“How?” I snap. “Tell me, blondie, how often do you get mistaken for a crazy jihadist?”
“Calm down, princess.” Jonah fills up four glasses with Diet Coke. “They’re just ignorant. Bianca!”
“Wha’?” says Bianca, sauntering in from the back, followed closely by the smell of cigarettes. “I was on the phone with my business manager.”
“Cosmo?” says Jonah. “He’s a loan shark. Don’t big him up.”
“He’s nice!” exclaims Bianca, punching Jonah playfully. Flirting for beginners.
“Please tend to your table,” I say through gritted teeth.
“Chill,” says Bianca, picking up the tray of drinks.
I glance at Jonah. “My name is Pia, by the way. Not princess.”
“I know,” he says, flashing a whiter-than-white movie-star smile. “Princess suits you.”
I look over. Bianca is serving the Diet Cokes. Everyone at the table is leaning forward, whispering to her intently, glancing over at me.
I can’t breathe, I feel sick, oh shit, I think I’m having an anxiety attack. Not again, please God.…
Bianca walks back toward us, mouth pursed. “What did they say?” I manage to ask.
“Ignore them.”
“Tell me what they said.”
She sighs. “They asked to make sure you didn’t touch their food. Forget about it, it’s not a big deal.”
I stare at her for a second. How can she say that? “Yes, it is. It’s always a big deal.”
You know, I’m used to the comments, the assumptions that I don’t speak English, the constant “where are you from?” question. It’s annoying, and it’s just the way it is. I don’t look like everyone else. I get it.
But this is more than that. This is racism. When I was younger, attitudes like theirs scared me and made me feel sick. Then it upset me, so I would pretend I hadn’t heard and run away.
Not this time.
I’ve had a really bad couple of weeks, and, yeah, my problems are all of my own making, but I’m doing the best I can to make my life better. I don’t need this shit. People can judge me on my inexperience, my princess attitude, my lack of sound decision-making skills when under the influence of tequila.… Judging me on my skin color is wrong. And that’s all there is to it.
“Call me … irresponsible,” croons Sinatra over the music system.
Taking off my little white apron and putting it on the bar, I walk leisurely and deliberately over to their table.
I lean over, hands on my knees, and start talking, in my sweetest voice.
“I’m American, you morons. I was born in New York, I have an American passport, and the reason I look like I do is that I’m half-Swiss and half-Indian. Indians are Hindu, not Muslim, and the two religions are completely opposed to each other. Whether I am Muslim, Buddhist, Orthodox Greek, or worship at the altar of Spongebob fucking Squarepants, I still have the right to serve your meal without getting this racist abuse. Moreover, none of it would be any of your business, because it’s a free country. And you?” I turn to Boob Guy. “These were not invented for your visual pleasure. Get your filthy eyes off them. And get the hell out.”
I stand back, flushed and trembling.
With barely a murmur, they leave the restaurant, shuffling out as fast as their chafing thighs can carry them.
Oh Jesus. I just kicked out paying customers. I don’t know where Angelo is, but it won’t be long until he hears. I’m fucked.
“You okay?” says Jonah, who is suddenly standing behind me. I wonder how long he’s been there.
“I really hate confrontation,” I say, my voice suddenly shaky.
Jonah laughs, his shaggy blond hair falling in front of his eyes. “Well, Pia, I’m no expert, but I’d say you’re exceptional at it.”
I meet his eyes. “I’m screwed when Angelo finds out. He has to fire me for that. Heck, I’d fire me for that.”
“So would I. And you owe me a tip for losing my table,” says Bianca on her way past.
“Oh, God,” I murmur.
“Who cares,” says Jonah, all reassuring Texan charm. “I’m guessing this wasn’t your ultimate dream job?”
“No, but I need it. I have a cash-flow problem.”
“Join the club. I’m only doing this to fund acting classes.”
“Actor, huh?” Every bartender in New York is an actor. What, they couldn’t find a plane going to L.A.?
“I dance, too!” he says, doing the soft-shoe shuffle.
Then Angelo taps me on the shoulder.
“Pia, we need to talk. I’m sorry, but I’m gonna have to let you go.”
“C’mon, are you serious?” says Jonah. “You can’t fire her for standing up for herself.”
“I have no choice but to fire her, I need to keep their hotel happy to ensure repeat business. They send a lot of recommendations our way.…” Angelo clasps his hands together anxiously. He’s really a nice guy. I can see he hates doing this. “I’ll pay you for tonight, you can keep your tips. No hard feelings?”
I sigh deeply and close my eyes. I’m so tired.
“Uh … hey, Pia?” says a voice. I look up. It’s the cool young mom from table three.
“Hey,” I say, trying to smile. “How can I help? Oh, God—the check?”
“No, don’t worry, we’ve left enough for the check. I wanted to give you this personally,” she says, slipping some money in my hand. “I also wanted to tell you that we saw—and heard—the whole thing, and you were great. And illegitimus non carborundum, and all that.”
“Thank you! ‘Don’t let the bastards get you down,’ huh?” My father says the same bastardized Latin quote when he’s feeling wild and wacky. It’s one of our few family jokes.
“Exactly,” she says, laughing. “I’m Lina, by the way.”
“Pia.”
“I know.”
“Um, oh … yeah.” She shakes my hand warmly.
“Okay, well, take care.” Lina turns and heads to the door, where her husband and the two kids are standing and waiting.
“Bye, Pia!” screams the little girl, waving enthusiastically. I wave back, and when they’ve left, look at the money in my hand. Two hundred dollars! That plus my earnings and tips from the last three nights puts me in at almost seven hundred. Not bad. But not enough to cover rent this month. Or bills. Or, you know, life.
“Okay, princess, I have an idea,” says Jonah. “Firstly, drink this.” He hands over a glass. “It’s a gimlet. My speciality.” I take a slug and nearly choke: it’s basically pure gin.
“And B, come with me to my Saturday jobs tomorrow, dude! You’ll see there are loads of easy ways to make good cash in Brooklyn. I’ll split my earnings with you, fifty-fifty.”
He’s flirting with me. Even through the hit of gin I can see it.
“What kind of jobs?”
“It’s a surprise, princess,” Jonah says. “I will tell you, however, that the first job is sweet and buzzy. Just get to Williamsburg by 6:00 A.M. C’mon! What have you got to lose?”
He’s right. And he’s cute. And I need the cash.
I shake his hand. “Done.”
* * *
When I get home, it’s still early. Coco, Madeleine, and Julia are in the kitchen, as usual. We’ve somehow adopted the kitchen as the Rookhaven hub. Dinners, cards, chatting: everything happens here.
“Hey guys.” I nod at them, grab Coco’s Us magazine, and perch myself up on the kitchen bench. Sometimes being in a group is comforting, even if you don’t feel like talking.
Coco is carefully measuring flour into a pink bowl, and there’s a saucepan of asparagus risotto on the stove. Julia and Madeleine are at the table, both still wearing their suits and drinking wine—which, by the way, I’ve never seen Jules drink before, it must be part of her I’m-an-adult-now thing. They look clean-cut, upwardly mobile, happy, and employed. Yins to my yang.
“Hey P-Dawg!” Julia continues her story. “And they were, like, we need it by end of play! And I was, like,
okay, no one told me that, of course I can do it.”
“And?”
“Nailed it.”
They high-five excitedly, like something out of goddamn Wall Street.
“How was work, Peepee?” says Julia, turning to me. “They let you off early, huh?”
“Yup.” I pretend to be deeply interested in the magazine.
Julia gets up and helps herself to another bowl of risotto, and looks over at Coco. “Cupcakes?”
“No, lemon chiffon cake. Angie said cupcakes were so effing over,” says Coco.
“There are cool and uncool baked goods?” Julia laughs and chokes on some risotto.
“Chew your food, Jules,” says Madeleine. “Slow down.”
“Too starving. In fact, I have been starving all day. I’ve eaten every, like, two hours since I got to my desk at seven in the morning. I only get up to pee or go to the vending machine.”
“Me too. I ate a salad sandwich at my desk, just like my boss, and got a killer sugar crash in the afternoon.”
Eat more protein at lunch, I think. Cut down on simple carbs like white bread. I once read a magazine article that said that avoiding sugar crashes was the secret to staying slim, and from what I can tell, it’s true. I love food, but I go easy on the sugar. And I never think about my weight much, unless my jeans get tight, and then I just eat more meat and less carbs for a week or two. The only person I know who eats whatever she wants and never gains weight is Angie. As a result she has zero body issues. If I didn’t love her so much, it would be kind of annoying.
“Argh, sugar crash! I buy mid-afternoon candy for my team. Sweetness means love,” says Julia. “Right, Coco?”
We all look over at Coco who is stirring and humming happily, lost in her thoughts.
“I haven’t really made friends at work yet,” says Madeleine.
“Give it time, dude!” says Julia. “The first people you meet are usually losers, anyway. Remember when I was interning at Morgan Stanley, and made friends with that chick from Long Island? Oh yeah, we used to go to Century 21 together at lunch and everything. Then I realized she was boring and because I was hanging out with her, everyone thought I was really boring, too. Social death by association.”
“Okay,” says Madeleine obediently.
“Oh, no!” shrieks Coco. “We’re out of butter.” We all look over. She gets really worked up about baking. “It’s okay! I’ll improvise.”
Julia frowns. “By the way, while I’m thinking of it, why am I the only person who seems to notice when we run out of toilet paper and house stuff? We’re starting a kitty jar for essentials, and Coco, you need to stop making food for everyone unless they’ve chipped in for it, okay?”
“I don’t mind,” says Coco.
“That’s not the point,” says Julia. “We all live in Rookhaven and it needs to be fair. Okay?”
Angie saunters in on her way out for the evening, looking insanely cool in five-inch heels and a long, white silk dress covered in black paint splotches. The dress is obviously expensive, probably stolen from her socialite mother, and customized by Angie. It’s the kind of thing she does.
“Hey, kittens,” she says casually, digging in her handbag, presumably for cigarettes.
“How was your day?” asks Coco shyly.
“Aces, if you exclude the parts that included the Bitch. I never knew arranging food photoshoots could be so boring yet stressful. Boressful.” Angie props an unlit cigarette in the side of her mouth, then starts tying her hair back into a knot. The Bitch is, obviously, her boss. Apparently she’s Dutch and very demanding. “I’ll have the last laugh. Every time she sends me to Starbucks for a nonfat latte, I get full-fat instead.” Madeleine gasps in shock.
Coco stirs the saucepan. “Would you like some risotto?”
“Ah, Miss Coco, you are the best,” says Angie, leaning over and eating a spoonful straight from the saucepan. “Amaze. Maybe when I get home later, sugar-pants, I ate a lot of sashimi today.”
“You eat so much raw fish, you’re like a fucking dolphin,” says Julia.
“And how can you afford it?” says Madeleine. “Good sushi is expensive.”
“My boss orders in for herself but never eats it. Why let it go to waste?” Angie fixes herself a vodka on the rocks, adding a squeeze of lemon from Coco’s cake ingredients. “Anyway, I survived on brownie batter and wine during final semester. I’m trying to restore the nutritional karma.”
“That’s nothing, one Spring Weekend I ate every single thing on the menu at Taco Bell,” says Julia. “Twice over.” God, she’s competitive.
“Sounds wicked cool. Okay, I’m heading into Manhattan for drinks with Lord Hugh, if anyone wants to join me. Pia? Why the hell are you so quiet?”
I take a deep breath. “I can’t go out tonight. I’m getting up at 5:30 tomorrow. I’ve got a job. Or a date. I can’t tell what it is. And I was fired. Again.”
There’s a shocked silence.
“Bartolo’s fired you? Oh, honey, are you okay?”
“You’re working at 5:30 tomorrow morning? Who the fuck works at 5:30 on a Saturday morning?”
“Who the fuck dates at 5:30 on a Saturday morning?”
“Tell us everything, now.”
CHAPTER 5
It’s dawn. Jonah and I are on a rooftop in Williamsburg, for our job-slash-date. He met me outside this building with two takeout coffees, beamed a big sleepy smile at me, and wouldn’t tell me what we were about to do.
The thought crossed my mind that he could have nefarious plans for me. Then I saw that he was wearing a Care Bears T-shirt and pale pink canvas shorts tied with a piece of rope, and realized that any man who dresses like a Huckleberry Finn hipster cannot possibly be evil.
And now, as I sip my coffee—God, I love coffee—I can’t stop looking over the river at Manhattan. It’s so beautiful in the early morning sunlight, it looks practically CGI.
I can’t leave Rookhaven, I can’t leave New York. I want my life here too much, and more than that, I’m … I’m hungry for whatever it is that’s waiting for me.
I just don’t know what that is.
“Beautiful, huh?” says Jonah, joining me as I gaze out over the city.
“It’s amazing,” I say.
“I read somewhere that the philosopher Descartes says that a great city should be ‘an inventory of the possible,’” says Jonah. “A place where anything can happen. Where you never know what’s coming next.”
“I love that,” I say.
“Turn around, and say hi to the girls.”
The girls?
Suddenly I see three hip-height blocks in the corner of the rooftop. I squint into the dawn sunlight and squeal. “Watch out! Bees!” I almost leap into Jonah’s arms.
“Relax, pussycat.” He pulls a mesh-covered safari hat out of his bag. “You’re not scared of bees, are you? If you’re going to be a wuss about it, wear the wuss hat.”
I ignore the wuss hat, though, actually, I am scared of bees. “No, no, I’m fine. So … what are we doing?”
“We’re beekeeping.”
I nod, trying to look cool. Of course we are. We’re in New York City. Why wouldn’t we be beekeeping?
“I look after the hives for my buddy Ray,” says Jonah, picking up a metal watering can contraption. “He runs a restaurant downtown. Nail it today, you can take over this job.”
Pia Keller, beekeeper? “So, we’re going to … milk the hive?”
Jonah lets out a loud laugh. “Are you serious?”
“No,” I add quickly. I hate it when I say stupid shit. “I mean … so what are we doing?”
“We’re going to check the supers,” he says, igniting the metal watering can. “This is a smoker. The smoke makes them sort of stoned, so they don’t mind when we check out their living quarters. Just be slow and quiet.”
Then a bee lands on my arm and I run to the other side of the rooftop, squealing.
“Dude! Seriously!” says Jonah. “You’ll scare
them!”
“Sorry!”
“Just do what I tell you to do,” says Jonah. Our eyes meet for a second, and he arches an eyebrow. Flirty McFlirterson. This is a date. But do I like Jonah like that? I don’t think I do.
Suddenly I think of the guy I saw on Court Street, the Prince Charming wannabe with the ridiculously nice eyebrows and the loud British girlfriend.… Ugh! Why am I even thinking about him? After all, he’s taken, and I’ll never see him again. And I don’t do relationships.
Why?
Well, his name was Eddie. And he was my first love. (Cringe, I know. There’s no other way to say it.) I was sixteen, and had arrived at my third boarding school shell-shocked and miserable after being kicked out of my previous two schools, not to mention the ensuing parental hellstorm. Then I met Eddie. When we were together, I felt calm for the first time in my life. We just, I don’t know, clicked. And he helped me study, stopped me from partying, got my life back on track. More than that, he made me feel happy, safe, understood … I felt rescued. He told me I rescued him, too—from the cookie-cutter New England girls he’d grown up with, from never laughing till he cried, from the suffocation of being popular yet lonely as hell. It was all bullshit, of course. The only person who you can ever rescue is yourself.
Anyway.
Just as we were about to meet up for the first time all summer before heading off to college (him to Berkeley, me to Brown), he broke up with me. Over the phone! His exact words: “Pia, let’s face it. You’re a flight risk, it’s never gonna work. I’m just doing this before you do.”
Even now, just thinking about it, I feel like I’ve been slapped. He dumped me because I was too fickle, too irresponsible, too untrustworthy. He dumped me because of who I am … or who he thought I was, anyway, and since he knew me better than anyone, it’s the same thing, right?
I’d never known I could feel pain like that. Even remembering it now makes my throat ache with a big, painful tear-lump. You know that feeling?
I was staying with Angie in Boston at the time and had the biggest anxiety attack of my life. I thought I was dying. I couldn’t breathe, my heart was racing, everything was spinning, and all I could think was it’s over it’s over.… Angie ran in minutes later, though it felt like hours. She told me later she’d heard a strange moaning sound I don’t even remember making.
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