"Coffee?"
"Yes."
"You could try something else, you know. Marco's pork shoulder is better than the branzino. Don't tell him I said that."
I look at her where she's standing with the notepad against her hip and her weight on her left foot and there's something on her face I haven't seen from across the street. Humor. Small and quick, there and gone. She's teasing me. The kind of teasing you test on a person to see if they'll hold it.
"The pork shoulder," I say.
She nods and walks away, and her finger taps the notepad once.
I eat the pork shoulder, and itisbetter than the branzino. I leave thirty percent and when I go, she's at the POS with her back to me and she doesn't turn around but her hand is on the counterand her index finger taps twice, and I don't know if it's for me or if it's habit, and I think about it for the rest of the night.
The fourth time is a Tuesday lunch. Quieter than the dinner shifts. Six tables occupied. She's working the floor alone because the friend is behind the bar, and the kitchen is running with just Marco and the kid. I sit at four, which is available, and she brings coffee without me asking and her hand is close to mine when she sets the cup down. I can feel the heat off her fingers.
"Pork shoulder?" she says.
"Yes."
"You've found your thing."
"I have."
There’s a small shift in her posture, a half-second where her weight redistributes and she looks at me. The look is different from the service look, the professional look, the look that reads tables and timing and the kitchen's mood. This look is just for me.
She’s pondering what I’m about. Why I’m so quiet, reserved, withdrawn. Maybe she thinks I can’t hold a conversation, and the truth is… I can’t. Not about mundane things, anyway.
People always peg me as brawn, no brain, but it couldn’t be further from the truth. I just let them believe it because who the fuck has time to convince anyone otherwise?
Then it's gone and she's walking to the kitchen and I'm sitting at table four with a cup of coffee I haven't touched. My hand is on the knife, my thumb on the handle and all I'm thinking about is the heat off her fingers and the fact that I haven't felt another person's body heat in ages.
She brings the pork shoulder. I eat. She works the floor. Between tables, she passes me—not because she needs to, because table four is against the wall and there's no reason to walk past it to get anywhere in the dining room. She passes me because she's choosing to pass me, almost like an orbit she wants to be pulled into.
She doesn't know she's doing it, or she knows and won't admit it. Either way, the third time she passes, she's carrying plates to table two and her arm brushes my shoulder on the way by.
She pauses.
One second. Her arm against my shoulder. The plates are balanced on her left hand, and her right arm is the one that touched me. Her jaw drops and she's standing close enough that I can see the texture of her sleeve, the tendon in her wrist and a freckle below her ear I've never noticed before. She's frozen with her arm against my shoulder and neither of us is saying anything.
Two seconds.
She clears her throat and walks to table two, sets the plates down and doesn't look back at me, but I can see her shoulders heaving like she’s trying to catch her breath. I don't pick my nails. I can still feel the spot where she made contact. Seconds pass before the feeling starts to fade and I pick up my fork and go back to the pork shoulder, only now it’s cold.
I eat it anyway.
On the way out, I leave the cash under the cup and walk to the door. I don't look at her because if I look at her right now I'm going to see the freckle below her ear. I need to not see the freckle because I have a job to do and the job is not about the freckle that I want to run my tongue over.
Shit… she’s got me fucked up and she doesn’t even know my name.
Delvecchio doesn't have my money.
I'm standing in the body shop at seven AM because the thirtieth came and went and Leone's phone didn't ring. Three days late. I told this man what happens when the date passes. He looked at the knife between his fingers and said he understood, and then he didn't do the thing he said he understood he needed to do, which means he's either stupid or suicidal or both.
The mechanic from last time isn't here. It's just Delvecchio, sitting on the same tool chest, except this time there's no sandwich and no casual posture. He's been waiting for me. He knows what three days late means.
"I have five," he says before I'm through the door. "I can get the rest by..."
"No."
