Testimony from Your Perfect Girl Page 7
“Scotch!” I yell, since I taste it in my mouth.
“Scott?”
“Scotch! Scotch Mizutani!”
He smiles, then gives me a questioning look and presses my lower back into him. I don’t think he heard. I don’t think he cares. He’s not even very attractive, I realize. I mean, he’s handsome, but in this highly crafted way. I can smell the gel in his hair. It’s then that I take a closer look and think that maybe he looks a little older than I had thought. I look around for the boys, but don’t see them anywhere. I feel a little dizzy now, and the boy—the man—gives me this hungry look, and the light on his face tells me, yes, he is old. He’s really old, and I can feel his boner against me.
“I’m sixteen,” I say.
“Even better,” he whispers in my ear.
“I gotta go,” I say, and walk away.
9
I hear Jay coming in. I wonder if he’s even worried about me. I’m watching some strange movie that only plays at times like these. I hear him rummage in the kitchen, where I’m sure he’s looking for something salty, and then I hear his steps. I both want and don’t want him to come in and see me, because I’ve been crying and he can always tell. I think I hear him pause in front of my room. He pounds on my door, then opens it kind of sheepishly, guitar and a snack in hand.
“Where’d you go?” he asks.
“Where’d you go?” I ask.
“Nowhere,” he says. “We were dancing, then went back to the bar. Joff said you were dancing with some dude.” My brother laughs, but it seems fake somehow. “Everyone was all tripped out.”
He walks to my bed and holds out the bag of chips. I’ve got my huge comforter over me and must look like a dead whale.
“Why were they tripped out?” I ask. “They couldn’t believe someone actually found me attractive?”
“No, god, hardly that. It’s just—you know, you’re usually . . . uptight. Busy. No-access Annie. Don’t be mad.”
“I’m not mad! They’re just wrong, that’s all.” I cross my arms over my chest. “No-access Annie? Is that a thing?”
“It’s not a big deal,” he says, which doesn’t answer my question. “They were just surprised. It’s not a bad thing. You’re just not really a flirty-girly-dance-floor type. Chill. I hope you had fun.”
He looks at me with a warm expression. The TV is loud—on it, the little girl is still crying because her dad yelled at her mom for lying to him about her job as a pole dancer.
“I thought it was you crying,” Jay says, then squints at my face. I sniffle.
“Oh my god,” he says. “Get it together.”
“I was crying at the movie,” I lie. Like I care that the mother isn’t a stripper, she just wants to go to the pole dancing championships in Miami. She has found her passion. “I have empathy, okay? They’re strong tears, I’m not wimpy crying—”
“Strong flow, got it.”
“The guy I was dancing with was disgusting,” I say. “I was trying to have fun, and . . . when I do, it always goes bad. I want to go home. I don’t understand what’s happening. I feel like Dad shouldn’t be so confident. I know he’s innocent, but other people don’t seem to think so.”
“You know how this goes. Dad’s like a celebrity, you know? People want to see him go down.”
“Like his friends? You heard Eric.”
His face seems to close like a fist. “Yeah,” he says. “I get the digs, I guess, but . . . I mean, they’ve got tons of money. It’s not like Dad took it all away. Or any of it. I don’t know.”
He just tried to comfort me, yet doesn’t seem convinced or comforted himself.
“I keep calling Cee,” I say. “She won’t call or text me back.”
“Probably because her dad was the project manager,” Jay says. “But if her dad had managed the project in the first place, we wouldn’t be here.”
“It’s happening,” I say. “Everyone’s turning against us. At school. Cee. Just now at the bar. And Mom seemed like she’s experiencing a lot of it.”
Jay continues to play a folk song that always makes me want to go on a long drive with a boy at the wheel. The boy is rugged and cool. I’m all awesome, with marsala lipstick and my caramel Stetson hat, or forget that, no lipstick, ’cause we’ll be on a dusty road and the dirt will stick to my mouth. I start to cry again. I can’t help it.
“Oh, come on,” Jay says, and I’m about to tell him I’m crying because I love this song, how it makes me think of campfires and starry skies and better times, but it’s more than that, and I tell the truth:
“I just read an article about families with dads who go to jail, and like, everyone turns against them. Especially the moms. The mom is banished from the parties and clubs, and sometimes they have to sell their houses, and the dads work as laundry attendants in jail and make, like, ten bucks a week instead of ten million a year.”
“Easy there, tiger,” Jay says. “You’re talking about dads who’ve been convicted, and who’ve done, like, Ponzi schemes. Big stuff. Dad’s not going to be convicted. And he didn’t purposefully try to scheme people out of their money, okay? That’s the difference.” He picks the strings. His face is pinched.
I realize I’ve been holding my breath and let it out. “Do you know that for sure?” I ask.
I hear someone coming down the hallway, and we both freeze and look at one another.
Uncle Skip peeks in. He’s red-nosed from the cold. “Hey, guys. Everything okay?”
“Annie’s depressed,” Jay says.
“And you’re not?” I sit up and check to see if my pajamas are covering me sufficiently.
“She needs to do something she can’t do anywhere else,” Jay says. He pats my back.
“God, shut up, vermin.” I roll my shoulders to shake him off.
“See?” he says. “It’s serious.”
Skip walks in. He runs his hand through his thick brown hair and sits on the edge of the bed. I pull up the covers, mortified. Skip reaches into the bag of chips.
“These will be my demise,” he says, then looks at me like I’ve just run into a wall. “It’s totally understandable that you miss home. And that you’re worried about things. Tonight on the phone . . . that must have been difficult.”
I just nod, and Skip nods back like we’re agreeing on something. Maybe I have run into a wall. He eats another chip and seems to be really tasting it, trying to identify the ingredients.
“Come work at Steak and Rib.” He looks so eager and pure. “I need a server. You could do it for the rest of break—what’s that, two weeks? And when school starts up, you could come in after school? Or . . . you probably have homework. Or you won’t be here.”
Week and a half. I’ve been counting the days. And then I won’t be here. Our dad will win, and I won’t need a job.
“If we’re still here, she can work weekends,” Jay says, also munching on chips. “She doesn’t do shit on weekends but skate, and that’s all done. Hey, these aren’t bad.” He reads the bag. “Potatoes, flax, sea salt, all organic.”
“What do you think?” Skip says to me.
I bring my knees up to my chest. I think I’d like everyone to leave my room now. “Servers have to talk to people,” I say.
“Yeah, she sucks at that,” Jay says, and makes a loud pluck on the guitar.
“What about the kitchen?” Skip says as if his idea is the key to my heart. “You love cooking! I mean, you wouldn’t be cooking, but . . . you’d be around it. You could see what happens. I could start you off tomorrow. Then you could work New Year’s Eve after that. Bang!”
The bed bounces.
“Bang!” Jay says. “And you knows you gots no plans.”
Something about this whole thing actually appeals to me. I imagine being in an apron, dicing, mixing, a mean chef reluctantly nodding his approval. I’d rise
to the top fast, wowing everyone by adding that one special spice that drops jaws. I’d be introduced as Annie Town. I could be whoever I wanted to be. A flirty dancing girl. A girl no one would be surprised to see having fun. A girl who doesn’t think so much. All-access Annie. But without the porn vibe.
“Okay,” I say. “Until we leave. So, not for long.”
Jay strums on his guitar, one big finale-like sound, like we have all accomplished something tremendous together. Then he gets up, and so does Skip.
“Great,” Skip says. “It will take your mind off things. Keep you busy.”
I pull the covers up, waiting for them to leave. Jay walks out, and Skip follows.
“Good night,” he says.
“Good night,” I say.
He closes the door, and I lie back down. This is good. Tomorrow I’ll truly start as Annie Town.
10
The next morning, day two, I get a text from Cee that must have come overnight.
What do you want?
What do I want? For you to answer my damn texts!
What’s up with you? I write, and feel like I should be more specific so she can’t just say, “Nothing.”
I’m living in Breck with my aunt and uncle. Can you talk? I know our dads have drama, but we don’t
I sit on the bed and wait for a while, then give up and get dressed, opting for one of my new shirts and strategically ripped jeans.
I walk out to the living room, and Nicole is standing behind the couch with her leg propped on a cushion in a balletic stretch. When she sees me, she shuts the TV off, but it’s too late. I caught a glimpse of my dad. I recognized the shirt first, one I helped him order online from Nordstrom. Dark brown. Reminded me of something a banker in the seventies would wear. I thought it would look great with a pink tie.
“Turn it back on,” I say. “Please.”
She puts her leg down and points the remote at the television. I catch the back of him walking into the courthouse and the reporter signing off, moving on to traffic and weather.
“What did they say?” I ask.
“They just repeated the charges of, uh . . . real estate fraud, then showed him walking in. He looked confident, but not cocky, so that’s good.” She gives me an apologetic look, then turns it off again.
“Oh,” I say. Real estate fraud. That word fraud sounds so awful.
She puts her other leg up to stretch. “So I hear you’re going to work in the kitchen today?”
“Yeah,” I say. She looks amused and skeptical.
“Want an omelet?” I ask, knowing she’ll say no.
“No, thanks,” she says. “Running to work. You going to do anything from the itinerary today?”
“Maybe,” I say.
“You don’t need to go in until three,” she says. “That gives you plenty of time to get out there.”
She looks at the dark TV, then back at me as if knowing I’m waiting for her to leave so I can turn it on again. “There’s nothing you can do,” she says.
“I know.”
When she leaves, I have breakfast, then go back to my room. I look at my phone on the bed, and there’s a text from Cee:
My dad’s going to testify against your dad.
I know, I text back. My dad told me about the confusion. What does your dad think? I ask, trying to get their side. When my dad explained he’s testifying over some confusion about a consulting company, I pretended to understand better than I do.
I see the dots appear, then retract.
Jesus, she writes. Get a clue.
Yes, Cee, I think to myself. That’s exactly what I’m trying to do.
* * *
• • •
The Steak and Rib kitchen is loud and male-dominant, and I feel a heat pour through my body and my hands shake a bit.
Skip whistles, and everyone looks up. I give a timid little smile, but then I remember this is my chance. I stand tall, eye the place with a smirk and a confidence, then realize this is something Annie Tripp would do, and so I try to give off warm, friendly vibes.
“Guys, this is my niece, Annie. Annie Town.” He looks at me with an apologetic grin.
“Hey,” I say, and the guys nod.
“Pablo and Ren,” he says, pointing to the guys by the sinks. “Freddie—head chef. Brose—where’s Brose?”
“Not here yet,” Freddie says. “We’re good, though.”
Brose? I think to myself. What kind of name is that?
“Forest . . .”
“Over here,” Forest says, coming out of some back area. Forest looks like he’s not entirely sober.
“Hi, I’m Annie,” I say.
“What?” he asks.
“Nothing, Forest.” Skip shakes his head. “Guys, introduce her to the waitstaff as they come in. Ren, have her shadow you guys.” He puts his hand on my shoulder. “You going to be okay? It’s just dishes. I need to get out front.”
“Yeah,” I say. “I’ll be fine.”
I follow Ren around for a while until he gives me my own task—loading dusty potatoes into the dishwasher. I’ve never heard of doing this and hope I’m not misunderstanding.
“Like this?” I ask, gesturing to the potato I place in the rack.
“Yeah, yeah,” he says, impatient. “Rinse. No soap.”
I continue, avoiding eye contact with anyone, but watch them when I can. They’re all incredibly busy and seem angry about it, and whenever I don’t have something to do I feel huge and clumsy in the small space, like an elephant in a porta potty. I thought I could be friendly, cool, and confident, but it’s another country in here, and I don’t know the language. After I’ve finished loading the potatoes, I walk over to Ren, the only person here I feel at ease with, perhaps because he’s a lot older and he’s sort of in charge of me.
“Can I help?” I ask, looking at the counter covered with shrimp.
He moves some shrimp my way, then gestures for me to follow what he does. He does one slowly, going through each step, then goes back to his utterly fast rhythm. It’s like watching someone shuffle. I take a shrimp, remove the head and feet, pull off the shell, then make a slit with my knife down the middle of the shrimp’s back. He gestures to the bag where he’s been saving the remnants.
“Fish stock,” he says.
I do a few more and am overwhelmed when I look at the rest of the pile. At least music is playing, but I wish we could have a little more fun.
I hold up a vein. “So weird this is the whole digestive tract,” I say. Ren looks at it, and I can’t tell if he understands. “Colon, stomach,” I say.
“Poop,” he says.
“Right.”
A waiter comes through the swinging door carrying a plate full of food and looking peeved. I’ve heard the guys call him Nat, and the girls, Natty. He’s cute, and seems to know this about himself.
“She says it’s not done,” he says to Brose, who came in about a half hour ago. He’s the line cook and is always grimacing, never still, yet there’s a kind of grace in his flurry. With his name, I expected some overly cool bros-before-hos type, but he seems a bit uptight, despite his looks—a little scruffy, like someone who’s into camping. He’s the only one here who has yet to say hello or even recognize my existence.
He looks at the plate that Nat places in front of him, then he looks up at the order.
“It says medium rare,” he says, shaking the pan. The mushrooms jump and sizzle. “That’s medium rare. It’s perfect, actually. Gorgeous color.”
“She said the pinkness made her think of the ostrich,” Nat says.
“Hell, she should think of the ostrich,” Brose says. “It’s what she’s gonna eat.”
I bite my lip, holding down a smile, perhaps to participate somehow.
“She made her choice,” Brose says.
“S
he needs to commit,” I say, which makes my heart beat as I pull poop.
Finally, he looks at me, then quickly away as if I had interrupted. Tough crowd. I go back to tearing off tails.
“I’ll put it back on and ruin it,” I hear Brose say, and then Nat says, “I don’t know you yet,” and I look up. He has a friendly, playful smile. His hair, short and neat. Intense blue eyes. Not the camping type. More the type I was dancing with the other night—clean, groomed, skier-boy, but young.
“I’m Nat,” he says.
He looks like if I poked him in the stomach, it would hurt my finger.
“I’m A-Annie,” I stutter. “I’ll be your dishwasher tonight.”
“What’s that?” he says.
“Nothing,” I say. “Just, I’m dish washing. I’m a dishwasher and a shrimp detailer, poop puller.” Oh my god. That just happened. Brose raises his eyebrows, but I can tell that whatever I’ve said earned me points somehow.
“You’re the best-looking dishwasher I’ve ever seen,” Natty says. “No offense, Ren.”
I catch Brose rolling his eyes, and I think Pablo is translating what Nat just said to Ren, who shrugs as though conceding my ranking. I accidentally drop a shrimp, pick it up, set it back on the counter, look at Ren, then throw it away. I’ve never been this klutzy before. Is it from Nat’s gaze or from being new, not just to this kitchen, but to work itself? I wasn’t this awkward when Nat wasn’t here, though. I’m used to boys like Nat, but this feels different because I’m different. He doesn’t know me, doesn’t think I’m an uptight priss. I’m hot versus distant and antisocial. I’m surmountable. I smile at him and feel my face burn, and while there’s some benefit to him not knowing me, I wish I looked as I normally do, put together, like him.
“Here,” Brose says to Nat, pushing the plate toward him. The meat, once tender, is now rock-ish. “Well done,” he says. “What a waste.”
I give Brose a look of knowing—it is a waste, and it says a lot about the consumer. She probably puts ketchup on it, too. I almost say this, but Brose returns my look with one that says, What are you looking at?