“No!” Zwena cheers, clapping her hands together and hurrying over to her register to hang a CLOSEDsign from the chip stand. I’m not sure you can close a restaurant at 6:00 p.m. in an airport, but Zwena can’t be bothered by protocol or dinnertime.
“Don’t worry about it, Jose and Peter will be happy to take a break from the fry station,” Zwena offers as an answer to my quizzical look. “Sit down and don’t leave anything out.” I’m woman-handled over to the table nearest the soda machine, and Zwena gets us two Diet Cokes,no longer deterred by my New Year’s resolution. Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything, my brief encounter with Ash may disappoint.
“I ran into Ash Eisenberg at the Cracked Cup.”
“Did he recognize your face or your body parts?”
“Thankfully all my clothes were where they should be.”
“Okay, okay, that’s an improvement. At least for now.” We nod in agreement. Zwena was on the receiving end of my phone call after class when I finally got to die of shame in the privacy of my car. “So, who’s the guy who slipped you his number?”
“It was Ash,” I clear up for Zwena.
“Wait, what?! You didn’t ask for it, did you? Girl, you may be dusty, but you are not desperate. Please tell me you kept twenty-year-old Toni quiet,” Zwena pleads, only looking for one answer. Zwena has a handful of essential rules when it comes to women going after the opposite sex. The first is that phone numbers should be requested by the man, rightfully keeping the power balance heavily weighted toward the woman.
“No, no, of course I didn’t ask for it.” This is where I don’t quite know how to spin the story for Zwena’s entertainment.
After ordering and paying for my own drink, I swiftly moved over to the pickup area to grab my latte and find a table. In the discomfort of the moment, my coffee couldn’t come fast enough. I purposely sat down at a cramped two-top with only one chair, my back to where I assumed Ash was waiting on his order. Blowing on my latte, faking being immersed in Instagram, I felt a shadow looming over my morning procrastination.
“Allow me to introduce myself properly. I’m Ash Eisenberg.”
I looked up at him, stunned silence hanging between us a beat too long.
“And you go by?” he asked, more like the start of an awkward cocktail party conversation than acknowledgment that we had met twice before. This was the last time I was giving it to him.
“Antonia Arroyo, but people call me Toni,” I extended with a hint of attitude.
“Well, Antonia, when building a company, you can’t survive on coffee alone. Nor can you do it alone.” Ash then placed a stuffed white paper sleeve next to my cup. As he walked off to make his tee time, I noticed Ash Eisenberg’s phone number, written in green ink, and a croissant were staring up at me.
Now Zwena’s the one staring at me, eyebrows furrowed. “I’m not clear. Does the professor want to have dinner with you or mentor you?” Zwena’s tone tells me she’s genuinely as unsure as I am. “And are you positive it was his number he was passing along, not the barista boy’s, because you do look young for your age, Toni.” Before I can react to Zwena’s accusation that I’m turning the heads of teenage boys, she winks and calls loudly to a young Delta pilot striding by with his captain. “Hey, Harley!” Mr. Second-in-Command waves, a wide grin plastered across his face, and holds his thumb to his ear, pinkie finger extended, signaling he’ll call Zwena from his next destination.
“We’ll see if I pick up,” Zwena shares, turning back to me. “I laid him out on his last layover here a few months ago, but he’s from Salt Lake City, and in between the sheets he kept trying to sell me on the celestial kingdom. I’m not looking for a magical afterlife, I’m working on making magic right here in this life.” I’m surprised to hear Zwena mention any life planning or commitment, as she’s more a take-advantage-of-what-comes-her-way-today kind of maneater. “Butummm, ummm, ummm,for a man who is supposed to wait until marriage, he sure knew what to do. We’ll see how I’m feeling the next time Harley passes through.” We both watch Harley stride down the concourse, pilot’s hat perfectly perched.
“Back to Ash Eisenberg. Did you keep his number, or did you throw it away?” Zwena wants to know.
“I may have tossed it in my purse, or maybe the trash. Honestly, I don’t remember. What am I going to do with it anyway, call him? I can handle my business on my own.”
Standing to signal to Jose and Peter that break time is over, Zwena places a hand on my shoulder to confirm her profound disappointmentin me. “While I don’t agree with it, yes, generally that’s the idea when someone gives you their phone number—you call them. The first one you’ve gotten in ages is from a well-to-do Black man and you ‘don’t remember’ what you did with it?” I’m not telling Zwena this is theonlyphone number a man has ever slipped me. “And take it from me, a woman who was able to change her fate to one people back home dream of, none of us gets anywhere all on our own. You need people, Toni.” Zwena clucks at me through her teeth. “I should report you to your mother.”
“Please don’t,” I beg, and Zwena lifts a shoulder like she’s thinking about it. With intel like this, my mother might head straight to the Cracked Cup and dumpster dive for the paper sleeve herself. The fact is, after I watched Ash exit the coffee shop and clear my view, I slid the croissant out of the sleeve and onto a napkin before any greasy butter stains smudged the numbers. I then got up and shook out the crumbs into a waste bin so I could evenly fold the paper sleeve in half and then quarters for safekeeping in my notebook.
MARCH
TUESDAY, MARCH 5
My phone dings twelve minutes before I’ve set the alarm. Groaning, I roll over and fumble around for my glasses on the nightstand, knocking Michelle Obama’s latest memoir and an empty ice cream pint and spoon to the floor.Oops, sorry, First Lady.
I hold my breath, hoping it’s an automated text from Saint Anne informing me that while the school applauds my selfless community service on my one day off work this week, today’s sorting of hundreds of pounds of donated clothing and home goods for the sixty-sixth annual rummage sale has been canceled. I’m looking to earn parental participation credit for volunteering without leaving the comfort of my own bed.
A month ago, I signed up under pressure from Coco and Lou, who complained that I never participate in anything school related other than emailing their teachers and harassing them about homework. They’re too young to hear how being an abandoned working mother on financial aid at a Catholic school in Silicon Valley is a whole other level of loneliness. It’s obvious to me that the parents at the school are positioning themselves to make friends with other couples who are higher up than they are on the Saint Anne food chain. The snacks being wealth, power, and fame, of which I have none.
When I’m with other Saint Anne parents on campus, the feeling of being a sinner as well as a charity case is like an itch under my skin,even if the uneasiness only exists in my head and in what I perceive are judgmental stares from Father Patrick Egan. Father Egan teaches the eighth grade life skills class. Lou and Coco insist his features are frozen in a state of resting dick face, but they think his heart is in the right place. Still, he makes me squirm like I’m nine at Christmas Eve midnight mass and in a hurry to get home to see if this is the year Santa will bring me a microscope before he finds out I nicked a few bucks out of David’s piggy bank.
My pervasive sense of social inadequacy aside, I should probably invest some sweat equity into the event that raises the bulk of money for the scholarship Coco and Lou have earned this year. Any mom can buy cookies at Whole Foods for a holiday party, arrange them on a ceramic platter, and drop them off in the classroom hoping to pass them off as her own. I’m forfeiting my day of rest. But now that the morning is here, my altruism has turned to anxiety at the realization that I will be trapped in a six-hour marathon of chitchat among women who give the impression they’d rather be talking to anyone else but me.
The text is from Saint Anne informing me that coffee and mini muffins will be available at 8:00 a.m. and sorting Saint Anne family castoffs will begin promptly at 8:15 a.m.
Tucking the covers under my hips to give myself five more minutes in my warm blanket cocoon, I consider how to send Zwena a persuasive text to come be my rummage sale wing woman. Zwena can talk to anyone. With a roof over her head, cash to spare, and a car that runs, no one can tell Zwena there’s a difference between her and any other woman. Today especially, I need some of her self-assuredness to rub off on me.
