Double Take (2 page)

I could barely see Joey's face in the light from the candle on our table, a cheap glass bulb with plastic mesh around it that I couldn't stop myself from tearing. While he went to the bar and got our drinks, I went over to the jukebox, threw in a handful of my tip money, and chose Monk, Billie, Miles, and as an afterthought, Ella, because Michael loved her. “But he's not here,” I said out loud to myself.

I picked up the candle, poured wax into my palm, molded it into a ball, and rolled the ball toward Joey, who caught it just before it fell off the edge of the table.

“So,” I said,
“what do you do?” That seemed like a nice safe question, though since I had become a waitress again, it packed a bit of a punch.

Light from the candle surrounded his eyes like a mask. “You can do better than that, can't you?”

“Sorry.” I shrugged. “What can I say? I mean, I never really knew you all that well or anything. So we know each other from Casa Sanchez, but it's like being relatives. I don't really know much about you.”

“What do you want to know?” he asked. Ella was singing about the shark's pearly teeth and how he showed them pearly white.

I pretended to think for a minute. “What do you do?”

“What do I do?” He leaned his chair so far back I thought he was going to tip over. “I work for the city.” He snapped the chair back in place.

“In what capacity? Everyone works for this city in one way or another.”

“I work with juveniles.”

“What do you do with them?”

“I try to keep them from turning out like me.” He flashed his pearly teeth. “I'm what you might call an ombudsman. I got a grant and I sort of set this thing up.”

“Very entrepreneurial.”

“I always was. And I had some good teachers.”

“I had some good teachers in college.”

“Same thing.”

“How
is
Sam, by the way?”

“Dunno. Haven't seen the dude in years.” He gave me a sideways look. “Who says I meant Sam?”

“Nobody says,” I said.

“Miles is running the voodoo down,” he said, pointing to the jukebox.

“Yeah,” I said. “I like that song.”

“So tell me about you.” He put on what I guessed was his ombudsman expression. “What are you doing at Diana's Grotto?”

“I am honored to be able to represent their fine cuisine in my small way.”

“Seriously.”

“Seriously? Well, I had this other job when I came back here three months ago, when I graduated. I got it through a friend of my mother's. It was sort of paralegal work. I guess you could call it para-paralegal.”

“And?”

“It involved a lot of Xeroxing,” I said, growing more animated. “Sometimes I got to read documents. The trouble was, whenever I read the documents I'd fall asleep. One time I actually drooled all over a divorce case.”

“They fire you?”

“No, I quit. They never found out about the drooling. I told them I was going to go to law school.”

“You're in law school?”

“No. That's just what I told them.”

“Ah. You want another club soda?”

“No thanks. I never drink and drive. Joke.”

“Ha ha. I'll be right back.”

I watched him walk up to the bar and order another Scotch. It had never before struck me as strange that I spent so much time in bars whenever I was home, even though I had quit drinking. The obvious reason was that there was nothing else to do in my neighborhood, but also, there was something about bars that made me feel comfortable. Maybe it was because they were always dark, and I was not a big fan of light. Joey was leaning on the bar as if he felt comfortable in the darkness, too. Telling him about my job at the law firm had brought this contrast home to me; my cubicle there overlooked the brilliant blue of the lake, and the fluorescent office light always seemed too bright.

“So you didn't want to be a paralegal,” he continued.

“A para-paralegal.”

“Okay. So why'd you take the job?”

“You sure ask a lot of questions. Is this what an ombudsman does?”

“I'll stop if you want me to.”

“No one has asked me anything about it. When I quit, my parents never made any reference to it again. It was like they were embarrassed and thought that if they didn't mention it, it never happened. You know what I mean?”

“Sure.”

“It's funny, I used to come back here every summer after being at this little college in California where everyone was really friendly, and they'd say hi to you even if they didn't know you. Like they do in small towns, right? I hated it, like they were invading my space. But then I got used to it. Then whenever I came back here I'd have to wear sunglasses for the first few weeks because I kept accidentally making eye contact with people. And you can't do that here.”

“People be following you home and shit.”

“Exactly. So one day someone asked me why I always wore sunglasses. And I told them, well, it's because there's so much dirt blowing around here and it always gets in my eyes, and they said, Okay, whatever. And then I said, well, actually, it's because I always wear sunglasses in California and I'm used to the way they feel. I didn't tell them about my problem with eye contact.”

“And then you told them it was because you were trying to look cool.”

“Right. So then I realized that if there really was a reason I was wearing sunglasses, I had no fucking idea what it might be. I had completely lost touch with my feelings by then. If I had a real reason, I no longer knew what it was.”

“Same thing with the job?”

“Exactly. I think I took it because I thought my mother thought I should. She never actually tells me what she really thinks about anything, so I just guess. I think her philosophy is that it doesn't really matter what you do, as long as you hate it. Am I whining?”

“Sort of.”

“Sorry. Anyway, the answer is ‘I don't know.'”

“What was the question?”

“I don't know.”

“Were you always like this?” He looked amused.

“What do you think?”

“You don't know?”

“You're good, Joey. Is it your ombudsman training? Do they have ombuds-women?”

“You think you can, like, ombud?”

“I don't know. Hey, could you buy me a beer?”

“I thought you didn't drink.”

“I just feel like a beer. Just one. It's because talking to you reminds me of the good old days, and the good old days remind me of beer.” I closed my eyed and sighed.

“What kind of beer you want? Wait, I'll bet I know. An Old Style, right?”

“Of course. An Old Style.”

1969

When the phone rang, Cookie picked it up. Casa Sanchez didn't have a regular phone, but everyone knew the number of the pay phone on the wall. Cookie recognized the voice immediately. She was good with voices. She couldn't quite put a face to it right away, but she knew its cadence. It was a rough voice, not a nice one. Whoever it was asked for Clay.

“He's not here,” she said, which was true, though he had been there a minute ago, which she didn't mention. She was always circumspect. Everyone knew the pay phone at Casa Sanchez was tapped, and they were always arranging little jokes to prove it. One day last summer she had been there when Rat, for his own amusement, called someone at another pay phone and pretended to arrange a drug deal at the corner of 57th and Blackstone. Within seconds the street was full of police cars.

The voice asked when Clay would be back. “Who is this?” Cookie asked.

“It's Levar.” Levar was Clay's best friend, a plump guy with a smoky, jolly voice. This hard voice was definitely not Levar's. “Don't tell Clay I called.”

“Okay, I won't.” She hung up, then went outside to look for Clay so she could tell him.

Cookie would always remember that this was the third day of Woodstock. Some guy she met on the street that morning had told her that some people there had been run over by tractors. He made it sound like total carnage, and she was glad she'd stayed
home. She couldn't have gone anyway. Sanchez needed her to work because all the other waitresses were college students and had gone home for the summer.

She would also remember that day because it was her friend Bando's seventeenth birthday. For the past forty-five minutes she had been sitting at a table in the front window of Casa Sanchez, watching for him. Sanchez had turned up the air conditioning full blast, and her arms were covered with goose bumps. Outside, heat rose from the pavement in waves. People stood on the corner where they always stood, leaning on the mailbox, lounging against parked cars, sitting on the pavement next to the storefronts. Often Cookie hung out there, too. The rest of the time she watched through the plate glass window of Casa Sanchez. It was like watching TV.

Just before the phone rang, she caught a glimpse of Bando out the window, or rather, of his sleeve, which she recognized. It was the sleeve of a shirt that had been tie-dyed in rainbow colors. She happened to know that the tie-dying had been done by his mother, but if you weren't aware of this, it looked cool. Now as she scanned the street for Clay, she saw Bando disappearing around the corner. “Wait up!” she called, starting after him. “Where are you going?”

He turned and regarded her through his wire-rimmed glasses, his expression unchanged. “As a matter of fact, I was going into the alley to relieve myself.”

“You can use the bathroom in Casa. Sanchez isn't there. He went to the butcher.”

“No, thank you.” He turned away.

“Happy birthday,” she called after him as he rounded the corner.

“Thanks,” he said when he appeared again, smoothing his jeans, which had creases in the front where he had ironed them. His shiny plum leather boots clashed with his tie-dye.

“You could have peed in Casa, you know,” Cookie said.

“That would be stooping. I choose never to stoop.” His hair fell across his glasses, and he brushed it away.

“Suit yourself.” She handed him a paper bag from the Book Nook.

“What's this? A present?” he asked in a soft voice. “Rachel, you're so bourgeois.”

“Do you want it or don't you?”

He peered into the bag. She had known better than to wrap it. “
Steppenwolf
?”

“You approve?”

He looked down at the shiny toes of his boots. “It's a funny thing, Rachel. This is the only present I've gotten.”

“Hey, the day is young. I'm sure your mother will give you something.”

“Don't be sure. She's out of town. My stepfather is suspiciously absent. I think he has a girlfriend.”

“You think you're that Hamlet guy.”

“No, I'm not Hamlet, I'm J. Alfred Prufrock. Will you give me a birthday kiss?”

“Sure.” She kissed him lightly on the mouth. His lips were thin and dry, as always.

His eyes were soft for an instant, then he said, “You never close your eyes when you kiss me.”

“Neither do you.”

“One of us should, and I think it should be you. You're the girl.”

“Bastard,” Cookie said, smacking him on the arm. They began to walk past the strip of storefronts where Casa Sanchez was sandwiched between an alley and a Christian Science Reading Room. As they rounded the corner, a plain olive-green sedan rolled slowly down the street. On the opposite side of the street, Clay, a tall man in a broad-brimmed hat and mirror sunglasses, stood in front of his yellow Porsche, talking to his friend Levar. The sedan pulled up next to them, and Cookie heard four loud cracking noises, then the car sped past her. She looked at the driver and saw a monstrous face. The face had no features, and for years afterwards when she thought about it, it still filled her with horror. She realized later that the face had been distorted by a nylon stocking.

Slowly, it seemed, Clay fell against his Porsche, his mouth open as if in surprise, or maybe because he needed air. She could see Levar bending over him, then turning around and screaming for help, as Clay sagged and then slumped to the ground. The whole scene took maybe thirty seconds, but seemed drawn out in slow motion, the air around them furry and glistening with heat. Against the canary yellow of the Porsche trailed long ribbons of crimson.

1975

“You're a little more relaxed now,” Joey was saying.

His voice jarred me back into the present. “I'm always relaxed,” I said, slurring my words a little. Five empty bottles of Old Style stood on the table in front of me. “I'm practically gelatinous. I don't drink, you know.”

“So you claim.”

After the first hour in the back room at Bert's, I had finally begun to feel a little more comfortable. Beer helped, so I ordered one, then another, then another. It tasted strange, like when I was a little kid and used to steal sips of my father's Meister Brau, but also familiar. Beer was more like an old friend than Joey was—after all, as far as I could remember, he and I had never actually had a conversation before. Something about talking to him bothered me. He was really hearing what I said. I was used to talking to people who weren't paying attention: my customers at Diana's Grotto, my best friend Emily, my parents.

Joey seemed to be weighing my every word. Maybe this was the reason that, after some awkwardly polite conversation, I found myself spilling my guts to him, telling him all about Michael and my plans for the future. My relationship with Michael was over, and my plans for the future were nonexistent.

It took us four beers to get around to talking about Casa Sanchez, as if we were both avoiding the subject for reasons of our own. Emily and I never discussed anything but the present; the past was too much like driving down a city street in winter—you
could start skidding, hit a giant pothole beneath the ice, and break your axle. She didn't like to remember all the things we did together in high school, the times we quit speaking to each other, stole each other's boyfriends, lied to her parents, drank too much and held each other's heads while we threw up in the snow. The only reference Emily had ever made to our shared past was when she remarked that she had taken the psychedelic Beatle posters off her bedroom walls a long time ago.

“You seemed surprised to see me today,” Joey said.

“Yeah, though I don't know why. I expect to run into people from back then, but I never do. You'd think I'd see some of my old customers from Casa. I even remember some of their orders. Like this woman who used to sit there all day long drinking a Mexicana.”

“A Mexicana?”

“Nestlé's Quik with hot milk and cinnamon.”

“Sounds pretty fancy.”

“Definitely. Anyway, I haven't seen her, or anyone else, until today. It's so weird working at Diana's. In a way, it's comforting to be back in the same job, in the same place, but in a way, well, it's just—weird. You know what I mean?”

“Sure.”

“Like, why am I there? Is it because I think that if I wait long enough and am a really good waitress, Bando's going to come back?

“Lots of cashed tickets around here. Clay, Levar, Jupiter.”

I took a sip of beer. “I always felt it was my fault, you know.”

“What was?”

“When Clay got killed.”

“Yeah, right.” In a loud voice, he said, “Everything is Cookie's fault.” Some guys who looked too young to be college students rolled their eyes at us.

“You're embarrassing me.”

“You don't care what those entitled little assholes over there think, do you? Man, they ought to make those guys wear freshman beanies.”

“Listen, I'm not kidding. It really was my fault.”

“I didn't even know you were there.”

“Of course I was there. That summer I was always there.”

“You saw what happened?”

“I saw it all.” This wasn't something I was in the habit of admitting. Even after so many years, I could still watch the whole thing clearly in my mind like a movie, and it wasn't a movie I wanted to see. “Did they ever find out who did it?”

“No.” He looked away, like there was something interesting in the distance. “I mean, not as far as I know.”

As I recalled, no one had ever been charged or even arrested. Some cops had turned up at Casa Sanchez, asking questions, but of course, since they were cops, no one had responded.

“Who do you think it was?” I asked.

“I don't know.” He leaned back in his chair again.

“But who do you
think
it was?”

“The way I see it, it wasn't none of my business.”

“It's funny.” As I regarded him in the dim light, he seemed completely unfamiliar, and I realized again that he was someone I didn't really know. “I went through four years of college without thinking about any of this stuff. But now, talking to you, the whole scene comes back to me.” I closed my eyes. “I can literally see us on the street corner. I'm in my blue waitress uniform, Bando is wearing his rainbow shirt.”

“Bando was there?”

“It was his birthday.” I still had my eyes closed.

“You and Bando were pretty tight back then?”

“Yeah, we were pretty tight back then.”

“
Tight
tight?”

“Just friends.” I opened my eyes and smiled the same smile my mother always forced onto her face to prove that everything was fine.

“I had the impression you were more than that.”

“No. Maybe it did get a little complicated every so often. But basically, he was my friend. Love and all that other stuff is so much easier than friendship, don't you think?” I stared down at the dirty red table. “Sometimes it was hard being his friend.”

“I guess you were pretty upset when he died.” He watched me as he said this.

“Yeah, I was pretty upset.” I tried not to let a single muscle in my face twitch. “And the way I found out about it didn't help. Chad told me. Fucking Chad, of all people. Christmas, last year. Merry Christmas, Chad, merry fucking Christmas.”

“Not a big Chad fan?”

“You could say that. I mean, I liked him when we met. But then I hated him. Also when we met.”

“Must have been a weird meeting.”

“Oh, it was a weird meeting.” I laughed a little too loudly. “We kind of met in a bathroom.”