People are weird around that kind of thing. Henry brought Starr in to work a while back and one of the patrons cornered him and asked, “What’s she got?”
I wanted to say, “The flu.”
Henry’s patient though. He explained about Williams even though it must get old.
Then the customer said, “Wow, she’s got the right idea, not being shy. It’s like we’re the ones with the disability.” Like she just discovered that people with special needs are people too.
But when I mentioned it to Henry he just shrugged it off. He’s heard that crap before.
We’re passed on to a server who is so toned that she makes the Applebee’s uniform look athletic. If someone lobbed a baseball, she’d probably be able to spring up and catch it while still taking our order. Actually, when I look more closely, I wonder if she’s missed a ball or two because her nose looks like it was broken. It’s fixed up like a vase with only a rim of superglue showing. She’d be great casting for a Buffy reboot; the perfect ratio of pretty, fit and tough.
Henry catches me checking her out and I trip over my order.
“Burger and fried. Fries.”
He smiles deeply into his menu, the tongue-fumble confirming his suspicions. It’s not like that. She’s way too high up the food chain for me, with her Alexis Bledel hair tied back in a ponytail. I’m waiting for the smart, interesting girl the alpha dogs have overlooked. The one who has to take off her glasses before people realize how gorgeous she is. Luz.
Luz and I got hired at the same time, the summer before I went into grade ten. She was a year older and at a different high school, also Catholic. We were both in the same group interview. For me, it was either Frankie’s Funhouse or Scotiabank. The bank would have paid better but it was through a friend of the family. My parents had no in at Frankie’s, no way to keep tabs. They still find my choice mortifying. Whenever someone asks, my mother wafts a hand in front of her face and says I dress up as some kind of children’s toy.
At first, Luz and I didn’t get too many shifts together, but I noticed her whenever we did. She always had a new streak of colour in her hair, right where it parted to the side. It took me a while to figure out that they were clip-in extensions. Her parents were too strict for permanent dye.
On the Labour Day weekend, one of the other staffers had a pool party. Luz wore a polka-dot halter one-piece and had dark grey polish on her toes. I think all the other guys would have tried to pick her up if it hadn’t been for the new hire, Maria. She was blonde, crazy long-legged and had a hint of a Russian accent. She wore a bikini with really skinny ties.
Luz and I were the only two people not drinking. I ended up telling her all about how I wanted to get a LEGO robot set with my next paycheque and try to customize it. I’d been crushing on her since she’d offhandedly mentioned Pet Sematary but I fell hard when she told me she was saving up for a Mac so she could start playing around with editing software.
This is how great a girlfriend Luz was – for my seventeenth birthday, she borrowed her parents’ car and took me and our friends Tess and Jihan to Niagara Falls. We went to all the haunted houses on the strip and Ripley’s Believe It or Not. She’d brought empanadas and we ate dinner in a park near the falls and played Carcassonne. Then we went to a drive-in and saw a double feature. Actually, it was a strange pairing, an animated kids’ movie and torture porn. In between the films, they played Let’s All Go to the Lobby. She even made peanut butter–filled cupcakes.
I used to send her a challenge a week. Grade twelve she was busy with school because she had her sights set on studying film in New York and needed a scholarship. She didn’t work at Frankie’s anymore – she had a gig as a receptionist at an after-hours medical clinic. Eighteen dollars an hour, four nights a week. I’d ride my bike over to the clinic and keep coming up to the window with new symptoms, making her guess what was wrong with me. Burst appendix, snake bite, elephantiasis. To make up for all the time we weren’t spending together, I sent her film exercises. Some of them I found on the Internet but most I made up myself. Shoot a scene where a Cabbage Patch doll looks like it’s about to cry. Make a time-lapse film of a square in the sidewalk. Film a conversation between two runners. She had two of her friends do the scene on a treadmill with a blue blanket behind them. Then she filmed behind her as she rode her bike and blended the two. With enough blur, it looked awesome.
Sometimes we’d work on the challenges together, like when I’d build a robot element for it, but often they were a surprise and would show up in my inbox on Sunday night. When she went to Brooklyn, I sent her more, but she stopped doing them after a few weeks. Her courses were challenging enough, I guess. I started messing around with animatronic hacks. By Christmas she told me it was over.
Henry doesn’t so much eat his club sandwich as attack it, jawing through each triangle in three bites. He’s finished his meal before I’m even halfway through my burger. Starr lags behind in the eating Olympics. She dips her fork in the salad dressing, then snaps the back of a romaine under the tines. She pushes the croutons to the side and Henry stabs them onto his fork. It’s obviously a habit for them and I wonder how he stays so trim eating double meals. He’s got a bit of a paunch, but nothing you could park a can on.
“How’s the salad?”
“Very tasty. The dressing has a nice tang.”
“You sound like one of the judges on Top Chef.”
“I like that show.” Starr hands her father the rest of her garlic bread. “When someone makes a mistake, you know it.”
“How do you think Reid Jessup would stack up?”
“Who’s Reid Jessup?”
I point to his name on the menu. “But I’m not sure it’s a real person. Maybe they just want to make the place seem fancier.”
“Why?”
It sounds condescending when I try to explain. “I’m fairly sure my patty came out of a bag of identical premade patties,” I say. “And fries and steamed veg don’t exactly require years of study with Julia Child.”
“Julia Child is dead.”
“It just seems pretentious.”
The server’s return saves me from the conversation thread. She asks Henry if he’s done and reaches across to clear his plate. The way she bends, her torso is in line with my head and I see Henry studying my reaction. I’m not checking her out, but his insinuation makes me blush. It’s like trying not to smile for your passport photo when they tell you to make a straight face.
She offers to wrap up the rest of Starr’s grilled chicken.
“No, thanks.”
“Was it okay?”
“It was very nice. But cooked chicken shouldn’t be out for more than two hours in temperatures above four degrees. I work in catering.” Starr seems to have no trouble chatting with anyone. “We take food-borne illness seriously.”
The server loads the last plates onto her arm. Just as she’s about to return to the kitchen, Starr stops her. “Is Reid Jessup a real person?”
The waitress looks puzzled, biceps flexing under the weight of her tray. “Yes. He’s our chef.”
“Oh, good. Darren thought that maybe he was made up.”
The server eyes me like she can’t remotely understand why I’d have said that.
Then Starr – oblivious to my feeling like a colossal tool – asks, “Can we meet him?”
It takes a few minutes, but the chef does come to the table. He’s late twenties, hair gelled into spikes, red Chucks underneath his chef pants. He stands at the lip of the booth, rubbing his hands on his apron before reaching out to take Henry’s. “Was everything alright with the food?” He notices my Space Invaders shirt and nods. “Nice.”
“It was very delicious,” Starr says. “The Caesar salad was crisp and tangy.”
“Good. Good. I heard you were worried about bacteria.”
“No, I think everything was heated to the correct temperature.”
“My daughter worked in catering.”
“Cool.”
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I wonder how many conversations Henry has that repeat and repeat.
“Have you always wanted to be a chef?” Starr asks. She and Henry are the only ones treating this like an entirely natural situation. The chef keeps looking around, unsure if someone’s set him up, surprised by the intensity of Starr’s interest.
“I don’t know,” he says. “I sort of fell into it. I do a lot of distance biking on my own time.”
“That sounds like a nice hobby.”
“It keeps me busy.”
“Do you think you’re going to compete on Top Chef one day?”
“Ha!” Reid pauses with his head cocked, as if he’s expecting a down-market Ashton to pop out.
Starr keeps smiling at him.
“Really? I think you have to run your own kitchen for that.”
“If we see you on the show, we’ll cheer for you. We can be your Canadian fans. Maybe we can even get T-shirts.”
I get the feeling Reid Jessup would be willing to ditch his shift to hear more about his remarkable future plans. The restaurant is getting busier, however, and the servers are chatting with the line cooks through the pickup window. They keep checking out our booth. The three surrounding tables have given up the pretense of not eavesdropping. Reid’s turned away, but Henry can see them. He extends his hand back to the chef. “Thanks again for coming over.”
“It’s been a highlight of the trip so far,” Starr says. “I’ll tell my boss that we met you.”
The chef pumps each of our hands in turn. On his way back to the kitchen, he turns around and gives another half-wave. The waitress brings the bill accompanied by a giant sundae with three spoons. On the house.
Henry grabs a fistful of mints from the hospitality jar. “Here,” he says, handing me half a dozen. “You sure you don’t want to ask her number?”
Mercifully, our server is out of earshot.
“It might be nice to know you have options.” He furls his hand out like a maître d’ seating a VIP. “Going into tomorrow.”
Thanks but no thanks.
I check the Comic Con website again to see if they’ve fixed their bugs with the mobile ticketing site. I’m getting nervous because these things can sell out, but it’s hard to know if the student film showcase will be much of a draw. Hopefully Henry won’t mind if we leave extra early tomorrow.
My inbox starts filling up with messages. Jeremy – FYI, Asshat. Your mom’s invited us for dinner tomorrow.
It’s corroborated by a text from my dad telling me to make sure I’m home by five, enough time to clean the downstairs bathroom before the Awanas arrive.
Jeremy again. Also, your mom’s asked me to take you out more.
That rubs me raw. Jeremy will steal a hundred bucks from Mrs. Awana’s purse, buy himself a video game and spend the rest on a bouquet for her. She never adds it up. She’ll brag for weeks about what a thoughtful son God’s blessed her with. My mother will get so jealous that my dad slips me a ten to buy her carnations from the grocery store.
As if he’s some kind of role model. Growing up, every Saturday morning of my life was spent stuck in the basement of our church learning Cantonese. In grade nine, I was only allowed to quit so that I could concentrate more on regular school. My lessons continued at home, with my mother snapping at every snag in my grammar. A real estate agent, she takes pride in being able to flawlessly mirror her clients’ diction.
Meanwhile, Jeremy never speaks Cantonese except for a few phrases at holidays, pass the noodles being his most sophisticated. But every time he slips his tongue into the old country, my mother nudges my elbow, see.
“Is it Luz writing?” Henry shakes his head at my silence, does his best to keep sounding jocular. “You haven’t told her yet, have you? Well, she’ll find out soon enough.”
Just like my parents. Even if we leave right after the showcase, we won’t be back before midnight. There’s no way I can tell them where I am. For one thing, they’ve never met Henry and wouldn’t understand why a grown man would take a stranger’s kid to another country unless it was for one of the sex crimes they point out to me in the paper.
I don’t know if it’s better to admit I’ve disobeyed them before or after I fail to show up. In TV movies, the parents always end up so happy that their missing kids are safe, they forget to be angry. Somehow I doubt my parents will suffer the same amnesia.
I send Jeremy another gruesome selfie. Figure something out. There’s barely time for the BBM to alert me that he’s seen it before the phone starts vibrating. Debating with Jeremy is like fighting a riptide, so I turn the phone off. Head-on, you’re going to drown.
Back at the hotel, I’m still awake at two, stuck staring at the popcorn stucco ceiling, while the person in the next room alternates between wheezy snores and horrible snorting gasps. I doubt I could sleep anyway, and I’m glad my room is at least a buffer for Henry and Starr. In the dark, I get to wondering which of us would die first in a sci-fi horror. Starr has all the markings of a survivor – sweet, virginal, loving – and it would be great if there were a movie where the special needs person wins. But she’d probably just end up as a Christ figure, her persistence and anxiety edited out, sacrificed so the audience could fathom the depth of the creature’s evil. Chances are they’d cast some Disney graduate and just use less makeup.
Any way you want to frame the film, Henry’s for sure on the chopping block – he’ll either die defending his daughter or be attacked by the karaoke machines in his basement. Or he’d kick it late at work and someone, likely me, would find him disembowelled in the Ticket Gobbler.
I figure I’ve got a fifty-fifty shot, depending on how much the distributors are relying on the Chinese box office. As long as a white character doesn’t jump in, I could be the one slaying the beast at the end, maybe with Luz by my side. Although, by the time the script got to production, she’d be Lee or Ting-Wei. Just as long as Jeremy’s protein-powder-enlarged guns stay the butt of the joke and don’t push him into leading-man contention. Deep down though, I know that would happen, that I’d be off to the side, the brainy comedic foil. That Jeremy would be the one banging Luz under the end credits.
Suddenly it feels cowardly, showing up without giving her a choice. I get a deep, corrosive feeling that she’s not going to appreciate my grand gesture. That all this – convincing Henry to extend his trip, delaying returning the suit, risking lockdown from my parents – might not pay off. That I’ll end up with another shank to the heart.
Now that I’m done high school, I can’t help but think it’ll be different. Luz will realize how much she’s missed me. Next year I’ll transfer to a closer college. After two and a half years together, being let down easy at the food court doesn’t cut it.
STARR
THERE ARE LINEUPS EVERYWHERE. FOR PARKING, FOR people who have wristbands, for people who have tickets, for people who don’t have either. None of them are moving. It’s a big room with a hard floor and no benches. The walk through the parking lot was already long and now I really need to sit.
“Can you find a spot on the floor by the wall?” Dad asks.
“I don’t want to sit somewhere where people have put their feet.”
“What if I wipe it first?”
Just as I’m getting ready to risk it, the line we’re in starts disappearing. A woman at the front holds up a sign that says, “Sold out.” There’s a couple ahead of us dressed as Han Solo and Princess Leia who are having a big fight about it.
“We should have gotten tickets online last week, when I reminded you to,” Princess Leia says.
Han Solo rips off his belt and chucks it in the garbage. He starts taking off other bits of his costume too and balling them up. It makes me nervous. “Just once I’d like to do something spontaneous.”
“Is he going to hit her?” I ask Dad.
“No, they’re just arguing. There are lots of people here.”
“For once I’d like to give you the benefit of the doubt,” Leia yells. “I
didn’t put twenty-eight bobby pins in my hair to spend the day picking nickels out of the sofa cushions.”
It reminds me of an episode of Dr. Phil where he asked a couple if they wanted to be right or if they wanted to be happy.
“Someone should ask them to calm down,” I say. “Count to ten, then speak.”
“They need to sort it out themselves.”
They’re making what Gran called “a spectacle of themselves.” Princess Leia pulls the bobby pins out of one of her buns one by one and tosses them at her boyfriend. The bun has started flopping away from her head. When they both calm down they’re going to be embarrassed.
“Respect is a two-way street,” I call out. “Keep it private.”
Princess Leia and Han Solo stop and stare at me. Han Solo’s face has a lot of attitude.
“Sorry,” Dad says, waving for them to get back to their fight. “Just let them be, honey.” One of Leia’s buns is just a ponytail now and she swings it away from us. I start to get that angry-frustrated-hurt feeling like I’ve made a mistake and I don’t know why. It’s a heavy feeling.
Darren is facing the front, where the sold-out woman is standing. He holds his hand up to his hair and presses his lips together. I reach out for his elbow, but he doesn’t notice so I let go.
“We tried,” Dad says. “Do you want to call Luz? Maybe she can get you in. Then you could see her for a few minutes.”
“Her showcase isn’t for another two hours.”
We’re the only ones left lined up.
“Can you two try to get in, on your own?” Darren asks.
“How?”
“Doesn’t Starr want to see the DeLorean?”
I do want to see the DeLorean. I want to meet Michael J. Fox and get an autograph. Maybe even another picture of him that I can hang on the wall at home, above Alex and Mallory’s tank.
Darren looks at me and then back at Dad. “Do you think you could work, you know, sympathy?”
“Sympathy?” Dad sounds furious.
Suddenly I understand. “Because I have special needs?” Darren rubs his eyebrows and his cheeks go very pink. He’s really hurt my feelings. “It’s only a few genes that are missing,” I snap. “It’s like if one speck of sand was missing at the beach.”
In Search of the Perfect Singing Flamingo Page 12
