Blues for Zoey (10 page)

30

What the Pho?

What the Pho had much the same layout as the
Sit 'n' Spin, except instead of washers and dryers, there were tables and chairs. It was a long, narr
ow strip of a room, with a big window up front and an open kitchen
in the rear. The place was decorated with old posters that looked like they had been stolen (not without violence) fr
om a defunct travel agency. Two flat-screen TVs w
ere bolted to the walls, running a perpetual loop of Asian soap operas.

Zoey
thought the place was cool, but she had no idea what
to order, so I requested a basic bowl of pho for us both.

“How come it's
so red?” she asked, poking the meat with her chopsticks.

“It's rare beef.”

“Is that even legal?”

“You've eaten sushi, right?”

“Yeah, but that's fish.”

“And it's raw. But it's good, right? This is just rare.”

“Rare.” She poked it again. “I think that's worse.”

I looked around
the restaurant. “Do any of these people look sick to you?”

“
He
does.” She pointed to a stooped wreck
of a guy staring at the televisions.

“That's not sick, that's just …
old
.”

She returned her attention to the bowl. “Okay, so what's this?”

“Tendon. A little chewy, but good.”

“Do you always take girls here? I'm not sure it's a good idea.”

“For a girl who plays music in the str
eet, you're not very adventurous.”

This comment was greeted with silence.

“Just try some,” I said. “Trust me.”

She did.

“Wow,” she said. (
Vindication!) “Why have I never had this before?”

“Questions I can't answer.”

We started eating. I took the opportunity to stare at her mouth. Watching her slurp and chew like that—what can I say? It made me want to kiss her.

Halfway to the bottom of the bowl, she asked, “Why does your boss hate me so much?”

The mention of Mr. Rodolfo brought me back to the real world. “He has a narrow definition of what it means to be normal.”

“Ick.”

“I know.”

We went on eating in silence
for a while. On the TV in the corner,
it looked like a Chinese soap dubbed into Vietnamese.
You didn't need to speak either language to
see that the words didn't match the actors' lips.

“Do you come here because
you're Vietnamese?” she asked me. “I don't know
much about Vietnam—
obviously
—but you look like you might be.”

“I'm not, but don't worry, nobody gets it right. I'm half Japanese, but my dad was black. He was from Barbados originally. He died of a heart attack about three years ago.”

“Oh, no.”

“I'm okay with
it now, but it's not the so
rt of thing you ever really get over.
It bothers my sister more than me, makes her worry about my mom.”

“I guess between us, we've got one full set of parents.”

For some reason, I was surprised. “Did something happen to your mom?”

“She's okay, but she ran off with some guy last year. Not that I can blame her. My dad can be a bit like your boss sometimes—i.e.,
an asshole
.”

I asked her what her asshole dad thought of her playing music in the street. She said he didn't like her practicing at home and besides, she could take care of herself. It felt good to be learning about her, like she was giving up her secrets just for me. I wanted more of them.

“What about school? Will you be going to Evandale in the fall?”

She shrugged as if it didn't really matter. “I don't know. Maybe. If we stay in town.”

“You're not staying?”

“Depends on my dad's work. He, um, teaches courses at Falconer. My favorite one'
s called Philosophy of Music. It's pretty cool, but right now it's mostly evenings and weekends. What
we really need is for him to get tenu
re for once. That means a full-time gig.”

“I hope he gets one. Then you'll stick around, right?”

“Maybe,” she said, looking away.

I didn't like the way she seemed distracted. I wanted to say something to grab her attention. “You know what I thought the first time I saw
you? When you first walked past the window wher
e I work?”

Her attention returned, but not the way I wanted. She was squinty-eyed and suspicious. “What did you think?”

“These are the exact words. I thought, ‘Holy shit, it's Jesus!'”

She laughed. “Shut up.”

“I couldn't see your face, and—well, look what you were carrying.”

“Wait. So the guy who
runs the jewelry store says I'
m an angel—and you thought I was
Jesus
? That'
s a shitload of divinity to pile on a girl.”

“It's true.”

She smiled at me, but only with half her mouth. “You have a weird way of giving compliments.”

“How do
you
give a compliment?”

She laughed.

“Go ahead,” I said. “I can take it.”

“You think I'm gonna pay you a compliment, just cuz you asked for one?”

I stood up, spread my arms, and spun in a ci
rcle. “Look carefully. I'm sure you can
find something worth at least
a little
praise.”

She c
overed her face, obviously embarrassed. “Stop spinning like an idiot!”

I did.

“Okay,” she said. “I got one.”

Before she could tell me what it was, a dog ba
rked outside the window. Only it wasn't just
barking, and it wasn't just any dog. It
was Razor, and she was going berserk. She
raced past the window, and a moment later B-Man went scampering after her.

“Oh, crap.”

“Who was that?” Zoey asked.

“B-Man.”

“You
know
that guy?”

“We should go,” I said. “Like right now.”

“Why?”

“Because I think I know where they're going.”

31

How to Detect a Lean-In
Moment

Razor leapt at the Sit 'n' Spin's huge window. B-Man struggled to keep her from crashing through it. Inside, a crowd of Mr. Rodolfo's poker players taunted the beast, shooing it with the backs of their hands, snarling at it from behind the safety of the glass. A-Man was there too, out in front, trying to pull B-Man toward Emerson. He must have shown up late for the poker game.

“Shit.” I stopped halfway up the block and grabbed Zoey's arm. “We should wait here.”

“
I can't!
” There was real panic in her voice. “I need the rattler!”

She tried to pull away but I held on tight. I slid my hand down her arm and w
e were holding hands, unintentionally, just like at Toph's party.

“It's okay. I hid it pretty good. They won't find it.”

She spun around
and glared at me. “You don't
understand. I can't go home without it.
I need it
.”

“We'll get it. We just have to wait.”

Mr
. Rodolfo came out of the Sit 'n' Spin.
He had the Arbitrator. He started hollering, pointing
the hooked end of the huge crowbar in B-Ma
n's face. Behind him, the Brothers stood watching, arms folded, grim and silent as ever.

A-Man got between them, grabbing hold of the Arbitrator. He was trying to keep the peace, but it was hard to say if it was working.

“Is that him?” Zoey asked me.

“My boss? Yeah.”

“He really
is
an asshole. What is that thing?”

“He calls it ‘the Arbitrator.' ”

Zoey scoffed. “You need a new job.”

“He pays me pretty good.”

“I'll
bet
he does.”

I squinted at her. “What's that supposed to mean?”

“Look at him. He looks like a
Sopranos
reject.”

It was true. The Arbitrator was huge,
but in Mr. Rodolfo's hands, it looked more like a chopstick. I tried to explain to Zoey that
just because you spoke with a slightly thick-tongued accent and
carried a wrecking bar into the street to
defend your business, it didn't make you a mobster.

“He's just a regular guy,” I told her.

Zoey let out a derisive shot of laughter—
HA!
—and covered her mouth. “Oh, my god. I just realized! He's not ev
en trying to hide it. It's a freakin'
laundromat
!”

“So?”

“You
do realize there's more than
one meaning for the word
launder
, right?”

“Um, no.” But then it dawned on me (
vaguely). I had an inkling that the term was used to describe a process of hiding stolen money. “You mean, like,
money laundering
?”

“
Exactly
. Let's
say—hypothetically—you stole a shitload of money. If you
didn't want anyone to find out, yo
u'd hafta disguise where it came from. Basicall
y, there're two ways to do that. One, you star
t a business and pretend it makes more money than it really does. Say, for instance, a laundromat. Or two, let's
say the money was stolen direct from a
bank. Then it'd have serial numbers. The police and insurance
companies can trace those pretty easily. That's why
you have to mix up the numbers, exchange
the money that you stole for new bills, and send the old ones off in all diffe
rent directions. Basically, you wash the money. You launder
it.” She pointed to the crowd
of men. “Spreading it around in a gambling game is one way to do it.”

“Wait, you're saying Mr. Rodolfo
robbed a bank
?”

“How should I know?”

“Why do you even know all that, about money laundering?”

“Don't
you watch television? Every cop show
for like a hundred years has had a money-laundering episode.
It's like a … like a
trope
.”

“That's TV, not real life.”

But the seed had been planted. I thought about how protective Mr. Rodolfo was of his office in the basement. I thought about
how the doors down there were
always locked. I thought about the way the Brothers ba
rely spoke to anyone and, even though I'd
gotten used to it, how eerie and threatening that
silence had been at the beginning of high school when I'd first sta
rted working for Mr. Rodolfo. I thought about how obsessed he was with keeping everything “good for business.”

“No way,” I said, in spite of all that thinking. “I'm telling you, he's just a regular guy.”

“Who threatens people with a—what did you call it? ‘The Arbitrator'?” Her fingers made a pair of mocking air quotes.

“That's just how he is.”

A-Man was finally getting the situation under control. He was
pushing B-Man back to the corner of Emerson.
Razor was still barking, still leaping up on her hind legs, still yanking against her collar. Nevertheless, A-Man calmly guided them both away.

B-M
an's interruption had put an unofficial end to Mr. Rodolfo's poker night. A couple of the men inside came out and got into cars. Eventually, the only ones left we
re the Brothers and Mr. Rodolfo himself. They chatted for a while in low voices before finally locking up
.

Once they were gone, I snuck up the street and let myself in. The instrument was just where I had left it, untouched.

“Well,
that was fun,” Zoey said when
I brought it out to her.

“Can I help you carry it home?”

“I don't live around here, like I said. I better catch a streetcar.” She glanced up
the street, where one was already on
its way toward us. “Usually they gimme shit for bringing my instrument on board, but at this time of night they don'
t care so much.”

I was disappointed, of course.

“So,” I said, “you really think my boss is a gangster?”

“He sure looks like one.”

I laughed. “I guess he does.”

“Thanks for dinner, anyway. It was good.”

“No problem. Maybe you could lea
ve the instrument at home next time. It'll make life easier if we didn't hafta stash it somewhere ev
ery time we want to hang out. I mean,
if you feel like hanging out again.”

“You're cute,” she said.

“What? Why?”

She tapped the side of her head. “You're always thinking ahead. I like that.”

This was unexpected. “I am?”

She nodded. “And you
're honest. You say what you feel.”

“Is that my compliment?”

She smiled. “Maybe.”

There a
re moments in life when you should lean in—i.e., quit talking and kiss the gorgeous girl standing right
in front of you. Detecting these moments is a skill. I was crap at it.

Zoey, howev
er, knew what she was doing. As the streetcar rumbled through the intersection, drowning out our words, she tipped forward and pecked me on the cheek. “
Gotta go.”

“Wait, can I call you? You have a phone, right?”

She scooped a random piece of paper out of her purse and scribbled the number.

“B
ye,” I said, as the doors of the streetcar flapped open. “I'll see you soon.”

She lugged the inst
rument up the steps and our first date (if you want to call it that) was
over.