12
DREW
Demo dining room floors. Check.
I peel off my leather construction gloves, heart pounding in my chest. The white shirt I put on this morning is damp, riddled with grime. Sweat drips from my face, fogging up my protective eyewear after a morning of manual labor.
I welcome the work this morning. The adrenaline is a sweet release. My brain is on overtime thinking of Camille and our backseat foreplay. If I didn’t have something to do this morning, I would be in a blue-ball world of hurt.
It was after midnight when I dropped Camille off at her apartment. She didn’t ask me in, and I was okay with that. While we rounded second base, and her body was in it 100 percent, her mind held something back. It was written on her face. Frankly, it kept me at a distance, too. It didn’t escape me she’d been a flight risk last night. Had I not shown up when I did, she would have gone MIA.
If time is what Camille needs, she’ll get it. But damn the unknown. She told me she’d call me, contact me, and not the other way around.
With her as my last thought before I went to bed and the first image in my mind, I can’t help but wonder: What’s she doing today? Who’s she with?
Matt, next to me, pauses his own work and stands to his full height. His face is contorted in pain. He runs his fingers through his beard, and little flecks of dust cascade to the floor. “Please tell me we’re done. I’m supposed to be creating, not destroying.”
“I know, I know. It’s the artist in you.” I repeat the mantra my buddy has proclaimed ever since we were young. Matt might be a Spartan, but as a kid he’d forego the pranks we’d propose and insist on working on his drawings that would eventually become architectural designs. “But the artist in you sure did a shitload of damage. I’m kind of impressed.”
“Don’t let this beautiful face fool you, man. I am dying, inside and out.” Matt reaches for a bottled water behind him and throws one to me.
The water is heaven, and I gulp three-quarters of the bottle in one swig. “Thanks for coming over to help. This would have taken me two days.”
“You did me the favor. I needed an extra gig. Single-A doesn’t pay the bills. But we could’ve gotten all this done in half a day if Blake showed up, the fucker.” Matt shakes his head, laughing, though I notice the faint insincerity in it. Blake, Matt, and I were like three peas in a pod, but the last few years tunneled a distance between the other two and me.
“Too much partying last night?” I ask.
“More like most days. A fuckton.” Matt swallows, then takes a breath. “He acts like a fool when he’s wasted. Caused another scene.”
“Another? So there have been more?”
Matt nods. “Heard there was an incident a couple of days ago, with some food truck. I’m ashamed to even talk about it, you know?”
“Shit.”
Blake has always been toughest of the three of us—the first to take the hit if trouble came down, the first to back us up in any situation. But then I remember the other night: Blake in his beer goggle haze, teetering on being a menace. “He’s in trouble?”
“I . . . I think so.”
“Have you told anyone?”
“And say what? I think my best friend is an alcoholic?” After wiping himself with a rag, Matt throws it to the lone table in the room. The pained expression on his face has turned into a drooped sadness. “We’re twenty-five years old. That’s fucking crazy talk, isn’t it?”
“No, man. I don’t think so. It happens more than you think.” I’ve seen this with soldiers—the loneliness, trying to ease their PTSD. And others who take their partying to the next level. I also know it sometimes takes hand-holding, a shove, to bring people to help. “I can help keep an eye out while I’m home. I’m glad you told me.”
A relieved smile splays across Matt’s face, with two layers of white showing under his facial hair. “Getting him a job here was a good thing. Baseball’s not keeping him busy enough. He’ll listen to you.”
“I think you mean I’m always pissing the guy off.”
“Better you than me,” he jokes, and after a few seconds, says in a serious tone, “Thanks.”
I hold out a fist, and Matt bumps it with his, volumes expressed in this show of solidarity. It eases the tension, and we begin the arduous work of hauling the construction waste to the rear of the restaurant, to True North’s overflowing Dumpster. Contractors mosey in and out of the space, working on the kitchen, while we vacuum up debris. We work until the sun’s high over the ocean and my stomach growls for chow.
My phone dings for the first time all day. I dive into the pocket of my shirt draped over a chair. I’m aware how desperate I look clamoring over and under tools to get to my phone, but I don’t give a damn.
“Someone’s expecting a call,” mutters Matt, and I flip him off. “Oh, someone is sensitive about this fact.”
“Watch it, Jensen.” I’m already thinking of where I should take Camille next. Alcatraz? A walk across the Golden Gate Bridge?
But it’s not Camille who’s texted. It’s my cousin Bryn. Coming to you with grub.
I text back: Sweet. I’m about to fall over. Bring triple. Matt’s with me and my pop should get here in five.
“I take it that it’s not who you hoped it would be,” Matt says.
“Nah. Bryn’s on her way with food.”
“Man, I wish I could stay.” He twists his wrist and looks at his watch. “Got practice.”
“Make sure you give Blake a hard time.”
“Yeah, I will.” Matt scoops up his wallet, phone, and hoodie, and plops his baseball cap halfway on his head. He shuffles out the door as Bryn slinks in. He greets her with his usual: “Hey, lil’ bit.”
“I’m not two, Matt. Don’t need to call me little.”
The guy huffs. “Known each other for twenty years and you still can’t loosen up.”
She rolls her eyes, sliding past me and offering a pained smile. “I brought dim sum: chicken feet, sesame balls, pork buns, steamed dumplings. All your favorites. Mr. Chang tried to push his roasted duck. I kept telling him you don’t like duck, but he was so excited to find out you were home. So he gave me extra dumplings instead.”
“What’s up with you?” I interrupt my cousin’s nervous, out-of-control talk. Bryn has feelings under all that edge, even if she keeps it from everyone except us. Cotton candy wrapped in aluminum foil. Tita Janice, her mom and my aunt, died four years ago of a heart attack, and it changed her. Bryn was always type A, but after, she became a workaholic, spending all her time at True North working, finishing up undergrad studies, and now grad school.
“First-world problems.” She stuffs an entire sesame ball into her mouth. Takes her time to chew and swallow. “Stupid thesis I’ve got to finish. I’m trying to quit smoking, which is making me cranky as hell. And I’m stressed. Like, I know exactly what I want next after graduation, but I’m not sure if it’s the right thing to do.”
I swallow a dumpling whole, I’m so starved. “This is news to me. You want to do something else?”
“Hello? I love True North, but there’s something else out there for me. I’m not getting my MBA to be the manager of a restaurant. I want to open my own place. I dunno . . .” Her voice trails off.
“Do your dad and my dad know?”
“No. Hence my stress.” Another dumpling makes it to her mouth.
“I have arrived.” Pop’s voice echoes through the dining room, followed by his presence, arms opened like he’s Jesus himself. “And I have a surprise. Iho, Bryn, come look out back.”
“Speak of the devil,” Bryn whispers. “I’ll follow you guys out in a sec. Gotta make a call.”
The sun slices into my vision when I step outside into the alleyway.
“Isn’t she a beast?” My pop’s voice is laced with pride and triumph. He pats a rectangular structure under an opaque white plastic sheet, and with one swoop of his hand and a magician’s flair, snatches the cover off. Underneath is a gleaming three-tone-mahogany behemoth. An ark, big enough to shield the entire kitchen staff from a San Andreas Fault earthquake. “It’s the bar,” my father says, filling the silence.
I’m speechless, though my fingers are drawn to the bar top. Wood lacquer fills my nostrils, but all I see is the bottom line on the profit-and-loss spreadsheet clicking higher and higher into the red.
“You don’t like it?” Pop’s tone flattens.
I’m quick to answer to prevent him from taking offense. “It looks expensive. I mean, it’s gorgeous, though.”
“I got a great deal and negotiated some extras. C’mon, let’s start clearing the front so they can install the bar.”
Curiosity tugs at me. “How much was it?”
“Don’t worry your head about it.”
I try to silence the pessimism creeping up my throat, but fail. “I can tell, with the details. But there weren’t any simpler ones? With the new changes we made to the plans, won’t it cut into the money from Tito Ben?”
“Not worried. People won’t be able to resist this bar.”
I guffaw at this comment, surprising even myself. “I’m around enough soldiers who drink. Believe me, they don’t give a damn where they are as long as the drinks are cheap and are flowing.”
“We are in a completely different league, Andrew. We are in competition. The restaurant business is a race to the finish. Like the military, we restaurateurs are at war, too. We have our own enemies.”
I bite my tongue. There’s no use arguing, not even to point out the restaurant business is nothing like war. I turn away and lift a random box into my arms, the straight cardboard sides becoming a support for my fledgling spine. Here I am, an officer, and I can barely argue with this man whom I can outrun at a jog.
But dammit. He’s my dad, and I can’t leave the country with us pissed at each other. Call it my family’s culture or plain old cowardice, but it is what it is.
My pocket vibrates. At the same time, my dad’s phone chirps. I click on a group message, addressed to my dad and me.
It’s from Bryn: Come in!!!! SOSOSOSOS
“Shit,” I say. There would be time for all of this later. I burst into the kitchen, my father trailing behind me.
Bryn stands perfectly still, staring out of the restaurant windows.
The word Panini in graffiti-style letters. Blinking red and green lights. Bright pink wheel wells.
It’s a truck. The ugliest food truck I’ve ever seen. And it’s parked less than twenty feet away from the front door, blocking the view of the beach and the afternoon sun from streaming through the windows.
I hear the click and the whirr of the truck’s generator come to life. Then a woman wearing a baseball cap jumps out. She props up an awning, assisted by someone inside.
Seconds pass with neither me, my father, nor Bryn saying a word.
“What the hell?” I can’t tear my eyes away from the spectacle.
“That,” my father mutters, “that is our enemy.”