Single Sashimi (13 page)

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Subject: Life at Oomvid without you…

Sucks! Still haven’t replaced you, even after a week. Edgar had to take over responsibilities, but not organized enough. Everything behind schedule. Programmers upset the company made you leave, have been slacking on purpose to make Edgar mad.

Asked Edgar innocently about new software he’d mentioned. Told me to go render a forest or something.

How’s working for the D-man? Never told me why don’t like him.

Been working on the Spiderweb. How’s your side coming?

Jaye

P.S. Emailing from home. Nancy and the baby say hi.

P.P.S. You left a copy of
People
in the break room.

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Subject: Re: Life at Oomvid without you…

Thanks for the update, Jaye. Bananaville is good. The company concept is a good idea, and they have a gold star sponsor list if I can get their technology solidified. Do you remember TrekPaste? Bananaville is about the same size. It’s very different from working at Oomvid.

Drake and I have been getting along. We’re professionals, even if we didn’t part so well. We had different work styles, and we clashed one time too many That’s why I left. Now, he’s learned to give me latitude in my job. Things are going smoothly.

I haven’t worked on the Spiderweb lately Bananaville’s founder has asked us all to do volunteer work with kids in the consumer demographic (stop laughing), so Lex mentioned working with her church’s youth group. I talked to the youth leader yesterday and intend to start at youth group meeting on Saturday night.

Tell Nancy hi. Tell the baby to sleep and let Daddy watch
24
.

Dump the
People
magazine, it’s old.

Venus

Venus walked into Santa Clara Asian Church on Saturday night, and realized she looked like a schoolmarm.

She wasn’t exactly geeky She had on pale linen slacks and a black Ann Taylor top. Her shoes were black Italian leather with solid two-inch heels. Muted elegance, much more casual than her business suits.

However, everything about the teen girls sparkled—hair pieces, shirts, jeans, flip-flops. Sequins or glitter or crystals or rhinestones. As soon as she walked into the social hall, little twinkles from the girls’ ensembles zapped her.

She felt so
old
.

She also felt gargantuan. Her height and heels made her tower over all but a few of the older high school boys.

The older kids gathered in clusters talking while the junior highers played tag at the back of the social hall. Well, a form of tag that involved somebody’s grungy sneaker being thrown around and picked up by various people.
Ewwwww
.

A short Asian man approached her. “Are you Venus?”

She recognized the voice from the phone. “David?”

He stuck his hand out and smiled, and he suddenly looked like he was about fourteen years old. “Nice to meet ya.”

“You’re really young to be youth director.” Oh, that was kind of rude.

He laughed. “Shh. I told the church board I was twenty-one.”

Heat whooshed up her face. “Sorry, you probably get that a lot.”

“I grew up in this church. Trust me, I’m used to it by now.” He motioned to a willowy Asian woman who was setting up a portable projector and laptop. “Kat, come here. Venus, this is Kat, my wife.”

Kat smiled and spoke with a soft Chinese accent. “Nice to meet you. Thanks for volunteering.” She sounded just a tad relieved in the way she said that, which cued the creepy stalker music in Venus’s head.

“Do you speak Chinese?”

“Mandarin. You?”

“Cantonese.” Well, no conversing in Chinese with her. Shucks. Venus would have liked to practice on someone other than a waiter.

Kat made a helpless motion with her hand. “Keiko, our other female staff worker, had her hip broken by—I mean, she broke her hip a few weeks ago, and she hasn’t been able to come. We really could use another woman with the high schoolers.”

“You work with junior high?”

Kat nodded.

David waved over two other Asian men—one tall, slender, and about Venus’s age, and the other stockier and about ten years older than herself. “This is Ronald and Herman.”

“Hi.” She shook hands with both.

Ronald seemed quiet, but Herman looked like he had Mexican jumping beans in his pockets. He was in constant movement. “Sorry we can’t stay, we still have to practice for worship tonight.” Herman gestured to the front of the room, with a battered upright piano and a guitar in a stand.

“Sure.” As they moved away, Venus turned to David. “So, what do I do now?”

“We’re almost ready to start. We’re waiting on one more person. It’s kind of weird.” He smiled. “You were the second person to call me this week wanting to work with the youth group.”

The creepy stalker music in her head morphed into
Twilight Zone
. No way. What were the odds? She had to stop thinking the world revolved around her—

The door to the social hall opened, and Drake walked in.

W
hat are you doing here?” she rounded on him.

He froze, one hand still on the door handle. His eyes bugged out of his head. “Venus?”

“No, Pluto. What are you doing here?”

He closed his eyes, released the door handle, and pressed his fingers to the heavy crease between his brows. “Don’t tell me.”

“Then I won’t. I was here first.”

David’s eyes shone white behind his glasses. “What? You’re not both staying?”

Drake sighed. “Venus—”

“I already work with you. Why would I want to spend more waking hours in your company?”

“Venus, don’t be childish.” He said it in a soft voice.

She started. Her back unkinked as it pulled out to full length, but then the quiet reprimand in his eyes made her feel like a spoiled brat. She didn’t like the nauseating suspicion that he might be right.

David looked thoughtful. “Actually, Drake called me first.”

“We’re both staying.” Drake’s voice held that tone she remembered from meetings, the “I have decreed this so it shall be done forthwith” firmness.

Both David and Kat heaved sighs that came all the way up from their diaphragms. Then David turned toward the room at large. “Everybody, form two lines!”

Well, guess they were starting.

Kat had nipped out, and now came back with a baking dish filled with green Jell-O.
Huh?

Venus stalked away from Drake and stood near the wall, shifting her weight from foot to foot. The girls gave her weird looks but didn’t say anything as they passed her to form two lines in the open area at the back of the social hall.

David had set up two chairs at the head of each line. A few older teen girls loitered disdainfully near the back, a few boys had started giving each other noogies, and some of the junior high girls were standing in line and braiding each other’s long, silky hair.

“Venus and Drake, you guys get to sit.” David grinned, a full set of gleaming white teeth.

Not a good sign. Venus sat slowly.

Kat placed the baking dish on the floor in front of her, then ran out of the room again. Oh, it was fruit Jell-O…except those pieces of fruit were extremely round.

“Okay, everybody take off your shoes and socks!”

What? Gross. Venus opened her mouth to protest, but then closed it.
Be a team player
. She took off her shoes and crossed her ankles.

Kat came back with another baking dish, which she set in front of Drake.

Her stomach cramped. She had a bad feeling about this, but she couldn’t even fathom what was going to happen next. The ceiling could open and a spaceship appear for all she knew.

Kat placed a large empty bowl to the side of each baking dish.

“Okay, guys, it’s Jell-O Toe-jams!”

What? She and Drake whipped their heads toward each other. His face looked as horrified as she felt.

The junior high girl who stood directly behind Venus started to moan. “Ewewewew!”

“Yeah, honey, I feel that way too.”

Venus heard the girl giggle. Well, at least she was amusing.

“Here’s what you do. Each person pick up one marble with your foot, drop it in the bowl, and then run to the back of the line. The next person sits down and does the same thing. First team with all the marbles out wins. Clear as mud?”

Clear as green Jell-O.

“Okay, ready, set, go!”

Venus squeezed her eyes shut. She couldn’t do this. Put her
foot
in that? That was a
baking dish!
She couldn’t put her foot in a baking dish.

She stuck her foot out but couldn’t get herself to lower it into the Jell-O. She peeked at it. Ooooh, it was so disgusting a concept she didn’t know if she wanted to throw up or…throw up.

The kids behind her had unformed their line and crowded around her to watch and yell. “Come on!”

Clunk!
Drake stood up and limped to the back of the line, trying not to get his Jell-O foot onto the sturdy carpet too much.

If he could do it, she could too, right? She plunged her toes in.

“Aaack!” That was totally
cold!
And
slimy!
Oh my gosh, this was gross! She flapped her hands as she moved her foot around in it.

Unfortunately, years in stilettos had cramped her toes. She couldn’t get them around the slippery marble. Each one she grabbed kept sliding away from her.

“She’s not going to get it.” “Come on!” “Faster!”

The junior high girl behind her cheered, “You can do it!”

Finally! She pulled her foot up—rats! She dropped the marble.

Several boys groaned.

The marble was a tad easier to grab on the carpet. She finally dropped it in the bowl and barely had time to get out of the chair before the junior high girl plopped her tiny little behind down. Venus folded in half to get her shoes out from under the chair—no way was she letting those get dirty.

Ugh, her foot was slimy. She tried to hop-skip toward the back of the line.

Those young kids were tons faster at this Jell-O thing than she had been.

The lines had become big blobs of people, so in leaning against the wall in the back and never moving forward, she managed to skip her next turn. Some older teen girls winced as they saw her sticky bare foot and stayed back there with her in order to remain Jell-O-free.

Smart chicks.

Drake, on the other hand, took his place in the other team’s people blob and got another turn at the Jell-O Toe-jam. He didn’t smile, exactly, but his eyes lit up like a child getting a red envelope at Chinese New Year’s.

He seemed so young. So juvenile. So un-Drake. Venus couldn’t believe her eyes.

“What’s your name?” one of the teen girls asked. She flashed her blue-smeared eyelids.

“Venus.”

Their eyes widened so much, one girl’s fake eyelashes loosened. “That’s really your name?”

She sighed, remembering hateful years in high school as the big girl with the ridiculous name. “Yup.” Teased by girls like these—cute, slender, made-up, feminine.

But they didn’t know that. She forced a wider smile. “What are your names?”

“Mika.” “Sarah.” “Rachel.”

Names seemed to suddenly undam their mouths, and they began chatting away. “So are you going to be our new high school youth leader?”

“Keiko’s been gone for so long.”

“She broke her hip, you know.”

“But it totally wasn’t our fault—it was Steve’s fault.”

“We were playing Toilet Bowl Tag, where if you get tagged, you have to get on your hands and knees until somebody sits on you and flushes you, and then you’re unfrozen.”

“It’s a really stupid game.”

“Anyway, Steve sat on Keiko, but he slipped and broke her hip.”

Ouch. “Is she okay?” Should Venus have signed some kind of personal injury waiver?

“Oh, yeah.” Mika waved her hand. “She broke her arm before too, but that was Timmy’s fault.”

Whaa?

“We have a winner!” David had his hands in the air.

Her team lost, naturally. By a landslide. A couple boys gave her mean looks. She tried to feel disdainful, but she couldn’t—when she’d been rising as a video game competitor in her teens and early twenties, she’d been told by enough people, “It’s only a game.” She knew that sometimes, it wasn’t just a game. It was the competition, the sense that only a factor or two kept her from doing better.

Factors like squeamish youth leaders with sticky Jell-O feet. How was she going to get this off?

Kids started streaming out the social hall toward the bathrooms to clean up. David stood wincing at the carpet. Luckily, it was that industrial strength short gray stuff, like in office buildings, so the Jell-O only formed small dark specks here and there.

Kat lightly backhanded his arm. “You forgot to lay down the plastic garbage bags.”

Venus and Drake, both still with greenish toes that they tried to keep off the floor, stared at the sticky mess. The kids had walked around, although most of the mess spread out from the two demolished baking pans.

“My sister’s got a steam cleaner,” Drake said. “She lives ten minutes away. I can run over and get it.”

“She won’t mind?” David glanced at the clock. Venus did too. Seven thirty.

“No. She just used it yesterday when the kids spilled Kool-Aid.”

Gerry owned and used a steam cleaner? Maybe the woman was as compulsively sanitary as Venus. Maybe she wasn’t so much prickly as wanting to clean every doorknob with antiseptic wipes or wash her hands every five minutes or spray Febreze before she entered a room. Not that Venus needed to spray Febreze in
every
room.

Drake turned and hop-skipped out of the social hall. “I’ll clean up and then go.”

“Venus, you can clean up too.” David pointed out the social hall doors. “Do you know where the bathroom is? We’ll start the worship as soon as the kids get back, but you can just slip in after we start.”

Girls crammed into the bathroom like Vienna sausages in a can. A couple had their limber legs propped up on the sink counter with the water running full blast over their toes.

Yuck. Something about feet in washbasins made her stomach curl.

Didn’t the church have a kitchen?

Venus limped further down the hallway, walking on her heel. She turned the corner—and ran smack dab into a junior high girl. The poor kid had been pulling a flamingo, but Venus sent her sprawling across the carpet.

“Oh! I’m sorry.” She limped to her side and helped her up.

“That’s okay.” Her cheeks had turned a ruddy pink, especially when she glanced sideways at a cluster of high school boys who’d already finished washing their feet and now loitered around talking. Otherwise, she looked fine.

Venus peeked into the kitchen. Rats, even the kitchen sinks were clogged with green-toed kids.

She waited until they’d finished—after all, she was the adult here, right? Finally it was just her and the girl, each at one of the two kitchen sinks. She wasn’t going to stick her foot in the basin—she’d dislocate her hip even if she wanted to try—so the paper towel dispenser on the wall above it was a welcome sight.

At first, the girl tried to hook her leg over the edge of the large stainless steel sink, but her legs were too short and she had to unhook herself or else dangle from the edge. She leaped up to grab a paper towel from the dispenser, but the next piece had been jammed inside.

“Here.” Venus handed her a wad of paper towels.

“Thanks.”

“What’s your name?”

“Rebecca.”

“I’m Venus.” Rebecca’s eyes widened. Before she could say anything, Venus said, “Yes, really.”

Venus took a long time cleaning her nasty foot—sticky and utterly black on the bottom despite her efforts to keep it off the floor—because, well, she was neurotic. But it seemed Rebecca was stalling, since she’d cleaned up her tiny foot several times already.

“You’re missing worship.” Venus could already hear music from the social hall.

“That’s okay.” Rebecca swiped again at her foot. “Herman’s leading today.”

“You don’t like Herman’s songs?”

Rebecca shrugged. “Chris and Eric usually lead, but Chris is in Japan on vacation with his family, and Eric’s at his cousin’s wedding.”

Venus tossed her paper towels and slipped her feet back in her shoes. “I’m done. Are you ready?”

Rebecca sighed, but tossed her shredded paper towel and followed Venus out. The young girl hadn’t brought her shoes, so she dirtied her feet as soon as she started walking.

By the time they returned to the social hall, the lights had been turned out and music drifted from the doors, which were cracked open. She and Rebecca slipped inside and sat in the back row.

Herman and Ronald played a rollicking worship song, one that she’d seen Sunday school children do with hand motions, but the kids sat lifeless. The song sounded kind of tinny with just a guitar and piano.

And Herman had a
terrible
voice.

Venus wasn’t a singer, but her back twitched at every off-key note. Kat sat at a small table near the front, where the projector flashed the worship lyrics on a pull-down screen. She moved the PowerPoint slides forward as the song stumbled on. The kids sat back in their chairs, numbly watching the PowerPoint as if it were T V.

After the song ended, she leaned close to whisper to Rebecca, “Chris and Eric come back when?”

“Not for two weeks.” Rebecca sighed a mournful sound.

Venus wished she’d had a steam cleaner near church so she could miss this caterwauling. Drake had totally lucked out.

Come to think of it, she hadn’t even known he was Christian. How had he heard of this youth group, this church? And why would he go to a church instead of a community center or something like that?

The torture ended just as Drake walked into the social hall and sat next to her. “Where’s the steam cleaner?”

“In my car. I figured we’d probably clean up after youth group, and I didn’t want to leave it lying around anywhere.”

“Do you know what we’re doing next?”

He shrugged.

How weird to be here, together, both completely clueless and doing something so far removed from work. Him seeing her in this awkward situation was
almost
okay because he didn’t look all that comfortable either. The lack of usual polish in both of them made her feel like they’d entered some alternate universe.