by Rose, Katia
She raises her eyes to the ceiling. “Sweet baby Jesus, I know it’s a lot to ask, but could you maybe one day help me hire someone who isn’t totally insane?”
I flap the resume at her. “As if you’d want to work with normal people.”
“At least normal people wouldn’t leave me on the verge of a heart attack just from walking into my own office.”
She steps back to give me space to get up. I pull myself to my feet using the edge of the desk and groan at the continued throbbing in my head.
“Are you okay?” she demands. “You’re not concussed, are you? Please don’t be concussed. That would be so bad for business. Should I get you some ice? You should probably sit down.”
In true Monroe fashion, she starts going into Ultra Concerned mode, and it’s all I can do to keep her from pulling out the first aid kit as the pain starts to fade.
“It’s fine, it’s fine,” I protest, giving my scalp a rub. “Just a good whack. We all need a good whack to the head sometimes.”
“We really do not.” She gives me a wary look like she’s expecting me to fall down unconscious at any second as she pulls up a spare chair for me before settling into her own.
“I’ve deduced that is the real reason you were on the floor.” She points to the resume still clutched in my hand.
“Yeah, I, uh, dropped it.”
She tilts her head to the side, her uncanny ability to read any situation coming into play. “You haven’t called her, have you?”
“I, um...”
“Dylan.”
“Yeah, I just, uh, um—”
“Hey, Dylan.” Monroe’s tone prompts me to look up from where I’m tapping on the resume with my fingers. “It’s okay. I know it’s a big jump to go from staff to manager. I had to do it myself—years ago, I know, but still, I remember it wasn’t easy. I don’t expect you to perfect your management skills overnight. It’s a process. I’m still learning it too.”
I nod to show I appreciate her words, but it’s difficult to believe anything about this job is hard for Monroe. She’s infallible. She’s like the messiah of restaurant management, and I’m apparently a very unequipped disciple.
“So,” she continues, “did you call her?”
I still don’t know how I forgot to make the call. Renee Nyobé has been haunting my thoughts like some kind of ghost since Monroe called me into the office yesterday and showed me her resume.
I looked down at the name printed on that piece of paper, and the whole office started to spin.
Renee Nyobé.
Tangled brown hair that never wants to stay tied back and a slightly gap-toothed smile.
I can still see her sitting in the back of the van on the way to nationals, trying to fit an elastic around her hair as she pitched in on whatever pseudo-philosophical debate we were all bullshitting about to help the miles go by faster. It didn’t matter what she was talking about. It didn’t matter how stupid the subject was. What mattered were Renee Nyobé’s words, and everyone who heard her speak knew it.
“I didn’t call her,” I admit. All I want is to drop my eyes to the desk again, but I force myself to face Monroe. “I’m not gonna bother with excuses. I should have got it done, and I didn’t. I’ll do better next time.”
“Thank you for your honesty.” Monroe nods once and then moves behind the desk. I step out of the way and watch the blue glow of the computer screen reflect on her face as her fingers move over the keyboard. “I did mean to ask you something about her, and maybe it’s better I’m asking before you call.”
“Shoot,” I order as the printer in the corner of the room starts whirring.
“I know we’re all pretty close around here, but there’s a difference between being friends with your employees and being employees with your friends. I don’t know how close you and Renee were—”
“We weren’t,” I cut in, faster than I meant to. “Not really. I mean, I knew her fairly well, but it’s been years.”
Three years and one month. Not that I calculated.
Monroe nods. “She was one of the kids you used to do the poetry workshops for, right?”
“Yep.” I rock back and forth on my feet before I catch myself doing it and try to stand still.
“Well if you don’t think it will be a problem to work with her, then it’s not a problem to me.” Monroe gathers the papers from off the printer tray and tucks them under her arm. “I’ll leave you to call her, then.”
She pulls the door of the office closed behind her when she goes, and I’m left with the sound of her question echoing through my head.
Is she one of the kids you used to do the workshops for?
For almost the entire time I knew her, that’s all Renee was to me: a kid. A teenager who showed up at the Montreal Public Library every two weeks and poured her heart into the workshops me and my slam team used to run. She blew us all away from the start, spitting fire and sparks, rain and wind, power and purpose.
Still, she was just a kid. She was sixteen when I first met her. I was twenty-three.
Just a kid, until that moment right at the end—that one single, fleeting second when we both realized she could be so much more.
It was the moment I almost made one of the biggest mistakes of my life.
Three
Renee
EUPHONY: A collection of words or sounds that is pleasing to the ear
“You’re a loser.” My sister doesn’t even raise her eyes from her phone as I walk into the kitchen.
“At least I’m not a pain in the ass.”
She still doesn’t look up. I grab a couple kiwi slices out of the meticulously arranged fruit bowl sitting on her placemat before hopping up to take a seat on the counter. That’s enough to distract her from whatever Instagram has on offer today.
“What the hell, Renee? Do you know how long it took me to cut those? Get your own fucking kiwi!”
“Language, Michelle Francine Nyobé!”
Our dad walks in, jacket and tie still on from his day at work, and starts washing out the sandwich container he always takes his lunch in. He shoots Michelle a disapproving glare from his place at the sink.
“She ruined my aҫai bowl! I was going to take a picture of it. That’s the whole reason I made it.”
Dad starts shaking his head. “Shouldn’t the whole reason you make food be to eat it?”
Michelle drops her chin and raises her eyebrows in that unimpressed expression no one can pull off quite as well as an affronted seventeen-year-old girl who’s just had the importance of her Instagram account questioned. I hold back a laugh as the two of them face off; as ridiculous as my sister can be, I wouldn’t want to face that glare.
I risked my life for the kiwis, but I’ve been bored enough all day that provoking her felt worth the consequences. It’s past 5PM now, and I’ve spent most of the time since I woke up distracting myself with household tasks while waiting for a phone call from Taverne Toulouse that still hasn’t come.
“You know what?” Michelle finally breaks her own fuming silence and stands up. “I cannot take any more of this oppression after an already very long and tiring day at school. I’m eating in my room.”
“Oppression,” Dad grumbles as she storms out, aҫai bowl in one hand and cell phone in the other. I can hear her pounding up the stairs as he calls out, “Hurry it up, Michelle! You’ve already been late for tutoring once this week!”
“Oh, she’ll be late today,” I assure him, waiting until I’m sure she’s out of earshot before continuing. “She’s probably setting up a special backdrop now and rearranging all the lights in her bedroom to get the perfect shot.”
Dad raises his eyes to the ceiling. “Three artistic women in the house. Some days it is a blessing, and some days it is a curse.”
We’re an artistic household overall. My dad is a curator at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. My mom is the creative director of a well known Canadian jewelry company. My sister’s knack for photography and maki
ng anything you put in front of her look cute and pretty has turned her into a teen Instagram sensation.
Then there’s me, the writer.
The writer who no longer writes.
“You’re heading out soon?” Dad crosses the kitchen to place a kiss on my forehead. “I’m glad you’re doing something fun today, ma petite lionne.”
My little lioness.
We usually stick to English at home; Mom’s French is passable at best, but Dad did his best to make Michelle and I bilingual. We don’t practice French together as much as we used to, but ‘ma petite lionne’ is a phrase of his that’s always stuck.
“Merci, Papa.” I force the words out, doing my best to sound like I don’t have a lump of emotion lodged in my throat. He usually knows just what to say to me, but I can’t tell if the reminder of all that name represents—bravery, courage, fearlessness—is making me feel worse or better this evening.
I shouldn’t deserve the title of lioness just for leaving the house to get coffee with my best friend, but considering how I spent the first few weeks—okay, months—of this summer, I can see why he’d want to congratulate me.
I drum my heels against the cupboard beneath me as Dad finishes up at the sink and leaves the room. When the kitchen is silent again, I pull myself together enough to hop off the counter and head to the front hall. I’ve just zipped up my jacket when my phone rings.
“Hello?”
I expect to hear my mom or Tahseen, the friend I’m heading out to meet, coming through the speaker—I’m not exactly a popular target for phone calls from anyone else—and my spine stiffens in surprise when a man replies instead.
“Hi, Renee? It’s Dylan. Dylan Trottard. You know, that cool guy who did your interview yesterday?”
My heart starts to race at the same time my spine relaxes, that combination of nerves and warm familiarity flooding through me just like it did at the interview. Even though it’s coming through a phone, his deep voice so close to my ear is enough to make me shiver. He has a poet’s voice: rich and resonant. Liquid. His words pour over me, trailing rivulets along my skin.
“A cool guy?” I lean against the little table in the entryway where we all keep our keys. “I don’t remember meeting a cool guy yesterday.”
It’s been years, but I slip back into our old routine without thinking: the routine that consisted of relentlessly teasing each other every chance we got. Everybody at the workshops liked to tease Dylan, but he and I were straight up savage with each other.
The heat that rises in my cheeks and spreads down my neck and chest at just the sound of him speaking is nothing new either.
“I’m sensing some sarcasm there, Renee. You might want to watch how you speak to your new manager.”
“What?”
“Congratulations. You got the job.”
The job?
I blank for a second, and then it hits.
The job!
Of course he’s calling about the job.
“That’s great! That is so great! That’s fantastic! I am so excited to start.”
Slow down there, eager beaver.
“I’ll admit I expected a more original response than ‘great,’ coming from you,” Dylan drawls. “Fantastic is a little better, but might I suggest a thesaurus? They’re very useful tools.”
“Asshole,” I shoot back before realizing I’m talking to my new boss. “Oh, shit. I shouldn’t call you that, should I? And I said shit. Am I allowed to say shit? I’m sorry. This is so weird.”
Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. Don’t say stupid things.
Speaking with him is like talking to my own past, like the phone lines have connected us to a conversation from years ago, and it’s messing with my sense of what I should say. My mouth goes dry, and I can feel the shaking in my hands starting up.
Focus on something you can touch. Describe it. The shape. The colour. The texture.
It’s one of the first coping strategies my therapist shared with me, and it’s the one I always come back to.
Focus on something you can touch.
I grip the table beside me hard enough to turn my knuckles white.
Dense, dark-stained wood. A few little scratches in the glossy lacquer.
I run my finger along the biggest scratch as Dylan keeps talking, reminding myself that I’m here, right here. I’m not spinning. I’m floating. I’m not falling. I’m here.
“It is weird, isn’t it?” He chuckles into the phone. “Hey, can I tell you something?”
Despite the freak show going on in my head, I’m still grinning at his laugh in my ear.
“Sure.”
He clears his throat. “So, uh, as your boss, I probably shouldn’t admit this, but I totally forgot to read your resume before the interview. I was looking it over right before you came in, and I’d literally just realized it was you when you walked in the door. It kind of freaked me out.”
“I freaked you out?”
“Oh shit, that was a bad way to put it. Also I guess I just answered your question about whether you can say ‘shit’ around me.”
We both laugh at that.
“I mean, I was happy to see you,” he continues. “So happy. I...It was good—really good to see you.”
Something about the way he hesitates makes my chest tighten. I blame it on narrowly escaping a freak out just a moment ago. Chest tightening has been part of my daily routine for a while now.
“Really good?” I can’t resist playing up the sarcasm as I break the silence. “You sure you don’t need a thesaurus? I hear they’re very useful tools.”
“Touché, Renee, touché. You’re going to fit right in at Taverne Toulouse.”
Right. The job. We should be talking about the job.
“I hope so,” I reply. “When do I start?”
“Monroe wants you trained up as soon as possible. We’re gearing up for our grand reopening, and we’re going to need as much help as we can get. She was really impressed with you, by the way. She said we’d be insane not to hire you. I was impressed too, obviously.”
My heart skips a beat when he pauses.
“I’m not sure exactly how your training is going to work,” he continues. “You’ll probably spend your first few shifts shadowing one of our bartenders. You’ll learn the POS system and all that at the same time too.”
“That sounds good,” I offer. “Although if it’s the girl with the pink hair who trains me, you may find yourself running low on tequila. She did seem serious about those shots.”
Dylan groans. “It probably will be DeeDee, and she probably will try to get you to do shots. She’s a very...enthusiastic person.”
“Really?” I joke. “I couldn’t tell.”
“Again with the sarcasm, Renee. You’re brutal.” I’m certain he’s shaking his head. “Seriously, though, she may be a little unorthodox, but DeeDee’s got a heart of gold. When it comes down to it, she’s one of the best employees I’ve ever worked with. Everyone at Taverne Toulouse is. It’s a really special place. It sounds cheesy, but I mean it when I say we’re like family. I don’t know what it is about that place, but every time I walk in those doors, I just feel...”
He trails off, but I understand what he’s trying to say. I’ve only been there once, but I knew walking through the doors of Taverne Toulouse meant I was stepping into something I didn’t even know I needed.
I want to tell him I feel it, that I can’t wait to be a part of it, that it’s the first time I’ve felt my heart race in a good way after months of going cold with fear every time my pulse started to pick up.
But I can’t share that. Not with him.
So I opt for more sarcasm.
“You feel...good?” I finish his sentence for him. “Or wait, what was it you said earlier? Really good? That was a truly innovative use of the English language.”
“You know what, Renee? I think I’m going to have to put a quota on your sassy remarks. One per day. Max.”
The slyness of his tone
makes my cheeks flush with a fresh rush of heat, but I can still give as good as I get.
“Why do I get the feeling that’s not gonna happen?”
“You know, I wasn’t allowed to say it to you at the time since you were an actual kid,” he informs me, “but you always were a bit of a little shit. I see nothing’s changed.”
I laugh along with him, but that last sentence rings true. Too true.
Nothing has changed.
I’m still a kid to him. He’s seven years older than me. He’s my boss.
I make myself repeat that thought over and over again as we continue the conversation.
“Hey, question for you before I let you go,” Dylan adds after we agree that I’ll start on Monday evening.
“Yes?”
And then he asks the one question that’s guaranteed to rattle me like a fucking earthquake.
“Are you still writing?”
The words hurtle me back more than three years, to a stifling summer night just a few days before the start of September. I can practically feel the fabric of my dress clinging to my thighs.
A white dress. I couldn’t have been more of the cliché ingénue if I’d tried.
I can still remember the last words he said to me. I can remember every moment of that night like it’s a strip of negatives, the seconds captured click by click, permanently imprinted on the film of my memory. After all these years, I can still hear his voice in my ear. I can feel his hand on my cheek, his touch so light I was never really sure I hadn’t imagined it.
“Keep writing, okay?” He’d sounded like he was begging, like the thought that I wouldn’t listen hurt him so bad he was almost scared to say the words. “Just promise me you’ll keep writing. The world needs your words.”
I don’t know if he can still feel that summer night on his skin, but I can and I do, and it’s far too much to handle.
“I, um—” I start to stammer.
“Sorry,” Dylan interrupts. “That was personal. You don’t have to answer that.”
As crazy as it is, I can’t help thinking he’d understand far more than anyone else if I tried to explain why those words he thought the world needed have gone somewhere I can’t seem to follow.