6
DREW
May 14
Camille,
Testing, one, two, three. Is this you? I woke up to the smell of muffins, but to an empty bed. First thing I wondered was if I dreamt you up. Don’t answer that, because I don’t want to know if I did. Let’s pretend you’re real—you left me your email because you want to keep in touch. If by chance your address is legit, and a complete stranger isn’t actually reading this . . . I want to make it clear. I do not want money sent to a foreign country. This is not a scam for supercheap body-altering meds. What I want is to see you again. For a bona fide date. Or maybe not? Maybe for another batch of muffins?
Drew
I swallow my last bite of muffin as I slip into True North Cafe, my family’s Filipino restaurant. The dining room is dimmed from a PowerPoint presentation in progress. Heads are turned to a wall that’s been stripped of a framed painting of Malacañang Palace, the White House of the Philippines, so I think I’m safe when I finally slide into a plastic seat next to my cousin Bryn. That is, until my father, Ritchie, glances at his watch.
“Nice of you to show up, Andrew,” he says.
Shit.
“Happy to be here.” I shrug off the icy welcome, keeping my own insecurity at bay. Tardiness isn’t my style, and the military didn’t have to teach me punctuality. I’ve never subscribed to island time, and five minutes early is my MO.
Except for this morning, when I swore I woke up in the wrong apartment, two hours after an alarm I thought I set.
I was lucky to get out the door with my shoes on.
My flippant answer earns a scrutinizing glare from my pop. He is the epitome of proper grooming with his combed hair, immaculate personalized chef’s jacket, and eye-watering cologne. No doubt my unshaven face and wrinkled shirt are unsatisfactory for the great Chef Ritchie Bautista.
“Jet lag, I bet. It’s hard to head west,” my uncle Ben chimes, arms crossed over his tailored suit. Sitting on a barstool next to the cashier counter, he’s giving me a low-down stare. The kind where he’s telling me to play nice and not talk back. “Welcome home, buddy.”
“Thanks, Tito.” I’m grateful for the save and say the Tagalog word for uncle with extra fluff. As my mother’s brother and the eldest on both sides of the immediate family, Ben Aquino has always been an untouchable. Thankfully he’s always had my back. Still, I’m surprised he’s here. Tito Ben is the restaurant’s one and only silent investor, and it’s not his style to get involved.
I look at Bryn to glean some answers as to why her father’s here, and more important, why I had to be here today. She is True North’s manager. But with her hair pulled tight and coiled on top of her head, she answers me with pursed lips, and her eyes scream at me to shut my ass up. To be agreeable.
“He can speak for himself. Surely they taught him to do that in the Army,” my dad says.
A rumbling begins from the pit of my belly. It’s an instinctive reaction to my father’s criticism. It never fails that when I’m with my dad, I’m never old enough, wise enough. So I fall into the role of the immature, irresponsible child he thinks I am. “Had a great time celebrating last night. You know what they say, what happens on leave . . .” I clasp my hands behind my head and wink for effect.
I know I should shut up. I should get through this restaurant meeting as swiftly as possible, but I’m still seeing spots. I was sideswiped. Duped. The victim of an almost-one-night stand who woke up to cinnamon muffins and an email address. And now I’m coming to a meeting blind. What else could go wrong? “Anyway, you guys wanna catch me up?”
Tito Ben sighs.
My father shakes his head as if giving up. He goes to his computer, perched on the hostess podium. He clicks to the next slide, labeled New Plans.
Bryn pushes a stapled copy of the printed slides to me. She circles a number on the bottom of the page and taps it twice with the pen.
I’m not a spreadsheet kind of guy, but it doesn’t take an accountant to know what I’m reading is a proposal for a whole restaurant renovation. The outlined cost is astronomical. “Whoa. Is this right? You’re redoing everything?”
My father sighs. “We must, to keep up. As it is, we don’t have the right space for the market we are trying to serve.”
“Is True North in trouble?”
I’m answered by a nod.
I bite my cheek, allowing the weight of this news to settle on my shoulders. Why don’t I know this? Oh right, because I never took his calls. I erased his messages, so pissed he gave me hell for choosing the Army over the restaurant. And my mother, probably playing the good cop, never talked about the business until I told her a spot at Fort Pershing, an Army post north of the city, opened up. Then she was all about getting me stationed closer to home, promising me peace. She insisted my entire leave time before deployment would be spent “bonding” with my father.
Now I wonder if bonding was ever on Pop’s docket.
“Turn to page five.” He clicks through to the next slide.
The page shows a before-and-after sketch of the dining room. The next is one of the kitchen. While the rest of the staff oohs and ahhs at the brand-name equipment, the planned kitchen concept and bar, I shut my eyes to the madness. Everything has been turned on its head.
“This doesn’t make any sense.” My voice rises above the rumble of chatter.
“Iho,” Pop says. Son. He says it softly, almost desperately. “Let me get through this.”
I press my fingers against my eyes. “Okay.”
Pop turns up his salesmanship, voice resonating as he paces. “True North has suffered quite a few setbacks this last year, the worst in the eight years it’s been open, and we’ve taken quite a hit. Honestly? We don’t have much time. I’ve spoken to business owners in the neighborhood and looked at the trends. Many restaurants have either downsized or taken a riskier direction. Bottom line: they changed their market. We’re one of a handful of restaurants near Ocean Beach, and the only Filipino restaurant for a good ten square miles. We have a chance to step away from the mom-and-pop concept. We need to snag tourists who are here, on this side of the city.”
“You want True North to become an upscale restaurant,” I interrupt. “You want to take your comfort food and put it on white tablecloths.”
He shakes his head. “We want to elevate the experience, exhibit Filipino food as an equal contender in the Asian food market in the city. Bryn, do you know what we sell most of?”
“Lumpia,” she answers.
“Right. The Filipino egg roll. A finger food. The second best?”
“Halo-halo.”
He nods. “The Filipino sundae, a dessert. Also a quickie. Can you take a guess, in the last month, what percentage of customers have ordered from the main entrée menu?” A pause. “Ten percent.”
I pipe up. “Which means we have to fix the menu, not take down walls or buy new furniture. We do risk assessments all the time in the Army. Do the least intervention with maximum return, rather than the other way around.”
Tito Ben nods, as if he didn’t expect me to fire back. In contrast, Pop’s face scrunches inward. I know better than to challenge my father in front of an audience. But the idea of renovating when the restaurant is failing is ludicrous.
“Let me walk you through this, since you haven’t bothered to be interested in the family business the last few years.” Pop approaches me and flips the page of the pamphlet in front of me, as if I needed help to do that, too. “The trend in the city calls for quick food, limited menu, lots of great drinks, upscale atmosphere. If we want to survive, we have to invest.”
I’m not sure what’s worse, being made to feel like I’m an insensitive prick or being too cowardly to do nothing about it. I want to scream my next words, but miraculously keep my voice lowered. “Then why am I here? I don’t work here anymore. You obviously have everything planned. I assume the investment has been made, right, Tito?” I sweep a glance toward my uncle, not meaning to add him to the reasons why I’m so pissed this morning. But the fact remains that Chef Ritchie’s obsession with growing a restaurant—the thing that always came between us—has been enabled and funded all these years by my uncle.
Tito Ben’s eyes cast downward. “Iho, there’s no need for disrespect. Your mom and dad asked me to help, and of course I will. You are family. I am an investor. I trust the decisions of my clients and prefer to be uninvolved. I’d rather not even know.” He looks at my father, almost regretfully. “I’m here today simply to show support.”
“That’s good for you all then,” I say, feet shifting. Despite having contact on the ground, I feel no control over them whatsoever. Nothing feels real.
The standoff is shattered when the kitchen door swings inward. My mother, Ramona, walks in. She’s wearing the restaurant’s apron, face flushed from the heat of the kitchen. With her wafts the smell of home, of pandesal. Just the thought of her handmade dinner rolls instantly takes me off my soapbox. When she spots me, she sends me a flying kiss. I pretend to catch it out of habit.
Mom and her perfect timing.
“You’re here because I need your help.” My father’s words redirect me. “We need muscle. We have contractors lined up, but it will be cheaper if we do the odds and ends on our own. I also need someone to direct traffic. That’s where you come in, Andrew. You tell me you’re a leader, an engineer in the Army. Consider True North your personal project.”
My mind grinds to a halt, and a dry laugh escapes me. My gaze snaps to my mother, whose smile wanes. “Now I understand, Ma.”
“Can I get a minute?” Bryn’s voice signals the end of a round. She lifts me up by the shoulders, off my chair. “C’mon, pogi.”
We make our way around the three-person tables in the dining room, through the kitchen, to the one-car parking spot behind the restaurant. Beyond the small lot is Ocean Beach. Whitecapped waves slam against the shore while seagulls dive for their meal. The surf is dotted with fully clothed visitors, some attempting to dip their toes in the water.
I shake my head. It’s May—are those people crazy? Ocean Beach, by default, is frigid every day of the year, but the average water temp in May is fifty degrees.
Bryn digs out a cigarette from her pocket and lights it. The tattoo on her neck contorts as if it’s being swayed by the wind. Although at twenty-seven she’s a couple of years older than me, with her baby face—sans cigarette and her scowl—she could pass for twelve.
She takes a drag. “You okay?”
“No.” I don’t want to talk about the thing she witnessed inside. That would mean it really happened. “I hate it when you call me that.”
“What?”
“Pogi.”
“But you are adorable.” Her tone is sincere, and it assuages the tension in my body. She leans back against the door of her Mini Cooper. “I’m sorry I didn’t warn you about today. I swear I didn’t know. I mean, I knew about the renovation, but not that you would be working all month.”
“I left to get away from this.”
“I know.” She holds a breath, then exhales slowly. Smoke billows around us. “You look like crap. What happened last night?”
The thought flips me 180 degrees. The memory of Camille’s body tackles me, and instead of Bryn’s cigarette, I smell Camille’s hair and skin.
She snickers. “You’re smiling. I’m guessing you had some fun?”
I will my face to pucker into itself. When Bryn barks out a laugh, I know I’m failing. Miserably. “It was a blast from the past,” I say.
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah, as in high school.”
“Damn. I don’t even remember half my classmates.” Three drags in and the stick is half gone. She drops the cigarette onto the cement and smashes it with her kitchen clogs. “I hated high school.”
“I loved high school.” Looking away, I train my eyes on the seagulls congregating on the beach’s rock wall. “She made me muffins. Left a note and an email address, and that was it. I emailed her this morning, but who knows if it’s fake.”
Bryn coughs. “She baked?”
“I know.” I pull out the crumpled paper towel.
Bryn skims the short note. “Look at that, you were pwned by a one-night stand. No wonder you’re being a shit.”
“Okay, let’s get this straight. One, she and I didn’t sleep together, so technically it wasn’t a one-night stand. Two, you’re not gonna guilt me about what happened in there. My mother gave me all this grief that Pop needed me. That he was ready to make amends. Come to find out what he really wants is for me to lift pallets and hang pictures. And for what? To be nagged every day?”
Bryn braces my shoulders. At five feet tall, her arms stretch to gap the eleven-inch disparity. “Chill, think a second. If it was as simple as that, they would have hired someone. You’ve also got to ask yourself why you came running home so fast, and why you took the assignment closer to home. It’s because you knew it was the right thing to do. You are their freaking only child. Besides, as much as I love this business, I hate everyone thinking I’m their kid. Your mom loves to wear those muumuus I can’t hang with.” She grins. “They miss and love you. You miss and love them. They need you to help them. And you can’t get all soft before you head off to Iraq, right? Lifting those pallets could help that cause.”
I shake my head, though too tired to fight back. “I can’t believe I’ve been volun-told.”
She plants her hands on her hips. “ ‘Volun-told’? What the hell is that?”
“You know. Make it seem like you volunteered but you were actually told?” Exasperation crackles through my words. “Army speak.”
“So do something about it. Give him your ideas. Help him spend his money wisely. You know the man. He can’t make sense of anything practical, and that’s your thing.” She pulls me by the elbow.
I let Bryn drag me, resigned. Not like I have another choice. I’m still my father’s son, whether or not I agree with his decisions. I can’t say no to something as simple as “directing traffic” if it will fix our relationship.
Bryn holds the back door open. “Anyway, you can’t not look for that girl now. You won’t be able to get your head on straight until you do.”
“If she wants to be found.” I look back at the car. “Wait. How did you get the prime spot back here?”
“Oh, cousin, you’ve forgotten I’m the eldest. Enough said.”