Someone Else's Fairytale (13 page)

“Up on
Sandia Peak
.”

“
Sandia
Peak
?”
She looked at the clock on our microwave. “There some kind of school thing up there?”

“Be honest with me about something?”

“What?” She poured herself some coffee.

“If I went up for a morning ride on the tram with a guy, and I'm meeting his family tonight, am I-”

“Whoa, what?” She nearly dropped her coffee mug.

“Yeah, okay. That answers my question.”

“Who?” she called after me.

“No. It's no one.”

“Who the heck did you meet and when? Is he cute?”

I ducked into my room for refuge.

“Chloe, come on!”

I stuck my head out. “Lor, please. I screwed up.”

“He must've been real smooth. Or real smart or something, to get you in this situation.” She laughed.

Her door opened and Charles stepped out. “Hi,” he said to me.

“Hi.” I retreated back into my room.

I considered canceling on Jason, but again decided I couldn't. Not on the very day. I dressed neutrally in a gray skirt, white blouse, and black flats. My phone rang while I dusted my nose with powder. It was a local number I didn't recognize.

“Hello?”

“Hey, it's Steve. Vanderholt.”

“Oh, hi.”

“Listen, do you mind if Shan and I drive you tonight? I guess there's a rumor out that Jason's going to be at Tia Anita's, so the parking lot might be especially bad.”

Tia Anita's didn't have a big parking lot as it was. “Sure,” I said. “I'm on Cornell, between Silver and Lead. You know where-”

“Sure, yeah, I know where that is. What number?”

I gave it to him. “But if you live out by
Montano
Bridge
and we're going to Corrales...” My house was a good half hour to forty minutes out of the way, depending on traffic.

“Oh, my brother's giving out where I live, is he?”

“Well-”

“I'm at
UNM
right now. I can pick you up when you're ready and I just need to get Shan from her sister's house. That's who's got our kids tonight.”

“Okay. Well, I can be ready in ten minutes.”

“I'll see you then.”

Shannon and Steve drove a minivan with two car seats in it and crumbs ground into the upholstery seams, which they kept apologizing for. To get to Tia Anita's, we drove parallel to the river until the regular buildings of Albuquerque gave way to the alfalfa fields and farmhouses of Corrales, then turned towards the river onto the little dirt road that led to the restaurant parking lot. As soon as we were close enough to see the restaurant's windows, glowing with honey colored light, we could see the hordes of people that choked the entrance.

“Oh no,” said
Shannon
.

It was worse than it had been this morning, at the base of the tram.

“I just hope they don't mistake me for him,” said Steve.

“Mmm-hmm. Sure, honey.”

“You hear that?” He turned around in his seat. “My own wife!”

“You're much better looking, my dear.”

“Nice one. Very smooth. You taking notes on this, Chloe?”

I rarely met people who were more sarcastic than me. It was great.

“I'm glad you're smiling,” said Steve. “We should probably tone down the Vanderholt snark, huh?”

I shook my head. Matthew would have thrown a fit.

He nosed the car through the crowds of people and into a parking space. “This is for cars,” he said, as if they could hear him. “Outta the way. Move! This is insane.”

“This worse than usual?” I asked.

“Oh yeah,” said
Shannon
. “Or it might be the new usual. But back when he was just the top rated show on Disney, he could go out to dinner in peace.”

“It was
New Light
that did this,” said Steve. “But
New Light
is over, and it just won't quit. We all thought it would, but he keeps getting more famous.
Danger Fields
broke the record for its opening weekend, and it's still number one.”

Shannon
's cell phone rang and she answered it. “Side entrance,” she said to us.

I hadn't known Tia Anita's had a side entrance, but a short trek through the tall grass on a flagstone path took us there. I also hadn't known Tia Anita's had a private room at the back. The restaurant was in an old farmhouse, or a building built to look like an old farmhouse. I didn't really know the history. Rather than one dining room, it had a series of little ones. This one was the smallest I'd seen, with only one table for about ten people.

The wooden floor creaked under our feet and a chandelier overhead threw little pieces of rainbow prismed light all over the room. Candles guttered on the rough hewn wooden table and the chairs all made heavy scraping sounds as we took our seats. No one else had arrived yet.

A gangly busboy stuck his head in. “Guess you know where you're going,” he said.

“How is it, tonight?” Steve asked.

He grinned. “All Chef Armijo told us was that her brother's a public figure. We were expecting the county clerk or something.”

Steve and Shannon cracked up.

“Manager's talking to the people in the crowd, asking them to disperse,” he went on. “We'll see if it works.”

The sound of more hard soled shoes on the floorboards let us know others were coming. Jason strode in first and came straight over to me with a smile and a “Hey!” He was followed by an older couple that I assumed were his parents.

“Lillian,” the woman introduced herself to me. She had her son's eyes.

“Doug,” said his father. They each shook my hand and smiled.

By the time they took their seats, three more people had arrived. “I'm the mean sister,” announced a woman who was very obviously Jason's sister. She had the same eyes, same shade of hair, just slightly paler skin. She was gorgeous. “Name's Jennifer.”

“Nice to meet you,” I said.

Her husband was quite a bit older than her and had dark hair and eyes and skin the color of coffee mixed with milk. “Kyle Armijo,” he introduced himself. “And this is Kyra.” That last was directed to a young lady who looked me up and down as if sizing me up for some kind of competition. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail and she wore eyeliner and red lipstick that she probably thought was sophisticated, but made her look even younger than sixteen, like a little girl playing dress up.

“Hi,” I said to her.

Her dark eyes narrowed at me and her mouth twitched up at the corners.
“Hi,”
she said.

“Kyra,” said her father.

She shot Jason a venomous look.

He didn't react. “Hi, Kyra,” was all he said.

With a chorus of scraping chairs, everyone sat down and the servers brought out baskets of sopapillas. Jason reached across the table and deposited one on my plate before passing the basket along. The warm, fluffy pillow bread was still crackling a little from being pulled out of the hot oil. People passed the jar of honey around and I tore off a corner of my sopapilla and spooned a little in. The flakey exterior and warm, sweet honey was heavenly.

“You aren't allowed to change these,” Jason said to Jennifer.

“Shut up,” she replied. “You get one?” She put a second one on his plate.

“Hey-”

“No advice from you!” She smiled as she said it.

“You see how mean she is to me?” He tore his second sopapilla down the middle and put half on my plate.

“Awwwww,” said Kyra, under her breath.

“Kyra,” said her father.

Jason was right. This kid really had it in for him. She batted her eyelashes at her father.

Food started to arrive, then. It looked like there would be no menus tonight, either. The family had ordered ahead. Not that I cared. There wasn't anything at this restaurant I didn't love. As it was, I found I had a combo plate with an enchilada, a relleno, and a three taquitos. Way more than I could eat, not even counting the generous sides of Spanish rice and refried beans.

“You want my taquitos?” Jennifer asked her brother.

“No.”

She put them on his plate.

One of them ended up on mine. The older Vanderholts asked if it was okay if we said grace, so we all held hands while they did that, then tucked in. I had been away from this restaurant for too long. As I worked through my relleno, I worried that I might, in fact, be able to eat my entire plate.

“So who
are
you?” Kyra asked me.

“Kyra. You aren't too old to have to sit in the car,” said her father.

She scowled at him.

“My name's Chloe.”

“Are you from here?”

“Yeah. I'm local. I grew up here.”

“Which high school?” Kyle asked.

“
Rio Grande
.”

“All right,
Rio
.” He winked at me. “Good school.”

“Rio Ghetto,” said Kyra under her breath.

“You trying to get sent to the car?” I replied, under my breath. “It that bad, sitting next to me?”

She bit her lip and shrank away, like I'd poked her in the cheek.

“Howabout you?” I asked her.

“The Academy.”

That was a private school in the
Northeast
Heights
, and a very, very well funded one at that. “Hey,” I said, “then you need to be nice.”

“Yes you do,” agreed her father.

Kyra slouched down in her seat, picked at her food, and gave up on us. Jason looked over at me as if to ask whether or not she was bothering me. I shook my head.

Everyone else made small talk for the rest of dinner. Kyle asked me about school and told me about the construction company he owned. Given how small Albuqerque was, I knew the name and had seen his trucks around town. I ate half my dinner and had the rest put in a takeaway box. The servers set out goblets of flan for desert. I was so stuffed I couldn't eat more than a few bites, even though it melted to almost nothing on the tongue.

“You can't change this either,” Jason told his sister.

“Quiet! No bossing around from you.”

“I don't boss you around.”

“No, because I usually beat you to it. Now be quiet.”

“It's our little competition,” said Jason, “to see if we can be the most immature people at the table.”

“Shhhh!” Jennifer swatted his arm.