by Lisa Samson
She reached into her backpack and pulled out her own. She jerked a thumb toward a nearby bodega. “Here. I’m going to get a soda.”
Manny’s head snapped up as the red phone on the kitchen wall started to ring. He laid down his knife, blade resting on a pile of mangled red onions. His eyes protested and he blinked away the tears. “Pepito! Chop these onions.”
“Sure, boss.” He didn’t look too happy about it.
He brushed his hands on his apron, picked up the receiver, and cleared his throat, trying his best to sound calm and professional. “El Callejon, how may I help you?”
“Manny?”
“José? Where are you?”
“I’m with Nina.”
Just as he’d figured. “Who the heck is Nina? I’m your brother. I fire people all the time, José, and you don’t go running around after them.”
“I know, man, I know.”
Servers bustled around him. Runners grabbed plates and still they did not get them from the window fast enough. Some returned with meals that had gone cold. It was a good thing he didn’t have his ego tied up in his cooking. But still, his restaurant was suffering. And that meant more to him than anything.
Pretty sad. And he thought José had no life?
The thought angered him. “When are you coming back?”
“I need to help Nina right now.”
“You need to do what? You need to be here. In this kitchen. Cooking. Doing your job. Come back right now.”
“I can’t. I can’t.”
“What do you—what do you mean you can’t?”
“Some things are more important than cooking, Manny.”
Manny gripped the phone, storming away from the wall to grab a twist tie off one of the plates on the tray Margarita was hefting out to the dining room. “Listen to me, idiota! If you’re not here in the next ten minutes, you’d better be at the unemployment office.”
He looked down in his hand and grated out his frustration. He’d pulled the phone cord out of the wall. Beautiful. Just beautiful.
Margarita hurried off as Manny slam-dunked the receiver into the trash can.
José sat in front of the store, waiting for Nina to emerge. This was the first time he’d gone out on a limb in years, and now this? For Nina? A woman he barely knew?
The thing was, Manny would fire him. And all in the name of what was best for José. He could picture the conversation.
“José, I hate to do this, but I’m your brother and I want what’s best for you. Sacrificing my business wouldn’t do either of us any good.”
A man slammed out of the door of the bodega, cursing, a few bills crumpled in a meaty fi st set below a forearm covered in a dragon tattoo. José shrugged. Angry people. New York. Nothing new.
He looked around him at the same weary streets and crumbling curves and realized he was ready for a change in life. That was for sure. Every day the same. Keeping anything with a pulse at arm’s length.
He unwound the bandages on his hand, wincing as the gauze stuck in the crevices of his wounded palm. The flesh was flaring in an angry red, blistered and seeping.
This isn’t penance.
He widened his eyes, his own thoughts surprising him.
That was right. It wasn’t penance at all. It created a way he could fool himself into thinking he was such a horrible person he could hide from the world and be justified.
He wrapped it back up.
A suited businessman wearing fine shoes pushed a dollar bill into an empty paper coffee cup by José’s feet and walked into the store.
José plucked it out and shoved it in his pocket. Oh well. Maybe today was his lucky day.
Nina exited the bodega and he stood up.
“Oh man, that was crazy,” she said.
“What happened?”
“Did you see that guy rush out?”
José nodded. “Very angry.”
“He had a run-in with the cashier. It sounded like the clerk, who was Chinese, was speaking Spanish. Just a typical New York moment.” She looked around her. “I’d hate to have to leave this place.”
They walked by a parking lot, a high chain-link fence lining their path to the right.
“Why would you leave?”
“It takes money to live here, and right about now they’re seating the Gallegos party in my section. They’re usually good for a two-hundred-dollar tab.”
“You’ll be fine. Don’t worry. I mean, there’re plenty of restaurants in this city.”
“It’s not that. It’s looking for a job. It stinks, José. The applications, the interviews. I’m going to need references. What do you think Manny is going to say about me?”
“List me as a reference.”
Nina sighed and took a sip of her drink. “Who knows? You’ll probably be pounding the pavement right along with me.”
“Hey.” José grinned. “Today is my first time. It takes three times.” He held up three fingers, mimicking Manny.
“Yeah, but you’re the chef. And you walked out.” She screwed the lid back on the bottle.
They continued down the street, José trying to figure out how to bring up the subject of Nina’s pregnancy. He had come with her to talk about it and now they were doing anything but. His mother always knew what to do to draw him out when he had troubles. “You hungry?”
“I could eat,” Nina said.
“I know a good place.”
They stepped from the subway station back out onto the street. Nina hadn’t traveled around the city this much in years. She’d become such a creature of habit. Home. Work. Home. Work. Nina picked at her uniform. “What am I going to do with this dress? Probably sell it on eBay.”
José shrugged.
They continued down Houston Street and Nina longed to put her hand in his, not because she was feeling romantic, but because José knew her secret and that drew him to her somehow. But she held off. Everybody at the restaurant knew that José never went out with women. José was some kind of strange penitent, they said, but without the pilgrimages and glass in his shoes. Although, who knows, maybe he did have glass in his shoes. He’d been wearing the same pair ever since he started. Raggedy sneakers. One time she asked him why he never got new shoes, and he said shoes just weren’t his thing anymore.
Weird.
No. No hand-holding. And maybe she was just feeling so unable to cope that she’d hold hands with Marilyn Manson if he were the day’s companion.
She stole a glance at José.
Okay, no. Definitely not Marilyn Manson.
A man sat on the sidewalk, delicate origami pieces resting on boxes and crates: dragons and swans, hearts and butterflies and frogs. His blue eyes contrasted with his walnut skin, and a constellation of dark moles spotted his face. His gray T-shirt was darkened by dirt and grime and too much time on his back, but something about him told Nina he was a friend.
When he spoke, unable to meet her eyes, Nina realized he was blind.
“Can I interest you in one of my creations, young lady?” He held up an intricately folded creature. “How about this nice frog?”
How did he know she was a woman?
“I’m sorry. I don’t have any cash on me.”
And how much was something like that worth? To Nina, quite a bit. The man being blind surely added on twenty bucks or so, didn’t it?
He rested his hands on his knees. “Okay.” He nodded. “Today’s a beautiful day, right?”
“I guess . . .”
“Describe it to me!” He smiled, nodding with an almost adolescent expectation.
“What?”
“Describe it to me and this piece of art is yours.” He held out the frog again.
José nodded at her, his face open and almost as expectant as the blind man’s.
“Okay. Uh . . .” She glanced over her shoulder at a small park. “There are some yellow flowers blooming on a bu—”
“Forsythia!” He nodded.
In that instant, Nina knew this man w
asn’t born blind.
“Yeah. And some purple ones too —”
“Hyacinth!” He inhaled through his nose. “Mmm.”
His face almost split in two at the joy of remembering those colors. Easter colors. She was feeding him, feeding his soul, like giving a man in the desert a drink of water.
“You really like flowers, huh?”
“Oh yeah.”
She smiled at José.
“What’s going on across the street?” the blind man asked.
She leaned forward, hands on her knees. “Well, it’s just an ordinary day in New York City. People rushing back and forth. Everyone’s got somewhere to go, somewhere to be. Nobody really cares about nothing. It’s like a huge living clock. It never stops.”
And why was she speaking so loudly? She caught herself and had to laugh inwardly. The man wasn’t deaf !
His smile became wistful. “Boy, I wish I could see that.”
Oh yes, you do, she thought. I wish I could too.
He handed her the frog. “Thank you.”
She took it tenderly, wondering how she was going to keep something so fragile from being crushed. Well, she’d introduce him to Bubbles and maybe they’d have themselves a good old time there in her backpack.
“And you!” The blind man pointed to José. “You keep it real. I got my eye on you.”
They laughed.
“Thank you,” said Nina.
“Thank you,” José said too.
As they walked on, Nina pointed to the sign resting beside the blind man, words scrawled in red magic marker, a little American flag sticker stuck to the cardboard:
GOD CLOSED MY EYES. NOW I CAN SEE.
“What do you think of that?” she asked José as they rounded the corner. “Did God do that to that man? Do you think he was being punished for something?”
José fl inched. “I don’t believe that of God.” End of story, judging by the tone of his voice.
“I can’t get mad at God for my being pregnant.”
“No. Babies are like flowers.”
Nina shut down that train of thought; she was actually thinking that she’d gotten herself into the mess. She wasn’t talking about babies.
And all for Pieter. What was she thinking? He couldn’t even stand up to Manny and tell him the truth when her job was on the line. It made her sick to think she’d slept with him.
She pointed to a street bazaar, tents set up, card tables all selling colorful items: purses, scarves, tablecloths, jewelry, batik and tie-dyed skirts and shirts, colorful sandals. And of course, watches. What street bazaar would be complete without fake Rolexes and, well, whatever other watch was popular these days? “Let’s go over to the sidewalk vendors. I like that kind of hippie stuff.”
“All right.”
José followed her into a tent filled with skirts and blouses, dresses and scarves. Nina plucked a scarf from a rack, a soft square of white with sea-blue designs.
She walked up to the vendor. “Do you have a mirror?”
The Asian lady held one up while Nina tied the scarf around her head, her ponytail peeking out of the back. “Thank you.”
She turned to José and tried her best Marlene Dietrich impersonation. “How do you do?”
She held out her hand to be kissed.
José just whistled.
Oh well.
“Looks pretty good, huh?” he said.
“Sure.” She shrugged and took off the scarf.
“José?”
Nina turned and watched as a woman almost as tall as José, and as fair and beautiful as he was dark and handsome, wove through the crowd of shoppers. Her blonde hair moved about her head, cut perfectly. She looked like a model. She probably was one. Oh man. Didn’t she know that it was Nina’s day to have a crisis? That she didn’t need to be standing next to Ms. Perfect and fall down fl at in comparison?
A baby outfit, a cute little baseball-themed jumpsuit, hung on a hanger from her fingers. A size 0 and a mom? Life was completely unfair for a woman like that to show up on a day like today.
José whipped around at the sound of his name.
“Oh my gosh! José! It is you!”
“Helen.” He’d thought about seeing her, but . . . not here. Not now.
She reached out, and he had no choice but to hug her in return. It felt so awkward. They’d broken up before the tragedy. She was wealthy, a soccer fan, and traveled all over the world to watch her favorite teams. They met one night after a match, at a bar near Wembly Stadium, and, well, he didn’t want to think about it all right now. They’d had too much to drink.
“Look at you.” She flipped a lock of hair just above his ear. “I barely recognized you under all this hair. How have you been? I haven’t seen you in so long.”
“Fine. I mean—”
How much did she know?
“Oh, I’m sorry. I heard about what happened to you, but the stories were so jumbled.”
He couldn’t talk about this now. He turned to Nina. “This is Nina. Nina, this is Helen.”
Helen smiled. “Nice dress.” She traced Nina’s outfit with her light blue gaze. “You must really love Mexico, right?”
José winced. Helen could be such a snob. She didn’t mean to be. She never meant anything badly, it just came out that way. Remarks like this had made José realize that, despite his status as a professional soccer player, he came from humble beginnings.
Nina smiled and José could see by the way her shoulder tried to meet her ear that she was uneasy. “It’s my work uniform.”
“Oh, where do you work?”
He was going to stop this, for Nina’s sake. “We work for my brother.”
Helen raised her brows. “Manny?”
“Mmm-hmm. I cook at his restaurant.”
Helen crossed her arms. “What happened to your plans, weren’t you signing with Club—”
“You know. Plans change.”
Again. Clueless. Why would Helen begin to think he’d want to talk about that? And in front of Nina. She didn’t know he and Nina weren’t seeing each other.
Wait. Yes, she did.
Helen knew that José wouldn’t have dated a humble waitress back in the old days. Trophy women, beautiful specimens of femininity were all he was interested in back then.
He wondered then what he might have been missing out on with such parameters.
“So you never played again?”
Take a hint, por favor.
“No. Something came up. We have to go. Good to see you.”
He quickly paid for the scarf with the bills he had in his pocket. “Bye, Helen.”
He grabbed Nina’s hand and hurried her out of the tent. The quicker he left Helen behind the better, and unfortunately, she now knew where to find him.
José dropped her hand and gave her the scarf.
“Who was she?” Nina asked, lighting up a cigarette.
He didn’t want to go through it with Nina. He pushed his hair out of his eyes. “Someone I used to see.”
“Someone you used to see, hmm? Do you think I’m as pretty as she is?”
José looked at her. Why did women have to ask these kinds of questions? No, Nina wasn’t nearly as pretty as Helen. But her face was kind and open, and her dark eyes fl ashed when she was angry. When she smiled she revealed straight teeth, and there was a vulnerability to Nina that sweetened her face like powdered sugar sweetens fresh strawberries. Helen was a crème brûlée. Fancy and highly prized but no good on a hot summer’s day. He smiled at Nina.
She pulled the scarf off her head. “Of course not. She’s prettier. So, someone you used to see. Boy, you are full of surprises.”
Eleven
Nina walked up to an ATM, slid in her card, and punched in her pin. She pulled out her cell phone and jiggled it from side to side at José. “I can’t even keep a phone well fed. You know I had to get a cosigner for this thing?” She chose the Fast Cash twenty-dollar button. “That’s how screwed up my credit is. And I cou
ld be picking up that big tip right now. Rent’s due. I have to pay rent and bounce my last five hundred.” Not to mention my half of the clinic fee.
The machine spat out the money; Nina grabbed it and stuffed it in her purse. “Hey, sorry I’ve been such a grump.”
José looked at her quizzically. “What’s a grump?”
Nina grabbed his arm. “It’s when someone isn’t being as nice as they should. Thanks for coming with me.”
José just nodded and stood there, silent as usual.
She hiked her purse up on her shoulder. “So where we gonna eat?”
José said, “Let’s get a taxi.”
“Why don’t we eat around here?”
“Patience, Nina. Let’s get a cab.”
A cab? José? “But I thought you don’t ride in cabs.”
More restaurant lore about José. They chalked it up to frugality, figuring he’d inherited some of that from Manny.
“That was yesterday.”
“Okay. I’m tired anyway.”
So they exchanged small talk while they waited for a vacant cab, Nina pulling information out of José who, she was sure, would have preferred to stand there in the continued silence. She tried to ask him questions with short answers.
José’s favorite subject in school was math; Nina’s was history. José’s favorite color was blue; Nina’s was orange. José’s favorite ice cream was strawberry; Nina’s was cookies and cream. José didn’t watch television; Nina liked Gilligan’s Island. José had wanted to be a doctor when he was really little; Nina wanted to be a dancer. She couldn’t believe she blurted it out.
“A dancer? Really, Nina? What kind of dancer?”
He looked into her eyes, interested. Nina felt like some body was really seeing her for the first time in years. “A Broadway dancer. Tap, jazz, modern. You know, shows.”
“No ballet, huh?”
“I dunno. I guess for me, so much of dance is about the music. Classical is okay and I know there’s modern ballet, but I like rhythm, José. I like it when the notes force themselves down into your heart and into your stomach and you can’t help but respond with your body. I knew I wanted to dance as long as I could remember.”
“So how do we get you dancing again?”
He looked so hopeful standing there, hands jammed deep in his pockets. Nina could see something different in José’s eyes. “You’re gonna help me decide about the pregnancy and get my career on track? Man, you’ve got your work cut out for you, don’t you?”
