by R. J. Jacobs
“No problem,” I say, casually, masking the new tightness inside me. Which musicians? I wonder again. Something about signing the form makes Ms. Parsons’s voice ring in my ear— the full extent of your sentence, which is fifteen years in jail.
Ken motions toward the tray of dumplings I had been folding. “Hats off to you. You stay on task better than anyone I’ve ever seen.”
I smile and re-glove my hand. He cocks his head slightly, like he is thinking of something. The word for staying in a place longer than necessary … Ken lingers until I hear someone call his name. Then he bounces a little, as if startled. One of the cooks must have shown up.
“Coming!” he yells over his shoulder. “Holler if you need anything, Jessie. Keep this up.” He points again at the dumplings then is out the door, the stack of folded papers sticking up out of his back pocket.
I start cutting croissants, into which I will scoop the chicken salad that Ken made that morning. After that, I will get to work on the mixed salad and the cucumber sandwiches, which have disappeared first at each event I’ve attended.
As I work, an interview with Owen flashes back to me. I saw it years ago, on the Ellen Degeneres Show, before he and Shelly were married. He was sitting across from Ellen on a sofa, legs crossed so his boot rested on his knee. His enormous smile hardly matched his all-black clothes. Ellen wore a white button-down with an enormous collar and made her eyes very wide.
“Owen, I have to say, you look different,” she teased. “It seems like something is new. Did you get a new haircut?” She tapped her finger against her chin. “Hmm. You went vegetarian?”
“Nope.”
The camera cut to the audience laughing. One woman shook her head.
“You took up yoga? No? Well, maybe you better tell us what’s going on in your life, mister.”
Owen smiled sheepishly and talked to Ellen like it was only her and him on a back porch here in Tennessee, even though everyone was watching. “Actually, I’ve met someone special. I’ve been acquainted with her for a few years professionally but recently we’ve gotten closer. And then one day I realized I am captivated by her. Just having plans to meet her makes me walk on air.”
Ellen made a teasing hand motion.
Owen smiled again. He knew how to tell a story—in a song or on a show. “Sometimes,” he said, “I keep my mouth closed just so her name won’t fly out. I left her dressing room one afternoon and jumped to see if I could touch the ceiling in the hallway. I missed by nearly two feet, but I was somehow surprised. That’s what this lady does to me.”
Someone in the audience clapped. One woman lifted her glasses to wipe her eyes.
“Well, are you going to say her name?” Ellen asked. She elbowed Owen and made a come-on wave to the audience, who started to clap and cheer.
“Her name is Shelly,” Owen said. “And one day I mean for her last name to be James.”
The memory sings in my thoughts as I clean my hands, the kitchen quiet except for the hum of machines.
There’s a difference between the enthusiasm people portray on television and the quieter way they show feelings in regular life. When I’ve watched Owen and Shelly in person, I’ve seen two people who grew up the same way, who don’t need constant explanations about rural life (I once overheard Owen say that he loves big cities but they wear him out). Both Owen and Shelly know what it is like to have someone tell them they loved their last album, even if they suspect that person actually hates it, or wants something from them. Neither has to explain to the other the feeling of being watched, or has to teach the other to pretend they don’t notice everyone in a room is staring at them.
I wonder if they feel relieved when they’re not being watched. Or are ever unsure of what to do with themselves when they’re alone. I push the question from my mind. Owen and Shelly know how to handle absolutely anything. I just know it.
One of the cooks is whistling, and it takes me out of my head. I smile when I recognize it’s Malik. He’s moving closer. I wonder if he’ll talk with me again. If Malik is so at ease, maybe everything will be okay.
I will look back on everything and wish I’d focused on what I sensed was coming. I’ll wish I grabbed Malik’s hand, got in my car, and drove away. We could have gone anywhere else. For a day or a week, or maybe just kept going.
If only I’d listened to myself, right then.
If only I’d run.
4
In the bathroom, I slip out of my prep clothes and change into my uniform. I pull my hair into a ponytail and wash my face with a bar of Dial soap, which makes the world smell orange for a moment, before drying off with brown paper towels. I don’t like to wear makeup, but I do want to look and feel clean. I straighten my uniform shirt and lean my elbows on the sink to give myself a quick once-over in the mirror. I look up at the leak-rippled drywall ceiling and try not to think about having to interact with all the people who will surely be at the party. To get through events like this party, I have to focus on maintaining myself—I visualize my facial expression and how to hold my body so I appear at ease. Ms. Parsons told me once to imagine Mario in the game Super Mario Brothers. After he eats a mushroom, Mario becomes invincible for a short time and can run through the game board freely with no fear of being killed. He is safe and purposeful and aglow. In the bathroom, I picture that golden glow around me and tell myself I will be fine. Just fine.
I recognize the voice I hear outside, and then the laughter too. A smile forms on my face. When I come out, I see that the other cook, Andre, has also arrived. He and Malik have propped a cinder block against the back door of the kitchen and are loading Ken’s van. Malik has an Afro, and Andre shaves his head. They are both nice to me—Malik especially so—but tease each other constantly, like brothers, and laugh at each other’s stories.
The three of us have worked for Ken for around the same amount of time, even though Andre is the newest to town. When we first were introduced, they both looked at me like most people did—distant, unsure—before we got used to each other. Now they keep an extra foot of distance between us and we air-fist bump as a greeting instead of shaking hands.
Malik leans against the door frame, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand. “Ready for tonight? I know you like prep work better than serving.”
“I’ll be fine,” I say as I pick up the stack of linens and walk them to the van.
“It’s okay, you know,” he says as I head back toward the kitchen. I realize that Ken and Andre are both inside. Malik tries so hard to be kind that I have a hard time meeting his eyes. “Everyone’s nervous about something,” he continues. “Maybe serving’s just not for you. I used to get crazy nerves before open mic nights, but stuff like that gets better the more you do it.”
I’m kicking a pebble with the toe of my shoe when Andre appears at the side door. He extends his fist and I extend mine and we bump air. “Hey, what’s up, Jessie,” he says, his face half-hidden by shadow. He says to Malik, “Get the other end of this table for me?”
Malik nods and follows Andre inside, where they pick up a folding table. I grab a tray and follow them. There is a lot to load up and secure before we head out, and for the first time I realize just how much food I prepared. Obviously, it’s going to be a big party.
When the van is full, I climb in the back. Malik and Andre follow, then Ken slides the door closed with that scrape-sliding sound. His keys jangle as he locks the back door. “Everybody ready?” he asks.
“Hot in here,” Andre says as he crawls past me and Malik to the front, leaning down to keep from hitting his head. He fans his face with his hands and adjusts the van’s air vents so they point toward him. He’s not from Nashville and it shows, but he’s right—at almost five o’clock the temperature is still near ninety degrees. “Ken, you better get this A/C cranked, my man,” he says.
Malik rubs his neck, squinting toward the sun as we start off. I sit on a cooler and can feel the vibration from the street through my fingers. Through
the window, I watch Nashville’s used record stores and restaurants fly by. Everywhere, a new building, a bar that just opened, a hotel coming soon. The joke is that the city’s official bird is a crane. I tighten my legs and grip the cooler handles to steady myself. When Ken turns, ice sloshes inside while smells from the food we made rise up from the folded edges of tin foil covering the trays nearby. We pass from one part of town to the next, the cooks and Ken chatting, me listening to them talk so my thoughts stay quiet. My mind is like a machine that I can hear working sometimes. It helps me to focus on someone else nearby, and to just listen.
We rumble over train tracks before driving onto curved, shady streets and gently sloping hills. The houses on both sides have old trees in wide front yards and diagonal lines cut into grass that seems an enhanced shade of green. The streets are named for trees—Aspen, Dogwood, Live Oak—names that make me think of … the word for when something will always be … The names made me think of permanence, of stone, and of strong families—ways of living that anyone would want. Envy nips me like a dog that doesn’t know better.
“Almost there,” Ken says, glancing at the map on his phone.
“Ken, you sweating, man?” Malik asks.
I look up and notice a clear drop running down Ken’s cheek.
He wipes it away. “It’s a big account. Good exposure for us, potentially.”
Every night after the rest of us go home, Ken cleans the kitchen. A month earlier, I’d watched him put stickers with the company logo on both sides of the van. He wants the business to be a success, and I want that for him too.
I don’t want anything about my past to interfere with his hard work, or to mess up my job. I know I need to lay low in order to make that more likely, which is obviously much harder if I’m serving at events and not just prepping food. The thought I always try to push away makes me cold despite the warmth surrounding me: the photo from my arrest seemed like it was posted on every news and gossip site for a few weeks last summer—google my name now and it still comes up.
I hear Ms. Parsons’s words in my head—“People forget things, Jessie. Probably no one will know, especially after a while”—and tell myself I won’t be recognized. I wonder how long it will be until after a while.
I slip on my black uniform cap and tell myself I’ll stay dim. I can handle this, I tell myself.
“Now this is what I call a neighborhood,” Malik says admiringly. “I think I’ll get myself a place here when I win the lottery. In fact, I’ll take that one right there.” He points at a house set far back from the road, where lanterns flicker beside the front door in the afternoon sun.
“What’s with all the lanterns?” Andre says.
Ken brushes away some flour that had settled on the sleeve of his black shirt. “Ah, I forget you’re a newcomer. Lanterns mean old money. And those stacked stone fences mean very old money.”
Malik smiles. “You trying to sound like a native? You’ve been here, what? Four years?”
“Five,” Ken answers. “Nashville’s like a mini-LA now. Everybody wants to be here. And the traffic is killing me.”
“Five years …” Malik says. “You’ve been here long enough to know everybody’s from somewhere else. Besides, any city worth a damn has traffic. We’re just in the club now.”
Andre asks, “So, lanterns mean old money? What about music business money? That ain’t always old money.”
Both he and Malik are musicians, working catering gigs so they can spend their free time on music. Maybe they think I’m a musician too. That’s what I like to believe. It would make sense—nearly everyone else in jobs like ours plays or writes music. After all, there’s a joke in Nashville: How do you find a songwriter? You go to a restaurant and ask to see a waiter.
“That’s a different neighborhood altogether,” Ken says. He’d never said so, but I get the feeling Ken is a musician too.
“Sometimes it ain’t old money,” Malik chimes in. “But in this town, fame is royalty.”
We hit a small bump and the van slows. My hands are sweaty on the cooler handles, but I tell myself to not think. When we come to a stop, the engine turns off and for a second I hear a deafening silence. Ken double-checks the address on his phone, then leans forward and squints as he looks up the long driveway.
“Look at that fucking house,” Andre says.
The house is a sprawling ranch with white painted brick—no, a color deeper than white, cream. Like a magnolia blossom, slightly wilted. The shutters are chestnut brown and the driveway slopes gently into the backyard like a subtle invitation.
“Please tell me it’s a big fucking family,” Andre says. “Like a dozen kids or something.”
Ken sighs like a teacher. “There’s three of them. Lane Peterson is who hired us. Her husband is Brian. Their son, Sean, is graduating.” He claps his hands once, like he’s snapping us out of a spell. “Okay, guys, let’s go ahead and get into our professional mode. It’s go time.”
“Go time,” Malik echoes, and I smile despite my nervousness because Ken says that phrase before any event, which I find funny but also sort of sweet. Go time. I take a deep breath and force a smile as I rub my finger and thumb together like Ms. Parsons showed me in order to not get lost in my anxiety.
Andre gets out and opens the van door. A warm wind blows against my cheek as I hear him chuckle. “These people have probably never seen a tough day in their lives,” he says. “Money makes ’em soft as little marshmallows.”
“The kid may not have it rough, but the adults aren’t soft, trust me,” Ken answers distractedly as he looks over the order once more on his phone.
Both cooks make noises that sound like disbelief.
Ken sets his phone in his lap, turns around in his seat, and raises his eyebrow at them. “You know what Brian Peterson does for a living? Private equity. He acquires companies, sucks the value out of them, and then sells them off. I read he put 5,000 people out of work last year. The article called him a sociopath. Maybe he is and maybe he isn’t, but he’s done some ruthless deals, make no mistake. It’s no accident he has this house.”
The cooks’ laughter softens as we step onto the street. “Ken did his research,” Andre says. I wipe my hands nervously on my pants, not able to stop from wondering how he hadn’t looked up anything about me. Above me, I hear the soft shushing sound of leaves brushing against each other as a breeze nudges the oak branches.
Malik hums a beat, absentmindedly. “A psychopath in a suit and tie, huh? Well, now I’m excited. Way to build the suspense, Ken. I thought it was just a fancy party.”
Ken opens the back of the van. He looks up at me and winks. “You good, Jessie?”
“All good,” I say, although something about the word psychopath makes my movements slightly awkward. I look down to find my footing on the sidewalk’s edge.
Malik snaps the cart together; then we unload the trays and move toward the back of a long driveway. The food I made is inches away, but my stomach feels full and raw at the same time—a tangle of nervous energy while thought fragments buzz in my head like bees that won’t land.
A woman with blue, hawkish eyes comes toward us from the backyard, her hair the color of molasses. She is maybe in her forties but doesn’t have a wrinkle. “Hello there! So happy to see you. I’m Lane.”
She sounds so cheerful that her voice stops Andre and Malik in their tracks but also somehow calms my nerves. One thing I’ve learned from delivering food at previous events is that rich people act very, very excited to see one another when they get together. Everyone is sweating except Lane, who looks indecently comfortable in the heat. She rests one hand on her chest and extends her other to Ken. While she and Ken exchange greetings, I run my fingertip along the groove between two magnolia bloom–colored bricks on the side of the house. The paint is slightly tacky from the humidity and I half expect my finger tip to be coated in cream when I pull it away.
Lane points to an enormous wooden structure extending off the back of th
eir house, behind which a white tent fills half the backyard. “We’ll keep the food mainly out on the deck area. You know how these things go: the grown-ups congregate in the kitchen, but kids run up to their rooms or hide in the backyard like little hoodlums.”
She motions toward the lawn behind the house, where strings of lights hang between trees. It looks like a set from the TV show Nashville, but it reminds me too of the outdoor festivals where I saw Owen and Shelly perform last year. I can almost taste cotton candy in my memory and smell the pot burning as their songs rose over joyful, dusty crowds. I may not have a good sense of scale, because my own graduation was so sparsely attended and informal— certainly no party was thrown—but it takes a second for me to remember that what I’m looking at is a high school graduation party. For a moment, my anxiety fades into the background of my mind as I consider the different world that I’m now in.
Malik, Andre, and I take trips back and forth between the tent and the van until all the food is where Lane Peterson wants it. She has left the side door to the house wide open, and each time I pass, I feel a cool wisp of air. On my next trip, I pass through the door into a large open kitchen, where I begin to arrange glasses on the countertop. I set them in five rows of five, each row two inches from the next. I’ll replace these as the party progresses so the arrangement stays neat. I’m so precise it drives Andre a little crazy sometimes, but Ken nods approvingly.
The kitchen and living area are basically one enormous space, with a deck that extends off the back where guests have already found shade on the two tomato-colored L-shaped sofas. The deck leads out to the backyard, which seems to fade into hedges beyond the hanging lights. Right where the living room meets the deck area, I notice an iPad-sized control panel attached to the wall, where a dozen icons glow. As I finish in the kitchen, I watch as Lane saunters over and touches the screen. The lights in the kitchen dim slightly, while lights on the deck ease on. When she touches another place on the screen, three fans attached to the pagoda above the deck begin to spin.
