We Never Asked for Wings

by Vanessa Diffenbaugh

“They only keep the super-designer stuff, and they get rid of everything else. Which is also mostly designer stuff.”

  She pulled down a box and opened it, sorting out the women’s and children’s clothing and starting a pile of anything she thought might fit Alex.

  “How do you know about this place?”

  “One of the nurses at the hospital. My mom’s been dressing me from this alley all my life.”

  Alex looked at what she was wearing: the hot pink bathing suit she’d worn all summer, cut-off jean shorts that Alex had assumed were old, or hand-me-down, but now realized had an intricately stitched pattern over the back pockets, and a white-on-white embroidered tank top that was so flowing it was probably made of real silk. He’d never noticed, because it wasn’t the kind of thing he noticed, but now that he really looked, he realized she did dress a little differently than the other girls in class.

  Alex lifted a second box off the top of a tall pile and started going through it. He was drawn to a pale green dress shirt that still had its tags, but Yesenia pulled it out of his hands and replaced it with a plain black T-shirt and worn-looking jeans.

  “Put this on.”

  “Here?”

  “I won’t look.”

  She turned around. He was wearing boxer shorts and she wasn’t even looking, but still he could barely zip up his jeans for the thrill of changing in an alley, his girlfriend an arm’s distance away. He pretended it took a lot longer than it did to put on his shirt, to give his body time to calm down.

  “Okay.”

  She turned back around, squinting her eyes as she assessed him. Stepping forward, she beckoned for him to lean over, and she tried to press his hair flat and to the side. He felt it flop back, exactly as it was before.

  “I think that’s as good as we can do.”

  “I’ll take that as a You look amazing.”

  “Basically.” She grinned, turning back to her piles, picking up the stack she’d sorted for him. It was enough to fill his entire closet.

  “We didn’t even need your money,” Alex said, taking the clothes she handed him.

  “Oh, we’re not done.” Yesenia led him back out of the alley and to the bus stop.

  “Seriously? Where to next?”

  “To the place where normal teenagers hang out on a Saturday night.”

  “Where’s that?”

  Yesenia smiled. “The mall.”

  It was phenomenally easy, bartending without a tantruming child in the hallway. For the first few hours Letty looked up every two minutes—as she’d grown used to doing—and each time she saw the empty chair, the weight she’d been carrying around all summer lightened a little, and a little more. Luna was at school. All morning and for most of the afternoon she was safe, and cared for—and maybe even happy. When Letty had dropped her off that morning at her new school in Mission Hills, Luna was all eyes: ogling the playground, throwing fistfuls of fresh wood chips into the air, flopping down on her back on the fresh-cut grass—and that was all before she’d even gone inside her classroom.

  She’d been assigned Room 10, Miss Noelle: a desk, homework folder, and pencil box full of school supplies were all labeled with her name. Luna had pulled out the safety scissors and snapped at the air with wonder while Letty turned away, embarrassed. Her daughter acted like she’d never seen scissors before. She had seen scissors, of course. She and Maria Elena had cut snowflakes to decorate the apartment windows every Christmas. But it was true she’d probably never seen a pair at school. Cesar Chavez didn’t have a labeled pencil box full of school supplies for every kid. Half the time, they didn’t even have pencils.

  Letty had expected her daughter to be afraid, or at least nervous, but Luna didn’t flinch when she went to say good-bye, just kissed her mother squarely on the lips and marched away. Remember to go to the after-school program, she’d called, but Luna waved her away like all the other kids, and Letty’s heart raced with the unexpected accomplishment. Finally she had done something right, and the thrill of it quieted the voice inside her head berating her for all her other failures: for getting Alex drunk, for not telling him about his father—even now, when she knew he knew. She’d answered his question and said not a word more, and neither one of them had mentioned it again.

  After the lunch rush, she cleared dishes and rolled silverware and cut limes and refilled ketchup bottles faster than she ever had before, hoping to have time to finish Rick’s book before his shift started. When she’d completed her side work, she pulled the book out of her bag, opened to the final chapter (“Exotic Syrups and Infusions”), and was deep inside a scientific explanation of crème de violette when a voice in her ear made her jump.

  “I’ve been looking for that.”

  Rick stood next to her, eyeing the book. He was early.

  Letty stiffened. “I was going to give it back.”

  “Uh-huh,” he said. He raised his eyebrows to say he didn’t believe her.

  “I was.” She closed the book. The spine was strawberry-smeared. Seeing it, she felt a crush of guilt, remembering Alex again, and she reached for a rag, attempting to wipe it clean.

  “Keep it.”

  “It’ll come off. It’s just strawberry.”

  “It’s not that. I’ve read it so many times I think I’ve memorized it.”

  “Are you sure?” He nodded, and she slipped the book inside her bag. When she turned back, Rick was writing the specials on the chalkboard. She grabbed it out of his hands. “Not until four o’clock.”

  “What am I supposed to do, then?” He pointed to the empty chair, where Luna usually sat. “I thought I had a date to ride the escalator.”

  Letty smiled in spite of herself. For weeks he’d been coming early to run around the terminal with Luna.

  “School started.”

  “Already? Where does she go?”

  “Willow Oaks,” Letty said and, remembering the morning, added: “She loves it.”

  “I thought you lived at the Landing?”

  With extreme deliberation, Letty reached for a rag and wiped the counter in slow, steady strokes, the motion in opposition to her racing pulse. Her children had been in school less than one day, and already someone was asking. “How do you know where I live?”

  Rick turned red, and before he could answer she changed the subject, kicking at the backpack he’d set on the ground.

  “What’re you making today, anyway?”

  He kneeled and unzipped the bag, pulling out a plastic Ziploc of lumpy brown sugar cubes and a dark bottle of orange bitters.

  “An old-fashioned. You know how to make one?”

  “Sure.”

  They locked eyes, and even though he didn’t say anything, she felt as if he was questioning her. She did know how to make an old-fashioned, but the muddled glass of fluorescent red cherries and orange syrup was probably not the same cocktail to which Rick was referring.

  “Fine,” Letty said. “Show me.” Deep inside her reluctance, Letty felt a glimmer of curiosity, a desire for knowledge she hadn’t felt since high school. In the weeks since she and Alex had mixed drinks in beakers, she’d entertained flights of fantasy—her bar filling up, businessmen leaving fat tips on company cards, even moving across the freeway and finding an apartment in Mission Hills, her pockets full of hard-earned cash.

  Rick bustled from one end of the bar to the other, gathering all the ingredients and spreading them out before her.

  “The key is in the quantities,” he said. “You use the sugar to measure the bitters. And don’t let anyone tell you it’s okay to free-pour, ever. Measure everything.”

  He got out a jigger (a “Japanese jigger,” he corrected her, showing her the measuring lines on the inside of the instrument) and then placed a sugar cube on a paper napkin, using the eyedropper to squeeze orange bitters onto the sugar one drop at a time.

  “See?” he said when the sugar cube started to leak onto the napkin. “Complete saturation.” He dropped it into a glass and handed it to Le
tty to muddle. Watching her pound the bottom, he took it back and started to stir it himself, pressing the dissolving sugar granules hard against the sides of the glass. When he was satisfied, he measured rye and poured just an ounce, then added a swath of orange peel and two cubes of ice, stirring before adding the second ounce. He stirred again—for what seemed to Letty to be an excessively long time—and then cut a final sliver of orange peel and spritzed it over the top.

  “Try?”

  Letty took a sip, swishing it around in her mouth, tasting the individual flavors of sugar and orange and rye.

  “It’s good, right?”

  He waited for her reaction like a six-year-old holding up a perfectly tied shoe, and as much as she wanted to, she couldn’t deny him the praise. It was amazing. She took another sip.

  “Really good.”

  Setting the glass down, she rummaged around inside his backpack until she found another book. He’d brought only one this time. It was tattered and dog-eared and ancient: The Savoy Cocktail Book, the cover announced in gilded gold.

  “Is this where you get your secrets?”

  “One of the places.”

  “What is it?”

  “Old recipes. In certain circles, that book’s the bible.”

  She flipped it open, intrigued, scanning the introduction until she got to a line that jolted her.

  “Wine was created for the solace of man, as a slight compensation, we are told, for the creation of woman—” Letty stopped. “What is this book?”

  Rick frowned and snapped the book shut. “I don’t remember that part. It was written in 1930, so it might be a little outdated.”

  “I guess so,” Letty said. “Although you could find significantly more offensive statements in the actual Bible—don’t tell my mother I said that.”

  “She’s Catholic?” Rick guessed.

  “Yeah.”

  “My mom too. She was brought up in the Metropolitan Cathedral in Mexico City, confirmed by the bishop himself. Cross her and she’ll report you to the pope.”

  Letty shook her head. “Our mothers would get along.”

  “Does she live here?”

  “Until this May. She and my father moved back to Mexico. What about yours?”

  “She’s in Mission Heights. She’s always threatening to move home, but my dad was born and raised here and she’d never leave him, and he’d never live in Mexico.”

  Could Rick have been raised in Mission Heights? It begged the question, and not for the first time—what was he doing working here?

  She would have asked, but just then a man with a small suitcase and a trim white beard sat down at the bar. He nodded to the drink they’d made, the orange and bitters and sugar cubes still spread out all around it.

  “What’re you making?”

  “That’s an old-fashioned.”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  Rick looked over her shoulder as Letty took her time, finding an old-fashioned glass and filling a second glass with ice, then placing a sugar cube on a napkin. With both of them watching, it took a few tries for her to figure out the eyedropper, and when she did, the bitters came out all in a rush. The sugar cube dissolved onto the napkin in a lumpy pile.

  “Start over,” Rick said. He whisked the wet napkin into the trash and handed her a new one.

  “You’ve got yourself quite a teacher there,” the man said, watching her work.

  “Self-appointed,” Letty said.

  The man laughed, and she managed to ask where he was going (Seattle) and what he would be doing there (work) while concentrating hard on following the steps Rick had demonstrated.

  “I don’t usually drink this early,” the man said when Letty finally handed him his cocktail. In Letty’s experience, this was something only the heaviest drinkers said. She was right. He finished the old-fashioned in one long, slow pull, asking for a second before he’d even set the glass back down on the bar. Letty moved with more confidence this time, and faster, but when she transitioned from the muddling to the pouring, Rick picked up the glass and made her muddle some more.

  “That’s the stuff,” the man said, pausing this time, halfway through his drink. “Self-appointed or not, I’d listen to that guy.”

  Rick bowed his head, an overdramatic display of humility at which Letty rolled her eyes, but her annoyance evaporated when the man withdrew forty dollars from his wallet and left it on the bar, telling her to keep the change.

  “See?” Rick said. “There’s money to be made.”

  She made change and added eighteen dollars to her earnings, her best tip of the day by far. She pulled out the rest of her money and counted it up, swapping the small bills for twenties and some change: $86.71. It wasn’t much compared to the night shift, but it was more than she’d made working midday in a long, long time.

  Rick watched her straighten the bills and put them in her wallet.

  “There’s no way I’m splitting this with you,” she said. “Sorry. I’m saving for something.”

  “Saving for what?”

  She looked at him hard. His olive skin was faintly freckled, and she wondered what he’d looked like as a little boy. “How old are you, anyway?”

  “Twenty-nine.”

  Letty squinted at him. Mistaking her expression for disbelief, he pulled out his driver’s license. Ricardo Lorenzo Moya. The picture was ten years old at least, his hair longer and curly, his eyes somehow aggressively confident and insecure at the same time.

  “I’m not carding you,” she said, pushing the license away, and then: “But just so you know, I do live at the Landing. Which means that until I save enough money to move across the freeway, I’m officially a criminal.”

  “I guess that depends on how you define criminal.”

  “Not really. I enrolled my kids in Mission Hills illegally, with a phony lease.”

  “Is it still breaking the law if the law isn’t just?”

  “What are you, a lawyer?”

  “No, an MBA student. Well, not anymore.” He frowned, and Letty guessed from his expression the end of his student tenure had not been because of graduation. He changed the subject. “So why don’t you move?”

  She rolled her eyes to the ceiling. “When I walk into Mission Hills, they don’t exactly roll out the red carpet.”

  “You’ve got a steady job and eighty dollars, at least. It’s not nothing.”

  “Says the man whose parents live in Mission Heights.” Who knows nothing about having nothing, she thought.

  He shrugged. “Whatever you think.”

  “Whatever I think?” It was her worst quality: she could go from zero to sixty in five seconds flat, and she felt it happening now, her face reddening, the blood beating in her temples. She hid her clenched fists in her apron pockets. She was trying. She’d worked five days a week all summer with a six-year-old in the hall. Rick had watched her. He, of all people, should understand what she was up against.

  “Whatever I think?” she repeated, but he said nothing, just turned on the faucet and began to rinse out the sink with a calm thoroughness she found maddening. “Hey. Don’t act like I’m not even trying.”

  “Well, are you?”

  “Of course I am,” she said. Over the last month, after winning the war over the airport gift shop, she’d managed to save five hundred dollars—and that was after sending money to her parents. But it wasn’t anywhere near enough to rent an apartment in Mission Hills. At least she didn’t think it was—it was true she hadn’t yet tried.

  She threw her apron in the dirty laundry bin, all of a sudden anxious to leave. “I’m out of here.”

  Rick spun away from the sink and stepped into her path. “Hey, I’m sorry,” he said. And then, abruptly: “Let me take you out sometime.”

  “What?”

  His eyes were glued to the rubber mat upon which they both stood, and he’d spoken so quickly and so quietly, she wasn’t sure she’d heard him right. After a silence he repeated himself, louder this time:
“Let me take you out.”

  “Are you serious?”

  Rick had seen her and Luna at their worst. He knew she lived at the Landing and that she was, as of today, officially a criminal. She certainly wouldn’t want to take herself out.

  “I like you,” he said finally, looking up and straight into her eyes. “You’re a little defensive, not to mention a thief”—grinning, he spun her around, pulling The Savoy Cocktail Book from where she’d stashed it in her bag when she thought he wasn’t looking—“but I still like you.”

  Letty laughed. “You’ve seen my life. There’s not a lot of room in it right now. You can have dinner with me and Luna, or you can take me to McDonald’s on my lunch break.”

  She’d meant it as a joke, but Rick smiled. “Done.”

  And without meaning to, she heard herself agree to meet him at Gate 37 on Friday at noon.

  —

  Letty took a detour on the way to Luna’s school, walking quickly down the frontage road toward the Landing and speeding over the pedestrian bridge. She knew exactly where she was going. If she had even the slightest chance of renting an apartment in Mission Hills proper, it would be in one of the high-rise buildings on the other side of the freeway from Mile Road. The apartments had an uninterrupted view of the Landing, and occasionally as teenagers, she and Sara had turned on the light in her bedroom and flashed an SOS with their breasts—so it was ironic that she would go there now, looking for a way out. But it was her best chance. For ten years, NOW RENTING signs had hung from the buildings, because really, who would want to live there, with the Bay Area’s busiest freeway in the backyard? Letty wouldn’t mind, though, not if it meant her kids wouldn’t have to lie about where they lived.

  The young man in the rental office didn’t look much older than Alex, his red hair mostly covered with a baseball cap. He stared at his phone when she walked into the room. A sign on a desk said PLEASE RING BELL FOR SERVICE. She rang it.

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you have any apartments for rent?”

  “What are you looking for?”

  “What do you have?”

  Seeing that she wasn’t going to be turned away by bad customer service, he shoved his phone into his pocket, rattling off the prices for one-, two-, and three-bedroom apartments.