We All Looked Up (7 page)

The girl pulled out an earbud. “What's that?”

“What are you listening to?”

“Myself,” she said, grinning widely. “Why? You into music?”

“Isn't everybody?”

The girl pointed to a little table by the door. “Grab a flyer on the way out. My band's playing the Tractor Tavern next week. You and your boy should come down. I'm the best thing since sliced bread.”

“He's not my boy,” Anita said, but the girl had already put her earbud back in. “Can you believe that?” she asked Peter, but he was staring hard at the smoothie girl, his forehead creased and his eyes all squinted up, as if he suspected her of something. It was a second before Anita realized he was
thinking
. He was the kind of guy who had a unique facial expression dedicated to
thinking
.

“What is it?” she asked.

He stepped close to her, speaking quietly. “I always figured that working some crappy job like this would be the worst thing that could ever happen to me. But I've got a funny feeling that this girl knows what she's doing a lot better than I do. I mean, can you remember the last time you felt
that good
?”

It was true, the girl did seem to be amazingly cheerful and self-­assured. And though Anita knew Peter's question had been rhetorical, it suddenly came back to her: the last time she'd felt
that good
. Ironically, she'd been standing in front of an open coffin at the time. It was her aunt's funeral, and Anita had been asked to sing “Abide with Me” at the service—the one performance her parents had no excuse for canceling. Afterward, her uncle Bobby had told her she ought to think about studying voice in college.

Anita had laughed. “I don't think my parents would like that very much.”

“But you'd like it, wouldn't you?”

“I guess.”

“So do it. You can make your own decisions, Anita.”

But that was easy enough for him to say. He wasn't Benjamin Graves's greatest investment. And investments weren't supposed to make their own decisions; they were just supposed to
mature
.

Anita watched the smoothie girl—the best thing since sliced bread—as she tapped the side of the blender, filling the paper cup just up to the rim. All the while, her head traced a sinuous figure eight to the beat of the music. The beat of
her
music.

P
eter

“SO WHERE EXACTLY ARE WE
going?” Misery asked.

Peter put on his FBI-agent voice. “That's classified information, missy.”

From the passenger seat, Stacy took a break from texting long enough to say, “I don't like secrets.”

“Have some faith,” Cartier said. “My boy wouldn't steer us wrong.”

Peter was pretty sure that none of them would have been there if he'd told them where they were actually going. That was why he'd only dropped some vague hints about food: for Cartier, he casually mentioned the possibility of spicy chicken wings; for Stacy, the single magic word “macrobiotic.” Misery, however, wasn't so easily tempted (he wasn't sure she ate anything at all, unless inhaling a pack a day of Camel Lights counted), so he'd needed his parents' help to “young lady” her into acquiescence.

Their destination was in Belltown, where most of the city's best restaurants were located. It was one of the strange ironies of Seattle, that the nicest and the shittiest neighborhoods somehow coexisted in the same physical space, like parallel dimensions. Peter parked in front of a trendy coffee shop as brightly lit as a sports stadium and led his three oblivious charges past the electric screech coming out of the Crocodile. They stopped in front of a typical-looking restaurant called Friendly Forks. Inside, waiters were scurrying around between the empty tables, adjusting place settings and lighting candles.

“Wait a minute,” Misery said. “Is this that place where they get all the drug addicts and criminals and stuff to make the meals?”

“Well, they also accept noncriminal volunteers, but yes.”

His little sister smiled. “Wicked.”

“Are you sure it's any good?” Stacy asked. “What if they put razor blades in the lasagna or something?”

“We didn't come here to eat,” Peter said.

A gorgeous girl with honey-colored skin and a shaved head stood just inside the door, looking over a reservation book the size of an atlas.

“Volunteers?” she asked.

Peter nodded. “I'm Peter Roeslin. This is Samantha Roeslin, Cart—”

Peter's sister interrupted, “I go by Misery.”

The hostess looked Misery up and down—from her Sharpie-­embellished sneakers to the wisps of emerald hair sticking out from under her black woolen cap. “Nice to meet you, Misery. I'm Keira. Everyone follow me.”

Stacy tugged at Peter's sleeve. “What's going on?” He just smiled innocently and shrugged.

Keira led them across the restaurant floor and into the kitchen, which was already about a thousand degrees and bustling with ­people who didn't look remotely pleased at the arrival of a bunch of high school students. A radio played something Spanish-sounding—all plinking guitars, piercing trumpets, and tight harmonies. Keira tapped the shoulder of an enormous mound of human being, who turned around as if pushing his way through a heavy revolving door. Where most people were made up of ovals and circles, he appeared to have been constructed out of cubes—a cube head on a cube body. He had a small goatee and long sideburns, and delicate vines of ivy-green tattoo spiraled from the top of his white collar halfway up the trellis of his neck. He held a large, gleaming knife made small by his huge cubic hand.

“Kids, this is Felipe, our head chef,” Keira said. “Felipe, these are your kids. Enjoy.”

Cartier watched her go, unconsciously letting out a low whistle. He turned back into the unsmiling mug of the head chef.

“You checkin' out my girlfriend,
ese
?”

The room went silent. In the years Peter had known Cartier, he'd never seen his friend physically intimidated by anyone. But staring into the eyes of an enormous, knife-wielding chef with more tattoos than a player for the Denver Nuggets, Cartier seemed to shrink.

“Dude, I'm sorry. I didn't know she—”

Suddenly Felipe emitted a laugh proportional to his size, and the rest of the kitchen joined in.

“I'm just messing with you, man! You shoulda seen your face, though. Woo!”

One of Cartier's best qualities was the ability to laugh at himself, and his smile was genuine as he took the knife that Felipe offered him, handle first.

“Does that mean she's not your girlfriend?” he asked.

“She's like my little sister, man, which still puts her out of your league.” Felipe led them over to a low counter of white plastic, gouged and stained and gored with tomato pips. “So we're gonna be moving you around a lot tonight, station to station, depending on what we need. Most of the work you'll be doing won't be for dinner, but this catering gig we've got tomorrow. For now, you're all on vegetable duty. You wash, you dry, you peel, you chop. Basically, whatever I or anyone else in this kitchen tells you to do, you do.” He handed a black hairnet to Stacy, who held it as if it were a dead spider.

“I have to wear this?”

“Health regulations,” Felipe said.

“Just me?”

“Your friends got hats on already. Speaking of which, any of you touch your hair, your face, your ass, or anything other than a knife or a piece of food, you wash your hands. You're gonna be washing your hands all the time, starting right now. And use some fucking soap, yeah?”

Felipe waddled off toward the range.

“I like him,” Cartier said.

“I can't believe this,” Stacy whispered, wrapping her hair up into a bun and slipping the hairnet over the top. “It's probably, like,
never
been cleaned.”

“Very white trash chic,” Misery said.

“Shut up.”

“Make me.”

They cleaned and chopped vegetables for close to an hour; then Felipe split them up. Peter and Misery were given a half-dozen ingredients and a simple recipe for vinaigrette, while Cartier and Stacy were taught how to close out tabs and run credit cards on the computer. Doors opened at six thirty, and as soon as the first few customers had put in their orders, the kitchen went nuts. Someone was always yelling at Peter to do something—usually just to get out of the way. The radio was turned down slightly, but the manic energy of mariachi music still permeated the room. Stacy cut her finger while peeling a potato and looked like she might pass out. After that, they put her on dish duty. There was a slight letup around eight o'clock (time enough for Stacy to take Peter into the alley behind the restaurant and ominously inform him of the “long talk” they were going to have later), and then everything started up again. Peter was crushing peppercorns with a mortar and pestle when the music gave way to a short news bulletin in Spanish. Felipe was closest to the radio, and he was the one who shouted for quiet.

Beneath the sizzling and spattering, the announcer's voice was barely audible. He spoke Spanish at that rapid clip that made Peter wonder how even a native could understand it. Only a couple of words stood out from the gibberish:
presidente
, Ardor,
emergencia
.

“What's he saying?” Stacy asked, and was immediately shushed.

The segment wrapped up, and a commercial jingled to life in its place. Everyone looked dead serious.

Felipe shut off the radio. “Back to work,” he said. “We've still got customers.”

By the time the last guest called for the check, the four volunteers were sweat-swollen, smoke-soaked, and sore all over. They shook hands with Felipe (“Come back soon,” he said, in a tone of voice implying that he didn't expect to see any of them ever again) and, after Cartier got shot down by Keira (“I have a boyfriend in grad school, player”), walked on throbbing feet back to Peter's car.

“Turn on the news,” Stacy said. Peter flicked through the stations until he heard the calm cadences of public radio.

“—numerous examples of the president speaking to the American people simply to allay the possibility of panic. This kind of thing has become something of an action-movie trope, so the very idea of something like Ardor is frightening to the average person. But any astronomer can tell you that there's more chance you'll be struck by lightning in the next thirty seconds than that an asteroid will collide with the Earth. The simple fact of a press conference is not a reason to worry.”

“Thank you, Mr. Fisher.”

“My pleasure.”

“That was Mr. Mark Fisher, one-time director of FEMA, now a professor at Georgetown University. Whether there's any true cause for alarm will probably not be known until the president delivers his speech. Join us here at NPR for live coverage of the event tomorrow night.”

“Jesus,” Stacy said. “Do you think something's going to happen?”

“Nah,” Cartier said. “That's crazy. Space is so freaking big. It would be like throwing a penny up in the air and hitting an airplane.”

“Maybe this is our punishment for trying to destroy the planet ourselves,” Misery said.

Stacy scoffed. “Don't you get tired of being so gloomy all the time?”

“I don't know. Do you get tired of being so dumb all the time?”

“Miz!” Peter said.

“What? She started it.”

Peter and Stacy had been dating for more than three years, but the animosity between his girlfriend and his sister had never been worse. And while he didn't exactly blame Misery, there was no getting around the fact that Stacy was basically the same person now that she'd been at the beginning of their relationship, whereas ­Misery had completely transformed. Ever since she fell in with Bobo at the beginning of freshman year, she'd been on a downward slope: drinking, smoking, blowing off her homework, and God only knew what else. She and Peter barely ever talked to each other like friends anymore; he inevitably ended up sounding like some kind of third parent, or else a PSA about drugs.

“Well, that was a weird night,” Cartier said when Peter dropped him off. “But it was worth it just to meet that Keira chick.”

“You'll get her next time.”

“No doubt, brother. See you tomorrow.”

Peter wished he could have just gone inside with Cartier, to watch some TV and maybe sneak a beer or two out of the fridge, but he had a date with an argument. At least Stacy was good enough to wait until they were standing alone at her front door before she started yelling.

“So what the hell was that?”

“What was what?”

“Taking me to that . . . place.”

“I don't know. Just a change of pace, I guess.”

“We already applied to college, Peter. We don't need to do shit like that.”

“I thought you might enjoy it.”

“Well, I didn't! I hated it!” Stacy's cheekbones were all sharp and serious, and there was that familiar little cinder in her eyes. She was prettiest when she was angry, and that was saying something, because she was pretty all the time. Peter couldn't believe it when they first got together, when they first touched, when he first saw her naked. What had he ever done to deserve something so beautiful? But his sense of gratitude had faded over the years, giving way to a constant low-grade irritation. That was the reason he'd kissed Eliza in the photo lab last year. Because for just a second there, he hadn't wanted the beautiful social queen. He'd wanted something different. Something more peaceful or pensive. Or maybe just something
more
.

“Why?” he asked, and the exhale of that one syllable felt huge, like smashing through a window with his bare fist.

“Why what?”

“Why did you hate it? I mean, we did a good thing tonight, and you should feel good about that.”

“I can't even deal with how much of an asshole you're being right now,” she said, then stalked into her house and slammed the door.

Peter walked slowly back to the car.

“She looked pissed,” Misery said.

“She was.”

“Yeah. I'm sure she would have had a better time torturing puppies or something.”

Peter didn't have the energy to bother defending his girlfriend. “Did you have a good time at least?”

Misery slouched down in her seat, pulled her black cap over her eyes. “Yeah. But only because ex-cons are badass.”

Peter smiled. And totally unbidden, totally unfairly, a thought came to him: Eliza wouldn't have been bothered by a night like this. He could picture himself working next to her at the vegetable station, quietly slicing up beets, then going out afterward to some foreign film or something. Sitting alone in the back row of the movie theater, their fingers interlocked, and then leaning over, turning her face to his . . .

Peter knew that thinking about being with Eliza was a kind of cheating, but he couldn't help it. The fantasies fell like dead leaves from somewhere above his conscious mind, more and more often every day. And no matter how often he swept them away, they always came back.

That night, when he gasped awake sometime in the hours before sunrise to find Ardor framed perfectly in his bedroom window, gleaming like the eye of some sleepless demon, his defenses dropped away, and he allowed himself to imagine Eliza slipping into bed beside him, kissing him like she had that first time. The fantasy led him gently back down into his dreams.

It was the last good night's sleep he'd have for a long time.