Bo shuts it smoothly, without a slam.  The old man puts a hand on the cart, like he’s expecting a gust of wind to knock him over.  He reaches for a little brown satchel, the leather cracked and fraying at the corners.  “Give me that one there.”

T-Bo gives him the usual routine about tagging the luggage and leaving it at the bell desk so it can get to the room right when Mr. Steadman does.  He’s also supposed to say how valet parking works.  Instead, he says, “I’m going to keep this car on the curb for you, Mr. Steadman.  I know you like to make fast getaways.”

“Are you watching this?” Kennedy whispers.

Mr. Steadman offers his hand to T-Bo.  “You call me Shine; you hear?”

Mr. Steadman looks at him like a son, but Kennedy and I have seen this before.  By the end of a shift, T-Bo’s been father, son, or spiritual advisor to almost every guest he’s met.

Kennedy puts his arm over my shoulder and squeezes for a second.  “Paige, Paige, Paige.  Have I taught you nothing?”

I lean in to Kennedy just a bit and agree.  “Pretty much.”

“Exactly.” 

Kennedy lowers his voice again.  “He probably flashed T-Bo a couple Andy Jacksons.  Why else would you curb a Lincoln?”

Curbing a car means you leave it out front, right on the curb where everyone can see it.  It makes the owner happy and the hotel look good because people who bribe valets usually drive Aston-Martins and Bentleys.  And that’s how you sell it too.  Like a bribe.  You make it sound like the curb is only for the owner, foreign dignitaries or fire trucks.

T-Bo walks to the curb with Shine, towing the luggage cart behind him.  The white guy goes on ahead, saying he’ll check in.  Shine starts unzipping the satchel and I know this is it.  Kennedy is cool; he walks past them to retrieve a stray luggage cart—the one he always leaves out so he can stroll past guests about to kick down or good looking girls waiting for a cab.

T-Bo’s eyes follow Kennedy the whole way before he realizes Shine is digging around in the satchel.  “Now you know I can’t take anything from you.  That’d put me deeper in your debt.”

Shine looks up at T-Bo and grins, then he zips up the satchel.  Kennedy looks stunned as he brings the empty luggage cart back over.  We watch T-Bo and Shine walk towards the glass sliding doors together.  They stop at the bell desk, where T-Bo will have to take the cart back into the luggage bin.  Shine tucks the satchel under his arm so he can shake T-Bo’s hand again, this time with both of his, cupping it the way ambassadors do.  It doesn’t make the old man look frail, though; his hands are big.  It’s T-Bo, all smiles and too happy, who looks like a little kid. 

“Did you see that?” Kennedy says.  “Who the hell is that guy?”

“Shine.”

“No,” he says.  “I mean the other guy.”

T-Bo’s grinning as he walks back to the drive, bounding along until Kennedy, safely behind the desk, stops him in lane one with, “Chump Change James!  Is that you?”

I’m still at the curb, thinking there’s a better explanation.  “Card collector?”

T-Bo shakes his head in a parental way, like we’re the ones who got stiffed.  “That man doesn’t collect baseball cards.  He signs them.”

I won’t say he didn’t look like anyone to me, but Kennedy is brave enough to put words to my thought.  “I’ve never heard of anyone called Shine.  Who’d he play for?”

T-Bo starts listing the teams on his fingers, “Homestead Grays, Indianapolis Clowns, Birmingham Black Barons—”

T-Bo steps over to the curb, taller than me even though I am on it.  I suddenly feel a weight to the word “Negro,” but I know I’ve used it properly.  “What’s a white boy from Orange County know about the Negro Leagues?”

It scares me a little, and I ramble like a course catalog:  “We talked about it in my American Popular Culture class.  About how the league is a microcosm of the American experience.”

Montgomery “Moonshine” Steadman played over twenty years in the Negro Leagues.  T-Bo says they called him “Moonshine” because he ran it for his daddy growing up in Mississippi.  Literally ran it.  Through the woods, across farms, anywhere it was hard for cars to get and fat policemen to follow.  People said that’s how he got so fast and stole so many bases.  Later, they just called him “Shine” so his name would be fast too. 

Kennedy cannot care less.  “All I know is you got stiffed.”

I’m looking for the connection here, wondering why it’s okay for Shine to stiff T-Bo, but he’s looking off into nowhere, telling stories, talking about Shine finally getting signed to the Major Leagues.  “He batted .470 in spring training for the Chicago Cubs.  Then they sent him back down to the minors for talking back when some white players insulted him.”

“I can’t believe that,” I say.

“It’s a boy’s game,” T-Bo says without the smile in his voice, “but you got to be a man to play it.”

Kennedy is not impressed.  “He gave up the Majors to make a point?”

I see it now, how Shine’s obscurity makes him even more memorable.  “He gave it up to be a man,” I say.

T-Bo slaps me on the back.  “There you go.”

 *

Urge says I act so much like T-Bo now I should get an Academy Award.  He and Kennedy called me Oscar for awhile, but the name didn’t take.  T-Bo wouldn’t even dabble; it was “Paige, help these folks out,” and “Paige, park this car.”  But fifteen minutes after we met Shine last night, T-Bo tossed me a key pouch and said, “Clear up my drive, Costar.” 

Tonight, when I got to the valet desk to start my shift, Urge came up to me and said, “Listen Costar, I’m in charge of the drive until T-Bo gets back from his dinner break.”

Kennedy was over by the rain forest, planting his first luggage cart of the evening.  “I’m not a costar,” he yelled, “but I play one on TV.”

My nametag still says Paige, but T-Bo has made it unofficially official.  It doesn’t matter if I like it or not; it’s who I am.  So I stepped behind the desk, found the list for who’s up to get a car, and wrote “Costar” at the bottom. 

My new name has not moved in half an hour.  Kennedy is at the top of the list, and he says he has been since five minutes before my shift started.   I’ve been waiting at the desk with him the whole time, trying to convince him his three bucks are better than the nothing I’ve made so far.

“Oh yeah?” Kennedy says.  He holds one of the bills up.  “I got this from some jackass in an old Porsche.  He gets his own luggage and then says to me, ‘Put my baby somewhere nice.’”  I look out onto the drive; the Porsche is not there.  “For a buck,” Kennedy says.  “I put it in a real nice spot on the deck.”

I laugh.  “Hold on to the dough—” 

“And we’ll bake it for you,” Kennedy finishes.

We stop laughing as, finally, a guest arrives with a ticket.  Kennedy is hand-shaking polite until he sees the name “Steadman.”  It’s the agent.  I look to the curb and see Shine already standing by the Lincoln—different color trousers, same sport coat, same brown satchel.

“Let me get this,” I say.

Kennedy makes sure the agent has stepped away from the desk.  “It’s a stiff.”

“I know.”

He pulls the key pouch from the drawer and folds his arms, tucking it away.  “Why do you want a stiff?”

“What does it matter?  I’m at the bottom of the list.”

Kennedy studies me.  “Give me a buck.”

“For a stiff?”

“For bumping to the top of the list.” 

I reach into my pocket.

“Wait a second,” Kennedy says.  “You’re going to do it?”  He looks over at Shine.  “This guy flash you a fin?”

“No,” I say.  “Look, I’ll give you whatever he gives me.”

Kennedy hands me the pouch.  “I’m watching, Costar.  I’ll go get my cart if I have to.”

“You can trust me,” I say.

I toss the keys over the car to the agent.  “You fellas looking for lobster or ladies tonight?”

His eyes widen, glancing to his hand and then back to me.

Shine pauses, then lowers himself into the car.  I’m expecting a smile, maybe a thanks.  He says nothing, just settles into the seat and tucks the satchel between his knees.  The agent starts the car as I bring the door to a dull, controlled slam.  I stand there at attention as the car pulls from the curb.   Shine looks up at me through the glass, and I recognize the expression upon his face, the disapproval my parents reserve for class choices steeped in the history I want instead of the future they think I should have.

Kennedy is dumbfounded, unable to move from behind the desk.  “I thought we kicked this feeling-guilty-about-tips thing.”

I want to say it’s not guilt.  It isn’t.  I don’t know exactly what it is.

Kennedy shakes his head and I know I can’t talk to him about it.  I wait for T-Bo, but Kennedy gets to him first, meeting him on the drive.  I’m certain T-Bo will laugh in his face, tell him how little he knows about the world he lives in.

The conversation is brief, and as Kennedy walks back to the curb, his back to T-Bo, he whispers, “Sorry.  I was only joking around.”

It’s hours early for fireworks, so I know this can’t be too serious.  I walk out and stand quietly next to T-Bo as he collects his thoughts.  He is staring out into the parking lot when he finally says, “Shine tried to tip you?” 

I give him a shorter nod, to show him I know I’ve done the right thing. 

T-Bo turns his whole body to me, looks directly into my eyes.  “What the hell were you thinking, boy?”

Suddenly, I’m not sure what I was thinking.  I just know I can’t stop thinking about a story T-Bo told me last night.  Once, at the Polo Grounds, in an exhibition game against white Major Leaguers, Shine tagged up from second base and beat the throw from deep center field.  But not the throw to third.  He hit third base full stride and came all the way home, two steps to the dugout before the relay got there.  As he took his third step, the umpire called him out.  “I beat the throw,” Shine said.  “He didn’t even tag me.”  The umpire turned his back and started sweeping off home plate.  Shine’s teammates jogged onto the field, knowing the futility of any argument.  The shortstop brought out his glove, and when Shine refused to take it, he said he’d leave it at second base for him.  ‘Look, boy,’ the umpire finally broke, ‘you might be able to tag up and score from second in your league, but you’re not doing it in mine.’

I tell T-Bo this is what I was thinking about, that I admire Shine too. 

“Uh-uh,” T-Bo shakes his head.  “You were showing him you’d rather have no money than a black man’s.”

“I can.  I do a lot of things you do.”

 *

I am standing on the curb next to Kennedy, a guy who will go to junior college until the day he transfers all his credits to a dead-end job with limited potential.  This is not who I am.

We are watching T-Bo open the door to the Lincoln, smiles pouring out as Shine shakes his hand, says a few words, finds a few dollars in the satchel and gives them to T-Bo.  This, too, is not who I am.   

Later, I know, T-Bo will give me that money, the money Shine asked him to pass along.  I will not argue with him and he will smile, call me Costar, and say, “There you go.”  I will slip the money into my pocket, be who T-Bo wants me to be.  As soon as T–Bo isn’t looking, I’ll give that money to Kennedy like I promised, be who he wants me to be.  I will go home tonight and lay the rest of my tips on the counter with my car keys.  Tomorrow morning, my parents will be up before me and see how it is still July and I am already becoming the person they want me to be.  But T-Bo is right; this isn’t my place.  The next time I have a day off I won’t go to the beach or read a book, I’ll go looking for an apartment near campus, a place for all the books in my trunk.  I can hold out another two months, nodding, smiling, making my C-notes.  And I’m pretty sure, come fall, when I quit the Pan, when my parents cut me off for not changing majors, I’ll feel good about all this.  Because then, I really will feel like the most powerful person in Southern California.