The Fortunes of Indigo Skye (4 page)

23

he likes Sinatra best. I know more Sinatra
lyrics than any eighteen-year-old should, thanks to Luigi, not that I advertised
that. All the white suburban kids who tried so hard to be gangsta and hip-hop
but whose mothers all had cappuccino machines would have chewed my ass if they'd
known I could sing "Dream" and "Fly Me to the Moon."

Trina's favorite table is Travertino Navona. At
Carerra's, every table is a different kind of marble, and the name is on a round
gold plate on the table itself. It must have cost Jane a bundle to have the
tables made. There are something like three thousand types of marble (called
"families"), and all the families have their own "faults," which give them their
characteristics, just like our neighbors at home--Mrs. Denholm next door, who
always snooped at us through the Venetian blinds, waiting for us "teens" to
commit some sort of crime; the Elberts, who let their dog bark all night; and
the Navinskys, whose television was always on, and whose kids even have those
miniature TVs for brief trips away from the real thing. If you saw Travertino
Navona, though, you wouldn't think about it having faults. It's a creamy brown,
like caramel and marshmallow fluff in a swirl.

"People are
hungry
here," Trina
says.

"I've got to go home sometime," Jane says.
"Just to get my mail, if nothing else." She's brought Jack, her black Lab, who
gets lonely and eats things if he's left alone. He ate the golf bag that
belonged to Jane's ex-husband, which she didn't mind, and the leg off of Jane's
dead grandmother's rocking chair, which she did mind. Leroy said this was better
than if he'd chewed the leg off the dead grandmother, but Jane didn't think that
was so funny.

Jack follows us in (actually, he shoves his way
past us), then flops behind the register and sighs through his nose
as

24

if the whole experience has been a terrible
ordeal.

"Dear God, bring me coffee before I kill
someone," Trina says.

Jane sets her bag down, disappears to talk to
Luigi. I get the coffee started; leave a message for Trevor to pick me up after
work. "Did you have a bad night?" I ask. Now that I really look at her, I see
that the underneath part of Trina's eyes have their own coffee cup rings of no
sleep.

"Bad."

"What happened?"

"Ten signs you're being dumped. Number one.
Your lover leaves the country and doesn't tell you."

"No way," I say.

"Way. I waited at home for him for two nights.
Almost called the police, but finally called Myrna instead."

"Myrna?"

"Roger's wife. He went to Brazil, she tells me.
'I'm sorry,' she says, 'I tried to warn you, didn't I? Once an asshole, always
an asshole.'"

"Oh, man," I say. I snitch the coffeepot out of
the base, interrupt the drizzle for Trina's immediate caffeine relief. I set a
full cup in front of her, and she sighs. Sometimes, coffee is deliverance
enough.

"Rio," Trina says. The word is an
ending.

"Why Rio?"

"He's got another house there. Topless
sunbathers, thong bikinis." Trina rubs her forehead. "What am I gonna
do?"

"Who needs him, I say."

"I thought we had a great time in Palm Springs.
The sex alone--"

25

"Whoa. I'm barely eighteen, here, remember?
Jesus. I don't want the details."

"Your loss," she says miserably.

"I get enough details at school, thanks. Do you
know there's such a thing as sex addiction? I saw it in some magazine. I'm
thinking the guys at my school need a support group for sex addiction. Wait,
forget the support group. Just make it sixth period."

"What kind of pie is there?" Trina asks. She
sounds like she's standing at the edge of a high building. She has suicide in
her voice. I know what will lure her from the edge, though.

"Chocolate cream. Apple with crumble
top--"

"Stop at chocolate."

Which I also already knew. People like to have
something to turn down, though. They want to be able to say no to some things,
because it makes their yes more meaningful. Even if that's just scrambled
instead of poached or fried, wheat and not sourdough or rye. And "no"--it's also
a handy, accessible mini-capsule of power. Maybe you can't destroy your asshole
boyfriend, but you can at least reject apple crumble pie.

I open the refrigerated cupboard, remove
Harold's chocolate cream, cut a wide triangle of comfort. By the time I have it
on the plate, Joe Awful Coffee is ambling in, and so are two women who hang
around by the door, even if it's obvious that Carrera's is a seat-yourself
place. I grab two plastic-covered menus and lead them anyway to Grigio Fumo,
since Leroy Richie likes Verde Classico, and Nick Harrison likes Rosso Verona,
and Funny likes Calacatta Fantasia, and Joe sits at the counter, which is all
Carrera No. 2.

Within moments, I'm flying around, and so is
Jane, and we're zipping past each other like experienced dance partners,
and

26

Luigi is belting out something he must have
heard on the radio on the way over "Why buy a mattress anywhere else!" and
there's the sound of frying and plates and conversation and silverware clinking
against glass plates and the smell of butter and coffee and sizzling bacon, the
melded recipe of morning. Funny Coyote comes in and talks to Trina, and the two
new ladies surprise me and order full stacks (when I took them for the fruit-cup
type) and Joe shows Jane and me pictures he just got of his new baby
granddaughter. Nick Harrison arrives and sets a section of folded newspaper down
beside him, and Leroy must be sleeping late, and a couple with a toddler wants a
table and I have to fetch a booster seat.

So, who needs a gym, right? First off, I've
never been the show-your-body-off-in-
stretchy-fabrics type, even if I've
got an okay one. (My ass is maybe a little wobbly, but big deal.) I went to one
of those places once, and there were just too many guys in tight tank tops
strutting around and looking at themselves in mirrors. Great big old narcissist
party, minus the booze and cocktail wieners on frilly toothpicks. But man, I get
plenty of exercise waitressing. It's hard work. Lifting, bending, constant
motion. I give Nick his oatmeal, coo-chie-coo the toddler, take the parents'
order, go back to find a pen that works, refill Joe's coffee cup. The full
stacks are up and I have my back turned when I hear Nick Harrison say, too
loudly, "Vespa alert. Curbside."

I'm registering what this means when in a
flash, the bells on the door jangle. When I turn, there's the guy again, in tan
slacks and a white shirt, a sleek leather jacket over one arm. He's everything
new and clean and crispy--shopping bags, clothes with just-ironed creases,
things wrapped in tissue paper. Trina's chin pops up, her head swivels, and you
can practically see the circles

27

of her radarscope following the movement of his
body. Code red. She sets her fork down. She's only one bite into her pie, since
Funny came in to hear her blab about Roger in Rio. Trina's a backward pie eater.
She starts at the corner, leaves the point of the pie, the tastiest bite, she
says, for last. This probably says something about her, only I don't know
what.

People are creatures of habit, and you learn
this quickly if you work in a restaurant. Maybe we have just so much change that
we can take, so much that's out of our control, that we need to keep the same
what we're able to keep the same. If someone sits at a table once, there's about
an 85 percent chance they'll sit there again if they can, and this man is no
different. He slides into the window-side chair again at Nero Belgio, a marble
that is almost pure black. It's all shiny elegance, and it's a good match for
him. There's also about a 75 percent chance that a person will order the very
same thing as he did before, but I'd just have to see.

"Morning," I say.

"Good morning." He smiles his closed-mouth
smile. I set a menu at the table, wait.

"Just coffee," the man says again. My inner
crowd cheers. It's the gleeful rise of I-knew-it, mixed with the gladness of a
continuing mystery. Eggs and sausage would have meant no more questions. A
regular guy finds a new place to eat, big deal. But no, he's still here with
Just coffee.

I pour, then set his cup down in front of him.
He doesn't have a newspaper, anything. He just sits and stares out the window.
Joe wipes his fingers free of bacon grease on his napkin before he puts the
photos back away in their envelope. "Sad," he whispers to me, flicking his head
back toward the Vespa guy.

"Maybe," I say.

28

Nick's taking it all in. He's filtered out the
ladies talking, the toddler twisting around and dropping crusts to the floor,
and he's listening to Joe and me. He nods.
Depressed,
he mouths,
overemphasizing the first syllable,
Dee,
from across the room, his top
row of teeth showing wide and white.

Trina suddenly needs to use the restroom, which
is past the guy's table, naturally. It's a pheromone parade--they're waving and
throwing their batons and eating flames and doing cartwheels as Trina saunters
by the guy's table. Roger who?

But Nick's the only one watching Trina's ass in
those pants. Well, me too, but I'm not watching in that way so it doesn't count.
The guy doesn't even blink or break his gaze from the window. "Full and
resounding failure," Jane says next to me, behind the counter.

Trina takes about two seconds in the bathroom,
obviously not long enough to do anything legitimate in there. Then she's out
again, swiveling those pheromones like lassoes. She stares directly at the guy,
but it's Trina's eye contact zeroing in to its target, and zing! Hitting the
side of the guy's head.

Funny Coyote's breakfast is up, and I set the
plate in front of her. Trina slides into her adjacent booth. "Gay," Funny Coyote
proclaims.

"You think?" Trina says. She sounds hopeful,
but it looks like she might cry. She pushes her plate away from
herself.

"You're not done." I can't believe it. Trina
usually eats every bite. I've seen her put her finger to a bit of crumb and lick
when she thinks no one is looking. Harold's pie--nobody pushes away Harold's
pie. You eat it even if you have to unbutton the top of your pants to make
room.

"I've got to go on a diet," she
says.

29

"My God, don't be crazy," Funny Coyote says,
which is pretty hilarious, because she calls herself Bipolar Babe. "Relax. He's
gay, I'm telling you."

"I don't know what I'm gonna do," Trina
moans.

"Trina, you're talking about a couple of
guys.
Big deal. A man is not water or shelter. Or a lottery ticket," I
say.

"Maybe the kind of lottery ticket you spend a
hundred bucks on, just to win five," Funny says.

"Harold's pie
is
a requirement for
living," I say.

"Really," Funny says, munching on a piece of
bacon. "Give it here if she doesn't want it."

"Maybe I need a boob job," Trina
says.

"Oh my God," I say. "Don't even joke. I hate
fake crap like that," I say. "Sure, I'll take a little cancer from silicone just
to have some cleavage. Sheesh."

"No kidding," Funny says. "And what happens
when you're sixty and have forever-twenty tits? Freak show."

Trina moons into her coffee. Funny pulls out
her notebook and starts to write. The man stays longer this time. The two ladies
leave, and so does the couple with the toddler, who went from cute to monstrous
in fifty minutes as his parents did the
Now-honey-that-makes-Mommy-
upset
public parenting routine that
always causes Jane to turn her back and pretend to stick her finger down her
throat. Thanks to little Hitler, the floor looked like its own galaxy of toast
crumbs and scrambled egg bits. I consider asking the Vespa guy if he's all
right, but he seems to be in that private place you shouldn't just barge in on.
The only privacy some people ever get is in their thoughts. So instead, I wipe
the floor clean and curse at parents who grow little dominatrix children and
then set them free in the world to be the kind of adults who let everyone else
pick up

30

their messes. You get some pretty strong ideas
about child rearing when you work as a waitress, let me tell you.

Finally, the guy lifts one long, elegant finger
in the air, gestures for my attention. Sometimes that kind of thing can piss you
off, but it all depends on how it's done. Some people have a demanding
stab-the-air finger that makes you want to flip your middle one back at them.
They are usually the people who ask you for this or that on the side and cooked
this way or that way, and with the strawberry pointing counterclockwise and the
parsley with two leaves only. Most often, this kind of thing happens with large,
pompous men with large, pompous voices, and with spatula-thin women whose lack
of food has turned them into restrained, yet rage-filled, maniacal
bitches.

Anyway, the guy was obviously raised right,
because even his finger has manners. I bring him his check, and there's the
crispy bill again. He smiles, I smile, and we all watch his suit-jacket-flaps
flap as he speeds off on his Vespa.