"I hate you, asshole."
"You don't."
I don't, he’s right. I finish the silverware and wipe down the tables then check the reservation book for tomorrow. Happy that everything is in order and the restaurant is clean and quiet and ready for the morning crew, I take off my apron and get ready to close the till out. Devon leaves first. Then the prep cook locks the kitchen. Then it's me and Javi and the neon clock and the last of the closing tasks.
We leave together. Javi locks the front door because Danny gave him a key two years ago and never asked for it back, and we walk the three blocks to my apartment. We don't talk.
I like this part the best.
The quiet after a full night, the sound of our shoes on the concrete, the street empty except for the parked cars and the glow of the bodega sign on the corner where Rosa's already gone home and the register light is the only thing still on.
At my door I get my key out and Javi stands on the sidewalk with his shoulders up around his ears because the wind is worse tonight.
"He had a knife," Javi says. "On his belt. Did you see that?"
"I saw it."
"That's not normal, right? Like, who wears a knife to a restaurant?"
"A chef."
"He wasn't a chef, Grace."
"Maybe he is?”
He stands there for a second, and the grin is gone and what's underneath it is the thing Javi doesn't talk about, which is the fact that he worries about me. Not in the way bosses worry about employees or coworkers worry about colleagues but in the specific, personal way that a man worries about a woman he cares about when she lives alone.
"Lock the door," he says.
"I always lock the door."
"Lock it twice, take a picture and send it to me. He was creepy, Grace. What if he knows where you live."
“Oh my God, that’s obtuse. Goodnight, freak, I’m going inside. Get home safe.”
I go inside and I lock the door once, which is all the lock allows, and I hear Javi's footsteps on the sidewalk heading back toward the restaurant and then the street is quiet.
I brush my teeth, change into a t-shirt and shorts, and get into bed.
I definitely don't think about the man at table four. I don't think about his hands or his face or the way he said "thank you". I don't think about the way he held his knife, the table knife, with the ease of someone who has held thousands of knives. I don't think about the fact that Javi said he tracked me across the dining room, or about the fact that when I stood at his empty table and tapped the edge of his plate, the tapping felt different than it usually feels. More like curiosity than anxiety.
I am definitelynotthinking about any of this.
Oh God… I need to get laid.
Chapter Five: Carmelo
Thefirsttime,Iorder the branzino and sit at table four and she serves me and I say eleven words and leave thirty percent.
The second time, I order the branzino again and she says, "Same as last time?" and I say, "Yes," and that's twelve words across two visits. The fact that she remembers my order means I made it into her memory bank. I'm in her brain now. The big man who orders the branzino and sits at four and pays cash and doesn't talk.
The third time, table four is taken and that irritates me more then I care to admit. A couple with a baby in a high chair, the baby smearing something orange across the tray. I stand inside the door for three seconds. Grace sees me from across the dining room and her eyes go to table four and then back to me and she holds up one finger and walks to table six, which is against the opposite wall, and pulls the chair out. Not the one facing the wall. The one facing the door. She remembered where I sit andshe remembered which direction I face and she set the chair for me without being asked.
I sit down.
"Branzino?" she says.
"Yes."
