Bella (6 page)

“You ready, right?” he asked José.

José nodded and looked back down in the sink. He was holding back tears. Manny could read his brother's face like he read his wristwatch, which told him it was almost time to unlock the front doors.

José came to life. “Let's go! Marco! Andale, andale, jefe!”

He'd give Mama and Papa a call later, warn them José might be slipping back. But right then he had a restaurant to run, and he was going to make sure it ran like Secretariat at the Preakness. First, family dinner. He liked to think of his staff as family. But he wondered what role he played. Grouchy uncle?

Several minutes later, the staff gathered alongside the long table spread like a runner down the center of the restaurant. They began passing bowls of beans and rice and the chiles rellenos.

Manny stood at the head of the table, a list of specials in his hands. “Shrimp and crab legs over Mexican sweet black rice. Squash with a papaya lemon oil.” Cutlery began to clink against the white bone china. “There are three boxes of shrimp in the walk-in, people, so push it, push it, push it!” He snapped his fingers. “By the end of the day, this item should be eighty-sixed in my kitchen. The last special is scallops. I think you've all served this before, so I'm not gonna say anything else about it.”

José entered the room, holding the quail, hand bandaged now. Good. Surely the Health Department wouldn't appreciate it if they came in and saw his chef with a hand like that. That is, of course, if they could get past the beard.

Time to share the good news.

“I've got a special treat, Pepito. This coming Friday the Mexican National Soccer Team, along with the coach, will be here for the Gold Cup. They play the United States out in Jersey next week. I'm putting them in Kevin's section.”

Manny looked at each person as they ate his expensive quail. He sighed. Well, there was nothing to be done.

“Also, there will be no autographs. If you want one, you can ask me, and I will ask them personally.”

And where was Nina, eh?

He leaned down. “Get a sub for Nina, and, Pieter, gather up her things from her locker.”

Pieter hesitated. “Do you think—”

“Don't question me. Just do it.”

Pepito reached for the rice. “I'm starving.”

Amelia smiled. “You're always starving.”

“I'm starving when El Callao cooks. You got that right.”

Henry, the new bartender, reached for the water pitcher. “El Callao? Why do you guys call him that?”

“Means ‘quiet one' in Spanish. It's easier to pull a tooth than to pull a word out of him,” Carlos said.

Amelia patted José's hand. Manny noted the tenderness in her eyes. She'd never looked at him that way. “He speaks to me all the time.”

Nina approached the
door of Manny's midtown restaurant. An hour late, she thought up all sorts of excuses. Water main break that flooded her apartment. A shooting on the way to her subway station. Emergency phone call from home.

Oh, that's right. Her mother wouldn't call her if her life depended on it. Nina thought of the last conversation they'd had five years before. Mother talked about the latest season of her favorite sitcom and wouldn't it be nice if everybody had good friends like that silly group, how she needed a new roof but just couldn't bring herself to get quotes, even about the stray cat, the sweetest little gray fur ball imaginable, coming around. After she'd asked Nina how she was doing, she'd interrupted her answer. “Oh, and did you see that new cop show on that cable channel?”

Nina had hung up the phone and realized that during the eighteen months since she'd left for the city to dance professionally, her mother hadn't called her once. So Nina made herself a cup of tea and asked herself if she should torture herself any longer by trying to maintain a relationship, putting in 100 percent when she shouldn't be carrying the primary burden in the first place.

So Nina experimented. She waited for a month. No call from Mother. Then Nina called. The conversation could have been the same with the replacement of different shows and an update on the cat and the leaking roof.

Next time she waited two months.

Then four, then a year. And now she had to admit even a TV-watching, roof-procrastinating mother would be better than nobody. Maybe the news that Nina was pregnant would bring her out of TV land.

Surely Mother would say something about a
grandchild
.

Nina pulled on the door handle. Her arm jerked. Locked. Okay, other door. The restaurant wasn't officially open yet. She walked a few steps, pulled on that door. Locked as well.

Nina shielded her eyes and peered in the large front window of the restaurant. She knocked on the plate glass, leaned forward as far as she could. And there they sat at the table, eating family dinner, the entire staff, staring at her, forks or water glasses suspended. Pieter stood up, then froze as Manny turned and made for the entrance.

She rushed toward him as he unlocked the door, then blew out onto the sidewalk.

“Manny, I'm sorry.”

He silenced her with an upheld hand. “I don't want to hear it.”

“Look, I had things—”

“Things?” Nostrils flaring, he pointed inside at the staff gathered for dinner. “You see Amelia? Three kids, Nina. She comes down here from the Bronx every day. Want to know how many days she's been late in the last eight years?” He joined thumb and forefinger together to form an
O
. “Zero, Nina. Zero.”

“I know. I know how hard that must be.”

“You know? You know? You know?”

He looked like he was ready to bite her. This was even worse than she'd imagined. Four years she'd worked for him, and she didn't like him any more than she did the first week when he railed her out for not filling up people's water glasses quickly enough. And you'd think she hadn't learned anything in all that time, the way he hovered over her, nitpicking, always finding fault.

“Manny, I didn't mean—”

“Okay, so then
you know
how easy it would be for you to find another job.”

He straightened up, looked around him, and turned away, heading back toward the door. Pieter stood in the doorway. He whispered something to him.

José stepped outside.

Panic whittled at Nina's pride. Not today! She needed that money. “Manny, please! Give me another chance! I promise I'll make everything good.” It was Friday, and tonight there'd be big tips, maybe enough for Wednesday's appointment. “How could you be so . . .”

No. Let it go, Nina. You're sounding like a grade-schooler.

Manny stopped, turned, and walked toward her, each step punctuating his diatribe. “So . . . so what? Unfair? It would be unfair, in fact, if I
didn't
fire you. It would be unfair to your coworkers for me to let them continue doing
your job
.” He stopped, finger in her face. “This is the second day in a row, Nina. Not counting the times people looked the other way or—or covered for you.”

“What are you
talking about?”

“You called in sick twice last week, then you show up to work hungover.”

Hungover? What in the world? “No. I was not hungover.”

“It's too much, already.”

“Manny, I was
not
hungover. I was sick!”

José rarely meddled in Manny's business, but Nina had been one of their most dependable waitresses. If he couldn't see something was happening with Nina, he wasn't looking closely enough.

Manny spun around, eyes hard. “Seeing how the other half lives, José? Stay out of this!”

José didn't want trouble. He just didn't want this to escalate. If Manny was going to fire Nina, fine. But this berating while the staff looked on: too much. Just too much. Even for Manny.

Manny pushed past his brother, back into the restaurant.

Pieter scurried out the door, arms overflowing with Nina's belongings: a pair of sneakers, a T-shirt, a makeup case, a paperback, and a stuffed bear. José liked Pieter even less than Nina liked Manny. The little suck-up.

Nina took the box. “Oh, thank you. Thanks, Pieter. That's nice.” She turned and headed back down the sidewalk toward the subway station. Fired.

José pushed past Pieter and hurried behind her. At the end of the block, she tucked her belongings under her arm, not noticing as the small stuffed bear tumbled to the ground.

José hesitated. Should he? This wasn't exactly step ten in the hermit's handbook. The bear almost got stomped on by a woman in high-top sneakers. That settled it.

He hurried forward. He'd always liked Nina, occasionally standing with her out back on her smoke breaks when he needed a break as well. She didn't speak about much more than the latest book she'd been reading or movie she'd rented, but he liked the sound of her voice and that she knew little about him other than the fact that he was the owner's brother and was nicknamed “The Quiet One” by the rest of the staff. Nina wasn't a gossip. He liked that about her too. She smiled a lot, but he knew a lonely soul. José saw people like him and Nina on the street all the time, pain stitching them all together with its scarlet thread, arm to arm, hip to hip.

He hesitated, scooped up the bear, and rushed forward. “Nina!”

“Nina!”

Nina thought she was being followed. She whirled around, people snaking past her as they hurried to get through the turnstile and down to the tracks.

Oh. Just José. Good.

José stopped, her bear in his hand. She didn't realize she'd dropped him. If she'd gotten home and that bear was gone, well, that would have just been the final, screaming exclamation point to the worst day of her life since her father died.

And Pieter! She never thought he was filled to the brim with courage and integrity, but that was ridiculous. Yes, they'd kept what happened a secret from the rest of the staff, neither Nina nor Pieter wanting them to jump to the wrong conclusion. But couldn't he have at least refused to get her things? Even for the principle of the thing? She didn't get pregnant on her own.

José's dark blue eyes softened as he held out the bear. “He's unconscious, but I think he'll survive.”

She'd never heard him string that many words together at once.

Oh, this little bear. John Bubbles. She'd named him after her favorite tap dancer when she received him on her twelfth birthday. They'd been through so much together. “Thank you.” She smiled and held up the bear, jiggling him a little. “I guess I'll see you around.”

She started toward the turnstile.

“Hey, why were you late? You know my brother.”

Nina stopped. “Oh, trust me. I know your brother. He's a jerk.”

A woman dressed for the office pulled up behind her. “Excuse me. Are you going in?”

Nina's nerves were stretched so tightly, she wanted to scream, but she moved aside. “Go ahead. Sorry.”

“Thank you.”

“He didn't have to humiliate me like that in front of everyone, José. I've been working for him for four years!”

She took advantage of a break in the fl ow, swiped her card, and pushed her way past the barrier. José was nice and she knew he meant well, but really, “rules are rules” didn't make what Manny did any easier. At least he didn't use the “this is no way to run a restaurant” line on her that Manny always did. She hated that. She looked up at José, the man of secret sorrows, kindness accompanying the pain in his eyes. How could two brothers be so different? “And you tell him that I wasn't hungover. I was really sick!”

Starting for the train, she hesitated. José deserved better than that. And Manny should know what he really did back there. She turned back, grabbed the tubing of the bars that separated her from scruffy José. “I'm pregnant.”

His face froze.

She grated out a laugh. “Yeah. This is one of the first mornings I haven't thrown up.”

José looked down. The Quiet One.

She waited, and when no words came—“Okay. I've had enough for today.” She held up Bubbles again. “Thank you. You'd better get back to your boss man.”

Why was she taking this out on him?

Just get home, Nina. Make a cup of tea, slip in a DVD of Fred Astaire, and try to make it through until Wednesday.

José knew he
couldn't let her go. Something inside him pricked his brain and he shouted, “Wait! Wait, Nina!”

She turned back.

“So what now?” he asked.

Her lips turned down. “Guess I have to figure that out, right?”

“You want to talk about it?”

She paused as if she were considering whether or not to pick up the earth and place it on her shoulders. She passed the Metro Pass to him through the bars. “They don't need a waitress; why would they need a chef ?”

Good. Good, good, good. He had no idea where she was going, but he had all day to be gone from the restaurant. At least until the lunch rush was over. If he was going to anger Manny, he might as well go all out. The result would be the same either way.

José took the card, swiped it, and joined her.

The prep work was finished. All Manny had to do was find somebody to run the line. Simple.

Manny figured he
just needed to cool off. He fell back into his leather desk chair and massaged his temples with the thumb and middle finger of his left hand. Staring at the jockey silks, he began to calculate how many years it would be before he could hire somebody else to run this place while he threw himself full time into racing. Not soon enough, apparently, judging by the headache knocking on his brain.

Pieter's shadow fell across his desk, his face stretched with panic. “José left.”

“What do you mean ‘left'?” He jumped from his desk, tore up the stairs and back out onto the sidewalk. Nothing there but the construction crew marring the late morning with the jarring sounds of their equipment. Despite that, Fifth Avenue never seemed so deserted.