Love Me Back (8 page)

As I was restocking some coffee mugs Craig called out that he had comped the bill and I could rerun my cashout. Can you back out the sales? I asked. He looked at me again like I was the wolf in the darkness. No, he said. We still had the cost. I know, but I have to tip out on money I didn’t get tipped on, I said. Sorry, he said, refilling his water bottle from a gallon jug under the desk in the office. The office was next to the back door and as I was standing there trying to calculate how much I had paid to wait on them Pedro the busser walked up to the door with a bus tub so full the mound of dirty plates obscured most of his face. I took a step toward the door to open it for him and as I held it I happened to look down. There it was, lodged in the frame of the door. Their black Citi MasterCard. Craig! I yelled. Don’t yell! he hissed from the office. I found it! I said. Look! He stepped out of the office. What the hell? he said. I pointed at the card. Seriously? he said skeptically. No, I said, I’ve had it in my pocket all this time because I just wanted to screw myself,
but I changed my mind and stuck it in the door so I could look like a moron too.

What is going on here? said Marlo from behind me. You need to watch your tone.

I didn’t mean it like that, Craig said to me, ignoring her. I just meant—this place, he said, shaking his head.

I’m sorry, I said to both of them.

Marlo was one who never backed down, but she performed the duties of power awkwardly, like a child playing teacher. Bossing people around while checking with herself every minute to see if she really meant it. She said If you’re not helping out you should go home, and walked outside. We watched her griping at Zeke for not refilling his pepper shakers.

She hates me, I said to Craig.

No she doesn’t, said Craig. Her husband has Crohn’s disease. He’d be super cute if he wasn’t shaped like a chop-stick with a head.

Do you have anything to say? Marlo repeated.

Well, I’d like to keep my job, I said to Marlo, who was already leaning out of the booth. It took me too long to come up with that unconvincing response but it was all I could think of to mask the panic. I’d looked outside and indulged the thought of never having to fix another wobbly patio table with sugar packets or check presenters for a split second but I didn’t know anyone in Dallas then except for the people at my restaurants. I was a month behind on my car payment.
Sometimes I would pick up a dinner shift at the Italian place if they had scheduled me off just because they served a family meal for all the waiters and kitchen staff before service.

I’m sorry, she said. You were stealing. You’re lucky I’m only firing you.

I nodded and looked down at my crossword. First PM of Burma. Marlo walked away. I thought I might cry so I dug the fingernails of my right hand into my left arm until it stopped. I left my plate with the scone and my glass of water and the crossword on the table and walked slowly to my car. I called Marshall, my boss at the Italian place, and asked for the night off. He said Sure, because I had never asked. You work too much, he said. Enjoy it.

Then I called Tanya. They fired me, I said. What the fuck?! she said. That fucking bitch.

She didn’t ask why they fired me. Come over, she said. Have a beer. That just sucks.

I didn’t really want to hang out with Tanya but I said Okay. It felt like school was out for the summer. Towel thrown, game over.

We drank Michelob Ultras. She had a generic one-bedroom apartment in Uptown, the kind they put corporate guys in for long projects. It was nice enough only if you knew you were going home before long. She put on some weird techno house music through her computer and we sat on her couch watching the screen saver—colored straws of light spinning and lengthening. She said You’re too good for that place anyway. She touched her fingers to my hair and pretended like she wasn’t doing anything. I looked down at her other hand wrapped around her beer. Something was wrong
with her thumb. It looked like soggy bread. She saw me looking and said, Bar rot. I know it’s gross. Sorry. She stood up so I couldn’t see her thumb anymore. I’ve just been doing this too long, she said. She took off her shirt and pulled the band out of her hair so it fell around her shoulders but it still looked mullety. She undid her bra with one hand and let it fall off. She wasn’t pretty but she did have attractive breasts. I had never seen another woman’s breasts until then. I came from such modest people. She kissed me. I didn’t want to be there. So stupid. She unbuttoned my pants. I felt her breasts with both my hands. I didn’t know what to do with them. I was fascinated but I was kneading them like dough. She looked annoyed. Take these off, she said, jerking on my belt so I fell back on the couch. She yanked off my pants and my panties and then her gruff momentum snagged. You don’t shave? she said. No, I said. Should I?

How do I get to it in all that? she asked, waving imprecisely toward my groin. I guess I should go, I said. I have to work. At least I still have one job.

I stood up and pulled on my pants. I left my underwear on her floor. Thanks for the beer, I said.

Hey, wait! she said. It’s just—she looked around the room. You should come into Monica’s for a drink sometime. On me, she said, raising her hands like she didn’t have a weapon. Her tits splayed out and then swung back together. I’m there every night but Sunday, she said. See you later, I said.

If I wasn’t at work I felt like I should go be with my daughter. I got in my car. I put the key in the ignition. Ana, I said. Ana.

I hate flying. There’s always a moment somewhere in the middle of the flight when I feel shocked that I have put myself there, thirty-five thousand feet off the ground. Strapped into a metal coffin. After I moved out I kept having a similar sensation, especially when I was driving home from work. Like there was nothing I could do to get back to ground except crash or stay the course.

It was almost four. I went to my apartment where I lived without Ana and got into bed with my clothes on. I fell asleep aching for her. Her body was the only real thing. Her voice.

I woke up because my phone was ringing. Dream, said the caller ID. It looked dark outside. You never want to answer a call from your restaurant. Someone is sick or no-call no-showed and they want you to come in, or they’re just extra busy and they want you to come in, or it’s dead and they’re telling you not to come in when you really needed the money. I didn’t answer. I don’t work there, I said to my phone. I turned over and tried to go back to sleep. The phone said it was 6:47 a.m. It rang again. Dream. I didn’t answer. I went back to sleep.

I woke up again in the afternoon and remembered I was fired. I had two new voicemails, both from Craig. In the first one he was asking me where I was because I was supposed to open and Elaine was there already. Elaine came in every weekday for breakfast. We didn’t open until seven but she was always waiting in her Maybach in the parking lot by
quarter till, and if she saw us inside setting up sometimes she would come in early. She drank an entire pitcher of iced tea—she told us to leave the pitcher on the table—and had one piece of sausage and one sliced avocado. She tipped well, almost always five on five. She reviewed documents for an hour and drank her tea and you gave her a to-go cup with the bill.

In the second message he said he’d spoken with Marlo and she’d told him I was fired. He said he told her they needed me, and then he said So you’re not fired. I’m sorry about that but please come back to work tomorrow. That’s when I cried. Because I was relieved I wasn’t fired. Because I hated that I wasn’t fired. Because I was crying over that shit job. Because of Tanya’s thumb. I got up and went into the bathroom and took my box cutter out of the drawer and sliced a horizontal stripe across my thigh. Fuck you! I said to myself. I sliced another stripe below the first one. Suck it up, you whiny little turd, I said. Or what, I screamed, cutting a third line in. Blood was running down my leg and pooling at the top of my sock but the cuts didn’t hurt as much as the crackling in my brain, or seeing my face in the mirror.

If you want to keep working here you need to wear some makeup, said Marlo. You always look tired. Put some concealer on those, she said, looking toward my head but not into my eyes. I never had acne as an adolescent or ever until I started working in restaurants. At the Dream Café it got worse. I was always breaking out around my mouth even though I was careful to never touch my face. And I want you
to wear a long-sleeved shirt under your Dream shirt. What are all those marks?

Burns, I said. There were dots and dashes of scar tissue up and down the inside and outside of both of my arms. They were uniformly spaced and reminded me of a fretboard. And other things. The deepest ones took several years to heal. Or fully scar, or whatever the curing process is called. So some of them were still pink and bright.

I bought three waffle-knit thermal undershirts at Goodwill and kept working at the Dream Café.

What are all those marks? asked Zeke. At first I’d thought he was gay because of the way he walked but it turned out he was just a nerd. We started doing my crossword together and sharing food. Together we could do the Thursday and sometimes the Friday. I had been at the Dream for nine months then and of the servers he and Tanya were the only ones who’d been there longer. Eventually we went back to his place after a brunch shift. His place was disgusting. It was an efficiency at Lovers and Skillman and it was filthy and dark. Everything was black. I still take wide detours around that intersection because I don’t want to think about it. There was one window but he had covered it with a blackout curtain. He had two cats and it smelled like cat shit. His bed was gritty from litter that came off the cats’ paws. They’re burns, I said. So you’re one of those, he said. One of what? I said. His computer chimed and he got up off the bed where we had been making out. Hold on, he said. This girl in Japan died. We’re having an online wake for her. Someone
you knew? I asked. Yes, he said. I mean, just online, but we in-game chatted all the time. He typed something and then he came back to the bed, which was only one step from the computer desk. We started kissing again and then we moved on. I went into my bathroom and shut the door and turned on the water. I changed the carpet to be fluffy and white and gave myself a big white robe and smooth legs. I erased all the rust marks from around the drain in the bathtub and erased all the dull gray that wasn’t anything but old calcified faded grime until the bathtub was spotless. Then I just got rid of that bathtub and started over with a brand-new claw-foot that no one had ever bathed in but me. I took out the toilet and put it in one of those tiny rooms that has its own door. I put in a couch next to the bathtub so I could lie on the couch and watch the water run. I made the bathtub deeper so the water could run longer. I upholstered the couch in the fluffy white carpet so it felt like I was still lying on the floor. Hey, said Zeke. Marie. Hey.