“I feel so essential,” I tell her.
“Good,” she says.
When we get to IHOP, I’m thrilled to see that Jacqui isn’t working. We get seated in Steve’s section. Everything seems to be going my way.
Charlotte taps her menu against the table as she gazes at Steve, who’s walking toward us. “I’ll stall him here as long as I can, don’t worry. Not a problem at all. I can talk forever if I have to.”
Just like my mom, I think. I hold my breath as Steve comes up to our table and stops. I let it out halfway and say, “Hey.”
“Hey, Fleming. What’s up?” Steve smiles. “How’s French?”
“Finegood,” I say, momentarily flustered and unable to choose a word. “I mean, très bien.”
“Yes. Of course that’s what you mean,” Steve says. “I knew right away.”
I feel my face turning red, contrasting with the cool mint T-shirt color. I want to ask him why he didn’t take the class, like he was supposed to, but for some reason it would seem like whining, so I don’t. “So, this is Charlotte. She’s new here.”
“Hardly,” Charlotte tells him. “I feel like I’ve been here forever.”
“Yeah. That’s what we call the Lindville Effect. Right, Fleming?” Steve looks at me and smiles.
“Exactly,” I say, feeling like the connection between us definitely isn’t gone. It might be faint right now, like a bad cell phone connection, but it’s still there.
“So, just to get the formalities out of the way, in case you guys are secret shoppers, taking notes on everything I do. My name is Steve and I’ll be your server this afternoon.”
I don’t ever get tired of hearing him say that. I really don’t.
“Did you get burned by a secret shopper recently or something?” I ask him.
“Oh, yeah. But I don’t want to go into that right now.” He glances over his shoulder toward the kitchen, as if he’s being watched. I wonder if a secret shopper mentioned that he was too busy making out with a coworker to be a good server. Maybe he and Jacqui will be forced to break up. “So what can I get you?” he asks. “Or do you need a little more time with the menus?”
I need a little more time with the server, actually. But I don’t want to be any more obvious than I’m already being. “I think I’m ready. Are you?” I ask Charlotte.
“I’m not sure. I was going to get French toast, you know, vive la France and all that. But now I’m thinking maybe just a two-egg combo thingy. Or three eggs. Yeah, that sounds good. Hey, go wild, make it a half dozen,” she says.
“Are you serious?” Steve asks. He looks at Charlotte as if she’s crazy. “I don’t think you can order that.”
“Sure I can. The three-egg combo plate, with three eggs on the side,” Charlotte says.
“Three eggs on the side?” Steve repeats.
She looks up at Steve and smiles. “No, I guess just the two-egg thingy. Please.”
“How would you like those two eggs?” Steve asks.
“Well, that’s another thing. I have some egg questions,” Charlotte says.
Steve raises his eyebrows.
“What does it mean, exactly, when it’s sunny-side up? Is there a sunny-side down?” Charlotte asks.
“No. See, there’s the sun. Which faces up,” Steve says. “And then when you flip the egg over, it’s called over easy.”
“Hmm. I’ll have to think about that. You go ahead, Fleming. I’ll be ready in a second,” Charlotte says.
While I order, I admire Steve’s blue apron. It’s not something you notice when it’s on anyone else. But it’s got this way of bringing out Steve’s eyes, sort of the way my checkered-flag apron brings out the dark circles under my eyes at 6 a.m.
After I order, he turns to Charlotte. “And for you?” he asks.
“I’m not quite ready yet,” she says.
Steve stands there. He glances at the tables around us to check on his other customers. He looks at me and smiles awkwardly.
“So. French. How is it, being in school when it’s a hundred degrees?” he asks.
“Fine. The teacher’s never there. I mean, we have subs,” I say. Today’s substitute looked like she had just come from playing golf, and was more concerned with her score card than with whether or not we could make any sense of the learn-French-by-video we were watching. “Really bad subs,” I say.
“Huh,” Steve says.
“Really bad,” I repeat.
Steve just nods.
And I can’t think of anything else to say. I fidget with my braid. The conversation is dead in the water. I nudge Charlotte’s foot with mine. I need help.
She looks up at me, and then clears her throat. “So I want two eggs, sunny-side down,” she tells Steve. “And if the cook says there isn’t such a thing, just explain that I like saying that better than over easy. Okay? And I want pancakes and bacon.”
“Sounds good. I’ll be right back,” he says. Then he leaves for the kitchen.
I watch him walk away, thinking: How did I blow it? Again? Why can’t I think of anything to say? Why couldn’t I have just asked him about movies he’s seen lately, or the Camaro-cornstalk incident, or mention I saw Mike on the bus? Why does my brain atrophy like that?
“You know how you could really make him notice you?” Charlotte asks.
I shake my head. “Obviously not.”
“Dine and dash.” She raises her eyebrows. “Take off when the check comes. He’d have to run after you and tackle you then. And once that happened, well, it’s all up to you what happens next.” She grins. “Am I right?”
“Are you serious?” I ask her.
“Yes!” she says happily.
It’s not the worst plan I’ve heard of, I think. But it’s close. “I’d only do it if I could be sure he’d be the one who chased me. If Roger, that other waiter, ended up tackling me? That would be gross.”
“Yeah, he’d probably break his glasses. I guess the whole plan is a little stupid and desperate.” Charlotte shrugs. “I wouldn’t mind doing the dine and dash, though. It might be exciting, and as we both know, we could use a little more excitement around here. I mean, this summer is off to a really slow start.”
I nod. “I have to agree.”
“Do you ever feel like doing something totally crazy? Just to shake things up, just to get someone’s attention?”
Like talking to Mike Kyle on the bus? “Whose attention do you want?” I ask Charlotte.
“I don’t even know. Someone’s. Anyone’s,” Charlotte says. “The whole town’s, maybe. It’s so boring, like everyone’s asleep.”
“It’s the heat,” I say. “Or maybe the bad air.”
“It might be smelly, but it’s not carbon monoxide,” Charlotte says. “There’s actually no excuse.”
“You could do something during the Rodeo Days,” I suggest. “Be in the parade. Wear a really outrageous costume.”
Charlotte thinks about it for a few minutes, then says, “I know. How about if I don’t wear a costume? How about if I streak naked down the street?” she asks, just as Steve comes up to the table with our platters of eggs and pancakes.
Steve obviously overhears, because his hand wobbles as he tries to put our plates down. The sunny-side-down eggs that Charlotte ordered slither off the plate onto the table, nearly skidding into my lap. One of the yolks breaks and spreads slightly, but it’s stopped by a hardened ridge of syrup on the table that holds it in, like a dam. All that’s between me and Steve now is an egg moat.
“Of course, you guys are going to streak with me,” Charlotte says. “I’m not doing it by myself.”
Steve quickly grabs a wet dishrag from a nearby service cart. As he cleans the eggs off the table, he looks up at me, with a little smile that verges on being flirtatious. “Well, uh, what do you say, Fleming? Are we in?” he asks. I think he’s adventurous enough that he just might.
“That depends,” I say, looking right at him, wanting him to know I am serious about being seriously
interested in him. As if he doesn’t know that yet. “Can I wear my Rollerblades? Because I’d want to be moving pretty fast, I think, if I was streaking in a parade.”
“You guys could both be on in-line skates. You could skate together. You know, like nude pairs skating, or whatever!” Charlotte says excitedly.
“Yeah, but, uh, I don’t actually skate, and if I fell . . .” Steve blushes, as if he has just in fact imagined it, as if he’s gotten a vivid mental picture of a naked me, on in-line skates, and a naked him. He picks up Charlotte’s plate and drops the dirty dishrag onto it. “So I’ll get you a new order of, uh, those eggs. Be right back.” He shuffles off toward the kitchen, and Charlotte and I crack up laughing.
“I can’t believe you said that to him!” I gasp between laughs. “God, that was so embarrassing.”
“Hey, you’re the one who brought up the Rollerblade part!” she shoots back.
“Nude pairs skating?” I can’t stop laughing. “What is that?”
“Hey, you’re the skater. You tell me,” Charlotte says.
I sit back in the booth and smile. Steve might be seeing Jacqui, but for a second there he was thinking about streaking with me—and he didn’t seem to mind.
Triple Ew
“Monsieur LeFleur is still under the weather,” a new substitute informs us when we gather for our fifth French class.
Monsieur LeFleur must have something sort of serious, I think. He is supposed to be so dedicated to teaching that he broke up his marriage over doling out too much extra help on weekends. Well, that and the weeklong trips with the high-school French Club—which is 90 percent female—to Quebec every spring. If he can’t drag himself out of bed for a simple summer session, then he must have a monster flu. Or something more serious.
It figures. Not only did Steve not take this class, now the teacher isn’t even taking it.
“He doesn’t have that flesh-eating bacteria, does he?” I ask today’s substitute.
“What? No, of course not,” the sub says. “What made you ask that?”
I shrug. “It seems like a thing that could make you miss a lot of classes, that’s all.”
“Yes. I mean, you might think he’s seriously ill, but no, he’s going to be fine,” the sub says. “Just can’t actually quite get out of bed yet. The vice principal told me he hasn’t had a sick day in eight years, which sounds sort of sick in itself to me, know what I mean?” He smiles, and there’s something green stuck between his front teeth. “But don’t give up on him. Don’t you dare. Not our Monsieur LeFleur.”
“Okay. Sorry.” I look over at Charlotte, and she shrugs.
“Now. He requested that we use today’s class time to make a videotape,” the substitute says. “He would like you all to introduce yourselves, so that when he returns, he’ll already know you and you can jump right into the curriculum.”
We go around the room, starting with me. I think the substitute is trying to give me extra attention because I seemed so distraught with my flesh-eating-disease comment.
“Je m’appelle . . . Fleming Farrell,” I say, as quickly as I can, realizing that I’ve just made a horrible rhyme because I pronounced Farrell “Far-elle,” as if it’s French.
My face turns red as the substitute tells me to say a little about myself and why I’m taking this class.
What are the vital details that Monsieur LeFleur needs to know about me? What will impress him? “I’ll be a senior at Edison next year, and I’m hoping to graduate early because I want to travel before I start college. And I’m taking this class because I just really enjoy French culture—French history, and French fashion, and French . . . toast.” I smile, feeling like an idiot. Then I decide to go on, as if I’m doing an imitation of my mother and need to relate my entire life story. “So for this trip I want to do next spring, before college? I’m hoping maybe France, but definitely Quebec. I actually went to Quebec City and Montreal once, but I was too little to really remember. Except the crepes, I loved the crepes. So then I’m thinking that maybe in college I’ll take a semester abroad, so I want to get a lot of practice speaking French before I do that. And then . . .” I notice everyone staring at me. Blankly. “So, I’ve heard that you’re a really great teacher, so get well soon,” I conclude. Just call me Christie Farrell, I should add.
The substitute turns to Charlotte next. I can’t wait to hear her story so I can forget about mine.
“I’m Charlotte,” she says. “I mean, Jeu mappel Charlotte Duncan. And I’m taking this class because I failed Intermediate Spanish and Intermediate Italian and I’ve got to pass Intermediate Something. I mean, those are like the rules for graduating at Benjamin Franklin; you can’t just take three Beginning classes, even though I personally think it makes a person more well-rounded than two years of only one language.”
“Ahem.” The substitute clears his throat. “Yes, well. Next?”
“I’m here to make up for failing French,” the next person says. And the next and the next and the next.
I wonder, is Monsieur LeFleur avoiding our class because all of these people flunked the first time around?
After the introductions are complete, we get ready to watch our video lesson of the day. It’s an ongoing story about some students, and we’ve been watching it the past three classes, but it seems to be a couple of levels above where we are—not to mention a couple of decades old. It involves racing around in small cars and rapid-fire conversations in outdoor cafes. I don’t know what’s going on until the end of each tape, when they stop to go over the vocabulary words.
“So do you want to do something Saturday before you go to work?” Charlotte leans over to ask me during the video. “Maybe you, me, and Ray could find Steve, and we could all hang out together. Or you, me, and Ray could go to breakfast at IHOP.”
“I can’t. I’m going to the rink with my dad on Saturday,” I say. “Then my parents are going to some lunch thing, so I have to stay home.” Finding Steve sounds a lot more interesting.
“Oh. Well, how about Sunday?” she asks.
“I have to help my mom while my dad’s at an open house, and then I have to go to the hospital with her for childbirth class,” I explain.
“Ew. Like, breathing and all that?” she asks.
I nod. “Tell me about it.”
“You know what’s really gross? Those movies—you know, of actual births?”
“What’s really gross is that I’m her birth coach,” I explain. “I’m going to be there when she gives actual birth.”
“Triple ew,” Charlotte says. “Hey, is that French? ’Cause I think that really sounded French.”
The substitute walks in just as Charlotte and I are laughing. “Do I need to separate you two?” he comes over and whispers to us.
“No, we’ll be quiet,” I say.
“Sorry,” Charlotte says. “I mean, ex-cue-say moi.”
As soon as he walks away, Charlotte passes me a note with IHOP = STEVE GROPHER written on it.
As if I could forget that.
Absolute Hams
“He still has it.” Dad’s coach and choreographer, Ludmila, shakes her head as she watches him out on the ice.
I’m not sure what she’s talking about. Does she mean he’s had it? Or that he’s got it? “Yes,” I say, stupidly.
“Your father. It is so amazing. His agility, his strength.” Ludmila kisses her fingers. “He might be twenty, not forty.”
“He’s thirty-nine, actually,” I tell her.
She ignores my correction. “He is a young man when he takes the ice,” she says.
Dad found Ludmila about six months ago through an ad in a skating magazine. She takes on students from about a two-hundred-mile radius. He only gets to see her once a week, so today is important for him. He ate three energy bars in the car on the drive here just so he would be ready. He has three hours of ice time with her this morning, and then he has to rush back for an open house, while Mom covers someone’s Saturday shift and I once again
hang out with Dorothy, Torvill, and Dean until I go to work at three.
“So he’s doing that well?” I ask. “I mean, he looks polished to me, but he always did. And he’s so critical of himself.”
Ludmila shakes her head. “You cannot listen to him. He is crazy. He is insane.”
“He is?” I ask. “I mean, I’d sort of suspected.” My joke is lost on Ludmila.
“If he makes just one mistake, he does the entire program over,” she goes on. “Entire! Entire thing! He is so demanding.”
And she isn’t even in debt to him. “Tell me about it,” I say.
I was only being sarcastic, but Ludmila takes me literally and starts to tell me how my father has the strength of a bull and the grace of a large bird. I think she means a swan. “Very unique,” she says. “One of a kind.”
“So does he have a shot at making the masters tour?” I ask.
“Oh, yes. A shot,” she says. “Yes, he does. He has very good shot. Only . . .”
“What?” I ask.
“Don’t call us, we’ll call you,” Ludmila says.
I wait a minute, hoping she will explain this.
“That is how these tours work. They want Olympic gold, they want world champions. They call on the telephone, please join us. Your father . . .”
“No gold medal, no cereal box,” I say.
She nods. “He needs to find a sponsor. To pay his way, to get him more lessons, more ice,” she says. “Then it will be a pinch.”
“A cinch?” I ask.
But she doesn’t hear me. She is calling to my father, something about his takeoff for his combination triple jump.
I can’t imagine how my father will find a sponsor in Lindville, but maybe he will. Could he skate with “Gabe’s Auto World” stitched onto the back of his shirt?
I watch as he stops his program to work on his triple Axel with Ludmila. He’s been doubling it today because he can’t quite triple it, which makes sense to me because the Axel is the hardest jump there is. Ludmila shouts instructions to him. I can’t understand half of what she says because of her accent.
Unforgettable Summer Page 24