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But there was a catch in her eye that I couldn’t decipher exactly, when she finally paused to let me know that she was considering me. Of course, a seventeen-year-old girl sitting all by herself on a barstool of a crowded restaurant was probably not her usual customer. Without a word, she found a menu under the bar and passed it to me before returning to her work, but every so often she’d stop and tilt her head, stealing a glance. As if I might be something that she’d put into storage, who now had turned up in an unlikely setting.
And when she finally smiled at me, it was quick as a flower tossed into an audience, and it disappeared just as fast. “What do you like?”
“Oh—it all looks great. I’ll eat anything.” True. My stomach felt scooped and empty and ready for whatever came my way.
It was the right answer. “Let me fix you something.”
As I watched, I could feel myself mentally shadowing the woman’s own movements, as she quickly heated a reserve of skillet oil for mushrooms and peppers, then added a couple of lethal pinches of chili pepper and a dried bay leaf to the sauce already simmering on the stove.
In no time, she’d served me up a platter of enchiladas, narrow as cigars, lightly drizzled in salsa verde and dolloped with sour cream, along with a side of black-bean salad and another of crispy fried zucchini.
Sinking in my fork, I had to resist the impulse to abandon utensils altogether and eat with my hands, and then to mop up the sauce with the extra plate of soft, warm tortillas. Stealthily, I let my boots drop to the floor, and I tucked my feet so that I could eat cross-legged, the way I loved to do when I was alone.
After a few minutes of relinquishing myself to what was easily my most amazing food experience in months, I could feel myself absorbing the enchiladas in a different way, as I imagined preparing them. I could feel my hand cover the spine of the knife blade, a technique I’d learned on a cooking show that had effectively demonstrated the cleanest way to chop and seed a jalapeño pepper. And there was, I remembered, a trick to the timing of the recipe, to juggling the sauce with the filling and the last-minute grating of the cheese—rough not fine—and yet this was a trick I’d forgotten.…
The dish was already spicy. My nose was fiery red and tears were slipping down my face. I’d doused it in hot sauce when it needed hardly any.
The busboy had reapproached me noiselessly and set down an extra napkin for me, which I used as a handkerchief. I watched him as he picked up a rack of dishes from a dolly, heaved them over his bony shoulder, and prepared to take them downstairs. At the same instant, another figure swung empty-handed around the corner. My heart stuck in my ribs. Kai.
18
Third Door Down
I froze. Kai didn’t see me at first. He had paused at the touch screen to place an order. But for me, everything stopped—the hour itself seemed to come screeching to a halt, along with my pulse, my thoughts, and every single half-prepared scrap of speech I’d ever recited to Kai in my head.
Stop…stop…stopped. Numb. I was scared to blink, to lose him.
Kai worked here? My brain reeled to make this seem obvious and natural. Of course he worked here—the matchbook had been his clue to me. He’d wanted me to find him. He’d been expecting me to find him. In his element. Because he looked good working here, too, dressed in his waiter’s tailored black pants and short black apron plus a golf shirt with the restaurant’s red and yellow logo emblazoned on the front pocket.
As soon as he finished punching in the order, I was sure that Kai was going to turn in my direction. But I was jolted to watch him coast past me toward the front of the restaurant.
He’d sensed me, though. Of course he had. Nobody who gets stared at as hard as I was staring at Kai doesn’t somehow figure that out.
So now what? Do I just wait for him to come to me?
I glanced down at the sauce and sour cream pooled on my empty plate. It was probably the lingering after-impression of all that spicy food, but I was heated up and close to tears; they threatened to wash out at any moment. Or maybe it was the old here-we-go-again panic slash exhilaration of being caught in another sort-of chance meeting with Kai. The matchbook had led me to him so easily. Too easily.
Okay, but now I was here. I’d found him. And he was less enigmatic now, right? Here was a huge new chunk of information. Kai worked here at El Cielo. As a waiter. Was anything less mysterious than that?
My heart thrumming, I kept my head downcast. I took tiny mechanical bites of the last tortilla, all too aware that Kai was wandering around in possible eye- or earshot. And when I twisted and craned, I caught him in angles as he tended to the tables, skirting between them, a purposeful back-and-forth from the wait stands and busing stations and then around again—to stack a high chair or bring a pitcher of beer. My vision of him was broken, occasionally, by the busy presence of the blond girl, who seemed to deal with Kai’s tables as well as her own. Maybe he was just a backup waiter?
After a few minutes, I could relax almost to the point of enjoying him. It was a new power, to watch while I remained unobserved. Kai looked more boyish in this setting, and more sweetly earnest while at work. His white shirt set off the dark tones of his skin—a color I could semi-achieve if I baked myself in the sun all summer—and his hair was different, comb-marked like a little kid’s on school picture day.
I stared, entranced, slightly dazed from too much dinner; plus my muscles were warm and now slightly achy from the physical therapy session. If there was ever a time to be equipped for another meeting with Kai, this was it. In one short month, I’d come a long way from my barely-rehabbed-odds-and-ends self. I didn’t need Dr. P to tell me I was taking better care not to be some shivering girl on a fire escape, or that I’d even learned a lesson from my Halloween trancing in darklight to a downtown club mix.
El Cielo might be Kai’s turf, but tonight I was strong enough to meet him on it.
I waited another couple of minutes, my heart racing faster than a Daytona mile as I thought up cute-but-not-cutesy ice-breaker lines. The tension was killing me and I could feel doubt start to creep in. What if I had this all wrong, and he never came over?
Because I had to talk with him again.
It really needed to happen. It was everything.
After another minute, I slid off my perch and back into my boots, and then went in pretend search of the bathroom, darting a quick look around the corner where the busboy had vanished. The threads of my nerves were pulling and tweaking at me like I was a puppet. The restaurant was now packed.
