“Hey, I have a joke,” he says. “Want to hear it? It pertains to the matter at hand.”
“Sure.”
“What’s the difference between a poorly dressed man on a tricycle and a well-dressed man on a bicycle?”
She thinks about it. She’s never been good at figuring these things out. “I don’t know,” she says finally.
“Attire!” That makes her laugh really hard. “You’re laughing!” he says. “Nobody ever laughs at my jokes.”
It’s corny, but it’s legitimately funny. She’s still laughing when she says, “Turn here. It’s this one, on the right.”
The rain has stopped and the sun is trying to peek through the clouds. The lobsterman’s kids are in the front yard, attempting to use a Hula-Hoop without success. Someday maybe Kristie will show them how. She was a really good Hula-Hooper back in the day—much better than she is at figuring out jokes.
Danny lifts the bike out of the back and sets it on the ground. He knocks three times on the seat, ratatattat, and smiles at her.There is a smudge of dirt on his right cheek. She wants to wipe it off, but obviously she doesn’t. Just the fact that she wants to is strange, though. She doesn’t even know this guy!
“Hey, can I give you my number?” he asks.
“My phone battery died.”
“No problem.” He pulls his phone out of his pocket. “Give me yours. I’ll text you right away and you can save mine when you go charge yours. Maybe I can tell you another joke sometime.”
“Okay,” she says, punching in the numbers. “Sure, another joke.”
She pulls her bike around the back and parks it under the stairwell.
When her phone is charged she sees a text that says,See You Around, Bicycle Girl.She smiles. She’s never had a nickname like that before. There’s a voice mail too. Someone named Fernando at Archer’s on the Pier, one of the places where she dropped off an application. They just lost one of their servers to a better offer on Cape Cod. He saysCape Codlike it’s a curse. Can Kristie come in at two-thirty for an interview?
It’s twelve minutes past two.
She calls back and tells Fernando she’ll be there.
Fernando is compact and impatient. All the men Kristie has ever worked for or with at restaurants are compact and impatient. They sit at the bar. In the middle of the restaurant is a curving staircase made of light blond wood. Kristie can see two servers rolling silverware at a table near the kitchen. She hears prep cooks yelling at each other. The bartender, a woman maybe ten years older than Kristie, probably in her late thirties, is counting bottles of sauvignon blanc and marking numbers down on a piece of paper. “You want something?” she asks Fernando, then Kristie.
“No,” says Kristie. “Thank you.” She is so nervous!
“Ice water,” says Fernando. Noplease. He jerks a thumb toward the bartender and says, “Amber.” Amber nods at Kristie.
Fernando studies Kristie’s application, moving his finger as hereads, like a child just learning to sound out words. He doesn’t look up when he says, “Miami Beach, huh? Hmmm . . . And—Altoona?” Now he looks up. The last place Kristie worked was a late-night place on Thirteenth called Tom & Joe’s, which was billed as “family friendly.” Miami Beach was not, for the most part, family friendly.
“Yeah,” she says. She clears her throat around the lump that has just formed. “I mean, yes. That’s where my mom lives. Lived. I was taking care of her. Until.” The lump becomes a boulder and she can feel her eyes starting to fill. She whispers, “She died,” around the boulder.
For a second Fernando’s face softens. He takes a long sip of his ice water and crunches a piece of ice. Kristie can’t stand that, the sound of ice crunching between teeth. Jesse used to do it all the time. Fernando is talking around the ice when he says, “So what brought you up here?” When he squints at her little lines shoot out from the corner of his eyes.
Oh, Fernando. The answer to that is probably more than you want to hear at two forty-five on a summer afternoon. It’s more than I want to tell.
She shrugs. “Thought I’d try something different.”
He doesn’t believe her, but it probably doesn’t matter. “If I called people at these places what would they say about you?”
“They’d say I’m a hard worker,” she says. “They’d say I know how to hustle.” These things are true. “They’d say I’m reliable.” Also true. Fernando won’t call anyone, though. She knows that. People in the restaurant business don’t have time to call around, especially in a tourist place, especially in the summer.
“Amber.” The bartender turns. “What do you think? Does she look like she knows how to hustle?”
Amber shrugs. “Sure.”
“Come in tonight for training. Black pants on the bottom. You got black pants?” She nods. “We’ll give you a shirt. Come back at four.”
“Okay.” She smiles. “Great, okay, thank you very much.”
