Bella (7 page)

“Who's going to run the line?” Pieter asked.

“José is gonna run the line.”

That was that. He'd come back. José had no life, no place to go, nothing really to do with himself. He'd closed himself in. He'd be back. Besides that, he had to be. Because when it came down to it, José knew how to run that line better
than anyone at El Callejon. There was no getting around it.

“What's the matter with you? You sick?” Manny asked.

Pieter shook his head. “No.”

“Because I need you, man. You can't bug out on me like Nina. And what's the matter with that girl anyway? You know?”

Pieter shook his head again and made for the door.

“Everybody's flaking out on me today,” he mumbled, reaching for a roll of antacids in his jacket pocket.

Nine

N
ina and José sat on the subway train, the sickening fluorescent lights turning everybody's skin a shade yellower than was normal. Light yellow. Yellow ochre. Golden brown. The car was packed, some unfortunate people hanging on to the overhead bars. Nina fixed her eyes on a particularly dark man with baby dreads and full-grown bling, a large gold cross hanging from a thick chain around his neck. His high cheekbones as well as his dark glasses reflected the lights. She suspected he might be asleep behind those glasses. Lucky guy. Because here she sat with José, who was trying to be supportive but couldn't seem to say a word. Any conversation Nina ever had with José had been superficial. Friendly, yes, warm, somewhat, but never anything of internal importance to either of them. How could it be? She basically talked and asked him yes-or-no questions.

Why are you here?
she wanted to ask him. She wanted to turn to him and say she didn't know what was driving his sudden need to befriend her, but . . . but what would she say after that? I'm glad you're here? I'm lonely and have nobody else, really? Gee, you know underneath that big beard you're pretty cute? And hey, as long as we're talking, why the beard in the first place?

She rolled her eyes, berating herself for being stuck in this situation. And there sat a pregnant woman three seats away rubbing her protruding belly. Just what she needed to see. A little girl, probably four years old with a dozen twisted ponytails and a gold hoop in each ear, stared at her, huge brown eyes stuck in her perfect brown skin like buttons on a pillow. She lifted her angel lips in half a smile.

Nina looked away.

None of that. Cute little people were what babies turned into. And babies, well, she didn't want to think about babies right now.

Four teenagers pulled out some five-gallon buckets, a shaker, and some cans. “Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen!” said what appeared to be the youngest of the group, his hair in cornrows, his smile, too many gold teeth notwithstanding, that of a born showman. “We are the Drumatics, and we would like to entertain you. After our presentation, donations will gladly be accepted.”

The rhythm began, the hollow
thunk
of the buckets and the echoing metallic thrumming of the cans, the scratch of the shakers—back and forth, back and forth.

Oh man
, Nina thought. It was one thing when performers did their thing in the stations. You could turn your back. You could walk away. You could turn up your MP3 player. But now they were stuck between here and there, at the mercy of all this noise.

The teen moved and clapped along with the percussionists, his open smile inviting people to join him in enjoying such amazing feats of rhythm—or something. A couple of tourists clapped. The rest, jaded New Yorkers like Nina, hunkered down into their magazines and newspapers. They didn't ask for this.

Nina held Bubbles, squeezing the little bear more and more tightly as the drumming increased in intensity. She looked down at her hands, trying to think about something else, trying not to feel so awkward next to José, who quite honestly looked like
he
wasn't actually sitting in the train, as if he'd hired some stand-in to sit there and let the everyday things of this world roll off his back.

“Give it! Give it!”

What now?

She twisted Bubbles's arm.

Two seats down and across the aisle a woman sat with her grandson who stood with his feet planted firmly apart, screaming and yanking on the plastic sword she held at the hilt.

“Give it to me!”

Little brat.

“No, sweetie. It's too dangerous on the subway. You could hurt someone.”

The Drumatics, in an attempt to drown out the boy, turned up the volume even further.

“Give it! Give it!”

Pull and yank and scream and yell.

“No!” the grandmother, not to be outdone, hollered back.

The hands of the drummers moved faster and faster, the
thunks
and
pops
slamming into Nina's head.

She twisted Bubbles in her hands. Harder and harder.

This was turning out to be the longest subway ride she'd ever experienced. And while she knew the drummers were only trying to make a buck or two, she'd have appreciated a little quiet about now.

Oh, that's right. The little boy was still yelling anyway, his shrill screams and jutting lip calling attention to just how wonderful child raising can be. Right?

Right?

The brakes squealed as the train pulled into the station.

What was she going to do with José? Invite him back to her apartment? What would they say to each other? She felt fresh out of good ideas.

Guess I'm a little preoccupied.

She knew he had a secret. But Manny stayed mum, and if any of the staff knew what had dragged José into the realm of the walking wounded, none were letting on. Not that they didn't hypothesize: unrequited love, a crime on which he was waiting out the statute of limitations, some even thought he might be a burnout. Nina didn't. He wasn't that far gone.
Tortured
and
gone
were two different things.

Anytime a new waitress came, she ended up with a crush on José that lasted about a week until she realized there was no hope in starting up something with him. Even Nina had felt a pleasant little tumble of the stomach when Manny first brought him in, but, well, there was too much baggage there, obviously, and she definitely did not need more of that, no matter how nice-looking the luggage was.

The little girl, eyes wide, pointed to the bear and said, “Look.”

Bubbles's arm was torn almost complete off his body.

Nina glanced up at the girl, forced the tears back behind her eyes, and shoved the little bear into her backpack. “I'm sorry,” she whispered and stood to her feet.

José followed her off the train.

Manny had taken
off his jacket half an hour before. Sweat ran down his face. He rolled up his sleeves and wiped the perspiration away with his forearm. This was not good. Not good at all.

This was not a good day.

He spooned some sauce over the fish entrée he was plating. “It's all about the presentation,” he said to Pepito. “We don't need him. We don't need him.” If he said it with enough confidence, maybe they'd believe him. Maybe he'd believe himself.

José, José, José!

Pieter, as rushed as everybody else, hurried into the kitchen, picked up a knife, and began chopping green chiles. “Maybe your mother and father will know where to find him.”

Manny glanced sideways at his dining room manager. Truth was, Pieter, who'd never liked José, was always trying to undermine José's popularity with the kitchen staff and never made a dent. He had a cousin in Buffalo dying to move to New York, and Pieter wanted Manny to hire him as the chef. So Pieter always cast José in a bad light to Manny, but Manny saw through it. He kept Pieter on because Pieter knew where to find the freshest ingredients and had enough connections to negotiate the best prices delivered in the shortest amount of time. Not only that— Pieter was easy to boss around. Let him try his maneuverings; Manny would keep José on because José was his family and somehow they'd make things work.

He handed Marco the spoon. “Take over. I've got to make a call.”

Marco stepped on the line. “You got it.”

So Manny called and complained to his mother, getting her upset, trying not to make it seem like he was making her feel guilty for asking him to hire José in the first place, which was exactly what he was doing. And there she sat in her cozy house near the beach worrying.

Truth was, he would have called her eventually, but now he had Pieter to blame. Well, good. He paid Pieter well enough for that.

The line was quickly falling apart, food arrangements falling over as they sat on the window, runny sauces bleeding over from entrée into side dish. The beans had scorched in one of the first pots Manny had ever bought for the restaurant.

Yes, he had a sentimental side.

He could see José's raised brow. Sentimental? Or cheap?

He wanted to prove to the staff and to José that he could run this line just as well as anybody. But finally, enough was enough.

He picked up the glaring red phone on the wall, the one with buttons the size of tea bags, and punched in his brother's mobile number. Ringing began on the other end. Manny held up a hand as the ringing began. “Shh!”

He cocked his head to the left, listening. The ringing . . . was in the room?

There sat José's mobile phone near his usual post.

Manny picked it up, saw his own number fl ashing in the display, then slammed it down on the counter.

Ten

N
ina pulled out a ten and handed it to a clearly relieved Carla. “Thank you so much.”

“No problem.” Carla eyed José with suspicion. Nina wanted to laugh. If this baby was José's, she wouldn't be in the same pickle. José would take care of his responsibilities by doing something more than suggesting “halvsies,” that was for sure.

Pregnancy kit paid for. Good.

She turned to José. “Want to go to the park?” That was a lot better than her apartment.

“Okay.”

They stepped out into the sunlight, walked in yet more silence to the park bench. They sat down as a group of Haitian nannies, their charges in strollers, crossed the sidewalk in front of them. This mystified Nina. “I thought the point of having children was to raise them. You know the parents make enough money to support three families. They should stroll their own babies.”

It was bad enough her father was not around because he had died.
Imagine
, she thought,
never having your parents
around and they weren't dead?
Yeah, that would make a kid feel really special. All the nice clothes, good schools, and positive messages on PBS kids' shows couldn't counteract all that. Well, her kid, when she had one someday, wouldn't have to worry about never seeing her. She wouldn't be that kind of mom.

You're already a mom.

Oh, shut up
, she thought.

José stood up and slipped a hand in the front pocket of his jeans. He dug out . . . nothing. He began patting all of his pockets. “I have to call my brother.”

“You don't have your cell phone?”

“I must have left it in the kitchen.”

She reached into her backpack and pulled out her own. She jerked a thumb toward a nearby bodega. “Here. I'm going to get a soda.”

Manny's head snapped
up as the red phone on the kitchen wall started to ring. He laid down his knife, blade resting on a pile of mangled red onions. His eyes protested and he blinked away the tears. “Pepito! Chop these onions.”

“Sure, boss.” He didn't look too happy about it.

He brushed his hands on his apron, picked up the receiver, and cleared his throat, trying his best to sound calm and professional. “El Callejon, how may I help you?”

“Manny?”

“José? Where are you?”

“I'm with Nina.”

Just as he'd figured. “Who the heck is Nina? I'm your brother. I fire people all the time, José, and you don't go running around after them.”

“I know, man, I know.”

Servers bustled around him. Runners grabbed plates and still they did not get them from the window fast enough. Some returned with meals that had gone cold. It was a good thing he didn't have his ego tied up in his cooking. But still, his restaurant was suffering. And that meant more to him than anything.

Pretty sad. And he thought José had no life?

The thought angered him. “When are you coming back?”

“I need to help Nina right now.”

“You need to do what? You need to be here. In this kitchen. Cooking. Doing
your job
. Come back right now.”

“I can't. I can't.”

“What do you—what do you mean you can't?”

“Some things are more important than cooking, Manny.”

Manny gripped the phone, storming away from the wall to grab a twist tie off one of the plates on the tray Margarita was hefting out to the dining room. “Listen to me, idiota! If you're not here in the next ten minutes, you'd better be at the unemployment office.”

He looked down in his hand and grated out his frustration. He'd pulled the phone cord out of the wall. Beautiful. Just beautiful.

Margarita hurried off as Manny slam-dunked the receiver into the trash can.

José sat in
front of the store, waiting for Nina to emerge. This was the first time he'd gone out on a limb in years, and now this? For Nina? A woman he barely knew?

The thing was, Manny
would
fire him. And all in the name of what was best for José. He could picture the conversation.

“José, I hate to do this, but I'm your brother and I want what's best for you. Sacrificing my business wouldn't do either of us any good.”

A man slammed out of the door of the bodega, cursing, a few bills crumpled in a meaty fi st set below a forearm covered in a dragon tattoo. José shrugged. Angry people. New York. Nothing new.