North of Happy

by Adi Alsaid

  At the house, the party’s already underway. I spot Emma immediately, my eyes flitting toward her as if there is a beacon shining from her. She doesn’t spot me right away, but Chef is here already too, and I don’t want to go say hi while obviously beaming, so I go grab a beer instead.

  Isaiah and Morris are hanging out by the cooler, and I just kind of stick around, listening to their conversation, simultaneously trying to figure out how to break into it like a normal human being and trying not to completely hone in on Emma. She’s at the far end of the backyard, near a couple of strung-up hammocks. I text her that she looks great, but she must not be looking at her phone, because she doesn’t respond. My beer is gone already, its label peeled to shreds. I go get another one.

  I look around, thrilled by the fact that this is where I live now. All these people are, technically, at my house. Most are out in the backyard, though I can see a few people through the kitchen window and hanging out on the couches. Food, of course, lingers in the air, as if it’s a cloud that’s followed us here, cartoon-like. A charcoal bite to the backyard, the heat of the oven emanating from inside. Back home, my friends approved of my cooking, insofar as it got them fed. Dad approves of hobbies, to an extent. Felix was into cuisine as a representation of culture, as a fuck-you to Dad, as a symbol for me.

  But these are my people.

  I walk around aimlessly for a while, grab another beer. It doesn’t take too long before I start feeling these quick drinks, and suddenly I know exactly the frame of mind Felix was talking about. I’m curious about everyone. Instead of getting lost in my own head, with the knee-deep muck that exists there, I come out into this surreal but present world. Isaiah and Morris are having a conversation about what Jackie Chan’s post-acting career might have been, which suddenly feels like the funniest thing in the world.

  “After your body breaks down, how do you put those skills to use, you know?” Isaiah says, excitedly. “He wasn’t a phenomenal actor or anything. Just had his karate moves and some charm. He hasn’t been in movies in a while, so what’s he been up to? You think he’s working at an insurance company or something? Just kind of scampering around the cubicles delivering memos?” He makes a frantic motion with his hands; I have no idea what he’s going for.

  I laugh along, until I realize I don’t really know who they’re talking about. I text Emma, I’m in the middle of a conversation about Jackie Chan, and it’s hilarious, but I don’t, exactly, know who Jackie Chan is. Was he an actor?

  I see her check her phone and smile, shaking her head. Her response comes through a few moments later, a little buzz of joy. Prime Minister of Japan in the ’90s.

  Wow. I am completely lost.

  Don’t worry, I’ve got your back.

  After a while, feeling like I can’t help but look at Emma if she’s nearby and I’m gonna get myself in trouble, I go into the kitchen. Vee’s there, and I realize I’ve never really had a conversation with her. I feel the urge to remedy that immediately. I want to know how she got into cooking, how she made her way to Provecho, what she likes most about working in kitchens. If she feels weird being interviewed by a semi-drunk kid like me, she doesn’t show it. She tells me about how she grew up in North Dakota, bored as hell. How she applied to be a line cook at a diner just for kicks and eventually saved up enough money to go cook somewhere else. She met Chef Elise in New York, at some catering gig ten years ago.

  I notice Matt on the couch, passing a joint to Emma’s friend Reggie as they play video games. Emboldened, remembering Elias’s words about Matt not being all bad, I grab a six-pack from the fridge and bring it over to the living room. “Anyone need a beer?”

  Matt mumbles a thanks and cracks one open, eyes me with the suspicion usually reserved for murderers. I plop down on the couch, watching the gameplay for a while. After a few moments, Reggie gets up to go use the bathroom and passes the controller to me.

  “Uh, I kinda suck at video games.”

  Matt groans and hits pause. “I’ll just wait for Reggie.” He offers the joint to me somewhat begrudgingly, and when I refuse he sets it down on an ashtray in front of him with a heavy eye roll.

  I try to think of something to say, fail. I open another beer, realize I’m staring, find myself wishing he would just simmer away. Back to my phone it is, as the awkwardness builds in the living room. Sitting next to Matt. Trying to break the ice, and be friendlier, but for some reason can only think of him as a sauce.

  That makes absolutely no sense, Emma responds, from some unseen corner of the party.

  Only to the sober mind. Trust me, it’s not weird. I don’t mean that he’s, like, a delicious sauce or anything. Just...you know. He evaporates.

  Carlos. Drink some water.

  Matt looks like he’s about to explode with discomfort, maybe because I keep giggling to myself. Before he does, he looks at me and says, “So, what’s that all about, man? Talking to yourself.”

  I think about bolting, laughing it off, lying. But the booze and my good mood swirl together and turn confessional. After all this time, I’m curious about how someone will respond to the truth. Especially someone I’m not close to, someone who doesn’t care about me in the slightest. “My dead brother,” I say. “I talk to him.”

  Matt stares at me, unblinking. He doesn’t laugh, doesn’t crack a joke. “Are you fucking with me?” he asks, taking a drink from his beer.

  I shrug, tell him I wish I were. Tell him how Felix died six months ago but that I still see him. Matt doesn’t say anything, just looks down at the controller he’s holding. For a second I think he’s going to say something nice for a change. That he’ll offer a condolence, for Felix or for himself. But then he turns back to his video game, mashing buttons, his gaze focused intently on the screen.

  In the kitchen I pour myself a glass of water from the tap, drinking it down quickly. Then I’m back outside, wanting to talk to everyone all at once, not knowing which conversation to choose. Emma’s sitting around the fire, and it wouldn’t be the most terribly obvious thing in the world to go sit next to her. Except Chef is sitting on the back porch steps with Sue, a full glass of wine in her hands, the fire pit directly in front of her.

  So I just look up at the stars, smile stupidly, have another beer.

  I make eye contact with Emma and smile goofily at her. I wave and then remember we’re trying to be incognito and very conspicuously sit on my hand. Emma grins at me and shakes her head, mouthing the words you are so drunk at me.

  You are so great, I mouth back. The carelessness feels like love, and maybe that thought is prompted by the booze but maybe not. Emma blushes and turns away. Chef hasn’t noticed a thing, thank god.

  “That’s why,” Elias says, nudging me, though he’s looking at Memo. “He’d be hanging out with us every day, pero el güey anda clavado.”

  Memo cranes his neck toward Emma. His eyes are bloodshot, droopy-happy. “I’d noticed.”

  “Shit, really? I’m trying to be secretive. Chef kinda told me to stay away from her.” I get the sense I shouldn’t be saying this so openly. But if alcohol is good for anything it’s for saying fuck it and confessing.

  “Probably a good idea,” Elias says. I feel my heart sink a little. This isn’t what I want to hear. I take a sip of beer, think about getting up, rejoining Isaiah and Morris, who I hope are still talking about Prime Minister Jackie Chan.

  “Not that I’m saying stop seeing her or anything,” Elias continues. He is picking at the label on his beer, looking at Emma and then back at me. “Just, you know, appreciate your place in the kitchen. You don’t know because you’re new to this, but what she’s doing for you? It’s rare, man.” He runs a hand through his hair, rolls a little corner of the beer label into a snowball and throws it on the floor. Memo sits quietly by, listening. “I know from experience that Chef pushes the people she believes in. She gives you o
pportunities that shouldn’t be granted to you because you haven’t earned ’em, or, like me, because you’ve thrown others away.

  “But she’s hard on people wasting those opportunities. That buddy I opened the restaurant with in Seattle? He was here too, man. But dude fell back into drugs and Chef literally put all his fucking belongings on the ferry back to the mainland the very next day.” Elias gives me a hard look. “I’m a romantic. I’m all for forbidden love. Just, you know, be careful.”

  I look over my shoulder at Chef and then at my phone to see if Emma’s responded to my latest text. I wonder if the booze has made me reckless tonight, how many people other than Elias and Memo have noticed me gawking at her. “Yeah, I know,” I say. “I am.”

  “Lo que tú digas,” Elias says. Whatever you say. Then he reaches into the cooler next to him and offers me another beer, and since I can’t go sit next to Emma, I take it.

  I continue to enjoy myself throughout the party, flitting around from group to group, even having a less-than-awful interaction with Matt about the greatness of noodle soups for breakfast. As the alcohol compounds and people leave, I spend more time looking at my phone, wanting to talk to Emma somehow, wanting her to carve a path for us in the woods where we can disappear together. But her phone must have died, and a little while later she waves a silent good-bye.

  When my body tells me it’s time to call it a night too, I carry myself up to my room, to the mattress on the floor, which I literally plop onto face-first. I entangle myself in the still-unfamiliar sheets, and, while my last few thoughts before falling asleep are about Emma, Elias’s words play over them, like foreboding music in a horror film.

  CHAPTER 22

  GYOZA IN ORANGE-BASIL BROTH

  For the filling:

  1 pound flor de calabaza

  2 pounds shrimp, peeled and deveined

  ½ pound portobello mushrooms, chopped

  ½ pound shiitake mushrooms, chopped

  2 red onions, chopped

  6 cloves garlic

  2 tablespoons ginger

  2 tablespoons sesame oil

  For the broth:

  12 cups veggie stock

  4 tablespoons ginger

  ½ cup packed basil leaves

  2 tablespoons sesame oil

  2 tablespoons sriracha hot sauce

  2 tablespoons rice wine vinegar

  METHOD:

  The next day, I wake up aware of death.

  It’s just there, prodding at me, reminding me it exists. It’s too early to get out of bed, but I know only activity will drive the thoughts away before they can shake me to my core. I drag myself off the mattress, splash water on my face, go downstairs. I find my phone in the kitchen, battery drained, inches away from a puddle of some unrecognizable liquid.

  Before the puddle can shape itself into Felix, I mop it up with a paper towel. I plug my phone in, look around the house to see where I should start cleaning. This happened often those first few weeks. After the funeral, I would wake up with too much awareness of How Things Are. The realization would claw at me that if Felix hadn’t been in the way of a bullet, something else would have got him in the end. I’d start thinking about how I too will inevitably die, how everything I know is transient, fleeting, impermanent. Sometimes it’s just flashes, in the middle of the day, of how things could go wrong. But when I wake up like this, I know I have to keep busy or else go completely insane.

  Though my stomach lurches with movement and my head is pounding, I grab a garbage bag from beneath the kitchen sink and start collecting beer bottles, taking pleasure in the little clinks of the glass, the crumpling of plastic cups and aluminum cans. I open every window and both doors to allow the smell of the party out and the cool morning air in. Memo’s still on the couch, Reggie on the floor. They barely stir as I tiptoe around them.

  Once my phone is charged and the house is tidy, I text Emma to see if she’s free. She might still be sleeping, and so I walk to the grocery store, listening to music. It’s a gorgeous day, and it feels like the world is trying to reassure me. I meander through the aisles, waiting for inspiration, hoping that death won’t creep into the space I’m carving in my thoughts for food.

  On the walk back home, the weight of groceries digs into my shoulder, clouds move swiftly overhead and the leaves flutter as if they’re breathing. I set my bags on the counter, turn on the oven, wash the vegetables. The restaurant is closed, Emma asleep; nothing else beckons.

  My roommates wake up and turn on the TV. The house comes alive as I cook. Elias goes out for a run. Matt heads to the city to meet up with friends. Before he leaves, he looks around groggily, takes heed of the state of the house. “Thanks for cleaning,” he says. The noose around my neck slackens.

  When Emma wakes up she comes over, sits on the counter as I concoct dish after dish, things I’ve never tried to make before, things that might read like a dream on a menu. Every now and then I bring a spoon up to her lips, wait for the steam to dissipate and then tilt it so she can taste. Every now and then I step into the space between her legs, and when a surge of affection threatens to make me say something stupid, I lean in and kiss her.

  Some things we eat, some things we only taste and cover with cling wrap. The fridge is full by nightfall, and when Emma lies down next to me, it’s hard to think of anything but life.

  * * *

  Tuesday morning, and Chef pushes away another omelet. I try to eat it calmly, hiding the fact that I want to throw it in her face, because at this point all doubts that she’s a sadist have disappeared into a puddle of egg yolks. I try to keep Elias’s words in mind.

  Instead of throwing something at her, I ask if I can start cooking the staff meal early.

  Chef looks at the time, raises an eyebrow. “Already?”

  “I’d like to be productive, Chef. Don’t plan on going home, and there’s no dishes for me yet.”

  She studies her clipboard, leads me to the walk-ins. “Use all this shrimp,” she says. She tells me to use any station I want, but that I’ll have to clear away as soon as the staff starts to show. “Yes, Chef.”

  I bring out all the Tupperware I’ve brought from home. I set them next to the items Chef’s instructed me to use up, thinking. Waiting. There’s a bunch of basil that’s not quite wilting but not pretty enough to use fresh. Good for a sauce, probably, but I feel like doing something else.

  I look over at all my potential supplies some more, wash my hands again, place the shrimp in a lowboy fridge. I run over to the pantry, grab some flour and—I don’t know what they’re called in English—flor de calabaza.

  Still not quite sure what I’m going to do, I pick up my gyuto, unsheathe it, watch it catch the light. In the blade, I see my reflection, and a hint of yesterday morning’s thoughts come bubbling back, that excessive self-awareness that tells me that one day I too will die. I think of a postcard I got from Felix from Hong Kong a few months before he died, one that stands out because it had these dumplings on the image, and Felix actually described them. All his travels, he almost never wrote about the food.

  Two red onions, chopped easily. Some portobello and shiitake mushrooms, the flor, meet the same fate, their resting place a large stainless-steel mixing bowl. Smash a few cloves of garlic with the flat side of my knife; mince them up. I grab a cast-iron pan from its hook in the prep area, squirt some sesame oil into it, slide the garlic from the cutting board into the pan before the fire’s lit. This I learned from Rosalba. Fill the kitchen with the scent of garlic before it can burn. Let the heat slowly draw out the garlic’s taste. Felix could pick out from the smell alone when the garlic was about to burn.

  I toss the entire mass of the basil into the blender and then cut some of the remaining ginger into chunks and throw them in too. A little soy sauce, a little sriracha, a few oranges’ worth o
f fresh-squeezed juice. While the blender transforms the pieces into a wholly greater whole, I turn off the flame on the mushroom/flor concoction. I grab a tasting spoon and take a bite and then run over to the dishwashing station to chuck the spoon into the sink in celebration of the flavors.

  The dough has to rest, the broth is at a simmer, the basil mixture tastes like I Belong in the Kitchen. Every piece of equipment I’m no longer using is in the sink waiting to be cleaned, and the surface around my work area is spotless.

  Felix is a genius for leading me here, for making sure I stay.

  Feeling like I’m in the midst of the kitchen dance, I use a mortar and pestle to crush some Thai chilies along with some garlic. Then I slide them into a deli container with a few tablespoons of olive oil, and fiddle around with a smoke gun I found at the bar, trapping the concoction under plastic wrap. I can’t believe this is a profession. That people fiddle around with food, perfect the art of it, and it’s a job. That you can provide the joy of a meal to someone else and earn a living. Not the kind of living my parents think is necessary, maybe. But I can’t believe I ever considered doing anything else, at Dad’s insistence or otherwise.

  When there’s eight dumplings for every person working the early shift, I finally stop. I look around, only now becoming aware of the fact that the kitchen’s almost full. Matt’s using a mandolin to slice cucumbers into paper-thin strips, for once not scowling at me. Memo catches my eye and gives me a little head nod. Everyone else is focused on their work, stirring, chopping, tasting. They may have been doing this for much, much longer than I have. They may not have grown up with maids or with two passports. The schools they attended probably weren’t surrounded by bodyguards. But right now, I feel closer to them than to anyone I grew up with. I am a part of their world.

  I check my texts, getting the feeling that Emma might have passed by without me noticing, but there’s only a hi how are you from Mom. Cooking , I respond.