As I walked away, I was aware that both dishwashers were staring at my backside. It felt like a heat going all the way down my legs—but it was Lobo that I really felt; the heat stayed coiled inside me, right between my hipbones, long after the heavy doors swung behind me.
Our first encounter took place a week later in the walk-in refrigerator, where I followed him as though I’d been hypnotized. He pushed a cooler stuffed with dead fowl in front of the door so that no one could open it. Standing near the egg cartons and milk cartons, we felt each other up for close to five minutes, fierce and hostile gropings, our breath visible in puffs. Even though I tried to avoid the temptation, and I got the impression he was wary of me as well, the second meeting took place about two weeks later. It was bound to happen. We found our way inside the outdoor walk-in pantry (which had a lock that locks from the inside and eventually became our meeting place). Desperate and graceless, he bit my lip, causing it to bleed, upsetting him as well. Lobo would have probably preferred a bohemian girlfriend, open to discussions of art and socialism, not a business major like me, but we soon became consumed with each other—we wanted to consume each other. Just as I only wanted to smell him and feel him, I knew that he didn’t want anyone else. So, in something like shock, and out of sheer practicality, I scheduled an appointment at Planned Parenthood and got my first prescription for birth control pills.
One morning, about a month into my job, Sheila came from the office, telling Jennifer to cover for me. I followed Sheila into the office and she handed me the phone. Julie Anne was calling from her home and I could hear her television in the background.
“Do you enjoy working at Holloway’s?” Julie Anne asked. Sheila stood near the copy machine, pretending not to listen.
“Oh yes,” I said, gripping the receiver tightly and turning my body toward the corner, so that Sheila couldn’t see my face.
“Good, because we think you’re an absolute delight. A gem.” There was a pause. “Your mother called me, Harriet. She said she’s been trying to get a hold of you.”
I felt something like a hand creeping up the back of my neck at the thought of Mom anywhere near Julie Anne: her Mom Pants and her lucky clover belt, her 1970s purse, and the way she acted around rich people: superior and deferential and judgmental all at once.
Julie Anne explained that family disputes had no place in a work forum. She was a busy woman and didn’t have time to be a mediator. There was an undercurrent of sympathy—she didn’t blame me for my background, for having a mom like that; but Holloway’s had a reputation, and just as waitresses weren’t allowed to dye their hair or wear garish makeup, I needed to keep my mother from causing any scenes.
“I’ll let her know,” I said, in complete earnestness, “never to call you again.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Julie Anne said. “I already told her that myself.”
And for a while I was able to forget about my mom and avoid grieving for my dad, much less think about him. Good money coming in, a wallet full of cash. Watching the men’s faces light up when I brought their coffee and food. My body learning all kinds of new pleasures with Lobo. Not necessarily wanting to be in love, but the words “I love you” slipping out every now and then anyway.
“Know what I think, Harry?” Lobo asked, our fifth or sixth night sleeping on the futon at my apartment. Earlier, driving away from Holloway’s, I’d seen Willy in my rearview mirror—I was 99.9 percent sure it was him—staggering drunkenly across an intersection, a car honking.
“Shh,” I said, “don’t talk.” There were two messages from my mom on my answering machine, and Lobo had already made it clear that he thought I should call her back.
“Just listen, because I really want to tell you something.”
“What?” I said, turning to face him.
“You’re deluding yourself. From everything you’ve ever told me, she’s done nothing horrible. Blaming her, like she killed your dad or something, when all she did was love him.” And then, perhaps as an afterthought, he said, “You don’t ever talk about him.”
Without wanting to, I thought of Dad carrying me to my bed after I’d fallen asleep in the back seat of Mom’s Monte Carlo: where had we come from?—A long car drive, late at night; I was half asleep, my thin arms around his neck, my face pressed in the space between his shoulder and his chest. My night-light was on, and his smile hovered over me while I lay in bed, watching him. There was a sad dreaminess about his smile, in its unpredictable arrival and how it echoed the sadness in his eyes. And then he sat on my bed and stroked my hair until I couldn’t keep my eyes open.
It angered me that Lobo would want me to dredge up memories, and I sat up on the futon, a sharp pain in my chest. “Fuck you,” I said, without any passion. “Try dissecting your own life.” There was a cottony sensation in my head, and I remembered the rushing sound I heard, like an ocean between my ears, when Mom and I came home from my swimming lesson—maybe I was five or six—at the YMCA, and Mom was still in her car, parked in our garage, looking for a stupid fountain pen that had fallen out of her purse, and I found Dad sprawled on the kitchen tile, his arm hooked under him. I stood over him, weeping, and I wanted to lie on top of him and sink into him, but I couldn’t move. And when Mom finally came in from the garage, she rushed me out of the kitchen, made me sit on the sofa. After a few moments, she came back from the kitchen, put a wet towel on the back of my neck, promised me that he was not dead, that he was just sleeping. And for a long time after that, every time he left the house, or when I couldn’t keep track of him, like when I’d have to go to school, or even when he’d use the bathroom and shut the door behind him, so that I couldn’t see, I’d hear that same ocean sound, and I’d think, He will die. This time, he will die.
Something desperate and frightening must have showed in my face because Lobo looked at me apologetically. I leaned over and bit his shoulder, hard. “Fuck,” he said, in an injured voice. My front teeth had made two matching purple welts. “That really hurts.”
He gently pushed me down on the futon, set his knee on my thigh, his hands holding my shoulders. He knew I preferred our aggressions and confusions to be physical rather than verbal. I pretended to struggle; but after a moment, when I really tried to get up, he was stronger. I managed to press my knee against his chest; he shoved my knee with one hand so my thigh splayed open, the fingers of his other hand pinching my nipple. He lost his balance, landing on me with such force, that for a second I couldn’t breathe, and I willingly lost myself in a black space of nothing.
I’d been at Holloway’s for over three months when I was trusted with opening the restaurant, a job that Jennifer readily handed over, along with a set of keys, because of the requirement of arriving before dawn. At the end of my shift, I collected money from the register, set it in an envelope along with the receipt for my total sales, and placed it in the deposit slot of the safe. I could hear the envelope thump to the base, and I discovered the safe’s combination taped to the back of the safe. Only Julie Anne and Sheila had keys.
Opening Holloway’s ended up being my favorite part of the job. I was alone on the restaurant side, separated from the kitchen workers, and I kept the front door locked to avoid any early-bird customers. I flapped out the crisp tablecloths over the tables. I brewed coffee, the aroma filling the restaurant. I placed folded napkins and silverware, salt and pepper shakers, sugar decanters, and vases of yellow tulips at each table; all the while the sky changed—inky blue to a dark glow with sunrise to finally a clear light blue. The kitchen workers listened to Spanish radio stations, and I’d wait until the last possible moment to ask them to turn their radios off. Then I’d turn on the stereo in Julie Anne’s office to the requisite opera.
One morning, unlocking and opening Julie Anne’s office door to turn on the stereo, I hit the light switch and almost screamed. Willy was curled up on the floor, his suit jacket rolled into a ball as a pillow. His briefcase was leaned against the filing cabinet and his leather l
oafers were underneath Julie Anne’s desk. Willy had been coming in less, once a month, sometimes twice, and I’d become more adept at ignoring him. He would small talk customers, displaying his usual exaggerated cheerfulness, and two or three of his longtime friends—like Mr. Deader—still paid for his meals; also a self-important pastor, fittingly named Dick: a man who always wore his clerical collar and enjoyed making me stand at the table for five minutes like a mute idiot, while he pretended to struggle over what to order.
Willy sat up, foggy-eyed, a deep crease at his cheek from the indentation of a jacket button, his yellow gray hair nested at the side of his head. There was no pretense at cheeriness, no chatter—he only stared at me, propped by his arm on the floor, defeated. The room smelled like alcohol. It was awful; I didn’t know what to say. I remembered him staggering across the intersection, more poignant now than when I’d watched.
After a long and strained silence where we continued to stare at each other, he said, “Are you going to tell?” I felt more intimate than I’d ever felt with a man, even more so than with Lobo, like having sex with the lights on, but without the sex—pain, longing, unhappiness—something honest and frightening between us.
“I don’t think so.”
“That’s a good girl,” he said. His eyes stayed on me and I realized that it was his way of saying thank you.
I didn’t say anything, feeling overcome. And suddenly I wanted to be a kid again, burrow my head in my dad’s waist and sob—the way I used to when I had stubbed my toe or scraped my knee—smell him and feel his fingers in my hair. Bumblebee, he used to call me. My little bumblebee. I pressed my palms against my eyes, forced myself not to cry. A built-up kind of grief pushed its way back through my throat and into my stomach. I heard a soft clunk and released my hands.
Willy was having trouble standing and had knocked over a stapler from Julie Anne’s desk. “Are you okay?” I asked.
“Yeah, yeah,” he said, letting himself sit again, his body thumping to the floor. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.” His face was turned away. I wasn’t sure what to do, and I had to steel myself from crying again. And for a second, I thought he might be weeping without making any noise, but then I realized he was only thinking.
“I want you to know,” he said finally, a bitter firmness to his voice, still looking away, “that no matter what Julie Anne said or any of them told you: I loved my wife.”
“Okay,” I said, because it seemed important to respond.
“I love her,” he said, looking at me.
We were silent for a few moments—he was composing himself, putting his jacket on; but when he tried to stand again, he needed my help. “Sorry,” he said, unsteady against me, getting his bearings.
He slipped on his loafers, leaning over awkwardly to get them past his heels, and then he left. I probably could’ve stopped him in time, let him know that he’d forgotten his briefcase. And I shouldn’t have opened it, but I did. It was more scuffed up than I remembered, the corners frayed, the inside lining torn. All the papers were gone; The Varieties of Religious Experience was gone. A small plastic bag held a bar of soap, the size of my palm. And what surprised me most was an envelope, unsealed, containing a small child’s tooth (it looked like a molar, a little dried blood, black and crusted at the top), with a note on a scrap of paper, in a child’s scrawl: Dear Tooth Fairy, How old are you? Are you a boy or a girl? And an answer in careful block letters on the other side: I am neither male nor female and I am ageless. There was a yellow toothbrush, bristles damp, and a travel-sized Vidal Sassoon shampoo bottle. The flask was empty, smelling of whiskey, with its family crest now clearly visible: an eagle, talons holding a key. And that must have been how I got my idea.
Everything happened so quickly. If I’d had a day or two to think, I wouldn’t have done it: I hid Willy’s briefcase in the outdoor pantry, behind the stacked bags of flour, and by the time I met Lobo in the pantry for our 10:15 A.M. rendezvous, I had already taken the safe-key from Sheila’s key ring, which she kept in her desk drawer, while she went to the bathroom for her usual post-espresso crap.
“You have to get this copied,” I said, “by noon.”
Lobo’s lips were at my neck and he pushed my hand with the key in it away.
“I’m serious; but you can’t ask any questions.”
He took the key from me and said, with some incredulity, “Is this for the safe?” I didn’t answer, and his face broke into a slow smile. “There’s no way,” he said. “I’m not doing it.”
He got me the copy by 11:30 A.M., and the tricky part was getting it back on the key ring, but I managed by messing up my sales by ten dollars, requiring Sheila’s expertise at the cash register. While she examined the register tape, forehead creased in annoyance, I slipped into her office and put the safe-key back on her key ring.
I knew Willy had his own set of keys to Holloway’s, and that he would be back for his briefcase, and possibly for a place to sleep. After the restaurant closed, I parked two streets east of Holloway’s. I wore sweats and walked quickly, like the jog-walkers I’d seen around the neighborhood. There was a half moon and the streets were quiet, except for the occasional sprinkler. And it smelled good: of grass and magnolia and the night itself. My urgency had to do with my anger and grief. My emotions seemed to light up all at once, reckless and destructive—almost like Willy’s anger got caught up with mine.
I opened the pantry with my key and found his briefcase behind the bags of flour, where I’d left it. Willy might’ve already been camped out in Julie Anne’s office, but as soon as I got there, I knew he hadn’t arrived yet. To make sure he wouldn’t miss it, I taped the safe-key to the briefcase with masking tape, and set his briefcase in the middle of the office, in the exact spot where I’d found him curled up. My blood was speeding in my veins and I kept the lights off. I imagined Willy taking the cash and jewelry from the safe, starting over somewhere else, where people didn’t belittle him because he was a rich man who was now poor. I imagined him reading The Varieties of Religious Experience, talking to a pastor who wasn’t Dick, maybe finding some kind of meaning, in part because of his struggles. And I know what the psychologists would say: that really I was still trying to save Dad. That I was grieving him, in my own distorted way. But at the time I didn’t see my activity as criminal or psychologically motivated, believing that what I was doing was more justifiable than Julie Anne collecting money to buy yet another stunning piece of jewelry.
That night, instead of sleeping at my apartment, I went home. I didn’t cry in my mom’s arms and she didn’t cry in mine, but I did tell her that I was sorry, news to which she responded with reticence and relief. And if I could’ve articulated it, I might have acknowledged that I’d been blaming her for what had happened, even though her endurance and practicality were born from an acceptance of her responsibilities, mainly to me: her kid. I might have told her that a shift had occurred, and that I hoped never again to mistake love for weakness or wealth for superiority. I lay in my old bedroom, unable to sleep, watching the moon and trees make shapes on my wall; and when I got up to get ready for work, Mom had placed a note for me on the kitchen table: Harriet, have a good day. Love, Mom.
When I opened the restaurant, I noticed right away, even in the dark, that the head had been raggedly cut out of Evelyn’s portrait, as if with a knife, and it angered me, because I knew that Willy wanted to get caught, that part of his satisfaction was Julie Anne knowing. I opened the office, and there was no sign of him, the safe door closed; but when I looked in the wastebasket, a curled ball of masking tape was at the bottom.
I went about my morning, headless Evelyn for the first time not watching me serve. A couple of customers chuckled when they saw Evelyn, but none asked questions. The kitchen workers weren’t allowed on the restaurant side, but Lobo poked his head through the swinging doors, evidently to check on me, and when he saw the portrait, he seemed genuinely alarmed. “Are you okay?” he whispered. When Sheila arrived, at first she di
dn’t notice the portrait, but when she was preparing her espresso, I heard her gasp, and then she was moving to the phone, asking, “Why didn’t you call the police?” She hunched her back away from me, clearly angry, and spoke into the phone.
The police caught Willy less than eight hours later, at the Santa Anita Race Track in Arcadia. And it was all anyone talked about at the restaurant, for a long time after, customers speaking in self-righteous tones, Dick letting it be known that he’d tried everything, but that some men were irredeemable. Julie Anne filed charges and Willy was sentenced to nine months in jail.
“I understand how Willy had a set of keys to the restaurant and to my office, because of Evelyn, of course,” I heard Julie Anne tell a customer, “but what I still don’t get and what the police haven’t been able to figure out, even after repeated, harsh interrogations, mind you, is how he got a key to that goddamn safe.”
I don’t know what happened to Willy afterwards, because by the time he was released from jail, I’d been fired, along with Lobo, supposedly for our “indiscretions” in the pantry, but really because Jennifer and the other waitresses had it in for me by then. Lobo went to work at the country club as a locker room attendant, and I started living with my mom again; it broke my heart when I found out that Lobo was doing drugs, and eventually I cut all ties. Before that happened, sometimes we’d talk about Willy, Lobo amazed that we took such a risk. “All for that idiot,” he’d say.
And maybe Willy’s nature was self-destructive and selfish, spending the cash on racehorses instead of getting a foothold at some kind of life; maybe he was incapable of finding light and hope and redemption; maybe he was a useless fool; but I’ll always remember my elation when, at the end of my shift, drama high in the air and everyone whispering hypotheses, employees waiting to be called into Julie Anne’s office for our “interviews” with the police, I decided to count the tips from my ceramic container. A flap of paper billowed out, along with all the bills and coins. I recognized it from his briefcase. I am neither male nor female and I am ageless, I read. And below, he’d put his initials: WJH.
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