North of Happy

by Adi Alsaid

  “Dooooo iiiiiiit,” Emma says, now grabbing me by the shoulders and shaking.

  Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised that her touch undoes the doubt within me.

  When I look up, Elias smiles like he knows he’s won, gets up from the office chair. “Follow me.”

  The opening of the steel door will be a moment I remember for the rest of my life, I’m sure of it. It’s not necessarily because the walk-in resembles all the ones I’ve seen on TV (every kind of produce lines the shelves, crates of fruit, plastic-covered containers of sauces and marinades and herbs). It’s not Elias gesturing me in or even Emma at my back, hand on my shoulder, giggling on my behalf. I will remember this moment because it so clearly feels like I belong here.

  On my left are all the sauces used in the set menu, each carefully labeled with a name and a date, although most are riddled with spelling errors. In the back are lowboy freezers loaded with all sorts of meat, almost every cut of beef or pork that I can recognize and plenty that I don’t. This is like the cracked-out version of roaming the supermarket aisles waiting for inspiration.

  Elias points me to some flank steak that we have to get rid of soon, a few dozen Mexican-style bolillo bread rolls. “You’re pretty much free to use the pantry and the veggies. Grab stuff from the front, ’cause it’s older. You can use my old station. Ready to serve in an hour or so, before we open. If you don’t know how to use something, ask me. But don’t really ’cause I’m busy.” He grins.

  I’m squatting to take a look at some cooked pinto beans in Tupperware. There’s lemongrass nearby, and I think of Felix’s demonstration of Vietnam the other day in the grass. I start to get ideas. “Thanks,” I say.

  “Like a kid in a toy store,” Elias says, and though I can hear him and Emma laughing as they head out, I barely register the noise.

  A few minutes later I set the meat down on a cutting board in Elias’s old station. Matt hovers over my shoulder and says, “What the fuck you think you’re doing?”

  “Staff meal,” I say, hoping he doesn’t go overboard with giving me shit, that he’ll take it easy. Inside I’m cowering, un-Felix-like, just hoping he’ll leave me alone. “Elias asked me to, since I’m caught up.”

  Matt gives me a little side-eye, but then a pot starts to bubble over and he curses under his breath while he rushes to it. Isaiah cocks an eyebrow, tells me that if I need help with any of the equipment to ask first before I fuck anything up. It’s a nice gesture, I guess, though the tone implies he wants to throw something at me.

  Never before have I bothered to exactly portion my meals, but never before have I cooked in a kitchen like this one. It’s the first time since I got here that I’m cooking for anyone other than myself, and I want to make sure I’m not messing anything up.

  That’s exactly what I do, though. I try to make the guajillo aioli from scratch, wasting ten minutes and five eggs before I realize I used the egg whites instead of the yolk and have to throw it all away. The veggies for the sandwiches are sliced unevenly, I overcook the steak and leave lumps of garlic in the bean puree. It’s almost forty minutes after Elias told me to have something ready when I pull out the last of the bolillos from the broiler where they’ve been toasting. I assemble the sandwiches, cut them into halves, wish to become completely invisible. People are gonna tear me apart.

  Elias is in the expedite station, meeting with the front of house manager. I stand nearby, not wanting to interrupt. When Isaiah sees me standing there for a while, he calls over. “Hey, man, if those are done, just play the music.”

  “Right,” I say. I’m convinced Chef is going to barge in and fire me. That Elias himself will throw me out and tell me never to set foot in a kitchen again.

  Felix appears for the first time all day. He’s a white, transparent, Casper-style cartoon ghost, floating around like a kid’s last-minute Halloween costume. “I can’t believe the emotion you’re going for right now is worry. If I were you, I’d be dancing. You just cooked in a professional kitchen, brother.”

  I give him a look.

  “You’re right. I’ve seen you dance. Please, continue worrying.”

  I hang around the window where the sandwiches are sitting under the heat lamp, not sure what the hell else I’m supposed to do. People don’t abandon their stations right away to come eat; they still have prep sheets to go through, slack to pick up from us being understaffed. Elias shows up pretty quickly. “What do we have here?”

  “Banh mi tortas.”

  He raises his eyebrows at me. “Nice.” Then he takes a big bite, wipes at some bean pâté that’s on the side of his mouth. He nods while chewing, bites again. I can barely stomach half a sandwich myself while I wait for people to trickle in and lay their reactions on me. “Not bad,” Elias says, and it doesn’t sound like a compliment to me. I disappear back into my station, for once happy at being cast away to a corner of the kitchen that proves I don’t belong here.

  Every now and then, I pause, dry my hands, take another bite of my sandwich, taste buds hyperactive to what could have gone wrong (underseasoned meat? Too much cilantro? Awful all around?). I keep looking over my shoulder, anticipating Matt coming in to tell me I’m a joke. But no one says a thing.

  When I leave that night, I feel like crawling into bed. I’m slightly buzzed from sleep deprivation and sick with the disappointment of screwing up a simple meal. Sure, no one gave me shit, but they weren’t quite licking their lips either.

  I’m on my way home when I see Emma stumbling across the road near The Crown, heading into a stretch of woods. I know the girl finds pathways where they don’t exist, but her gait implies a stupor, a lack of control, and I call after her. She looks over her shoulder at me and pauses while I catch up.

  Moonlight filters through the space between the trees. She turns her back to me until I’m there, and when I get there, she whips around and says, “My dad’s an asshole.”

  “Mine too,” I say.

  She laughs and surprises me by falling against me, cheek against my chest. I almost fall backward but gain my footing. Then I realize my T-shirt’s getting warm and damp.

  “He always does this shit. Cancels at the last minute. Cancels right when I get my stupid hopes up, like the one parental instinct he got is a sense of when I’ve just started feeling good about him.” She sighs against my chest, pushes back and reveals tear-streaked cheeks and red eyes and dilated pupils.

  A beat goes by, and then she says, “Fuck,” and she leans back into my chest for an hour or three or fifteen minutes, I’m not sure. I want to keep her safe from whatever’s hurting her.

  Insects buzz around us with a pleasant hum, like the island’s trying to comfort Emma. She steps back again and blinks, looking at me as if she’s realized I’m here, as if she’s just realized anything is here.

  “Carlos?”

  “It’s me. You’re okay.”

  “Where are we?”

  “The woods,” I say. “Right near The Crown. I saw you stumbling.”

  She bites her lips, wipes at the pain all over her face. Some of it smears onto her sweater; some stays put. “I don’t know why I feel this bad,” she says.

  I imagine it has something to do with dilated pupils and shitty fathers, but instead I put a hand on her shoulder to steady her and say, “Let me help.”

  She hiccups, nearly falls asleep on her feet. It’s a struggle to get her home, partially because of her slurred, half-mumbled directions. We finally manage, and as we climb the stairs to her room, I’m thankful Chef isn’t around to potentially surprise us in this awkward situation. There’s a few posters on Emma’s wall, a video game console in the corner, several bookshelves crowded with haphazardly arranged novels.

  Emma slips into bed and starts snoring almost immediately, shoes still on. I make sure she’s on her side, slide a trash bin next to the bed. I keep h
er bathroom door open, in case the urge is immediate. I sneak downstairs to get her a glass of water.

  I help her tilt her head up a little and gulp down enough water to maybe make a difference. She goes right back to snoring, curled up atop her colorful, striped bedspread, knees to her chest. There’s a whiteboard in the corner of the room, smudged nearly black from shitty erasers. I think about all I could say to her, and instead write: I hope you don’t feel awful when you read this. If you’re ever lonely, you can call me. I sign my name and head home, sleep soundly.

  * * *

  At the end of the next day, I hang up my apron and wash my hands. The mood, as it always is this time of night, is one of survival. I have to wait for everyone else to survive before I’m gone, though, so I’m usually among the last to leave. Only a few people are left. Elias and Michelle are having some sort of meeting about the menu.

  “Good job today, baby,” Elias calls out. People call each other all sorts of weird things in the kitchen, I’ve found. Almost everyone has multiple nicknames for each other. I’ve got “Fake-xican” and “baby,” I guess.

  Vee is pulling up the black rubber mats that run throughout every station; a few ovens are on their cleaning cycles or slow-cooking something overnight. Other than that, the kitchen is a glimmering polish of stainless-steel cleanliness. The floors are mopped; the roaring hood is off.

  “Thanks, Chef,” I say to Elias. “See you tomorrow.” I push the door open, noticing that what was debilitating exhaustion a week ago now feels like the status quo. Something I can survive.

  “Of course you can,” Felix says, following behind. I don’t respond yet, because I have all night with him. Lately, I haven’t been dreading his arrivals. I’m starting to think that this whole thing has nothing to do with getting rid of him.

  When I turn the corner, I spot Emma sitting on the bench in front of the restaurant, reading a book, tilting it so it catches the light of the street lamp. She’s got earbuds in, one leg tucked beneath her.

  “Just forget it,” Felix says, because he knows what I’m thinking. “She seems like she’s a mess, like she just wants to toy with you. Focus on the kitchen. That’s going well.”

  I wave a hand in his direction and am honestly surprised when he flitters away like smoke.

  I know maybe Emma doesn’t give me as much thought as I give her, that she likes making out drunkenly at bars and having it mean nothing, that she’s leaving the island soon. But I also know that I want to surround myself with her. I slip a flannel shirt on over my gross, smelly T-shirt and then plop down next to her on the bench.

  Emma jumps a little, gives me one of our shared, silent-shriek looks. She reads for a second or so, still listening to music. I check my phone for the first time since the morning but don’t really care enough to delve into the notifications. Emma slips a bookmark into the pages and pulls out her earphones. “Hey. Thanks for yesterday.”

  A strong breeze blows by, makes the streetlights sway slightly. The shadows shift on Emma’s face and her eyes brighten; something I can’t point to makes me ache and yearn that we had something more. She looks up and then back at me, combs her hair behind her ear.

  “Don’t mention it,” I say. “You looked the way I feel sometimes.”

  Secrets slip out of me when I’m with her. She smiles at me, and I can’t help but reciprocate. We do that at each other like idiots for a second. For once, I’m okay with the awkwardness hanging around.

  Firefly meadow and the lake? I want to ask, but the words don’t come.

  A mile away, waves crash on the shore with such force that they send out a fine mist that shimmers beneath the streetlights, coating me and Emma. We’re quiet for long enough that it feels inevitable that eventually I will muster the courage to say what I want. Then Emma says good-night, and she gets up from the bench.

  On the walk to my motel room, Mom calls, but I’m in no mood to talk, so I let it go to voice mail and then check the message she leaves.

  “Carlos,” she says, imbuing my name with too much emotion, the way only a mom can. The moon should be a waning crescent by now, but it’s still full. Somehow, it still allows the surrounding stars to stand out, and it’s almost more beautiful than it was last week.

  “When do you think you’re coming back?” Mom asks, her recorded voice fraught with worry. “Your dad and I miss you. We’re worried about you, and there’s some paperwork for school that you still need to fill out.”

  I think of Emma reading on the bench. The way she was focused on her book, how the orange glow of the street lamp made it look like she was in a photograph. Light doesn’t behave like that anywhere else that I’ve been. Everything here is ethereal.

  Yeah, I’ve noticed the absence of my family. I’ve noticed how many of my meals are solitary, even at the restaurant, with people around. How I rarely talk to living people. But anytime I think about my parents, it’s not Mom’s care that I remember, it’s Dad’s good-bye: So you’re running away. Just like your brother did. A lot of good it did him.

  I don’t call Mom back.

  CHAPTER 14

  MILKSHAKES

  Some milk

  A lot of chocolate ice cream

  METHOD:

  It’s four in the morning and I’m hiking up the hilly street to meet up with Emma.

  I’d been lying in bed, looking up videos on how to arroser fish, sleep eluding me. Then my phone started to buzz. I’d assumed it was Mom again, even with the time difference. I’d thought maybe something had gone wrong. Then I saw Emma’s name on the screen.

  “Turns out I’m lonely,” she said when I answered. “Wanna go on a date?”

  My room lit up, a cloud passing by to uncover the moon or something. “When?”

  “Now,” she said and then paused. “I have kind of a crazy idea for a date that I’ve been meaning to try out but haven’t had the chance to yet. Because you were in Mexico before.”

  “Right, my bad,” I said, sitting up in bed, certain she’d be able to hear my smile through the signal. “So, what’s your idea?”

  Now I’m the only person on the island who’s awake, except for maybe some of the fishermen heading out to open water or some of my kitchen mates heading back home from the bar.

  After a whole lifetime of being told four a.m. is dangerous, especially on foot, it is freeing to feel such peace. Safe among the trees and the moonlight, I don’t keep my cell phone in one hand, ready to call for help, the way I always did in Mexico when leaving a party, conditioned to fear the city even though I was in neighborhoods where things rarely happened.

  Fireflies have been accompanying me the entire walk, and when they take Felix’s form, I’m happy that the situation leads us to talking about dating. We never really had the chance to before.

  “Just be yourself,” he says, another platitude that offers no real advice unless it’s completely earnest.

  “Did anyone think you were smooth,” I ask, “or could they see through your bullshit?”

  “Hey, man, I did okay.”

  I want to ask him about girls he loved, but the past tense kills me, so I just let him rattle on with his advice-column wisdom until I knock on Emma’s door. The fireflies he’s made up of flitter away. A few seconds later she answers wearing brightly colored elephant pajama shorts and a loose-fitting Sharon Van Etten tank top.

  “Hi,” I say because I don’t want to say what I’m actually thinking, that this is weird and lovely and I’m a puddle of nerves and she looks fantastic and how the hell has life led me here. “You look great.”

  “No, damn it!” she says. “This is a reverse date. You’d say that at the beginning, and that’s not now. Now’s the end.”

  “Right. Sorry.” I put my hand on the door frame and then look down at myself wondering if I’m even sane enough to be on a date
right now. “Should I be in pajamas?”

  Emma laughs, grabs my hand. “Okay, so maybe this isn’t as smooth as I was envisioning. But this next part might help.”

  “What’s the next part?”

  “Well, assuming the date went well, which I am...”

  “I like that assumption.”

  “Then, we kiss good-night.” Emma says, biting her lip.

  I take a moment to process this information. I might need a whole new brain to wrap around that statement. “We start the date with a kiss?”

  “No, we’re ending it with a kiss.” She steps closer, puts her free hand around my waist so that I can feel how much warmer it is inside her house than in the cool air I’ve been walking around in. “Instead of worrying about the kiss all date, we’ll get it out of the way now, so that we’re not nervous. Like in that movie.”

  “What movie?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” she says, pressing even closer, giving my hand a squeeze. “You ready? We’re going to say good-night now.” Over her shoulder, through a window, I can see the beginning of a sunrise softly erase away the night.

  “Good night, Carlos. Thanks for a great date.”

  “Good night, Emma.”

  Our first kiss unfolds the way first kisses usually do: with equal measures of clumsiness and slobber and awe. It is phenomenal and not in sync and the slight part of me that is worried about the latter is completely overshadowed by the joy of the former. I feel transported, but, instead of to some other place, I’m transported more fully to the exact place where I am. To the taste of her lips, the feel of her body against mine, the quiet of the world around us. Emma pulls away from me, her cheeks and lips flushed red. More of that whole smiling-at-each-other-like-idiots thing. “Shit,” she says. “I’m still nervous.”

  “Me too,” I laugh, but her hands are in mine and I can feel myself start to relax already. “What’s next?”

  “Well, now we go to sleep.”

  I laugh, though only because I don’t know what muscles to use for a more appropriate reaction (i.e., making my head explode).