Cadge

cadge
verb, transitive. To ask for or obtain something to which one is not strictly entitled.

Jill parked her tray on the bar and mopped it as she waited for Caleb to approach so she could relay her drink orders. Things were slow for 5:15 on a Friday. They'd pick up soon. "They'd better," she mused. Her rent was due in three days and she needed tips.

Caleb was taking his time. He had turned from the cooler door at the far end of the bar to chat with one of the regulars perched on a stool there. Jill watched them, calculating. He would be a minute or two, she judged, and since Donnie wasn't here yet....

She dug in her apron for the pack and extracted a cigarette. She dropped her eyes and studied it as she flicked her lighter. She usually refrained from smoking on the job, but things really were slow, except for the order for that one booth she still hadn't given to Caleb. She glanced at its occupants. They were deep in conversation, leaning toward each other. She wondered what their story was. Businessmen cobbling up a deal? Drug dealers? With a mental shrug, she turned back to the mirror behind the bar and watched herself take a couple of drags. As usual, the act calmed her, but the clock in her head never stopped for long. She dropped the cigarette into the spool-shaped snuffer in the staff ashtray.

"Caleb?" she called. He was talking and didn't respond. She wished she hadn't put the cigarette out and took a deep breath.

Just then the street door opened and admitted a husky woman. When Jill recognized her, she groaned aloud. Marci. Marci, the trainee barmaid, whose customers complained about her body odor, and who couldn't seem to understand that her homeliness was the reason her tips were so meager. Marci, who would spend the rest of the shift cadging Jill's cigarettes, explaining that she needed to smoke so she could get her weight down. Jill's enthusiasm for the evening's work evaporated. She rarely reacted to people this way, but she had developed a strong dislike for Marci after working with her for only one night.

"Caleb!" she barked. "Order up!"

He didn't linger with the regular, but spun on a toe and headed toward her. "I heard you the first time," he remarked testily. "What's the rush? I saw you light up." Then he noticed Marci and his gaze flicked to Jill's face. She thought she read sympathy there. She hoped so. She needed it.

Definitions adapted from The New Oxford American Dictionary, Oxford University Press, Inc., 2005 (eBook Edition, copyright 2008), and from Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam Company, Publishers, Springfield, Massachusetts, USA, 1965, depending on which is more convenient to hand.