Getting Warmer (23 page)

“It’s really great that Robert’s getting to experience different aspects of the restaurant. I just want to make sure he’ll have some exposure to the management side.” Exposure. As in: exposure to secondhand smoke. Onions, garlic, chili powder, chicken, chocolate—where was the tobacco smell?

I blinked at Luis. “Are you smoking a
joint
?”

 

 

I called Jonathan from the parking lot.

“You’ve got to stop calling me,” he said evenly.

“Please, just hear me out. I just stopped by to see the chef who’s supposed to be acting as Robert’s mentor, and he was smoking marijuana.”

“Robert,” Jonathan said. “That would be one of your imaginary friends? Or was he the imaginary student?”

“I never had any imaginary friends. Or students. It was just the job. Everything else was real.”

“So your mother really has Alzheimer’s.”

“Oh. Well, no. But I really have a mother,” I added, grasping at straws. “But—Robert. I can’t leave him in there.
I can’t
.”

“I spend a lot of time with restaurant people,” Jonathan said.

“Yes, I know. That’s why I—”

“And I’m trying to be shocked about the marijuana. And I’d try to be shocked if you said the guy was doing shots of tequila at noon or even lines of cocaine and that he couldn’t say a single sentence without using the F word and that the entire kitchen staff was undocumented. A kid can get an education in a restaurant kitchen—but probably not the kind you had in mind.”

 

 

The rehearsal ran late—past six o’clock—but I didn’t want to go home yet. I didn’t want to go home until I was so exhausted that I could collapse into a deep, dreamless sleep. “You doing anything?” I asked Lars. “Want to grab a bite to eat?”

“Um, yeah,” he said. “Sure.”

I walked to my car while Lars put some props back in his classroom. My cell phone rang: Jill. “Hey,” she said. “I’m bored. You doing anything?”

“I’ve got a hot date with Lars. You want to come?”

After some back-and-forthing, Lars agreed to swing by Jill’s house so she wouldn’t have to drive. From there, we hit the Happy Cactus, which was considerably more packed than the last time we’d been there. Since the temperature had dropped, the entire Valley of the Sun had become more crowded. I had to allow an extra five minutes to get to work—and an extra seven to navigate the Starbucks line. My hairdresser needed five weeks’ notice to schedule a trim. At least the days were sunny and perfect, though I’d begun carting around a geeky English teacher cardigan; the temperature dropped precipitously the instant the sun went down.

“You got the two-for-one margaritas tonight?” Lars asked the bartender. But no: bargains were just for the off-season.

We snagged a table in the middle of the room. I took off my sweater and arranged it across the back of my chair. “How’d rehearsal go?” Jill asked. She’d changed into black jeans and a stretchy V-neck top that allowed a glimpse of her ample cleavage. On her feet she wore chunky, high-heeled black sandals. Jill is not one of those tall women who embraces ballet slippers and poor posture in an effort to appear smaller.

Lars shook his head, too pained to speak.

“The kids did great,” I said. “Not a single line missed.”

“I’ve let them down,” Lars said. “I should have stood up to Dr. White.” Lars was wearing a pink oxford shirt and khakis. His hair had been recently trimmed. He looked really pretty.

“It’s not worth losing your job over,” I said, thinking: Hey! If I stand up to someone, can I get fired?

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Lars said. “Let’s just have fun.”

The waitress came with our drinks: margaritas for Jill and me, a martini for Lars.

“Excuse me,” Lars said, looking wide-eyed at the waitress.

“Yes?”

“How do you get to the beach from here?”

She squinted at him. “What beach?”

“You know—
the beach
.”

“You mean Silver Lake? The reservoir?”

“No!” Lars said. “I mean
the beach
. The one with the waves and the surfers.”

“Um . . . are you talking about California?” She was keeping her voice neutral, not wanting to jeopardize her tip.

Lars laughed arrogantly. He looked at Jill and me as if to say, Can you help me out, here?

“No, the Arizona beach,” Jill said. “You know—it connects to the Pacific by the inland waterway? It’s about a half hour from here. Forty minutes, tops. It’s not in any guide books—the locals don’t want the secret out. Willow’s been there. Haven’t you?” Everyone was quiet for a moment. Jill poked me. “
Right
, Willow?”

Willow. Geez. I didn’t even get to pick my own name.

“It was a while ago,” I said.

“But it
was
in Arizona,” Lars said.

“I can’t swear by it.” I picked up my margarita. Everyone was staring at me. “It could have been Utah.”

By the second round of drinks (anticipating my drive home, I had moved on to Sprite), Lars and Jill had given up on the irritated waitress, preying on the tourists at the next table, instead. Within twenty minutes, Bill and Marge McCloskey, down for a week from Minnesota, had elaborate driving instructions to “Kokopelli Beach” written on a series of cocktail napkins. Lars advised them to rent wet suits before heading out.

“I’m going to head home,” I announced.

“So soon?” Lars asked.

“My head hurts.” It did a bit—probably from hunger. I kept suggesting we order appetizers, while Lars and Jill, who had once again eaten enormous, matching lunches, maintained that the free chips and salsa were more than enough. Jill said she’d bring me lunch on Monday. I didn’t believe her, somehow.

I had driven ten minutes away from the bar when I realized why I was so cold; I had left my cardigan at the table. I tried calling Jill, then Lars: no answer. I turned around in a strip mall parking lot and headed back. Maybe they’d have broken down and ordered appetizers by now. I’d kill for a plate of heaping nachos.

They weren’t at our table, which had been taken over by a lovey-dovey couple sucking face. All I could see from across the crowded room was the woman’s long, blond hair. As I crept closer, I spied my black sweater, still draped across the back of my chair. They probably wouldn’t even notice me taking it. I tried not to be too obvious looking at them—public displays of affection have always made me squirm—but I couldn’t help but glance up just as I reached the table.

“Oh!” I said.

Jill and Lars pulled out of their embrace. Good God, what were they trying to pretend this time?

But then they looked at me, and I knew. How could I have missed it?

“We’ve been meaning to tell you,” Jill said, holding Lars’s hand. Lars said nothing.

Jill just didn’t get it. “We didn’t want you to get hurt,” she kept saying, standing at the edge of the amphitheater. It was Saturday—opening night—and I had just arrived, even though the play was due to start in twenty minutes. I was over an hour late, but responsibility be darned: I was determined to avoid Jill and Lars as long as possible. My cell phone had been turned off since the night before.

“You made me look like a fool,” I said. “All that stuff about Lars checking out Neil Weinrich’s shoulders?”

“Oh, come on. That was funny—you’ve got to admit it.”

“Actually, I don’t.”

“Natalie, please. We value you as our friend.”
Our
friend.

“Friends don’t lie to each other,” I said.

Cody came rushing over, his face flushed. His black T-shirt read, STAGE CREW. It hung long and loose over his blue jeans. “Miss Quackenbush! Do you have the colored water?”

“The what?”

“The colored water! That we need to use for the beer!”

“I forgot it,” I said unapologetically.

“But what are we going to do?” he squeaked. “We don’t have time to get anything else!”

“Deal with it!” I snapped. “Just use plain water or Coke—isn’t it supposed to be Coke now, anyway?”

“You shouldn’t project your anger onto the students,” Jill said once Cody had left.

There was a seat reserved for me, front row center, right next to Lars (who was right next to Jill), but I ignored it. I trudged up the amphitheater’s hard concrete steps, my eyes darting around for an empty spot.

Mrs. Clausen was there with a stylish-looking older woman. “Natalie!” she said, reaching out to give my hand a squeeze. “You must be so excited for the kids!” She gestured to the older woman. “Mom, I’d like you to meet Natalie Quackenbush, one of our newer teachers. Natalie, this is my mother, Lavinia Schroeder.”

Mrs. Schroeder smiled at me. Her teeth were yellow but straight, her lipstick the perfectly bright shade of pink to set off her royal blue suit. Her white hair looked professionally styled. Her faded blue eyes were surrounded by friendly crinkles. Mrs. Clausen would look just like her in twenty-five years.

“My mother is visiting for Thanksgiving,” Mrs. Clausen told me.

“Enjoy your stay,” I said, feeling as if I had been hit in the stomach. Thanksgiving was next week. I’d planned on spending it with Jill and Lars. Now I had no one.

I finally spotted an empty seat near the top of the amphitheater—behind Robert, no less. “Hey,” I said, sliding in.

“Hey.” He glanced at his friends, cleared his throat and sat up straighter. His two friends were taking up more than their share of room on the bench. One had iPod buds in his ears and was grooving his head in time to music that I could only hope he had downloaded legally. The other sat hunched over a beeping Game Boy, which emitted gunfire and explosion sounds every ten or fifteen seconds.

“Excuse me,” I said, tapping the boy’s shoulder.

“Huh?” He sat up and blinked at me, as if I had awakened him from an especially deep slumber.

“Your Game Boy. You’re going to have to turn it off once the play starts.”

“Oh. Yeah. Sure.”

There was no curtain to rise on the amphitheater stage. Instead, the students made their entrances from behind a fake wall that had been set up for the occasion.

Robert’s friend with the iPod strained his neck to look at the first scene. “Where’s the girl in her underwear?” he whispered, far too loudly (as far as I could tell, he hadn’t turned the music off).

“Shhh!” Robert scowled at him and crossed his arms.

I leaned forward. “No girls in underwear tonight. That part’s been cut.”

The iPod boy did his best to avoid my gaze. Robert blushed and smiled a little, looking relieved; perhaps he didn’t want his friends to see a half-dressed Katerina after all.

Watching the play made me more nervous than I expected. I held my breath when Ralph stumbled over a line, finally exhaling when Katerina rescued him. I had seen the play so many times that it took me an instant to realize what was going on when Katerina strode onstage in her negligee. The kids were performing the original, uncensored version of the play.

“That’s not underwear. That’s just pajamas,” Robert’s iPod friend said.

“Huh?” The Game Boy friend looked up. (He’d resumed playing but had turned the sound off. I pretended not to notice.)

Katerina tossed back her long hair. “If my mother catches you, she’ll kill us both,” she told Ralph.

There was murmuring throughout the audience. I half stood in my seat, trying to see Lars’s face. All I could see was his flippy blond hair. As angry as I was, I still felt sorry for him. How could the kids go over his head like that?

No one yelled with outrage. Claudia’s mother didn’t pop up and demand a halt to the action. Dr. White didn’t orate. The scene finished with an implication of Jules’s deflowering, and the show went on.

After the actors took their bows, they gestured to Lars to join them on stage. He scurried up. I expected him to look nervous, to scan the crowd for Dr. White, but he had such a set, victorious look on his face that I knew: the kids hadn’t rebelled on their own. Lars had told them to.

Lars scanned the crowd. A couple of the kids called out, “Miss Quackenbush!” I slid further in my seat, hiding behind tall Robert and his backward baseball cap. The moment passed. The kids on stage forgot about me. They bowed one last time before filing off behind the artificial wall.

 

 

I finally turned my cell phone on Sunday morning. As expected, there were a slew of messages from Jill. I deleted them without listening.

There was a voice mail from Jonathan. My heart pounding, I punched in the necessary numbers until I heard his voice filtered through the phone’s tinny earpiece.

“Hi. It’s me. Jonathan. About that internship. I have this friend, her name is Suzette Doherty, and she’s a caterer. She’s built up a good business—lots of corporate clients, fund-raisers, she does weddings, the whole deal. Anyway, I talked to her, and she said she could do the internship thing starting Monday.” He gave me her business address and phone number. He didn’t tell me to call him back.

I called him, anyway. “I got your message. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” Silence. “I think I left all the information you’ll need on your voice mail.”

“Okay, thanks. I-I appreciate your helping me.”

“I just wanted to help the kid.”

“You are.”

“Suzette will be expecting you on Monday. I hope it works out.” After I got off the phone, I spent the next half hour picturing Suzette. Why couldn’t her name be Marge? Or Fran?

Suzette.

My only hope was that years of sampling cream sauces had taken their toll.

She looked like a Suzette. She wasn’t that much taller than me—maybe five foot six to my five foot two—but she was one of those women who appears taller than she is due to ideal proportions and perfect posture. Her blond hair was slicked back into an artful ballerina bun. Perfectly arched eyebrows framed black-lashed, bright green eyes. She wore simple catering clothes: tailored black pants, a white blouse and a chef’s apron, her only adornment tiny pearl earrings set against the backdrop of perfect pink lobes. I snuck a peak at her left hand, hoping in vain for a twinkling diamond and a band of gold. But no: unless she had taken off her rings to knead some dough, Suzette was available.