“Teaching what?” I ask Amy, careful to keep the question on the I’m-only-asking-to-make-conversation side. “And where would it be?”
“International business,” she says. “And as for where, it would be here — well, not ‘Marcine’ here, but ‘Ohio’ here. In Columbus. At the Fisher College of Business at Ohio State.”
The janitor in my brain pulls a well-isn’t-that-interesting face. She unclips this enormous carabiner ring from her belt loop, and it jangles with dozens of keys. She flips past a key labeled Shitty racist experiences from childhood, then another one that says Two years of utter emotional fucking bankruptcy after things with Jenny ended, fiddles around some more until she finally arrives at one that says Willingness to reconsider living in Ohio again. The janitor walks down a corridor, still humming her pop song, comes to this thick metal door that looks like it belongs to a bank vault, twists the key into place. A rusty lock mechanism grinds inside the door, and the door groans mournfully, opening two or three inches.
Amy’s brow furrows. “What?” she asks.
“What, what?”
“What is that look on your face?”
“Nothing. Hey — are you done with that?” I ask, pointing at her mostly empty plate. When she nods, I pick it up and rise from the table. “I’d better go see what my brother’s up to. He’s trying to get payroll done while it’s still quiet.”
“Okay,” she says, but I detect some disappointment in her voice. She looks at her watch and stands up. “I should probably go — told my friend I’d meet her at the church. But… would you be up for doing something later? If you’re not too busy here?”
My head bobs up and down with a nod that I realize too late is very dumb-oaf-ish. I make my head stop moving and try to look more like the intelligent, sophisticated adult that I am.
“Sure. I don’t have any more statues to show you, though.”
Amy’s answering smirk is the kind that sets my stomach to knotting in on itself and my heart rate to galloping. “I’m sure we can think of something else to do.”
I glance around the dining area to make sure we’re still alone (we are) and step into her personal space, my hands finding their way to Amy’s. I bend down, and my mouth fits perfectly against hers. It’s not a long kiss, but it has way more heat in it than the two from last night, even more than the exaggerated one we performed for the benefit of the rednecks coming out Dillan’s Bar & Grill. When I pull back, I must have a dumb-oaf look on my face again because Amy giggles and touches the tip of her index finger to the tip of my nose.
“See you tonight, Ani,” she says, stepping around me into the aisle.
A piercing alarm blares inside my brain at the sound of my nickname, red and white lights strobe brightly enough to give me a fucking seizure, and somewhere, a door swings shut, closing with a loud BANG.
Fuck. Why’d she have to call me that? Nobody but my family and…
Annie. Ani.
…Jenny calls me that.
#
By four o’clock, no one’s in the dining room, no one’s calling in a late lunch order, and all of us — me, Gerry, Becker, and Emir — are prepping for dinner. Gerry emerges from the back with a stack of white envelopes in his hand. He sets them down and sits heavily in the chair across from me.
“I finished payroll,” he announces.
“Okay,” I say, waiting for what’s coming next.
“It’s worse than we thought.”
I set down the rag and spray bottle on the table next to me. “How much worse?”
“Twenty-three dollars and fifty-seven fucking cents. That’s how much is still in the account, once everyone’s paychecks are cashed.”
I frown. “How can that even be? We’ve been busy every night since I’ve been home.”
He nods. “We’ve been busy every night since before you’ve been home. We’ve been busy every night since I’ve been home, and that’s been more than seven months now.”
“Then how can we…?”
“Dad’s making an enormous payment every month that’s only labeled ‘loan’ in his accounting software. Even though Soul Mountain’s making money hand-over-fist, whatever this loan payment is, it’s draining out the account as fast as it fills. Which means we’re barely scraping by. He’s charging all the groceries — I checked. All it’s going to take is — ”
“A couple bad weeks. A slow week when school lets out and everybody goes on fucking vacation — ”
“Or a bad weekend or two, and we won’t be able to make the loan payment.”
I sit down, lean back in the chair. “Why do they even have a loan out? A loan for what?”
“I don’t know,” Gerry answers, shaking his head. He takes off the Buckeyes baseball hat he’s wearing, runs his hand through his curls. “We should talk to Mom and Dad.”
“It’s not our business.”
“It is our business,” he insists.
“It’s not.”
“It will be if the fucking restaurant closes, and Mom’s getting fucking chemo, and they can’t pay her fucking medical bills or afford their insurance, and then they lose the fucking house. Are you going to be the one who takes them in?”
“You’re overreacting, Geronimo.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Then don’t be an over-reactive pussy. They aren’t going to lose the restaurant. Soul Mountain’s an institution in this town. It’s been around for twenty-five — ”
“Twenty-three dollars and fifty-seven fucking cents!” he shouts, slamming his fist on the table.
I cross my arms against my chest. The dining room is silent except for the faint sound of the muzak playing in the background. Gerry scratches absentmindedly at the crook of his arm. I watch him do it, stomach curdling. It’s a gesture I’ve seen plenty of times before, an ill omen that comes right before tales of needles and purple track marks and opiates.
“Gimme your arm,” I say, holding out my hand.
He looks up, startled. His eyes dart from his arm back to me. “What? No, that’s not, I’m not — ”
“Give me your fucking arm, Gerry!”
“Anika, I’m not — ”
I don’t wait for him to finish. I shoot up from my chair, lean across the table, pin his wrist with one hand while I use my other hand to push up the sleeve. He’s protesting and yelling and his words don’t even register. I’m faster than him, I’m bigger than him, I’m stronger than him, and goddammit, he’s still my baby brother and I’m still his big sister and he shouldn’t try to fight me.
I pull the sleeve up over his forearm, over his elbow, halfway up his bicep.
And the copper-brown skin below is smooth. Unmarred but for a couple small white scars from his using days.
“Everything alright out here?” comes a deep voice from the direction of the kitchen.
I turn to see Becker staring at us, concerned expression on his face.
“Yeah,” I say. I steady the chair teetering behind me, lower myself back down. “Sorry. Just sibling squabbling. It’s nothing.”
Becker gives a crooked smile and disappears back into the kitchen.
My eyes find Gerry’s. His chest is heaving up and down, and he’s rubbing his arm like I hurt him.
“Sorry,” I repeat. “I saw you scratching, and I…”
“I told you. I’m not using. I’m done for good.”
“I’ve heard that before.”
“I mean it this time, Ani.” His eyes start to glisten. “I’m turning my life around.”
“I know. It’s just…” I trail off again, shrug. My palms turn face-up, my classic I-don’t-know-what-to-say-here gesture.
“You don’t know what it’s like to be back here,” he says. He looks up at the ceiling, seems to struggle with himself for a second, clears his throat. “Everyone’s looking at me like you just did. All the time. Waiting for me to fuck up again. Waiting for me to prove them right, to prove that I’m the asshole loser they always thought I was. Ev
en Mom and Dad. Well, you know what? Screw them. I’m not who they think I am and I never fucking have been.”
A lump forms in my throat, and I’m twenty years old again, chasing my baby brother through the park so I can take him home, sober him up before our parents find out. I reach out to him, put my hand on top of his.
“You’re really done for good?” I ask.
“Yes. I swear it.”
And there’s a little bit of the old Gerry hardening his voice when he says it, the rebel who gave the middle finger to the rest of Marcine before too many drugs dulled the rebellion out of his eyes, the kid I admired for not even trying to fit in while the rest of us fought so desperately for some tiny crumb of acknowledgment and acceptance.
“Then I believe you, Ger.” I pick up the stack of envelopes, finger through them one by one. “But… we need to talk to Mom and Dad about this.”
He adjusts his baseball cap. Nods.
“And then,” I sigh, “we’re figuring out how to save this fucking restaurant.”
Our gazes connect, and it’s almost like looking in the mirror. We share the same dark eyes with the same subtle folds around them, the same high Nepalese cheekbones, the same long, flat nose, the same tawny skin. And when his face breaks into his best cat-who-swallowed-the-canary bad boy grin, I match it with a grin of my own.
“Damn straight we will, sister,” he says.
He holds out a fist. I bump it.
An hour later, just as the first few trickles of the dinner crowd starts coming in, Kiersten — the snooty young waitress I met my first night home — calls in sick. She doesn’t sound sick, though. She sounds like she’s got Thursday night plans she doesn’t want to break. I tell her sarcastically Thanks for the advanced notice, and slam the phone down so hard against the receiver that for a second I’m sure I cracked the plastic casing.
I have a feeling it’s going to be a long night.
Chapter 22: That’s a fucking romantic second date.
Thursday night
This is what being deep in the weeds feels like:
You scoop ice into a plastic pitcher, stick it under the sink to fill, and while you wait, you search for a clean fork because the kid at table nine dropped his, but you realize there are no clean forks, and the teenager with the backwards baseball cap standing in front of the dishwasher is full-on sweating, and his hands are chapped to a bright red and he has a sink full of dishes, so you grab a fork and wash it by hand, dry it on your apron, turn the sink off because the pitcher’s overflowing at this point, and you snatch the pitcher on your way back to the dining room, only to hear “Order up!” just as you shoulder the door open to exit the kitchen.
And in the comparatively cool dining area, there’s muzak playing, quiet laughter coming from the young couple in the corner, louder laughter coming from table nine, where the mom and dad have had one too many beers and the kid’s still waiting for his fork. And the hostess glances over at you; her eyes are wide and rolling like a panicked horse, chewing on her bottom lip as she looks between you and the lobby full of patrons waiting for a table, and as if you’re playing a game of connect-the-human-dots, your eyes bounce from the hostess, to the knot of waiting patrons, to the bus boy hustling to clear the table by the window, to the young couple, back to table nine again. The kid at table nine’s looking your way expectantly, trying to catch your eye, and you know he’s waiting on the goddamned fork, so you plaster on a smile, carry the fork and the water pitcher their way, gaze darting from the wife to the husband to the kid with no fork to the screaming baby sister in the high chair while you refill their waters and apologize when, in your haste, a bit of ice water splashes out onto the table.
“I think we’re going to order dessert,” is what the wife says, and you’re looking at the fat rolls that hide her elbows thinking, Lady, the last fucking thing you need is dessert, but you just smile even bigger and say,
“Sure, what do you want?”
and you listen and mentally count up how many more clean forks you’re going to need to bring them, and then head back for the “Order up!” that’s still waiting in the kitchen for the young couple in the corner.
It’s this wolves’ den of pure chaos, with me and Gerry trying desperately to turn tables, the hostess doubling as an extra bus boy, and even the unflappable Becker utterly silent as he tries to keep up on the hot side of the line, that Amy walks into about seven-thirty.
From the corner of my eye, I see her excuse me, pardon me, scoot around the families waiting in front of the podium, and weave her way over to my station in the corridor, where I’m swiping a credit card.
“Hey,” she says.
“Hey, Amy. Listen, I know you were hoping to do something tonight, but I — ”
“But you’re deep in the weeds and there’s no way you can get away.”
“Yeah,” I say, and I try to convey my disappointment with my voice and eyes as I look down at her.
“You guys have a clean apron back there?” she asks, nodding at the kitchen.
“A clean apron?”
“Yeah. I told you I’ve been a server before. I can help.”
“Amy, you don’t have to — ”
“No, I don’t have to. But…” She lifts her shoulders. “It’s still better than sitting in the hotel by myself.”
“You don’t know the menu.”
“So? I don’t need to take orders. I’ll just help out. Run food, fill drinks, bus tables.”
“You’re serious?”
She nods. “If this is the only way I can spend time with you tonight, I’ll take it.”
My face splits into a grin, and I’m wondering to myself how she always manages to elicit these dumb fucking smiles from me. “Okay. Clean aprons are hanging from the shelf in the office.”
She nods once, struts into the kitchen like she owns the place.
#
It’s two more hours of straight-up hustle before things slow down again and we all have a chance to catch our breath. By the time it’s over, Katie, our high school hostess, looks totally fucking traumatized, like we told her that her puppy got hit by a car. But Gerry looks like he’s having a blast; Becker’s smiling; Emir and the dishwashing kid are joking around in Spanish.
And Amy…
She pops up on her toes and gives me a quick peck on the cheek in the shadows of the corridor next to the wait station.
…Amy’s fucking amazing.
“Thanks for letting me stay,” she says. “I haven’t had this much fun in a long time.”
I’m about to thank her for the fourteen millionth time and inform her that she has a pretty fucked-up idea of fun, but she spots an empty glass and darts off with a pitcher of ice water in one hand and a carafe of fresh coffee in the other. She walks with purpose towards the table, like refilling an empty glass is serious goddamn business. As if she’s a career waitress and not a globe-trotting software executive.
As if she’s serious about how much fun it all is, and she actually truly enjoys running around Soul Mountain and smelling of curry and cumin and collards and cornbread.
I chuckle and shake my head and turn back to the credit card machine.
#
It’s just after ten when Katie finally turns on the overhead fluorescents, the universal restauranteur’s signal to customers that Okay, we’re really happy you came and ate with us and all, but now get the hell out, alright? and the last table of patrons looks up in surprise, blinks a few times, and then they’re shuffling into jackets and grabbing purses and making their way to the exit.
I slump into an empty chair as Gerry finishes wiping the table down with a greying rag.
I feel a cool hand on my neck and I tilt my head up, not surprised to see Amy standing next to me.
“So I guess we got to do something tonight after all,” I say. “Though this wasn’t exactly what I’d had in mind for our second official date.”
She lets go of my neck, glances at her watch before shrugging. “It’
s only ten,” she says. “Night’s still young.”
I start to say something else, but Gerry strides back over, sticks out his hand to Amy. He claps her on the back as he shakes her hand.
“You’re a fucking lifesaver,” he says, sitting down across from me. “I can’t believe you jumped in like that.”
Amy smiles, looking pleased with herself, which makes me smile, too.
“It was no big deal. I think I’m getting too old to do it every night, but it was kind of fun.” She glances between Gerry and me. “So — you’re Anika’s brother, right? We didn’t really get an official introduction.”
“Yeah, I’m Gerry. Around here they call me the ‘bad brother.’ And you said your name’s… Amy?”
She nods. “Amy Ellis. Guilty as charged.”
He laughs, points from me to her. “So… you guys know each other from high school or something?”
I shake my head. “No. We, uh, we met on the plane from Toronto to Cleveland a few days ago, actually.”
“Oh,” Gerry says, and his eyebrows travel up his forehead a little as he studies Amy more closely.
I can tell he’s putting two-and-two together and arriving at four, and normally I’d feel a little embarrassed, because it sort of makes it seem like I came all the way back to Ohio just to hook up with some chick I met on the plane three days earlier, but for whatever reason, I don’t feel embarrassed about Amy. If anything, I’ve got to say I’m feeling kind of proud. Like Hey, lookit me, I’ve got good goddamned taste, and I can still turn a few heads.
Amy’s face brightens with a new idea. “Do you guys want to grab a drink or something? Once we close up?”
Gerry shakes his head. “I don’t really drink anymore.” He adds quickly, “But you two should totally go. In fact — just go ahead and get out of here. We can handle closing without you.”
“No, no. Closing can be a bitch,” Amy says, shaking her head. “I didn’t work all night just to skip out on you guys at the end.”
Anika takes the long way home up soul mountain: A lesbian romance (Rosemont Duology Book 2) Page 13
