The Nakeds

by Lisa Glatt

  “Don’t break my new chair. Pull the lever toward you,” Martin instructed.

  Tony jiggled the handle and sat upright, his feet hitting the carpet. He situated himself. He ran his hand along the side of the chair. “Feels like vinyl to me. How much did you pay for these chairs?” he asked.

  “Enough.”

  “I hope you didn’t think you were paying for leather.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  They were quiet again until Tony finally said, “Do you like being back in town? You OK here? How’s work?”

  “Great,” Martin said, meaning it. “I’m the boss. I’m in the kitchen, making stuff. I’m trying out new recipes all the time. You and Annabelle should come by on Saturday. I’ll get you a good table,” he said.

  “We’ll get a sitter. You’ll give us a deal?”

  Martin nodded. “My dad hired a good crew. He had an eye for that sort of thing. Not sure if I’ll be as sharp at hiring people when the time comes.”

  “You’ll do fine.”

  “I don’t know. My dad was a good judge. He could always pick them. He knew who’d be fast and who’d be slow.”

  “You got foxy waitresses?”

  “I’m talking about busboys and waiters. But there is a redhead—” Martin began and then stopped himself. “Want some iced tea?” he asked.

  “Sure.”

  “Or a beer?” Martin teased.

  “Tea’s fine. Tea’s great. I’ve been sober five years,” Tony reminded him. “How do you think I became a pharmacist? College and graduate school? I wouldn’t have become anything if I kept going like I was going.”

  Tony asked him if he wished he’d gone to college. “You should have gone, man. It’s not too late,” he said.

  “Cooking school was enough for me,” Martin said, thinking that Tony was somehow managing to bore him and irritate him at once, thinking that maybe he’d go back to Las Vegas after all. Maybe he’d get someone else to take care of the restaurant. He’d open a Kettle’s on the Strip and plan out the whole menu on his own. “I’ll get that tea,” Martin said, walking toward the kitchen. Sadie sprinted from the couch and followed him, the two of them leaving Tony alone to congratulate himself.

  “Hey,” Tony shouted after him. “Tell me about that redhead.”

  4

  PABLO AND Hannah pulled up to the curb in front of Rebecca’s house, and this time he made a point of rushing over to her side and helping her out. He pulled the crutches from the back and leaned them against the truck before offering her his hand.

  Hannah had told Rebecca that Mustafa probably wouldn’t join them, but still Rebecca looked disappointed when they showed up on her porch without him and, maybe more importantly, without his pot. “We’ll have to drink all the vodka now,” she whined.

  “Hey, Becca,” Pablo said. “Can you help me put the shell on?” He gestured to the truck, his future home, in the driveway.

  Hannah wished she could have helped Pablo with the shell and was insulted that he hadn’t even asked her. She knew she was useless in a toe-to-groin and would have been mad if he’d asked her to help in the first place. There was no way for him to win.

  She stood on the porch watching Pablo and Rebecca haul the shell from the back, and when they zipped it up together, chatting and laughing, she imagined losing them both.

  Rebecca sat too close to Pablo on the couch. She laughed too hard at his jokes and twirled her long hair around a finger. She looked mesmerized and impressed when he said the most innocuous things and Hannah was relieved when the phone rang and it was Mustafa, relieved when Rebecca trotted upstairs to her room to talk to him, leaving Hannah and Pablo finally alone.

  They heard her bedroom door close and then her exaggerated laugh behind it. They heard her enunciating words, saying them too loudly, the way she always did when she talked to Mustafa.

  “She really likes him,” Hannah said, although she didn’t think this was true and wasn’t sure why she was saying it.

  “She likes his pot,” Pablo said, laughing.

  “He’s more than his pot.”

  “The burger went flying, huh?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I thought you said—”

  “I don’t know,” she snapped.

  “Whoa,” he said, backing up. “Let’s be nice.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  He came closer, talked to her in a sweet voice. “I like you, Hannah. I do.” And she felt that he was trying to convince not only her but also himself.

  And even though Hannah wasn’t at all sure that she still liked Pablo, it was important that he like her, so she responded to his soft voice, moving toward him, letting him kiss her and kissing him back.

  And he handed her the crutches, and she moved with him into the den, and tried to convince herself with her body and his body that they were still boyfriend and girlfriend. So what if they disagreed on the way over. So what if he wanted to live in his truck and play his harmonica on the street. People say all sorts of things they don’t mean, she told herself. So what if she told him about Mustafa’s seizure, if Pablo brought out the worst in her—it wasn’t his fault that the worst was there.

  In the den with the door shut, they couldn’t hear Rebecca’s voice, but Hannah felt like her friend was still with them. Rebecca was in the room, was on the couch with them—her voice and laugh in Hannah’s head. Still, they kissed and kissed and kissed, and Pablo kissed her neck and touched her breasts, and Hannah kissed back, positioning herself just so, inviting his hand into her favorite jeans.

  The back of Pablo’s hand scraped hard against her cast and he cussed too loud. “Fuck,” he nearly screamed, moving his hand from the left side to the right.

  She only kissed him again, trying to pretend that her leg wasn’t in the way. She was a girl whose cast was coming off in a couple of weeks, a girl who would then join the healthy, whole girls on their side of the room.

  • • •

  Later, when Rebecca finally got off the phone with Mustafa, she joined Hannah and Pablo in the backyard where they were sitting on wicker chairs, drinking a concoction of cherry punch and vodka. They’d already helped themselves to the Chinese food she’d promised them. Takeout cartons of fried rice and cashew chicken, half-eaten, sat on a side table between them.

  “See you made yourselves at home,” Rebecca said, smiling. She looked around the yard. “We need music. Want to help me with the speakers, Pab?”

  Pab—what was with the Pab? Hannah wondered.

  She watched and waited, dipping an egg roll into sweet sauce and lifting it to her mouth. Inside the house, Rebecca and Pablo worked together, hauling the three-foot speakers across the living room. Halfway to the screen, Rebecca lifted her speaker in the air, struggled the rest of the way. It was a ridiculous dance, Hannah thought, Rebecca’s torso, shoulders, and face disappearing behind the speaker, and she was, for those few seconds, two red flip-flops, two perfect tan legs.

  Pablo positioned the speakers at an angle so that they were pointing toward the backyard.

  They sat outside until nearly midnight, drinking what was left of the vodka. The cherry punch stained their lips red. They listened to the Beach Boys until Pablo couldn’t take it anymore and insisted Rebecca take those dicks off the turntable and put on a blues station.

  Rebecca told them that it was fun talking to Mustafa on the phone. She told them he hadn’t mentioned his seizure and that she hadn’t really expected him to—they weren’t that kind of close, she said.

  The three of them talked about kids at school, kids they were looking forward to seeing when summer ended and school started, and kids they’d planned to avoid.

  “I better get my own locker this year,” Rebecca said. “Last year I had to share with Amy Owen. She pasted pictures of her stupid cat all over the door.”

  “All tenth graders get their own,” Pablo said. He pulled a cigarette and book of matches from his pocket. When he popped the ciga
rette in his mouth and lit up, the flame illuminated the marks on his hand. They were worse than Hannah thought.

  Rebecca shot up in her chair. “What happened to you?” she shrieked.

  “Her cast,” he said, looking down at it accusingly.

  “Sorry,” Hannah said.

  “What did it do?” Rebecca wanted to know.

  “It fucked me up.”

  “It’s not a person,” Hannah said, feeling drunk. “It didn’t beat you up, Pablo. You’re both acting like it’s alive.”

  “What?” he said. “You’re not making any sense.”

  “I am too,” she protested, not at all sure.

  But no one was listening to her. It was as if she’d disappeared.

  “That looks painful, Pab,” Rebecca cooed, leaning over and holding his wrist.

  Hannah looked at Pablo’s hand and felt embarrassed that something on her body had hurt him. “I’m sorry. It’s sorry,” she said.

  “We’ve got a first-aid kit somewhere,” Rebecca said, and then she was gone, rushing out of the backyard and bolting up the stairs.

  Alone again, the two of them turned quiet. Hannah knew things were all wrong. She didn’t like Pablo enough, and worse, he didn’t like her enough, despite what they’d done in the den. “You drive like a little old lady,” she said.

  He was silent, picking at his scratches.

  Then, Rebecca was rushing down the stairs, breasts bouncing in her T-shirt. By the time she got to him with the bottle of iodine and a handful of cotton balls, his hand looked even worse and he’d started to bleed.

  Rebecca held the cotton ball to the bottle’s mouth, and then she was leaning forward, dabbing at the tiny red dots, saying, “Here, let me help you, let me clean this up. He’s hurt, Hannah,” she said. “Can’t you see Pab’s hurt?”

  5

  MARTIN MADE the third restaurant his own and left the other two restaurants to Sandy and her husband, who were happy to take control of them. Kettle’s served mostly Italian food and the first thing Martin did was add some menu choices. He made use of what he’d learned in cooking school. He added the Thai-spiced fish, even though his mom insisted it didn’t fit with the rest of the menu. He added a flourless chocolate cake and a lemon meringue pie.

  And he was drinking again, but was sure he had it under control. One beer a night—who would it kill? It was the only time he talked to people other than Tony or his mom or the men and women in the kitchen. He liked sitting after work with the waitresses and his one beer. He liked to keep the lights low and the red candles burning on the tables. Mostly he stayed quiet while letting the girls talk. They rolled up their sleeves. They unsnapped their barrettes and shook their hair free over their shoulders. They loosened the belts from their uniforms or took them off completely, draping them over chairs.

  He liked them all, the brunette, the married redhead, and the one whose hair was a different color every other week: Cindy, Suzanne, and Suzy. It was hard to keep their names straight, but the redhead, Suzanne, her voice, the way she moved her hands when she spoke, the way she wiped off her lipstick with a napkin and her lips stayed pink, remained with him long after their little party of four had broken up. Images of her talking or laughing or even one night crying followed him as he walked home. The images followed him into bed and into his dreams.

  He nursed one beer.

  Another night he nursed two.

  At first the girls asked him questions about his life.

  Do you have a girlfriend?

  Where do you live?

  Is your friend Tony, the doctor, married to that woman he brought in on Saturday?

  How is your mother getting on without your father?

  Why did you move away?

  And why Las Vegas?

  He gave short answers. Sometimes he shook his head, saying, “I don’t want to talk about me.” After repeated attempts, they stopped asking. He liked that they didn’t insist and that they let him sit with them while they talked and drank. The more they drank, the more intense their conversations became. Their laughter grew louder, they cussed and gossiped.

  He listened to their stories of an unfaithful boyfriend, a husband who slept too much and ate too little, a miscarriage. He just sat and listened and stared at them or stared at the candle’s flame, and sometimes he thought they almost forgot he was there, and that suited him just fine. He liked looking at them and he liked hearing their voices and he liked putting his fingertip in the hot wax, letting it dry, and peeling it off, letting the wax collect on the little napkin in front of him.

  The girls talked about cheap tippers, the grapefruit diet, and birth control methods. Cindy or Suzy talked about church. Someone mentioned a shoe sale at the mall. Suzanne talked about the husband who was always asleep on the couch when her shift was over. She said that his breath had grown sour over the years and that lately he’d been refusing to eat what she cooked for him.

  One night, after the restaurant had bustled with big spenders and generous tippers whom the girls were still talking about, Martin splurged and drank beers without counting. He used a key to open the bar and pulled a bottle of whiskey from a shelf. They drank and drank. He told the girls about his life in Vegas, cooking school, and his friendship with Tony. He ran a hand along the back of his chair and asked them if it was possible to tell the difference between expensive vinyl and cheap leather.

  “Vinyl’s never expensive, is it?” Suzy said, looking at Suzanne and Cindy for confirmation.

  Both women shrugged and all of them started laughing, even Martin, who suddenly didn’t give a shit what his chairs were made of. What mattered was that he had a place to sit.

  When the laughter stopped, though, Suzanne wiped off her lipstick and started to cry. She told them about her husband again, how he was losing weight, becoming skinny. His face was gaunt and cruel, she told them. And he didn’t say good-bye when he left the house for work. She missed those first few years of marriage when he wouldn’t leave a room without kissing her, when he hungrily and appreciatively ate what she’d cooked for him.

  It was after three a.m. when Martin found himself in the back of the restaurant with Suzanne. The other two kept up their chatter and he could hear their voices while he was kissing Suzanne and she was kissing him back, while he was unbuttoning the top of her uniform and slipping his hand inside.

  “I’m married,” she said, but she continued kissing him and let her hand fall to his crotch.

  • • •

  The four of them staying after work became the three of them—Suzanne always running home to her thin, sleeping husband.

  It stung every time she said good-bye. When she rushed off or waved or when he heard the door click shut, he felt rejected.

  Once, while he was setting a plate of pasta primavera under the hot lamps, she approached the counter and he tried to apologize for what had happened between them, when really it was a mutual thing and she’d seemed pretty happy while it was happening. He remembered how they’d moved to the cot in the back and how she’d wrapped her long legs around him and told him she’d been waiting for him for a long time, such a long time, she had said.

  “I’m sorry about what happened,” he said, leaning forward, feeling the heat from the lamps on his arms. “I mean, I’m sorry if you’re sorry, which you seem to be. I’m not sorry myself.”

  Suzanne looked at him blankly like it hadn’t been her that night and he hadn’t been him and she didn’t know what the hell he was even talking about. “Maybe you shouldn’t drink so much,” she said.

  “What?” he said, surprised.

  “You heard me,” she said, grabbing the plate and spinning around, walking back to the dining room.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t,” he called after her.

  The next day Suzanne called in sick.

  And the next.

  And the one after that.

  She had a cold that wouldn’t let go, maybe it was the flu, she said, sniffling dramatically, coughing in b
etween words. And then finally she just stopped coming in and didn’t bother to call. He’d heard from one of the busboys that she’d been waiting tables at a French restaurant in Huntington Beach. And then Cindy told him that Suzanne and her husband were happy again and moving to San Francisco or San Diego, she couldn’t remember which.

  And then none of the girls stayed after work, each night with a different excuse. I’m tired or I’ve got visitors from out of town or I think I’m coming down with something.

  He stayed after work alone, sitting in the corner in the near dark with only one candle burning, drinking beer after beer. He didn’t keep track anymore and he didn’t care. He didn’t need those waitresses—they needed him, their jobs, he told himself. They were just waitresses and he was the boss. He was in charge of things. If he wanted to, he could fire them all and hire some new girls and ruin things all over again.

  He drank until the bottles lined up in front of him, until he knocked one over and it crashed to the floor. He might have had six and he might have had seven. He might have had eight or nine.

  He stepped over the broken glass and stumbled to the kitchen where he devoured what was left of the lemon meringue pie. He ate right from the tin with a spoon that still tasted like rice pilaf. He ignored the crust and scooped up the creamy yellow middle.

  He woke up in his bed the next morning but didn’t remember the walk home. The front door to the apartment was open and his keys hung from the doorknob. He found one shoe by the bed. When he opened the fridge, he found the other shoe on a shelf between the milk and eggs.

  Still, he wasn’t like Tony, he didn’t need those AA people, those prying losers. He’d stopped drinking before and he could stop again. Cutting down was even easier. He thought about those first nights after work, sitting with Cindy, Suzy, and Suzanne for hours, nursing his single beer of the night. He could do that again. No more shoes in the fridge for me, he told himself. He didn’t need to go to a fucking meeting, didn’t need to stand up and identify himself as powerless, to confess his secrets to a bunch of nosy assholes.

  6

  HANNAH WATCHED the saw’s spinning blade. She looked at the doctor’s big hand holding the saw. She looked at his hairy knuckles and the thick veins shooting up his arms, and thought about all the doctors who had come before him, their many sets of hands and how they differed, how they were the same. She thought about the way her leg had been handled and touched and twisted by those hands, the casts they had made and removed, and how each time her leg popped free, it looked less familiar, less hers, thinner and more traumatized.