Love Me Back (18 page)

One night one of his call parties didn’t come through for him, this German-American guy Konstantin who brought in big business clients and left Cal somewhere between fifty and eighty percent on tabs that were never less than five hundred and could push up on four grand depending on how many guys he had with him and what he wanted out of them. On this particular night Konstantin was distracted or drunk when he signed the credit card voucher and tipped Cal $300 on $1,620, a figure that any one of us would have called a good night. Cal called it cheap and called it to Konstantin’s face.

See, anybody else would have been fired for that. If a guest says to you Did we take care of you? after paying the bill the only possible answer is an effusive Yes, thank you for asking. Doesn’t matter if they didn’t. Like it doesn’t matter if they’ve been sitting there for two hours after the dishwasher left for the night, if they say Are we keeping you? the only possible answer is Oh no, sir, the place is yours.

Cal went up to Konstantin in the lobby where he was still working these Japanese guys, trying to get them all in cabs to the strip club, and made it clear he needed to talk to him immediately, and when Konstantin said What’s up,
my brother? Cal pulled him aside and opened the check presenter like he found a turd in it and showed it to Konstantin and said What is this?

Konstantin went all meek and said Oh did I fuck up? And Cal said I don’t know Kon you tell me, but usually I see something closer to what I’m worth on this line. Is that what you think I was worth tonight? Something you weren’t happy with? Because it seemed like all your guys had a great time and it seemed like they was going the way you wanted em to.

I’m not sure how he got Konstantin to think that the multimillion-dollar deal he had just closed succeeded in part because of Cal’s excellent service but Konstantin rescribbled the tip in as $900 and said to Cal Is that more like it? I’m sorry, my man, I didn’t mean anything by it. You know you’re my guy here. And Cal had the audacity to shake his hand and say stiffly, still trying to be cold, That’s what I thought but I was about to have to let somebody else be your guy here and Konstantin said I feel you, we straight?

You should have seen Nic Martinez doing his impression of Konstantin later in the parking lot. A Mexican doing a German trying to be black. Nic took a puff of Cal’s one-hitter and passed it to Cal and then put his hand on Cal’s biceps and said I feel you Cal my man my brotha my nigg we straight? You my homey right? You vant a couple more bills? You vant me to lick your nuts? and then he was laughing so hard, so crazy, he was leaning over in front of Cal, still holding on to his arm and coughing from the big hit he was trying to hold in and say at the same time Teach me how to get my own German, massa! Teach me!

Cal was holding up straight, letting a smile stay in his cheeks but looking at his pipe all serious, knocking the cache out, reloading. I know he knew his muscle was popping out strong with Nic hanging on him like that and he took pride in that and pride in his balls-out way with “his people,” as he called his call parties. Ain’t nothing to teach, he said to Nic, just got to be you and bring it.

He looked bronze with the streetlight shining on him, reflecting off his white undershirt. He looked the same color as Nic but he was really a goldish cinnamon. He said he was ochre, terra-cotta, and sepia, colors a former girlfriend, a painter, gave him. He liked that. He was always painting himself for me.

I mean did he really feel that way about himself though—the way he made it look in the bank suit, the way he made it look with Nic hanging on him. Where was the nugget you couldn’t massage or change or put a pinstripe on and was it that confident. Was that kernel whole and well or was it sad, smacked out, lost. I don’t know but I think a showman is all show. There’s no secret—or there is, and that’s it. Like when I asked Danny if that scotch rep Alyssa’s tits were real and he said Yeah they’re real—real fake.

Cal would have a little taste, as he called it, near the end of the shift when nobody was looking, a taste of Grand Marnier neat. Danny didn’t care as long as the guests didn’t see and Danny was usually drinking with him anyway. Cal’s taste would become two or three tastes and then he would get so frisky, he would start touching all the women—servers, guests, the pastry chef—like you trail your hand through cattails out on a skiff. Pleased, enjoying the weather, nature.

One night after a few tastes he sat down with Doc Melton’s woman—Doc wasn’t there, and Doc was one of his big men, the ones who kept him on a sick and regular payroll of inflated gratuities at The Restaurant and threw in extras like Mavs tickets. Cal sat down with Cassandra Melton and he told me all about how he felt her up under the table, his fingers on her pussy lips, how fluffed and slick they were and how she sat into it delicately. He did this and after she and her girlfriends left, after he kissed her on each cheek, he came over to me and Danny where we were doing tequila shots at the corner of the bar. He was flying. Oh my Gawd, he said touching his fingers to his lips, that pussy. I can’t believe I haven’t been getting none of that. Why don’t you Cal, I asked, why don’t you just take it, always complaining about how long it’s been since somebody took care of you at home. Fuck knows it’s on offer for you everywhere you go.

No, he said. Can’t do that. I’ll touch me some titties and some pussy but I won’t do
that
. Cal, that is such bullshit, I said, and he said You just say that because you want me to cross over. I do want you to cross over, I said, but it’s still bull.

That was the summer Cal would come over to my apartment after he got off from the bank, before we had to be in at The Restaurant. Those were warm afternoons, my apartment toasting the Texas sun through big old perfect windows. I moved into that place when I saw the money I was making at The Restaurant. I bought that car too. You can make good money—high fives if you really push, low
sixes if you’re Cal—but you never lose the feeling that it’s fragile, your connection to the money. That place I lived in after I first got that connection, it was small and expensive but it was clean and bright and everything was nice. The carpet was thick and new and Cal and I would scuffle on it every afternoon. His kisses. His face—so soft—Your face! I’d say—I take care of myself, Mami, it’s what you got to do he’d murmur—his lips hot, fresh.

That much he allowed. But even if he was stripped down, his suit draped carefully across the back of the loveseat, his white V-neck undershirt tucked into his white boxer briefs, he wouldn’t allow me to touch him. I reached and he said No, don’t do that. We can’t. Mama gon kick me to the curve, I might as well move in.

Okay, I said, move in. I’m ready.

You not ready. You don’t know. Why you always want more.

You want it too.

I do. No doubt. But you think we ought to touch outside of our want?

He was forty-four and I was twenty-two but he was in better shape. His waist as trim as mine, his pecs tortoiseshells, his quads modeling those boxer briefs. Before The Restaurant he used to train the Highland Park moms at Gold’s. He still got up at four every day to do his reps—pushups, crunches, curls—before his daughter woke, then he’d make breakfast and take her to school. That was his time with her. Home late, never to bed before two or three in the morning, the office afternoon would fall on him like a tree. Him in that bank chair, sleeping upright in that suit.

So his excuse for coming over was he needed a nap. Only once did we actually nap—or he did, sleeping clean and gentle in his whites. I lay behind him, my hand on his thigh, breathing in the warm buttery smell of his neck, afraid to move, afraid to sleep and miss his sleeping in my arms, as if he were a comet, an eclipse, a papal visit. Not just a man pausing on me, a bead in his rosary.

But usually we rolled around on the floor, I listened to him talk, I begged for it, then I’d give up and go take a shower and he’d watch me start to finish, hand me the towel. Once he said You got a body too. Baby Rie-rie, lil M, look at those big nipples she got. Ugh. I could work with those big gumdrops and that bush. Real woman got a bushy bush like that, don’t know what all this mess with some naked pussy lips is for.

Don’t talk about it if you don’t want it, I said. You’re not for real. I’m for real. I’m ready.

You sure not ready for work, he said, looking at his watch, changing the subject. Looking at his fingernails. He got them buffed every Saturday, they were always shiny. His shoes too. He’d drop off one pair and pick up another. He had some military standards. He believed in the power of systems and order to manifest success. He believed in every clichéd thing about the power of belief. He believed in believing in belief. I tell my baby she not allowed to use the word can’t, he said. And he said I don’t get sick cause I just refuse to. You tell yourself Oh I’m sick—he said this in a whiny puny voice, screwing up his face—you sure enough will be.

That swaggering, who knew it wasn’t his belief in himself that made it all go. That it did work if you worked it. I
was never that certain about anything. That’s your problem, he said, you doubt yourself. You got to want it. I do want it, I said. Nah you don’t. Not if you don’t know you want it. What’s that big dark thing behind you? he said, and I said I don’t know, what, showing him I was impatient with whatever lesson was coming. That’s the shadow of a doubt and you best deal with it right here right now.

What I wanted was some jack. Make that jack, baby, make that jack. Another of his mantras. I got to get out there and make that jack, he said in the back station at The Restaurant, taking a long draw of his protein-ginseng-vitamin smoothie before heading out into the dining room with purpose. I wanted to know how to do what he did. Conjury. Turning dinner into livelihood, wealth, stability. My girl lived in a one-bedroom apartment with her dad, she slept on a futon in the living room. Cal’s daughter lived in a giant suburban house with both her parents and took ballet. It’s not that I even wanted a giant suburban house for her. I just wanted her to have something from me, anything better than absence.

Cal’s daughter Elena, he got her in with this modeling agency. That was him—that belief in the most pressing uniqueness of his own life. No question. My daughter was beautiful too, at three she had flossy red hair down to her waist and strangers would use adult beauty words to describe her, like gorgeous. But I was always thinking something like
Nothing is really all that special
.

Cal was always thinking the opposite. And his daughter was what modeling agencies look for these days, a mixed-race child with fluffy hair and skin that one caramel Polynesian
shade. She was tall, five feet when she was eight, with long delicate bones. Like Cal’s having her in ballet and modeling from the time she was small made her that way or something. Like he willed it. He said Man, Maxine will not have that talk with her and I keep getting on to her, telling her it should be a young lady’s mother has that talk. She’s dangerous, she looks too old, boys gonna be after her in a minute and she so young inside still. I told Max she don’t talk to her by her next birthday I’m gonna do it my own self, he said.

Max was Mexican, from Laredo. Cal said After my first marriage I knew the next one would be outside my race, but he never explained that or how he knew. His first wife Tamara was a black woman; they had a baby that was stillborn and took the marriage with it. Angeline, tattooed on his heart, scroll, script.