Tantalize

by Cynthia Leitich Smith

  As Uncle Davidson and Johnson exited the stainless doors, I told myself they’d just be gone a minute and flipped the radio on to KUT. The piece playing was classical, Bach or Beethoven or one of those B-named composers.

  I glanced from the door to the dining room to the door to the break room to the door to the hall to the door to the parking lot. When Uncle D had redesigned the place, he’d been thinking about flow, not defense.

  But now we were taking precautions. Outside official business hours, the back door would always be locked. Uncle D had promised he’d remember. Plus, he was talking about hiring a couple of bouncers and/or security guards. Soon.

  My uncle and Johnson returned with the old vinyl recliner, struggling to figure out the angle at the doorway. The beat-up chair looked out of place in the ultramodern kitchen, in front of the two cash registers. My uncle sank down and extended the footrest. The Gatorade bottle sat on the floor beside the chair, untouched as he closed his eyes. Meanwhile, Johnson got scrubbing and I pushed up on the counter to supervise.

  By the time Johnson hung the saucepan onto the overhead rack, the radio was accompanied by the nasal snore of my uncle, who slept like the dead.

  “Hungry?” the chef asked, lavender eyes attentive.

  Wait a minute, I thought. “You have lavender eyes?”

  They’d been — what? — hazel the night before.

  “Contacts. I thought they might make me look more otherworldly.”

  “They do that,” I agreed, taking inventory. Johnson wasn’t classically handsome. His nose was too big, his smile too smug, his blond hair thinning on top. More skinny than slight. Cornball dimple in his left cheek. Bad dresser. Slouched. Pluses: youth; height, if he’d stand up straight; granny polite, though it came and went. Quirks: he wore two watches, expensive looking, that seemed out of place with the western clothes; his nails longer than usual for a man. And again, lavender eyes. “But they say more ‘fairie prince’ than ‘vampire.’”

  He retied his apron. “I’ll try red next time, like in the movies.”

  I wasn’t sure how much Uncle D had told Johnson, but it was my responsibility to get him up to speed. “You know,” I said, “a lot of Sanguini’s potential guests take the whole cape-and-incisors bit seriously.”

  “Cape?” he asked.

  “Cape.” Might as well spit it out, I decided. Uncle D envisioned the vampire chef not only as culinary expert but also as master of darkness. Each night’s dinner climaxing in his leading a midnight toast. It was part of the job description. “His girlfriend, Ruby,” I pointed at my snoozing guardian, “drinks human blood from virgin donors in Hill Country caves on nights with a full moon.”

  Johnson raised one eyebrow. “How do they know who’s a virgin?”

  “This isn’t a joke!” I informed him. “We have to craft a complete gothic-inspired menu, capisce?” I held up a finger to stop him from interrupting. “And, at least so far as the general public is concerned, we also have to present you as reigning vampire king over anybody who dares to stroll through the front door.”

  “We?” Johnson asked, pulling a bag of tomatoes from a nearby bin. He’d apparently stocked it last night. “Look, Miss Morris, I understand you’re a young woman. Very young, barely a woman, and you don’t want to come off as a pushover. But you might reconsider your tone.” He set the bag on the counter and grabbed a bowl from the cabinet. “You’re lucky to have me. Nobody else even wanted this job because here at Sanguini’s the first-year restaurant fatality rate does in fact mean fatality rate, and —”

  “Hey!” I exclaimed, legs crossed in a manner hopefully more commanding than prissy. “A man died here, you know. Show a little respect.”

  “No worries, honey,” my uncle piped up, having been awakened by our chatter. “I’ll ask Ruby to give him a hand with his wardrobe and persona.”

  I remembered Ruby’s laugh at Vaggio’s funeral, the way she’d basked in the media limelight, how much time my uncle was spending with her already.

  Not to be all territorial, but she wasn’t the one whose grandparents and parents had once owned this restaurant. She wasn’t the one who’d be taking it over one day. She wasn’t even officially an employee. Besides, I’d thought I was in charge of the chef.

  “Or,” Uncle D mused, “maybe Ruby could play the master vampire and —”

  “Wait!” I said, horrified at the idea of her in the spotlight night after night. “Let’s not panic. I can help him. Really. I’ll turn him into Count Sanguini.”

  “Not that Ruby doesn’t seem like a great dame and all,” Johnson said, reaching for a knife to dice, “but I’m sure Miss Morris and I can handle the job.”

  He didn’t like Ruby either, I realized. Brownie points for him.

  Waiting for my uncle’s answer, I bit my lower lip. It was twenty-seven days until the relaunch. Engraved invitations for the Friday the 13th party had already been ordered and prepaid. Johnson had a menu to design. I had school, Kieren. It was a big job, an important job, way out of my area of expertise and smack in the middle of Ruby’s. But I wanted to do it anyway, to put the finishing touch on Sanguini’s, to create its star.

  “All right, you two.” Uncle D folded his hands, one atop another, like a corpse laid out for viewing. Then he pointed his toes as much as they would point in Birkenstocks. “If you run into trouble, just let me know.”

  Johnson’s rigatoni marinara was an orgasm in tomato sauce. If nothing else, the new chef could nail the basics.

  After lunch, Uncle D took off to the restaurant supply store while I met with Johnson in the management office. It was bigger and cleaner than the old one we’d had before the remodel. My uncle had even sprung for a fake banana tree.

  I took Uncle D’s chair, and Johnson sat across from me. He’d brought an open bottle of blush wine, a ’99 Sonoma Zinfandel from the fridge.

  “It’s too cold, even for a white,” Johnson informed me, like he wasn’t talking to a teenager, “and it’s a day old, but we might as well finish it off.”

  I wasn’t what anyone would call a partyer, but it wasn’t like I’d never had a drink before either. Kieren and I snagged a couple of Coors every once in a great while, and there was that one disaster with the tequila. Besides, in my new assistant-manager-in-training mode, I didn’t want to come off like a little kid. So I just nodded.

  Johnson poured us each a glass, handed one to me, and raised his. “To Sanguini’s.”

  How could I not drink to that? I raised my glass in reply, then brought it to my lips. The wine was chilly . . . and disturbing.

  At my expression, Johnson laughed. “Something wrong?”

  “Vaggio let me try wines sometimes,” I said carefully. “I prefer white.”

  “Red is more sophisticated,” Johnson replied. “Like you, sophisticated for your years but sure to improve with time.”

  I couldn’t help being flattered and took another sip.

  “Better?” he asked.

  Not really, but I nodded again anyway.

  “You’ll develop a taste through continued exposure,” Johnson explained. “You’ll learn to appreciate its edge.”

  He sounded awfully sure about that, of himself. It was time to take charge of the situation. “Let’s get your info in Frank,” I said.

  “Frank?” Johnson asked.

  I grabbed it from inside the desk drawer. “My day planner.”

  “You named your day planner?”

  “It’s a Franklin Day Planner,” I said. A leather-clad Christmas gift from Kieren, who knew me too well. “‘Frank’ is the natural diminutive.”

  “Like ‘Frankenstein’?”

  The monster maker, though this meeting was more about a make over.

  Johnson was watching me, how I turned to the address pages, held my pen. It made me self-conscious about my scars.

  As he rattled off an address, I copied it into Frank.

  We’d have to start with the bio Uncle D wanted to adhere to the inside of t
he menu covers. A compelling identity for the vampire chef.

  In real life, Henry Johnson hailed from Kansas City (Kansas City, Missouri; not Kansas City, Kansas), moved after graduating from high school to Paris (Paris, Texas; not Paris, France), attended the Southwest Culinary Arts Institute, and then worked one year as sous-chef and two as head chef at Chat Lunatique, also of Paris, Texas.

  Johnson had just moved to Austin, he explained, when he came across Uncle D’s help-wanted ad. “My last weekend in Paris was the same one my predecessor died. It’s awkward, taking over under these circumstances. I’m sorry about your loss.”

  “Thanks,” I replied. It was nice of him to say. Really, I appreciated it. But I couldn’t talk about Vaggio right now without tearing up, and that wouldn’t help anything. Uncle D had asked me to work with Johnson, and that’s what I was going to do. Bio first. “About your stage name, do you have any suggestions?”

  Johnson fidgeted in the chair across from the desk, too small for his frame. “How about ‘Henry’?”

  I rolled the wine on my tongue, trying to look neutral.

  “‘Hank’?” he asked.

  “Welcome to the Million Bubba March.”

  “‘Brad’?”

  “Eh.” It wasn’t tragic.

  He rubbed his chin. “How about ‘Bradley Sanguini’?”

  “‘Bradley’?” I asked, raising my glass again.

  “My mom’s maiden name,” he replied, brightening. “Or how about ‘Brad, the Impaler’? As in ‘Vlad,’ like the Prince of Transylvania, except with —”

  “‘Bradley Sanguini’ sounds fine.”

  “You know,” Johnson said as I copied down the name, “we’ve been talking a lot about me, and I’m wondering . . . Not to pry, but what’re you doing at this joint? Shouldn’t you be putting off your homework and looking for the ultimate zit cream and obsessing over who’s taking you to the homecoming dance?”

  “Lots of my classmates have afterschool and weekend jobs,” I replied, hoping that he was referring to hypothetical zits. “This place means a lot to me, so I decided to do work-study in the afternoons, help out my uncle.”

  “Won’t there be plenty of time for that later?” he asked.

  I shrugged. “Who wants to be forever young? You can’t do this, can’t do that.”

  “So you don’t have enough power?” Johnson asked. “Is that what you’re saying?”

  I fiddled with the zipper on Frank, embarrassed by the intensity of his attention.

  “But adulthood,” continued the barely twentysomething, “doesn’t give you power over what matters most. It doesn’t protect you from pain, loss, fate. That’s part of being human.”

  Still . . . “I prefer to be in control.”

  “Isn’t that about fear?” Johnson asked, swirling the liquid in his glass. “What are you so afraid . . . ?” Beats me what my face did, but he backed off. Quick. Far. Decisively. “I’m just trying to understand. Control of everyone? Everything?”

  “I want to take care of myself, my own.” That had been succinct. Adultlike. I was ready for a change of subject.

  Johnson leaned forward. “Being the chef at your family’s restaurant, would that make me your own?”

  What a flirt! “An employee,” I clarified. “Not a slave. Besides, my uncle runs the place, and he’s more mellow than I am. Some free will is tolerated.”

  He laughed out loud at that, and I felt tension ease from my shoulders. The alcohol was helping with my stress level. A good call on the part of the new chef.

  It wasn’t his fault he wasn’t Vaggio.

  Johnson, no, that wouldn’t do. From now on, I’d call him “Brad,” short for “Bradley Sanguini.” With my help, Brad would work out fine.

  A knock sounded at the door.

  As Brad reached for it, I said, “Wait,” and then, louder, “Uncle Davidson?”

  I thought he’d already left.

  “Uh, it’s Travis,” a boy’s voice sounded.

  “And Clyde,” another pitched in, brisker.

  Kieren’s friends. “How’d you get in?” I asked.

  Clyde answered, “The back door was unlocked.”

  My stomach clenched as I wondered how Uncle D could forget.

  Brad looked at me, and when I didn’t object, he opened the door.

  Standing before us were two guys, sophomores at my school.

  Travis was maybe five foot four and stocky. He hopped back at my evaluating stare. Clyde stood a couple of inches shorter, his body slight. Each had a pronounced nose, though Clyde’s came to a sharper point. Clyde also had black hair, going very early gray, mucho body hair on his arms and legs, and a smart-ass smile that showed too many tiny teeth. He broke the silence. “We’re here to talk to your uncle about jobs.”

  Neither boy carried the kind of muscle that Kieren and his mama had inspired me to associate with Wolves, but I could always tell that neither Travis nor Clyde was a human being. I finished my glass, wishing Brad had brought back a full bottle.

  I had every intention of walking to school. I’d resolved to do so every day after selling my temperamental Honda last May. It was a ten- to twelve-minute walk. No big deal. But then Monday morning came. It was already hot, and the rising sun made my eyes water. Fortunately, just as I’d walked out the door, Kieren pulled up curbside.

  We hadn’t talked about the possibility of his leaving for a pack since Saturday.

  But I could feel it between us, crackling in the heat.

  “You sure about this?” he asked, slowing his truck. “Working late, school in the morning. You’re already dead on your feet.”

  My juggling work and school was nothing new. I yawned, shifting the seat belt.

  Kieren took the hint. “Check it out,” he said.

  I opened my eyes to see Mitch at the corner. His sign read:

  I lowered the window. “You’re up early.”

  Mitch stepped into the street. “Miss Quincie! Hardly ever seen you before nine either. Not all summer anyway. Not since Mitch don’t know when. Not since, shoot, hellfire, I, I sure am thirsty.”

  Digging into my purse, I slipped him a five.

  “God bless, bless you. Gotta tell you, though. You gotta know. Cops talked to me, had lots of questions. So many. Too, too many. Asked about you and asked about you, too. I, I told ’em I didn’t know nothing, not a thing, but that you was good kids.”

  Kieren and I exchanged a look.

  “They’re just doing their jobs,” I told Mitch.

  “Gotta go,” Kieren pitched in. “Light.” It’d just changed to green.

  “Watch, watch. . . . Take good care, care for her,” Mitch replied, backing away as traffic shifted into gear. “Bye-bye.”

  As we entered the intersection, Kieren said, “You don’t think they suspect Mitch?”

  “The cops? Why would they? It sounds like it’s you and me that —”

  “It’s a high-profile case. There’s a lot of pressure to get it solved, to bring in somebody and charge them. Mitch would make an easy scapegoat.”

  So would Kieren. Especially if it got out that he was part Wolf.

  Kieren hadn’t wanted to talk about his interview with APD, had dodged the question when I’d asked if the detective had demanded to know where he was born. But he did mention that werepeople and probably hybrids didn’t have the same legal rights as humans. I studied his strong, brown hands on the steering wheel.

  Moments later, Kieren pulled into the school parking lot and found a spot under a shade tree, several rows from the nearest car. Kieren shut off the engine and patted the dashboard, like the truck was Brazos. Some kind of territory thing, I guessed. “I have to ask,” he began. “Have you given any more thought to —”

  “No.” I reached over to turn the key so the air would come back on. I’d been able to tell from his tone where the conversation was headed.

  “I’m asking you to talk to your uncle about making one adjustment. He can still retool the restaurant t
heme. Maybe the remodel is enough without the vampire crap.”

  I unbuckled my seat belt, reached for the door handle. “He’s married to the idea,” I snapped. “If Ruby loves it, he loves it.”

  “Quince —”

  “God, can we just have a normal day?”

  Kieren’s touch was tentative on my forearm. “Normal sounds nice.”

  I knew my day would be lousy, though, when I saw the words “Bitch Sucks” spray-painted in red on my assigned locker. I could only hope the implication was sucking blood. Which, in itself . . . Christ.

  Kieren was behind me, and I could feel him seethe.

  Winnie Gerhard had bent over the nearest water fountain as an excuse to linger. Just great, I thought. The girl was the senior class equivalent of Fox News.

  “I’m going to get a janitor,” Kieren said.

  “Wait, we’ve got class, and it’s no big deal.” Nothing everyone hadn’t seen or heard about already.

  “I know. But you shouldn’t have to look at it.”

  I nodded, raising my hand to spin the combination, put away my backpack. “I’ve got Econ first period.”

  “See you in English,” he replied, marching off down the hall.

  I watched him pass Quandra Perez — tall, dark, zowie, the kind of girl even straight girls lusted after — without so much as a glance. Kieren might not have ever acted on his feelings, but so far as I knew he’d always been loyal to me.

  Quandra herself neared, casting a shocked look at my locker door, but she didn’t say anything.

  I used to have more friends, but in fifth grade, Sumi, my best friend who was a girl (as opposed to Kieren, my best friend who was a guy) had moved with her family back to India. A few cards, letters, then we lost touch. And the other girls, the ones from Sunday school and soccer . . . They hadn’t known what to say to me, how to act after my parents died. At the time, I’d felt deserted, angry because they seemed to think that being an orphan was somehow contagious. But then I’d had Vaggio, Kieren and his family, Uncle D. My life had seemed full enough between them and Fat Lorenzo’s, and I’d lost interest in making new friends.