The Bermudez Triangle (3 page)

“No thanks.

“Ashley remembered her manners and reached down into her mini-fridge
and halfheartedly offered a Red Bull to Nina as well. Nina shook her head. She didn’t really feel the need to increase the number of hours she was awake with her roommate.

Steve typed. Ashley braided. Nina watched her visitor out of the corner of her eye. He had a deep tan and just a bit of a shadow on his chin, and his face was becoming more and more intent on the screen. Then his fingers stopped moving on the keys and he turned around slowly.

“What’s bullshit?” he asked.

“This. Schools. Admissions are all bullshit,” Ashley said, clearly bored by the discussion already. “Schools just want money. Give them money, they let you come. Get some bullshit recommendations. Whatever.”

Steve regarded Ashley with a curious cock of the head. Nina, however, had to step in. She
had
to.

“It’s not bullshit,” she said. “I do everything I put on my application, and I’m here to learn how to run things.”

“Oh,” Ashley replied. She seemed completely content with her own thoughts; the opinions of others didn’t affect her at all. She dropped the braid and let it unravel, then she sprang up, tugged her tiny shorts into place, and flat-footed it out into the hall.

Nina jumped off of her own bed and firmly shut the door. She could feel her pulse racing.

“I’m not going to make it,” she said. “I can’t live with her for nine more weeks. Can we switch rooms?”

“Some people are like that,” Steve replied.

“You mean assholes?”

“The thing is,” he went on, “if you let it get to you, you can never get anything done. But you can come down anytime, if you want to escape.”

“Thanks.”

He turned back around to his e-mail. Nina settled herself back down to her reading.

Steve suddenly interested her a lot. Maybe it was because he had expressed a mutual dislike of Ashley (the enemy of your enemy is supposed to be your friend, after all). Maybe it was because he seemed real—from his conversation, right down to his worn-out clothes. And maybe it was just because he was flat-out muscle-bound and appealingly rugged.

He thanked her quietly when he was done, then gave another quick glance at Nina’s bath basket before smiling and backing out the door.

Later on, as she walked down to the bathroom, she passed Steve in the small kitchen nook. He had the door to the microwave open and was using a piece of cardboard to scrape out the green slime that coated the already nasty interior. She stopped and watched him, but his head was actually in the microwave, so he didn’t notice. There was a bottle of some kind of environmentally friendly orange cleaner on the counter, which Nina guessed was his.

She hadn’t liked what Ashley had done, but it hadn’t occurred to her to clean the mess up, either. In fact, in a whole hall full of leaders and activists, Weird Steve was the only one who appeared to care about the fate of the cleaning people.

June 29

TO: Mel; Nina

FROM: Avery

Our manager, Bob, gave me my first point today because some people complained that I ignored them. (Eight points and you’re fired. Either that or you get Valuable Prizes.)

I AM THE VERY FIRST P. J. MORTIMER’S EMPLOYEE TO GET POINTS! I WIN!

Later on I caught Bob sitting out back by the Dumpster reading
PC Gamer
on his break. I had a cigarette, and he gave me one of those “ew, you smoke?” kind of looks. So I gave him one of those “sex with your Sims girlfriend doesn’t count” kind of looks back.

June 30

TO: Avery; Mel

FROM: Nina

You know, on TV the people you fight with are always the people you end up dating.

Speaking of, there’s this guy on my hall who’s either v. cute and cool or totally out of his mind. I can’t decide which. I think living with Strange Ashley is affecting my idea of what “normal” means.

June 30

TO: Nina; Avery

FROM: Mel

Ooh! Explain. Who is this guy?

And Bob’s not that bad.

July 1

TO: Avery; Mel

FROM: Nina

His name is Steve Carson. He’s kind of very different from me, sort of an eco-warrior but really, really nice. We study together a lot now. He works really hard—harder than pretty much anyone else here. He doesn’t hang out or watch TV or anything. When he’s not doing work, I think he sits in his room and coordinates an environmental campaign.

I am getting used to the Birks and the hemp shorts and the kind of choppy haircut because under all that he is seriously smoking hot. He’s way healthy and rides around on his bike all the time, so he’s got the biker legs going on.

This is really weird to me. I never thought I would like a guy who is so crunchy—not that I like him. I’m just kind of … intrigued.

Okay. Go ahead, Ave. Insert comment here.

July 1

TO: Mel; Nina

FROM: Avery

I smell a sitcom!

July 2

TO: Mel; Avery

FROM: Nina

Today’s SAB (Strange Ashley Behavior): SHE STOLE ONE OF MY BRAS (the tiger-printy one I got on clearance at Victoria’s Secret last year) and then denied it. I found it sticking out of her bag. She said that she thought it was one of hers. I know I always find my underwear hanging over the back of other people’s desk chairs and carry it around to class.

It took Avery
about a week to conclude that her entire job at Mortimer’s consisted of (1) lying and (2) selling. That was it. Lie and then sell. It was kind of fascinating to watch the whole process. She felt like she had the smoking gun on the whole conspiracy of life.

First of all, the P. J. Mortimer’s ads stressed that people were supposed to come and sit and stay for a long time, enjoying the warm Irish hospitality. This was the first big lie that Avery uncovered. One of the main issues emphasized in training was that she was selling experience, not product, which was some weird way of saying that she was supposed to entertain people. She was supposed to be cheerful and friendly, as if she actually
lived
at P. J. Mortimer’s and the people at her table were unexpected but welcome guests in her living room. At the same time, she was told she had to get people out the door the
minute
they stopped ordering. If someone turned down a dessert or another round of drinks—
bam!
—she was to drop that check.

Then there was the selling. The entire existence of P. J. Mortimer’s seemed to depend on appetizers, desserts, and frozen
drinks—and these were the things she had to push. When people first sat down, she was supposed to interest them in some pub fries or onion blossoms or Paddy’s Frozen Peppermint Patties. And when they were done, after Avery cleared away the plates of bones from the baby back ribs and the remains of the half-pound hamburgers, it was time to put her hands on her hips and say, “Okay. I know somebody wants dessert!” She should have just passed out the phone number of a good cardiologist.

Just to make things a little more unpleasant, management kept a scoreboard in the staff changing room (a hallway with some boxes in it), charting exactly how much money every server made each shift. Most of the guys, she noticed, got really competitive about it, like selling piÑa coladas and Paddy’s Frozen Peppermint Patties was some kind of
sport
that required skill and prowess. Avery saw it as badgering people to buy things she didn’t feel like waiting for at the bar all night, so she didn’t bother too much. She felt that her soft stance on the frozen drink issue allowed her to keep a little bit of her dignity, which was rapidly eroding because of the very worst part of her job: the birthday jig band.

There was no way Avery could have known that by answering “yes” to the bizarre question “Can you play the piano or accordion?” on her job application, she would commit herself to becoming one of the official—and few—members of P. J. Mortimer’s Birthday Jig Band. She soon came to the conclusion that her thirteen years of piano lessons were probably the only reason she was hired in the first place, since she didn’t exactly seem to have the personality that Mortimer’s was looking for. She was called into action when she
heard a whooping noise and then the heavy beat of a mechanical bass drum that was mounted on the wall by the front vestibule.

She was hearing it right now, as a matter of fact. This was the P.J. Mortimer’s Birthday Jig Alert.

Avery swerved around a busboy carrying a heavy load of dirty dishes and ducked into the pantry. If she could just slip through and get out the fire door fast enough, she could claim she was taking her five-minute break and never heard the alert.

Mel was right on her heels. Avery stuck herself in the corner, next to the ice cream freezer, and jammed her hands into her apron pockets.

“I’m not doing it this time,” she said under her breath.

“But this one’s my table,” Mel pleaded.

“I’ll make you a deal.”

“What?”

“Come with me to Gaz’s tonight,” Avery said.

The alert was still banging and whooping in the background. Mel glanced through the doorway nervously and looked at the group of other servers, who were clumping together and all looking a little pained at the thought of having to sing.

“Come on, come on, come on….” Avery scrunched up her face. “You know you want to.”

Big parties always freaked Mel out, and she tried to get out of them whenever she could. But now that Avery had Mel on her own, she’d found that she had a lot of leverage. It had gotten incredibly-easy to convince Mel to do things in the last week or so, now that Nina wasn’t around to protect her.

“I guess …” Mel said.

“Say you promise.”

“I … promise.

“Okay,” Avery said. “Let’s go.”

Mel borrowed Avery’s lighter to light the candles on a small green-and-white cake that was waiting on the prep counter. Avery headed out onto the floor and took her seat in front of a keyboard on a small raised platform in a corner of the room. The jig was a very simple tune that just about anyone with the most basic piano skills could play. Avery banged out the chords automatically, keeping her eyes trained on Mel as she brought out the cake. The other servers fell in behind her, letting her lead them to the birthday table. You could always tell which one it was by looking for someone trying to slide down out of sight or covering his or her face with a pair of hands. Sure enough, there was a group of women in one of the booths, and one was slinking down, looking like her cover in the Witness Protection Program had just been blown.

All the servers locked arms and began to sing:

This was followed by a short jig (skipping in circles), with several more hi-di-hos, after which the singers skittered away
as quickly as possible, like roaches when the lights come on.

Back in the safety of the pantry, Avery grabbed a dessert fork and pressed it into Mel’s hand.

“If I have to do that again,” Avery said, “I want you to kill me with this.”

“You can do me too,” said a voice behind them.

Mel and Avery turned. One of the other servers had come in and was slouching against the wall, demonstrating his utter contempt for the official birthday jig. He was tall but had a young-looking face, with a dash of golden freckles over his cheekbones. His very dark brown hair had overgrown a bit, sweeping down over his high forehead in a thick swag that he kept pushing back with his hand. What really stood out, though, were his eyes, which were the same deep brown as his hair and were very intense and bright. They actually glistened a little just at the thought of the jig.

“Kill me, I mean,” he added, after a moment’s thought on his remark. “I trained nights, and they were even worse. We did the song about a dozen times every shift. I’m not kidding.”

He leaned forward and stared at the name tag pinned to Mel’s green suspenders.

“Molly Guinness,” he read.

“I’m Mel,” Mel said. “This is Avery.”

He glanced over and looked at Avery’s name tag, which read:
Erin Murphy.

“I like that we all have these fake Irish names that double as beer ads,” he said with a smirk. “It’s good to reinforce the
idea that all Irish people are alcoholics. Keep the stereotype alive.”

Avery leaned forward to read his tag.

“You’re Shane O’Douls?”

“I know,” he said. “The nonalcoholic one. I’m Parker.”

Though he made occasional attempts to turn his head and look in Avery’s direction, Parker’s attention was really on Mel. This was nothing new to Avery. All guys looked at Mel. Mel was candylike, adorable. Guys hung out with Avery and talked about music and maybe hooked up once in a while. They were usually a little intimidated by Nina because she was tall and assertive and she ran everything. They took Nina as a challenge. With Mel, though, guys developed instantaneous, epic crushes—the kind that caused them to want to iron their clothes and listen to the lyrics of slow songs.