Way to Go (5 page)

The coffee stopped dripping. As I poured myself a cup, I heard a vehicle pull into the parking lot on the other side of the building. I walked back through the dining room to look out the window and saw that an old beater of a hatchback had pulled up near the front door. Someone was bent over, rummaging around in the backseat.

A girl stood up, holding a huge quilted cloth bag, and slammed the car door shut. She was almost my height, with a long wavy mass of reddish-brown hair that was held back with an elastic. As she swayed up to the front door, I ducked back from the window, trying to act casual as she walked into the restaurant.

She was beautiful. Tall and willowy with pale, lightly freckled skin. She was wearing cut-off jeans and sandals with leather straps that were tied up past her ankles. A lacy shirt, embroidered with flowers, was knotted over a green tank top. I saw the edge of a tattoo—it looked like a green rose—peeking up from behind the back collar of her shirt. Dozens of bangles jingled on her wrist, and her fingers flashed with big gaudy rings. She looked to be around my age, but nothing about her was familiar. She was clearly unlike any of the girls I knew from Deep Cove. She took a quick look around and then turned to me, her shimmering pale-green eyes staring right into mine.

“This is the place, huh?” she asked.

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“Who are you?”

“I'm Danny. I work here, with Denise. For Denise.”

“What a coincidence. So do I.”

She walked over to the counter and dropped her bag, then wandered into the kitchen. I followed her and watched as she poured herself a coffee.

“Denise told me that this place was kind of grubby,” she said, looking around. “No shit. So what are we supposed to be doing today anyway?”

I didn't understand; Denise hadn't mentioned anything about some strange girl showing up to work. “I'm supposed to paint the trim in the dining room,” I told her.

“Painting. Okay, I can help with that.”

I must have looked confused, because she laughed and said, “You're wondering who the hell I am, and why I'm here.”

I nodded.

“Fair enough. I'm in town for the summer to stay with my aunt, who is friends with Denise. Denise asked me if I was interested in waiting tables for the summer, and since I don't know anybody around here, I figured, what the hell. I've waited tables in much fancier places than this, so it's no big deal.”

She tipped her coffee into the sink and then did the same with what was in the pot. “You make really shitty coffee,” she said as she set about brewing some more. “I was called out of town because there was a bit of an… issue…with my mom. It's, well, it's basically the same reason I'm here for the summer in the first place.” She shook her head, as if to dislodge a thought. “Long story. Anyway, I ended up coming back earlier than expected, and I figured I'd stop by to give Denise a hand.”

“Where's home?”

“Home? Home is where the heart is, right?” She laughed, and I just smiled back, trying to figure out how to respond to her. “I live in New York.”

“City? That's cool.”

“Yep, the Big Apple. Not that cool, though, unless you like bums and businessmen. Give me your cup. I won't let you drink that swill.”

On a map, New York wasn't really all that far away from Deep Cove, but she might as well have told me she lived on Mars. It explained a lot. Her confidence, the way she talked, her clothes… She handed me a fresh cup of coffee with a flourish. “Now, if you don't have any more questions, let's go paint some trim!”

“I have one more question…”

“Shoot.”

“Ummm…what's your name?”

She struck a pose, turning sideways and holding an imaginary pistol up to her face. “Lisa. Lisa Walsh,” she said, blowing make-believe smoke from the barrel.

For three awesome hours, Lisa Walsh and I talked and painted and listened to music. Well, mostly I did the painting and she did the talking, but she had more than enough to say for the two of us. She had all kinds of stories, like the time in ninth grade that she and some friends had snuck out at night to try and see Nirvana at a club in Brooklyn.

“We didn't even make it past the security guard,” she said, “but we could hear them from the alley. It was pretty rad.” Her big cloth bag held an astonishing array of random crap. When she pulled out a pair of old cutoffs and a ratty Guns N' Roses T-shirt for painting, I caught a glimpse of a big old camera and a deck of cards. After she'd changed in the bathroom, she unearthed a thin purple package of super-skinny black cigarettes. “I don't usually smoke,” she said, standing in the doorway and lighting up, “but these are French, and sometimes I just want to be like
that
, you know?” I nodded, although I had no idea what she was talking about.

When she was done smoking, she pulled an assortment of mix tapes out of the bag and tossed them on the floor. They all had unique handmade covers: carefully glued collages of magazine images and hand-drawn cartoons, with the names of the songs handwritten on the insides in intricate lettering.

“My friends and I have a tape swap. Every few months each of us puts together a mix tape and makes a bunch of copies to pass around.” She dragged JP's busted-up old double cassette player into the center of the room and shoved a tape into it, fast-forwarding to find the right song. While I painted, Lisa played DJ on what she dubbed
le boom box
. Every song seemed to have a story.

“Okay, hang on,” she said, her finger paused over the Play button. “So this one is my friend Naomi's favorite. She totally lost her virginity to this guy last year, some creepy painter dude who hung out at her mom's gallery. He was super old, like twenty-five or something, but she totally dug him, and before they did it, she made him wait so she could put this song on. Naomi's a total drama queen. She'll be famous for sure.” She pressed
Play
and the room filled with a smoky voice singing jazz. I couldn't tell if the singer was male or female.

Just in time, you've found me. Just in time.
Before you came, my time was running

looooooowwwww…

“Wow,” I said. “I've never heard anything like that.”

“You like it? Nina Simone. She's amazing. She's like the most badass ever.” Lisa dropped to the floor and twisted her legs into a yoga pose, and then, just as quickly, she bounced back up and twirled around the room. I was getting used to the random movement; she seemed unable to sit still.

“New York now is so clean and perfect,” she said. “It's not edgy at all anymore. Back in the day, like in the fifties and sixties, you could get all slicked up in dresses and suits and go sit in smoky clubs and drink martinis and hear Nina or listen to Beat poets. Man, that must have been so—I don't know—authentic, you know what I mean? Now it's just so lame.”

I didn't really get half of her references, but it seemed to me that New York was just about the opposite of lame, especially compared to Deep Cove. Lisa rummaged around for another tape. “Okay, check this one out!” She pressed
Play
and the room was filled with shimmery hypnotic notes that were gradually joined by thumping drums and bass. She started to dance around the room, slithering over to where I was standing and grabbing me by the hands, pulling me toward her.

“Come on, dance!”

I was a terrible dancer, the worst. And on the rare occasions that I'd danced in the past, it had at least been to music I knew. This music was bizarre, endlessly repeating itself while somehow creating something new. I resisted, but she grabbed my arm and pulled me around the room, and eventually I found myself moving with her, with the music, letting it slide my limbs into the right places, letting the sounds do the thinking for me.

When the music died away, we stood there exhausted and laughing.

“Embarrassing,” I said.

“Why? Dancing is everything!” She flopped into a cross-legged yoga pose on the floor next to her bag and looked up at me. “Don't you dance?”

“No. At least not like that. I don't think I've ever heard music like that.”

She laughed. “That's Underworld. Rave music.”

“Rave?”

She looked at me with disbelief.

“You're kidding me,” she said. “
You
, my friend, have a
lot
to learn.”

Our party was interrupted by the sound of Denise's truck pulling up to the building. Doors slammed, and Denise came into the dining room.

“Lisa! You made it!”

Lisa jumped up and ran over to give Denise a big hug.

“I hope you haven't been corrupting little Danny with your evil big-city ways,” Denise said.

“Mister Dan has been a perfect gentleman.”

Denise took a look around the room. “The trim looks good, Dan. Can you go out and help JP unload the tables from the truck?”

On my way out the door, I heard Denise, her voice low and serious, ask, “So how's your mom doing?”

That night, I had a hard time getting to sleep. I couldn't stop thinking about Lisa. She wasn't like any girl I'd ever met. I imagined the two of us traveling around the world together, lounging on oceanside patios in elegant clothes, toasting each other with well-iced cocktails. Was this what having a girlfriend could be like?

Maybe Lisa had appeared out of nowhere for a reason. I was kind of like a frog in a fairytale who needed a kiss from a princess so he could turn into a prince. Only, instead of a frog, I was a might-be-gay kid who needed straightening out, and instead of a princess, she was a cigarette-smoking tattooed city girl with a bagful of mix tapes. I figured that was close enough.

SEVEN

Over the next few days, the four of us worked like crazy to get the restaurant ready for opening day. We finished painting the whole place, and we installed new light fixtures in the dining room. Flowers were planted around the outside of the building, the floors scrubbed until the original color of the tiles came through. Just as my mom had predicted, I loved my job.

Best of all, Lisa and I were really connecting. She told me stories about New York and the amazing things she'd seen and done there. She'd been on family trips to San Francisco and Paris and even Tokyo. She'd done so many things that I'd only dreamed about. We were the same age, but it seemed to me she had a big head start in life.

I couldn't tell if she thought of me as boyfriend material though, or if she just wanted to be friends. She was always throwing her arms around me and giving me spontaneous hugs, or reaching out to mess up my hair. She spent so much time talking or laughing or dancing that it was hard to tell what she was thinking most of the time. Every once in a while, she'd get kind of moody and stop talking altogether, but it never lasted long. With Lisa, you learned to just go with the flow.

The main thing was that she seemed to like me, which was a good start. Now I had to figure out how to get her to
like me
like me. As in, want to jump my bones and make a man out of me. If I could make that happen, it would prove to everyone—and to me—that I wasn't gay.

If only it was that simple. I couldn't really figure out how I felt about her. I thought she was totally beautiful, not to mention the most interesting person I'd ever met. But even though I thought about her all the time, I didn't care about what she looked like naked. I never thought about having sex with her. I just wanted to be around her all the time.

On the night before the opening, we ended up working till well after dark putting the finishing touches on the place. It was almost midnight when Denise told Lisa and me to stand back and look at the dining room.

“What do you guys think?” Denise asked.

“I think it looks great,” I said, and Lisa agreed. The walls were painted a soft bluish gray, the color of the ocean in the morning, and the tables were set with crisp white linens. On top of each one was a small vase of wildflowers, and on the walls were photos Denise had taken of the local area. Fishing boats heading in from the catch, kids playing on the beach, wild rose bushes beside a dusty dirt road. It looked like a real restaurant. Denise couldn't stop smiling.

We joined JP in the kitchen, where he was putting the finishing touches on his workspace. The stainless steel gleamed, the shelves were neatly stocked and the big glass-fronted refrigerators were full of food.

“Hey, JP, if you're not too busy admiring your reflection in the counter, why don't you whip us up something to eat?” Denise said.

“Denise, Denise, when the clock strikes ten, I turn into a little pumpkin. You know that.”

“What if I grab us a bottle of wine from out front?”

“Now you're talking. How about you kids? Are you hungry?”

We nodded, and he motioned to us to pull up some stools around the counter.

“If you wanna eat my food, you gotta watch me make it. Look and learn, friends. You'll be happy you did. But first, some music, don't you think?”

He dug around in a stack of tapes on the shelf next to
le
boom box
and snapped one on. The kitchen was filled with music that made me feel like dancing, and that's exactly what JP did, shimmying around the kitchen, grabbing veggies and a knife, and chopping with lightning speed.

Then that time I went and said goodbye,
Now I'm back and not ashamed to cry,
Ooooooh baby, here I am, signed, sealed, delivered,

I'm yours.

“This sounds familiar,” I said. “What is it?”

JP stopped his knife in midslice as he spun to look at me. “Sounds
familiar
? What the hell planet have you been living on?! You really don't know who this is?” I hesitated, then shook my head. JP made the sign of the cross and turned to Lisa.

“It's Stevie Wonder,” she said.

“Thank you! Yai yai yai.” JP shook his knife at me. “You be grateful. If she hadn't known, you'd both be eating hot dogs in the parking lot. You've got a lot to learn, that's for sure.”