Under the Water

by Paul Pen

  Another rumble lent force to his words. Grace laughed.

  “I’m hungry, too, to be honest,” she said. “And I’d rather not have to do anything when we stop today—we’re going to be worn out when we arrive. Let’s stop and eat so we can just go to sleep when we get there. We can always make a big breakfast in the morning. We can still see the stars when we get there, but with a full stomach. And we won’t have the noise from this kid’s belly disturbing us.”

  “I second the motion,” Audrey agreed. “Let’s have dinner—it’s almost night.”

  Frank directed an exaggerated pout at Grace, lamenting the unanimous rejection of his proposal.

  “You know what? I’m starving, too,” he admitted.

  Simon gestured ahead. “Well, there’s a restaurant coming up.”

  The yellow and green of capital letters at the top of a post stood out from the purple tone of the twilight landscape. They formed the word DINER. Underneath, Danielle’s was written in a more informal type, as pink as the color that tinted the clouds at dusk.

  Frank hit the blinker.

  “Will they have vegetarian options?” asked Audrey.

  7.

  The bells above the door rang. Then she heard laughter. There was nothing worse at the end of a hungover day than a happy, noisy family. Until now she’d been lucky with one of the quietest evening shifts she could remember, as if the heavens had heard her prayer as she walked through the restaurant’s back door. She’d prayed for an easy shift. For an empty restaurant. And for the few people who did come to be completely alone. Single men, widows, truck drivers. She’d taken a Tylenol from the first aid kit next to her locker, washed it down with a swig of Pepto-Bismol, and gone out to serve the tables. As if the heavens really had granted her wish, she’d had almost no customers. She was two hours from the end of her shift, and there was only an elderly couple occupying a table at the back. They were sharing their third portion of pie. Without speaking, just holding hands. They’d sat there that way all afternoon. Aniyah wanted to grow old like that with someone, and silently she awarded them the prize for best customers for a hangover, even if the hangover had almost subsided. Until the sound of the little bells over the door brought the headache back. And the laughter returned the discomfort to her stomach.

  Aniyah looked up from the bar, where she was drying flatware with a dish towel. It was a family of four that came in. White. With two kids. Kids who would order dessert—an extra twenty minutes of service. And they would order ice cream. Everyone ordered ice cream in July, and she’d already cleaned the syrup bottles. How lazy she felt. She made herself focus on the fact that, if they had dessert, the check would be bigger and so would the tip. She’d be none the worse for it—she’d hardly collected any tips today, and at least it was an American family, not the European tourists who pretended they didn’t know how much to leave. Aniyah mustered her strength, left the towel on top of the flatware, and came out from behind the bar. She felt the corners of her lips fight against the rest of her face to paint the fakest smile she was able to force.

  “Hi, beautiful family! Welcome to Danielle’s,” she said in a singsongy voice, her face feeling almost deformed. As she always did to win over the children and, in doing so, the parents, she searched for some detail on the little one to personalize the greeting. “I’ll bet the road’s made you all hungry—especially you, little pirate,” she said on account of a patch the kid wore on his eye.

  “Really hungry!” he replied.

  Despite the boy’s enthusiasm, there was an uncomfortable exchange of looks between the parents. Perhaps mentioning the patch hadn’t been the best way to earn their affection, after all. While she showed them to their table—for her own benefit, she offered them a booth near the kitchen and bar so she’d have less walking to do—she asked what they’d like to drink and memorized it.

  “Great, I’ll go fetch those drinks while you decide what you’d like to order.” She laid menus in front of them. The parents had sat nearest the wall, opposite each other. The children were at the outer end of the table.

  Back behind the bar, Aniyah took four glasses and began filling them under the soda fountain’s valves. She’d almost finished filling the mother’s Coke Zero when she heard the bells above the door again. Her shoulders dropped as the hangover grew heavier. “I don’t believe it,” she murmured.

  Everything had been going so well, and now she had two new arrivals in quick succession. She prayed it would be just one person, maybe a hiker on the way to the hot springs—she was in no state to deal with another family. The Coke Zero overflowed the glass, and she wiped it with a cloth and placed it on a round tray with the others. She watched a young woman walk in, her sweatshirt’s hood covering her head. Without waiting for anyone to receive her, she headed to a table of her own accord. Aniyah picked up four straws. She cursed the young woman’s bad manners—the least you can do when you arrive at a restaurant is wait for the server to offer you a table. Now the girl would sit on the other side of the room and she would have to walk ten miles just to serve two tables. She’d done so well with the trick of positioning the family near the bar, and this young woman was going to ruin her night and make her hangover worse. She peeled the paper wrapping from the straws, leaving one hood-shaped end as proof that they were unused. The girl didn’t choose a table, she went into the restroom. Maybe it was a sanitary emergency and that was why she’d gone in there in such a hurry. With luck, she wouldn’t stay for dinner. In which case, Aniyah would forgive her for everything.

  She was about to pick up the tray of drinks when the young woman came out of the bathroom. She’d been quick. Again, she appeared to search for a table—she would stay to eat. Aniyah considered rushing out to meet her and redirect her, but the girl approached the bar. When she ended up sitting in the booth next to the family’s, Aniyah began to like her much more. In fact, the girl was pretty. The kind of white woman she liked—small, but with character. She could see it in her face. With renewed energy, she picked up the tray of drinks and balanced it on the palm of her hand, her bicep swelling.

  “I’ll be right with you,” she said to the young woman as she passed her.

  Trying hard to put a friendly mask on her exhausted face, Aniyah took the family’s order. The mother had straight chestnut hair, worn down with a part in the middle. She had sunglasses on top of her head, acting as a hairband. She barely wore makeup, sure of herself or comfortable among her loved ones. She was wearing jeans and a baggy checkered shirt, the buttons open to give an everyday garment a sexy cleavage. On one wrist she had a hair tie, and on the other she wore a gold watch. She’d left a brown leather purse on the seat. She ordered a Caesar salad, smiling with both her mouth and her eyes, exuding warmth. Aniyah was attracted to her natural manner and simple charm, but she looked too much like a good girl for Aniyah to really like her. She was more into women who could give her a tough time.

  The father ordered a double burger with bacon and cheese. The height and width of the man suggested he would’ve played football at the private college where he’d probably studied. And where he no doubt met the woman opposite him, with whom he must have spent twenty years and made their beautiful family of four, with two children that had, of course, been a girl and a boy. Straight couples were always perfect like that. And conventional. She also thought it was no surprise that the father, with his physique, had ordered such a high-calorie dish without thinking twice—unlike Aniyah, whose butt grew bigger if she even looked at the desserts she served. The polo shirt he wore was tight on his chest and shoulders even though it was as baggy as his chino pants, the classic outfit of a father at the wheel. Four-day stubble rounded off his relaxed appearance—in his professional life he was almost certainly obliged to shave.

  Aniyah liked the girl’s hairstyle, short and asymmetrical, it reminded her of a rocker girlfriend she’d once had. And the fact that she ordered a veggie burger also matched her memory of that girlfriend. Were she able, Aniy
ah would do more with her hair, but she’d tried chopping most of it off a few years ago and the convenience of not having to comb it was hard to beat. It also gave her a virile look that proved a winner. Finally, the boy with the patch ordered chicken fingers with french fries. Lots of french fries.

  “More than you can eat, don’t worry,” Aniyah said. “If that’s everything, I’ll be back with the food real soon.”

  Before taking the order to the kitchen, she stopped at the next table. The sweatshirt girl’s eyes were a blue color that seemed grayer. Aniyah felt a flutter in her stomach, and the palms of her hands broke out in sweat.

  “Thanks for not sitting on the other side of the room.” She winked without intending it.

  The girl frowned. “Huh?”

  “Don’t worry, just a waitress thing.”

  The furrows on the other woman’s brow remained. She didn’t seem friendly. There was some torment in her expression, or perhaps it was shyness that made her a little uncomfortable to look at. Aniyah thought about Kristen Stewart—she had a few photos of her in the locker from which she’d taken her uniform a few hours ago, before swallowing the Tylenol. She’d begun to like the actress when she came out of the closet on Saturday Night Live.

  From the other table, they heard the father comment: “We’re the kings and queens of a country called Our Family.”

  Hearing it, the girl in the sweatshirt snorted.

  Aniyah lowered her voice. “I can’t stand these regular families, can you?”

  The girl shook her head, raising her eyebrows, as if it was obvious and no one in the world could stand them. Aniyah wanted the response to give her a clue as to whether she had a chance with the girl. She looked for a trace of masculinity in her demeanor but found nothing.

  “Too heteronormative for my taste,” Aniyah added.

  She introduced the term on purpose, to make her inclination clear. That way she made it easier for the girl if she was timid. Aniyah was rarely wrong when she set eyes on a woman, as difficult as it may seem, but this one showed no particular reaction to the unusual adjective.

  “I can’t stand them,” the girl whispered.

  “You’re lucky you can’t see them.” With her pen, Aniyah pointed at the back of their seats, which reached the ceiling, giving each table complete privacy. “And if you put some music on your headphones”—a cell phone was on the paper table cover—“you won’t have to listen to them. I’ve got an hour of forced smiles ahead of me, all for a couple of dollars. I think I’d do better as a stripper.”

  Aniyah laughed but the girl didn’t join in, as easy as it would have been to go along with a joke like that. How hard it was picking up customers in Idaho. In California it was much simpler.

  The girl turned her attention to the menu on the table and ordered one of the all-day breakfasts. Aniyah returned to the kitchen assuming she’d been wrong. It would be one of the rare occasions when her intuition failed her. Or perhaps the girl didn’t like black women, or she had a girlfriend, or a boyfriend, or she was just unfriendly. She finished drying the flatware while the chef prepared the five dishes. The smells of french fries, butter, meat, and oil alternated in her nose.

  After serving the family, she took the pancakes and scrambled eggs to the girl. She noticed that she hadn’t put on her headphones as Aniyah had suggested.

  “I see you like to suffer.” She gestured at the family with her chin. “How’s life for the nuclear family?”

  The girl shot herself in the head with a pistol formed from two fingers. The gesture amused Aniyah and she smiled, though she’d just promised herself she’d stop flirting. She looked at the family’s table.

  “Well, they’ve calmed down a little,” she said. “They’re all on their cell phones. And if you need anything—anything at all—I’m right here.”

  She bookended her words with another wink, so that the sentence could take on whatever meaning the girl chose to ascribe to it. Clearly she wasn’t going to be able to control herself. What else could a bored waitress do when a girl as beautiful as Kristen Stewart walks through the door?

  8.

  Frank observed his family. Opposite him, Grace was sliding her thumb over her cell phone, no doubt reading a long list of comments on one of her videos. She’d left her fork in her salad bowl a little while ago. Next to her, Audrey was typing on her phone like a centipede in a hurry. She’d eaten all of her veggie burger except the top half of the bun. She was drinking through the straw in one side of her mouth. The boy was also entertaining himself with his cell phone, matching the colors in a game to make lines disappear. On his plate, there was a circular brushstroke from french fries soaked in the last remnants of ketchup.

  “Seriously?” asked Frank. “Everyone in their own little worlds? Don’t we have anything to say to each other anymore?”

  Five eyes looked up from their screens at him.

  “This is supposed to be a family trip,” he added, “and families talk to one another.”

  “All the time?” asked Audrey. “We spoke while we ate.”

  “As much as possible, yeah. Let’s call it a day with the cell phones.”

  First he took Simon’s, since he was sitting beside him. Grace thumbed hers faster before he snatched it as well.

  “Dad, just because you’re a digital dinosaur who hasn’t got a clue about technology doesn’t mean you have to drag the rest of us down with you,” Audrey argued. “I’m a digital native and I need to stay connected.”

  Seeing that Frank had no intention of giving in, she finally handed her phone to him when she’d finished typing her message.

  “That cell phone’s my only contact with the life you’re making me leave behind.”

  Frank rolled his eyes. “Give me one of your ziplocks,” he said to Grace.

  His wife always carried the hermetically sealable transparent bags in her purse, separating her cosmetics from her keys, her food from her billfold, her accessories from her pens. It was a system she recommended to all her friends who complained they could never find anything in theirs. She’d even made a video on the subject. Grace lifted her purse onto the table. She took out a bulky guide to Idaho and some of the used bags. She passed an empty one to Frank. He put the three cell phones in it and closed the zipper.

  “There we go.”

  “And yours?” asked Audrey. Simon laughed.

  “Busted!” said Grace.

  “Not at all, I’ll do it gladly. I’m the one who wants to make the most of the time I have with my family.”

  He took his cell phone from his pocket and added it to the ziplock. He set the bag aside on the table, beside the wall. It was so full he struggled to close the zipper again, but managed it.

  “Confiscated until further notice.”

  “This is scary,” Audrey said, slumping forward. “I already feel so disconnected . . .”

  “We’re an eighties family now,” Grace added.

  “Cool,” said Simon. “We’re in black and white.”

  He looked at his hands as if he’d traveled back in time to an era in grayscale. The anachronism made Frank roar with laughter, though it also made him feel old. Grace opened the Idaho tourist guide.

  “We could read in the eighties, couldn’t we?” she asked with an arched eyebrow. She flicked through several pages, reacting to some of the photographs, reading some titles. “So, what’s this spectacular place we’re stopping at tonight?”

  “It’s a secret.”

  Examining the pages, Grace started suggesting possibilities. She asked whether it was Rocky Canyon Hot Springs, and Frank shook his head. Or Kirkham Hot Springs. No. Red River Hot Springs? Not there, either.

  “Goldbug?”

  “That’s still a long way away. And you can quit with that list, it’s of the state’s most famous hot springs. The place we’re going isn’t even in there.” He tried to close the book but she resisted, making her fingers strong. “We’re going somewhere out of the way that no one knows, only the l
ocals. Carl in Reservations recommended it to me. He came with his family, and he said they spent the three days they were there alone. The places you mentioned will be full of people. Everyone reads the same guides.”

  “And how’re we going to get to this place if it isn’t in the guide?” asked Audrey. “We’ll have to search for it on Google Maps.”

  She stretched out her arm, trying to reach the cell phones. Frank gave her a tap on the hand to interrupt her ploy.

  “We have to turn down a road marked with two fat tree stumps. It’s just after a Super 8 motel we’re going to pass soon. Once we’re on that road, we’ll be there in two hours. People found places before they had cell phones, you know.”

  “It seems so.” Audrey slumped back on the bench. “When life was in black and white, like my little brother says.”

  Grace read out loud: “While there are few experiences as pleasant as taking a warm bath surrounded by nature in hot springs, some of them are fed by currents that come from inside the earth at temperatures exceeding the boiling point. They are, therefore, incompatible with life. Visitors must also take great care to avoid locations with high sulfur, sulfuric acid, or hydrogen sulfide levels, which are capable of breaking down a human body.” She closed the book on the table. “I think I’ve read enough.”

  “That’s disturbing, Dad,” said Audrey. “I’m not going in anything like that.”

  “I will!” yelled Simon.

  “Hang on, hang on.” Frank made a dampening gesture with his hands to calm his family. “Carl went in with his four children, and one was a baby. Anyway, it’s easy to take precautions: if there’s no steam coming from the water, then it’s not boiling, and if there’s sulfur, it’ll stink of rotten eggs so we won’t feel like bathing in it. In either case, I’ll be the first to stop us from going in. But you’ll see, these thermal waters are perfect. Like a spa in the mountains.”

  Four long spoons appeared on the table.

  “Here’re your tools,” the waitress said with a wide smile, “and the sundaes are on their way. I warn you, they’re big. And very deep. That’s why the spoons are so long. Have you seen spoons like that before?” She directed the question at Simon.