The Other Way Around (17 page)

He pauses for a minute. “You a long way from home, huh?” I smile and nod, not sure if he means geographically or just the fact that I'm in the back of a restaurant about to tackle a sink full of dirty pots and pans. Either way, he's right. “Me too,” he says. “Me too.”

He's right about the rice pots. They're the worst, especially at the bottom, where burned rice is caked on in an inch-thick layer. The trays are greasy with barbeque sauce and chicken fat, but most of that slides off easily into the sink. Once they're done I walk them across to the Hobart, where G and Jesse run them through to fully sanitize them. They have definitely worked one of these machines before; the trays fly in and out with precision timing, and the machine rarely sits still. Tim moves at his usual meandering pace unloading the clean dishes and finding their spots on the shelves one at a time. When I finally get burned rice out of the bottom of the last pot, the front of my jeans is soaked with dishwater and my back aches from bending over. There's something satisfying about looking at an empty sink, and something completely disheartening when Gene comes around the corner with another pile of dirty trays.

He laughs when he sees my face. “No, no my friend. You're done for tonight. These are from tomorrow's prep anyway. They need to soak. We leave them here. Come out with the others and have some dinner.” Out in the restaurant Jesse, G, and Tim are sitting in front of platters of steaming food. Old road signs cover the walls, and brightly painted wooden animal sculptures perch above the red leather booths. The waiters and
hostess are still busy bussing the last of the tables, but there are no customers left inside and the lights in the front window have been dimmed down. I swallow a big mouthful of saliva generated by the food in front of me. There's a huge bowl of red beans and rice, another steaming bowl of some kind of dark greens, a platter of barbeque chicken, and a tower of fluffy yellow corn bread.

We eat without speaking for the first few minutes until Gene looks concerned at our silence. “Something no good?” he asks.

Jesse shakes his head vehemently and swallows a huge mouthful. “No, man, no. Everything is incredible. Sorry, we're all so focused on eating we got all quiet. But it's amazing, really. Thank you!” We all nod and grunt our agreements.

“No need to thank me,” Gene says. “You guys help me out tonight. Without all of you, we'd be here late doing dishes.” He looks critically at G and Jesse, who have heaping piles of everything but the chicken on their plates. “You vegetarians?” he asks. “You should have said. My wife, she's vegetarian. I make her a smoked tofu she can't get enough of, man. You should have said.”

“It's okay,” G says. “Rice and beans are my favorite.”

“Listen,” Gene says as we're finishing up. “That guy who no-showed tonight? I fire him anyway. I like you guys. You come back tomorrow night, get me through until I can find someone else. I make you my famous smoked tofu, okay?” I'd agree to anything if it meant I got to eat like this again, and it seems like as good a plan as any we've got. Gene sends us out the door with bursting bellies, a bag full of corn bread for breakfast, and our promise to return the next night. My eyelids
are fluttering as I stagger along behind Jesse and G, eager for even the hard van floor, as long as I get to lie down.

***

Emily is hanging out back in the van, but there's no sign of Lyle. She eats a couple pieces of corn bread and then pulls me aside to tell me something. “Listen,” she says in a hushed tone. “I think I found a way into one of the bathhouses. You want to go for a swim?” Every ounce of my body wants to lie down in the van and shut my eyes. Well, almost every ounce. Over her shoulder I see G. She doesn't look up or try and get my attention. Which I decide to accept as her unenthusiastic acceptance of my continued interest in Emily.

“All right,” I say. The smell of Emily—patchouli and cinnamon—when she's whispering in my ear is invigorating enough.

“I knew you'd be up for it, Drew,” she says and squeezes my shoulder. She has no idea.

The marble steps and columns in front of the Buckstaff Bathhouse make it look more like a courthouse or an art museum than a spa. Through the tall front windows I see elegantly dressed people mingling, drinks in their hands. “It's some kind of private party,” Emily says. “But they're only upstairs. The baths and locker rooms and everything are in the basement.” I follow her around back, where there's a less formal entrance guarded by a tall, skinny guy in his early twenties wearing a baggy and unimpressive security uniform. In place of a gun he has a dinky-looking pair of plastic handcuffs and a wooden baton. He looks extremely excited to see Emily and significantly less so to see me.

“Hey, girl,” he says with a pronounced Southern drawl. “I thought I told you not to bring anyone with you.”

“I know,” Emily says in a cutesy voice I hardly recognize. “But he's my younger brother, and he caught me sneaking out and threatened to tell our daddy if I didn't bring him with me.” She throws her arm around my shoulders and I shake it off, acting the part to perfection.
Younger brother? What the hell?
My face is red with embarrassment as Emily walks over
to Curtis—his name is stitched on the front of his starched, blue-collared shirt—and taps his chest with her forefinger. “You're still going to let me go for a swim like you promised, right?”

Curtis hesitates, but even I can tell it's for show. “All right, but don't take too long. I could get in big trouble for this, you know?” Emily stands on her tiptoes and kisses him on the cheek.

“You're the best!” she says and grabs my hand before I can act on my impulse to get the heck out of there. I can't believe she just passed me off as her younger brother. It's not so much that I care about Curtis. It's just that what I've seen hits a little too close to home. Is this what I look like to G and Jesse and those guys? I pull my hand away from Emily as soon as we're inside the bathhouse.

The bathhouse is a long room with a low ceiling covered in decorative tile. The baths are long, shallow swimming pools made of white stucco. The overhead lights are off, and the only light in the room comes from the glowing blue-green lights in the bathwater, which cast ripples of aquamarine light all over the walls and ceiling. I follow Emily wordlessly down the narrow passing space between the bath and the wall, trying to hold on to my resentment over the Curtis issue. There's a red button in the wall that she presses, and immediately the rushing sounds of Jacuzzi jets fill the air and the enormous pools start frothing. “You're coming in, right?” Emily asks. I give a little shrug. “Are you mad about something?” She cocks her head to the side.

“I just don't like the way you handled that guy out there,” I say without too much conviction.

Emily snorts and laughs. “Who? Curtis?” Then she looks at me again, this time with a little disbelief. “Drew, are you serious?” She takes a step closer and stares at me. I look over her head at the bubbling water, anywhere but at her gray eyes, her adorable upturned nose and her soft, pink lips. I shift awkwardly from one foot to the other. “Drew, are you jealous?” I roll my eyes, but I still can't look at her. I want to retort that no, I'm not. But the words are stuck like chunky peanut butter in the back of my throat.

Because the truth is that yeah, I'm jealous, of Curtis and of Lyle and anybody else who gets her attention. It's not like I want Emily all to myself. It's that I want us to have something exclusive, something I don't have to share with Lyle, or Curtis or G or anybody. The wanting is there, tugging at the bottom of my gut. I can't remember ever wanting something so intense from another person. As if she's reading my mind, Emily takes another step towards me. I take a tiny step backward against the cold, clammy wall. She puts her hand on my belt and hooks one finger over the waistband of my jeans. She tugs ever so slightly with that one finger, tugs me toward her. I still can't look down at her face. I'm afraid she'll start laughing and make this whole moment a joke. But then she reaches up and puts her other hand on the back of my neck and guides my face down towards her slightly parted lips.

Emily tastes like she smells, sweet and earthy. She teases my tongue with hers and tugs a little on my bottom lip before she lets go. I'm staring down at her, stunned, wondering if that just really happened and when exactly it's going to happen again. I put my hands up to her face and kiss her again. This time a little more aggressively. I feel her lips turn up into a
smile, and she laughs into my mouth. “Come on, Drew,” she says. “Let's go for a swim.”

Emily pulls away, leaves her clothes in a heap on the floor, and slides over the stucco side into the nearest pool. I'm glad it's pretty dark. I'm glad she can't see my immediate and dramatic reaction to her kisses. I dunk my head into the warm water as soon as I can, trying to stay calm amid all the lustful thoughts from my overstimulated brain and body. When I come up for air she is lying on the far side of the pool, her head resting against the edge. The curves of her breasts are just at water level. I stay where I am. She sighs loudly, “This water feels incredible, doesn't it?”

“Uh-huh”

“You know, they don't use chlorine in here or anything. Just natural salts and minerals. It's supposed to be incredible for your skin.”

“Oh yeah?” I swim over closer and find a dark spot near where she's lying and let my head rest behind me. My body floats out in front of me and I close my eyes, still careful to keep my lower half below the surface of the water. Every so often I open my eyes and glance over, but Emily's eyes are always closed. After about ten minutes of this I leave my eyes closed completely and don't open them until I hear a splash next to me and Emily is gone. I see her swinging dreads retreating into the darkness. She comes back wrapped in a plush white towel and throws a second one at me. I grab it before it hits the water.

“We shouldn't push our luck,” she says. “I don't want Curtis to get in trouble.” I am totally capable of ignoring the reference to Curtis at this point. Curtis who? I'm the one who
was naked in the pool with her. I'm the one she was kissing just minutes ago. I pull my clothes on and use the towel to dry off my head. Curtis must be making the rounds, because when we emerge from the bathhouse he's gone. Emily scratches the word
Thanks
into the concrete with a piece of quartz from the landscaping around the bathhouse.

We're walking back towards the van, and I'm not saying much because I'm trying to think of a way to kiss her again before we get back. Finally, when we're almost a block away, I just grab her hand and pull her close to me. She kisses back, but this time there's reluctance. She puts her hands up to my hands, which are on either side of her face, and pulls them down. “We can't be like this in front of everyone,” she says.

“I know. Because of Lyle, right?”

“It's not just Lyle, although yeah, I don't want to hurt him. Being a couple or whatever doesn't work in this kind of situation. Besides I don't believe in that kind of commitment anyway. You know?”

I nod but then realize that I don't know. “No, I don't know. What do you mean?”

“I mean I don't believe we're really meant to be monogamous creatures. Humans, I mean. I don't really think we're cut out for monogamy. I don't think it's natural.”

“Oh,” I say. I must sound disappointed, because Emily stops walking, turns, and brushes my hair from my eyes. She looks at me critically, smiles, and then kisses me again. When she kisses me I don't care about monogamy or Lyle, or Curtis, or any of it. I just don't want her to stop.

“You're good at that,” she says. “But can I tell you something?”

“Sure.”

“You shouldn't put your hands on someone's face when you're kissing them. It's a controlling gesture, like muzzling a dog. It's very patriarchal.”

“Okay,” I say. “Duly noted.”

In spite of what she says, I'm still a little disappointed when Emily curls up on the opposite side of the van from me. And the next morning, when she barely meets my gaze and then goes off with Tim to do some dumpster recon, I'm practically depressed. I don't even realize it's all over my face until G asks me if I've talked to my mom recently.

“No,” I say, sounding sour, I'm sure.

“Well you're sure acting salty about something,” she says. “Something happen with you and Emily last night?” She actually doesn't sound all that judgmental, and there's part of me that would love to get her opinion on the whole thing. But I also already feel like I know what she's going to say, and mostly it's a big “I told you so.”

“No,” I lie. “I just kind of woke up thinking about my grandmother and how messed-up the whole thing is.” I feel bad lying about Mima. It's not an outright lie, but it's certainly not what's on my mind this morning.

“Sorry,” G says. There's not much else she can say. “There's a free concert happening over in the park in about an hour. It's a kickoff for the bluegrass festival. You want to check it out?”

“Sure,” I say.

We make our way over to the park without talking much. I'm thinking about Emily and how incredible it was to kiss her. But weirdly I don't feel happy right now. I should be happier, right? But what I mostly feel is scared that it might never happen again.

I look at my watch. Right now I'd probably be changing for gym or staring out the window in Ms. Tuttle's class while she begs and pleads with us to acknowledge Shakespeare's greatness. I never really got why anyone would want to be a teacher. It's like a half-step away from being a prison guard. But now I really don't get it. School is the biggest scam ever and completely inapplicable to everything about real life that I've seen so far, except maybe for some stuff in books.