“Right now, I have a temporary job so I can make moneywhileI do the training to study art.”
“What is it?” I picture her filtering all of this back to her mom. “Starbucks?” she asks hopefully. “Oh! Is it Sephora?”
“I work at a restaurant,” I reply, shutting down her visions of unlimited Frapps or discounted skin care products her nine-year-old face doesn’t need.
“You work with my dad?” Her face might be concerned? Angry? I can’t quite tell now that the sun has gone down. “My dad works at Chili’s. He’s the boss of everyone. But his office isn’t as nice as my mom’s.”
“Nope,” I reply. “Different restaurant.”
“Are you the boss at that restaurant?” She should be shining an interrogation lamp in my eyes while I’m handcuffed to a table, asking for a lawyer.
“I’m a bartender. Sometimes a server.”
I’m about to tell her that I train new hires sometimes when Kira looks over my shoulder and says, “Dad, Sam says fuck isn’t the real F-word.”
“Kira!” Nick drops the glow sticks onto the blanket behind me. “Let’s not use that word around other people, okay? We’ll talk about it when we get home.”
Kira nods, completely satisfied with this resolution, and immediately tells her dad that I’m actually the coolest adult she’s ever met.
Ha. No.
She harangues both of us about “the real F-word” until the fireworks start, and even for a few minutes into the show.
After our eardrums get blown out by the grand finale, Nick and I—and thousands of other Ohioans—pack up blankets.The dispersing crowd pushes toward the exits as a slow-moving mass.
“Help me keep an eye on Kira?” Nick asks as we join the herd.
The orange jacket made her easy to spot in the daylight, but night is a different story. Kira keeps trying to route around the groups in front of us and I lose her orange jacket in the sea of people for a few seconds.
“Kira!” Nick yells. “Don’t get ahead of us.”
She slows down momentarily, letting us catchup.
“So, fake F-word?” He shakes his head, laughing. “I know what you were trying to do. I don’t usually lie to her. She’s dogged. She won’t let it go.”
“I see that.”
“She’ll probably be a federal prosecutor someday.”
He gives me a kiss on the forehead, and I melt for the three seconds before we turn toward where Kira just was.
I can tell something’s wrong even before I survey the crowd in front of us for her orange jacket. I practically feel the surge of adrenaline through Nick’s skin. He drops my hand and pushes forward through the crowd, moving people out of the way.
“Kira?Kira?” Every time he shouts it, his voice gets a little more frantic.
I do my best to keep up with him, but I can’t move through the crowd as aggressively. Instead, I focus on the periphery. Maybe she turned right or left and we’ve already passed her. I turn around to look behind me, letting the crowd brush against my shoulders in their rush to sit in traffic for forty minutes.
Then I lose track of Nick.Dammit.
I continue scanning the crowd. She’s here somewhere. Everyone’s moving in the same general direction, slow like a herd of lazy cattle. No one would kidnap a girl in a brightorangejacket. I don’t want to think about the added detail on theDatelineepisode where Keith Morrison says, “The inattentive younger girlfriend then spotted a trampled orange jacket on the ground.” I push it out of my brain.
When I reach the edge of the lawn and still don’t see Kira or Nick anywhere, I call him. The reason I didn’t spot her, I reason, is that Nick already did. They must be waiting for me up ahead. Nick probably scolded her then bought her an Italian ice.
“Did you find her?” he asks, voice full of panic.
“No! You didn’t see her?”
“No, I—” The connection cuts out for a few seconds. “—double back.”
