North of Happy Page 6

  “That’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  The lake has a little bay that dips into the woods, out of sight from the bonfire, and we follow the grassy shore until we’re completely isolated.

  “So, have you been planning to come here for a while?” Emma says, stopping at a boulder near the lake. She leans against it, starts to untie her shoes.

  “No,” I say, continuing my surprising trend of truth telling in her presence. “I kind of ran away. Bolted from my own high school graduation party.” I look around at where we are, the little nook of lake that has us hidden from the rest of the world. “What are we doing here?”

  “I’m showing you more cool island things,” she says, peeling off her socks now. “This is a great night for it too. When the moon’s out, it looks even better.”

  “What does?” I ask, following her lead and stepping out of my shoes.

  “Plankton.” Emma leans down and rolls up her pant legs until they’re halfway up her calves. Her toenails have traces of purple polish on them, long ago chipped. She tip-toes her way to the edge of the lake, avoiding rocks and twigs. I expect her to dive right in, but she stops before she reaches the water, looks back at me.

  It’s really tempting to get caught in that look, so instead I tuck my socks inside my shoes, roll up my pant legs, step up to Emma’s side. It’s a little chilly out, and I expect the lake is colder, but there’s no way I’m not doing whatever the hell Emma has in mind.

  “Okay, when I say so, we’re gonna take three superlong strides into the lake. Stomp as much as you can. You’ll get a little wet, but, trust me, it’s worth it.” She moves her glasses again so that they rest atop her head. “Don’t look up, don’t look ahead, don’t look at me, okay? You can only look down at your feet. And really stomp down. Splash as much as possible.”

  Emma counts down to three, and as soon as we splash into the water, it comes alive. Millions of white lights sparkle. They radiate out like a shockwave, tiny brilliant explosions like nothing I’ve ever seen. Emma is stomping onward, a path of light in her wake. I follow along, but I go slower, not wanting to take the next step until the last one has subsided, afraid that the magic will run out. It’s like lightning underwater, like microscopic fireflies raging in sync. When the water calms back to darkness, I lean over, run my hand through the water. The lights follow suit, like it’s my skin that’s charged and not the water.

  I hear Emma’s stomping and near-maniacal laughter get closer. “What is this?” I ask, my face only a few inches away from the water. I hadn’t even noticed how warm the lake is, how soaked through my jeans are. I swirl my fingers across the surface, enchanted.

  “This is nature being ridiculous,” Emma says. “Bioluminescent plankton. Like swimming in fireworks.”

  We step back to shore, sit on the muddy banks with our toes dipped into the water. Every now and then one of us will kick out to bring the lake back to life. I think back to how I lost it at the restaurant and it doesn’t feel like something that really happened to me. A dream, maybe, or a story I heard someone else tell.

  “Thanks for bringing me here. I needed this,” I say. I raise my foot up from the water, watch electric white droplets cling to my heel. “You were right. This unshatters dreams.”

  “I could tell you’d appreciate it.” Emma scoots closer to the lake so she can bend her knees up and still touch the water. She folds her arms around her legs, looking out at the water, a beatific smile on her face. Then she turns her head a little, rests her cheek on her knee to glance at me.

  In that one glance, I know I’ve never been here before. I’ve never been in a moment like this one, never wanted a night to stretch out the way I want tonight to stretch out. If this island is as magical as it feels, it’ll stop the flow of hours into a trickle. If I’m here for a reason, it’s not the meal I had at Provecho.

  I smile at her and she smiles back, and then I stomp my heel down in the water so that the air around us is lit up by bright droplets. Emma stomps too, hard enough that the splashes soak us both.

  When we stop, I look at that spot in the lake where our feet are touching underwater. The particles of white light in the water rearrange. Felix again. Quick urge to kick him away before I think: How many nights like this did he have? How many was he robbed of?

  “Hey, you okay?” Emma asks.

  I takes my eyes off the lake, not sure how I managed to get pulled away from this. “Yeah,” I say, smiling. “Really don’t want tonight to end.” She lays her hand on mine, and as soon as she does I really do feel okay. Like my time here isn’t going to be all panic attacks and solitary cooking.

  For the first time in a long time, I am okay.

  CHAPTER 7

  SALMON WITH ANGEL HAIR PASTA

  ¾ bottle dry white wine

  5 lemons (and zest)

  ½ cup fresh dill, roughly chopped

  1 pint heavy whipping cream

  4 8-ounce salmon filets

  500 grams angel hair pasta

  ¼ cup sun-dried tomatoes, julienned

  1 4-ounce jar capers

  METHOD:

  The next morning, I leave the motel at sunrise. When I said good-bye to Emma yesterday, she told me to come by the restaurant early. I’m not sure why, but I didn’t really bother asking.

  Fog encroaches again, but it’s tinted pink by the dawn. The whole island looks like cotton candy. I linger in the parking lot awhile, see that couple who walked past me the other day packing up their car. Maybe I should be booking my flight home, but for some reason I don’t want to think about it. Not after last night. Felix didn’t show up again the rest of the night, and though I didn’t sleep long, I slept deeply.

  Before I can knock on the front door of the restaurant, Emma pokes her head from around the corner. “Come this way,” she calls.

  I follow behind. She’s standing by the back door, keeping it propped open. “I have a surprise for you,” she says with a smile.

  “Me too.” I hold out the coffee I bought for her on the way here.

  I want a little moment reliving yesterday, some eye contact or a forearm squeeze or something. Emma takes the coffee unceremoniously and urges me inside. The short hallway we walk down is much colder than the temperature outside. It’s quiet, though I can tell there’s someone else here.

  “Are you giving me a tour?” I ask, a little giddy at the thought. I’ve never been inside a professional kitchen before, and though I’ve had some exposure on TV, in books I’ve read, it’s a little different than what I’d imagined.

  “There’ll be time for that.”

  I don’t really know what Emma’s talking about, but I’m distracted by the sights of the kitchen. We pass two huge steel doors that I imagine are home to all the ingredients from my meal yesterday. I strain to see the line, the row of cooks prepping for the day. Felix would have loved to see this. We turn a corner and come upon a door, which Emma immediately knocks on.

  “Come in!”

  Emma pushes the door open. Inside, at a desk facing the door, is a woman who looks surprisingly like Emma herself. She’s wearing a white chef’s coat, her brown hair up in a bun, bags under her eyes. Golden script on the pocket over her heart reads: Chef Elise. She looks up from a clipboard in front of her, barely taking in my presence before she starts scribbling something. “What are you doing here so early?” she asks, which feels to me like a weird way to talk to your employees.

  “Meet our new dishwasher,” Emma says.

  Chef stops her scribbling and gives Emma a hard look. I turn to her for an explanation too, but she’s busy staring Chef Elise down. I’m guessing this is some sort of joke. I’m just trying to figure out if it’s at my expense or not.

  Chef tosses her clipboard down onto the desk and sighs, looks at me. “Any restaurant experie
nce?”

  “I’m sorry, I’m not sure what’s going on here.” I turn to Emma. “You want me to work here?”

  “Goddamnit, Emma, what are you bringing this kid in here for?”

  Emma rolls her eyes. “You need a dishwasher, don’t you?”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “Of course it is,” Emma says, throwing her hands up. “You need a dishwasher, Mom. It’s not the world’s—” There’s a loud crash, and when I turn to it Chef Elise’s clipboard is on the floor and I swear I can see her nostrils flaring.

  “In here, I’m your boss. You call me Chef like everyone else.”

  Jesus. The air in the room feels exactly the way it did when I left home. At least now I know why Emma seemed a little familiar. I’d seen Chef before, on that show. “Whatever,” Emma says. “Dishwashing isn’t the hardest job to learn. You need a dishwasher. He wants a job in restaurants. I’m just helping you out.”

  Wait, what? Where the hell did Emma get that notion? I’m so confused, which must show on my expression because when Emma sees it she gives me a little smirk. “The way you talk about cooking. You don’t want to go back home, do you?”

  Emma raises her eyebrows, questioning. Chef Elise has a similar look in her eyes, just a little more on the exasperated side. As I’m caught in their stares, wondering what I’m supposed to say to that, I sense another presence in the room. Of course. Felix. I try to subtly look around for him, find him in the dust swirling around in a beam of light.

  “I think the girl has a point,” Felix says. Only my brother could find a way to smirk when he’s dust. “Why go back to the same thing? What’s waiting at home for you?” At least he’s in wisdom-nugget mode and not stupid-joke mode.

  I think about what I said to Mom before I left. One week. It feels like a joke now. How could I have thought a week would be enough? It’s enough for a meal, maybe.

  My thoughts are interrupted by the squeak of Chef’s chair as she rolls over to pick up her clipboard. “Fuck, Emma, look at him. He doesn’t even know where he is.” Great, I’ve been staring at a beam of light and probably moving my lips while I think up a response. Chef’s about to tell me to go away and I don’t know what I’d do with the rest of my day. Go back to my room, try to hold myself together by cooking things Felix and I used to. Go home. Face Dad again.

  “Elias!” Chef yells out.

  A Latino dude shows up at the door. “Yes, Chef.” He’s in a chef coat too, a towel slung over his shoulder, sweat already on his forehead. He’s right around Felix’s age, maybe in his midtwenties.

  “Have we heard from Richie yet?”

  “No, Chef. That’s three days.”

  Chef looks back at me and then at Emma. The other cook, Elias, goes back to whatever he was doing in the kitchen. Chef leans back in her chair and then goes over to the computer on her desk and clicks a few times. Emma gives me a reassuring smile, or at least that’s what I assume it’s supposed to be. It’s six in the morning and I think I’m in the middle of asking for a job, which was not at all in my morning plans.

  Then Chef sighs and pushes herself away from her desk. “You,” she says, pointing at me. “Come with me.” She walks toward us, combing back a loose strand of hair. I want to explain further, say that I’m only here a short while, that I don’t know what the hell is going on. Frankly, I’m a little terrified to say anything. “And you,” she says, scowling at Emma. “I love you, but you’re such a fucking brat.”

  Emma beams a smile and then I’m following Chef out the door. “Love you too, Chef,” Emma calls out behind us. Felix comes along as my shadow, which is the first time I’ve seen my shadow in months. He’s pretty bad at it. He keeps doing all these flips and leaving the confines of where a shadow should be. Given everything else that’s happening, he’s making it really hard for me to keep my cool.

  “These are walk-ins,” Chef points to the steel doors Emma and I walked past earlier, “but there’ll be no reason for you to be in this part of the kitchen. You love cooking? Awesome. So does everyone else here. You don’t get to do it my kitchen.”

  At the end of the corridor Chef points out the prep hall. There are three cooks in there: a short and stout Latino guy shoving tomatoes into some sort of chopping contraption that I’ve never seen before, even on cooking shows; a tall black guy stirring something in a big pot; and an older Latina looking over a sheet of paper stuck to the ticket rail above her. Chef calls out to them, says, “New dishwasher! This is...”

  Caught up in the suddenness of what’s happening, I’m surprised that I manage to say my name. Chef introduces them to me. Memo, Isaiah, Lourdes—I say their names a few times to myself as if I’m really planning on staying. Chef shows me where all the stations are, gives me a brief summary of what each is responsible for. Each person is introduced along with their title: Michelle and Gus are the two sous-chefs; Vee, the enormous Southern rotisseur who carries a machete-length knife in a holster at her side; Elias is the poissonnier, and he raises his eyebrows the slightest bit and goes back to whisking something.

  Here is the language Felix and I used to employ as often as possible. Kitchenese, we used to call it. Any time we cooked together, we wanted to feel like we belonged, so we spoke as if we did.

  Steam is billowing up into the induction hood, which is much louder than I could have ever imagined. Through the sounds of the kitchen (pots being moved, water running, knives coming down on cutting boards), things are fairly quiet. I catch a lot of Spanish being exchanged, even from the handful of staff members who aren’t Latino. Most people are in chef’s whites or have some other sort of coat on, as well as checkered pants or black trousers. Absolutely everyone is in these big, ugly, comfortable-looking shoes.

  On the line, I’m introduced to Morris and Boris (entremetiers), who have matching loud mouths and tattoos, twins if not for their difference in race. Matt arrives in the middle of my tour, giving me a confused look, which I return, because no one here is more confused than I am. His eyes are bloodshot, as if the party continued on long after we left the lake last night.

  “This is the pass,” Chef says, pointing to a long station at the end of the kitchen. “This is where I am most shifts, making sure every piece of food that goes out is perfect before it continues on to the dining room floor. If I’m not here, the sous are in charge. Sometimes it’s me. Sometimes it’s two of us. Whoever is standing here, you don’t fucking talk to, okay?”

  “Yes, Chef,” I say, thrilled at the way the words sound leaving my mouth. I’ve read the term in books, heard it offhand in cooking shows. Felix the shadow jumps and clicks his heels together. I half expect him to break out into a musical number.

  I look at the pass the way an art aficionado might when entering the Louvre for the first time. I see about two dozen spots ready for plastic containers. Mise en place, I think to myself. I can’t believe I’m here. There are a couple of containers arriving to the pass right now, oils and chopped herbs, something that looks like sesame-seed crisps.

  “You’re over here,” Chef says, leading me away from the heart of the kitchen.

  The dish station is tucked away, hidden from the rest of the kitchen by a wall, though there’s another entrance that leads back to the prep area. There are multiple counters where pots and pans are already being stacked up. Isaiah walks in carrying a huge vat that’s still steaming. “Comin’ in hot, man,” he says as he heaves it alongside the others with a deafening clang.

  “Roberto’s the chef plongeur, so he’ll be your direct boss. You do what he says, when he says it, exactly how he says it. And that’s basically true of anything anyone else tells you in here. I don’t want to see you holding a knife unless you’re washing it, okay? In my kitchen, you wash dishes. That’s it.”

  I look around the little room. If I’m still, I can hear the hood roaring in the kitchen. The cooks
are starting to wake up, perk up, speak up. Their voices are still soft and muffled, often overtaken by the work they’re doing.

  “Roberto’ll be here soon, but you can get started. Don’t break anything. Clean dishes go over there,” Chef says. She turns to leave, but before she goes she says, “I want you to work a double today, stay until we close. Roberto will tell you when you can take a break, and when you can leave, but other than that you stay right here. Work fast, work clean and I’ll let you come back.”

  Then Chef is gone, and I am left alone. I turn and face the sink. Felix shows up on my shoulder as a fly, rubbing his little forefeet together. “What the hell just happened?” I ask him out loud.

  He buzzes around for a bit. Excitedly, I can tell. I stare at the pile of cookware, cast-iron and shiny with grease. I reach out to touch a wok, just to make sure it’s real.

  “Felix. I didn’t ask for this.”

  “But you got it, brother,” he says immediately. He always, always had a quick response. I don’t know how he never faltered when it seems like that’s all I do. “What else are you going to do?”

  “Not work at this restaurant?”

  “Okay, so you go home. Then what?”

  I stammer for a second, because he can’t really expect me to just start working here. That’s not in the plan at all. I’m not, like, a huge fan of the established plan, but this is too much. This is Felixesque, and I am not Felix.

  I think about what comes next: a flight back to Mexico, Dad chewing me out, the internship, all the days bleeding into one foreseeable future.

  I told Mom I only had to do something for Felix. But I did that and nothing changed. Even in this room, where every surface is stainless steel and reflective, I’m fuzzy, out of focus. What if Felix wasn’t leading me to this restaurant just to eat here? What if he’s trying to lead me to something bigger?