Under the Surface (11 page)

Her mother pulled a dented metal pan from the oven. “Not tonight,” she said as she pulled back foil to reveal slabs of something edged in purple with seeds scattered in the middle green flesh simmered in red sauce.

“What's that?” Eve asked.

“Baked eggplant,” her mother said in a harried voice. “Your father had another checkup with the cardiologist. His cholesterol is still too high. The doctor recommended a vegetarian diet.”

Eve could imagine what her father thought about that, but since he was completely unable to boil water, he was at his wife's mercy when it came to eating. “I thought for sure he'd invite Cesar,” Eve called from the dining room as she opened the drawers in the buffet to get the place mats.

“How is Cesar?”

“Struggling with algebra. Otherwise, fine.” She thought it best not to mention the altercation with Lyle Murphy, at least not until her mother had dinner on the table. The eggplant had reduced her normally unflappable mother to muttered almost-curses.

Eve set the table, including the serving dishes her mother set in the pass-through window. The transition from the casserole dish to the serving dish rendered the baked eggplant an almost unrecognizable glop, but the steamed broccoli doused in lemon looked okay, as did the rice. Her mother walked down the hall to her husband's office. As Eve took her seat, she heard her mother say, “Supper's ready.”

She got a quick kiss from her father before he sat down. A quiet grace, they passed the food, and her mother led off the conversation. “How's business, Evie?”

Her mother's tone was polite, almost completely covering the tension underneath, but Eve knew what it cost her to even ask. “Steady,” she replied as her fork sank into a slice of eggplant she could only describe as mush. The cheese sprinkled on top had the texture of oily paste. “Is this mozzarella?” she asked, distracted.

“Fat-free,” her mother said, an edge to her voice.

Moving right along.
“I hired another bartender,” she said quickly. The eggplant needed something, anything, so she looked around for the saltshaker. It was missing from the table, so she settled for a generous sprinkling of pepper.

“I didn't know you planned to hire another bartender,” her mother said.

“He's a replacement, not an add. I had to fire Brent,” she said, using energetic motions to section off another tiny piece of eggplant. Maybe if she actively feigned eating motions she'd convince her mother some of the food had actually gone into her mouth.

“Not working out?”

“He was working out too well,” Eve said. “I caught him in the back of a truck with a customer, so I fired him. The last thing I need is the bar getting a reputation as some kind of stud service.”

Her mother's lips tightened, but for once Eve wasn't sure if her displeasure stemmed from Eve's irregular job or from the mushy main course. Her mother pointedly looked at her father. Her father mournfully considered his unpalatable dinner, and Eve steeled her spine for one of three possible discussion tracks: Lack of Husband Prospects, Late-Night Hours in an Unsafe Environment, or …

“I saw Lee McCullough last week at the SCC Board meeting. He said he'd be interested in seeing your resume for a position in their marketing department.”

Lee McCullough was the VP of HR at Lancaster Life Insurance, so this was Door Number Three: Getting a Better Job. Eve kept her tone bright and positive. “Dad, that's really kind of him, but I don't need an interview, or career counseling, or a job. I have Eye Candy.”

Her mother's face tightened. “This is a good job, with benefits, and a career track. Lancaster Life is growing. They're actually hiring, in this economy.”

“They're hiring for jobs in a gray-walled cube, with people wearing business casual for tedious meetings, working over a computer all day. I'm not going back to that.” She'd go back to the Met before chaining herself to a cube again.

“Why not, Eve?” her mother said gently. “You'd have a steady salary, regular hours, some security.”

Her parents grew up in what was euphemistically described as extreme poverty. She understood her parents' drive for secure, stable lives for their children, knew where it came from. Benefits would be nice, but she was young and healthy, for now. “Mom, there is no security. Two years ago Lancaster Life laid off five percent of their work force, and the economy was better then.”

“I'm sure Lee would protect you if that were to happen again.”

“Lee would fire his own mother if the board of directors told him to.”

True or not, this sharp statement earned her a quelling look from her father. “It can't hurt to talk to him.”

This was true. He might need a location for a holiday party, or even think of Eye Candy for team gatherings, but she wouldn't deceive her father into thinking she was going for a job interview when she really intended to market her business to a member of the SCC board. When Eye Candy opened two months ago, Eve's efforts to help the East Side's most vulnerable workers became the weak spot in her parents' persistent determination to shift her from provocative to respectable. She played this card without hesitation.

“If I shut down Eye Candy now, I'm out five years of savings. My credit will need a decade to recover, and who would hire the people I currently employ?”

“With a proper job you'd be able to offer internships to SCC clients,” he said.

“Maybe, Dad.
Maybe
if I'm in a management role,
maybe
one a year, probably unpaid, and they'd probably go to college students. Right now I employ people who support some, if not all, of their extended families on what I pay them.”

“Eve, we never dreamed you'd make as much as you have out of working as a cocktail waitress,” her mother started.

She committed one of the Webber cardinal sins and interrupted a parent. “
I
dreamed it, Mom. Ten years ago.
My
concept,
my
business,
my
building,
my
employees, funneling money into
our
neighborhood, all of it something I made real. We need small businesses on the East Side.”

A sharp look from both parents, then a few moments of silence while her mother cut her bright green broccoli into tiny florets. “You had your fun when you were younger, Eve, but you're almost twenty-eight. It's time to think about something different than nightlife and fun.”

Nothing new would come from this conversation, so she simply said, “I appreciate your concern, Mom,” and changed the subject. “Dad, I talked to Cesar a couple of nights ago. He's having trouble with algebra, but he's going to come in for a little tutoring. I think he just needs a review on the order of operations and some one-on-one practice to boost his confidence.”

“That's a relief,” her father said, clearly as glad to change the subject as she was. “You're doing a good thing tutoring him.”

“I'm happy to do it,” Eve said.

There was a moment of silence while everyone bowed to the inevitable and forced down a mouthful of eggplant. “You could open a flower shop,” her mother said.

“Two have gone under in the last five years,” Eve replied, clinging to her patience with her fingernails.

“I heard East High is having trouble filling the two open math positions.”

Students at Eve's alma mater had a reputation for breaking first-year teachers within a month or two. The graduation rate was the lowest in the tri-county area. Resigned, she gave up on the eggplant, angled her knife and fork together across her plate, and said, “One, I don't have a teaching certificate. Two, I need a major in math to teach it in this state. Three, I don't want to teach high school in any state.”

“Then elementary school. You'd have summers off when babies came,” her mother said.

“Let it go, Mom,” she said, resigned. “Please.”

They ate in silence for a few moments, then Eve cleared the table and loaded the dishwasher. Only when they sat down to frozen yogurt topped with strawberries did her mother circle back to Door Number One. “Are you seeing anyone?” she said brightly.

Just a tall, mysterious, newly hired bartender, and for the most part, in her dreams. “Not really,” she equivocated. “No one serious anyway.”

“Evie, dear, you don't really have time…”

The screen door squeaked, then the front door opened. “Hello?” Caleb called.

Thank God and all his archangels. “In here,” Eve said as she jumped to her feet. “Have you eaten?” Normally she'd make Caleb get his own food, but escape, if only to the kitchen, seemed prudent at the moment. Her neck felt as tight as Chad's had in the Jeep.

Her brother skirted the dining room and came straight into the kitchen. Like her, Caleb had inherited their father's wavy black hair and green eyes, and he'd kept the muscular, rangy build from his college basketball days. “Hey, sis. Quinn and I split a pizza. What's for dessert?”

“Frozen yogurt and crushed strawberries.”

He lifted his brows, then looked at the barely touched pan of eggplant congealing in the red sauce. “What the hell is that?” he asked incredulously.

“Language, Caleb!” Her mother's voice came from the dining room.

Eve lowered her voice. “Dad's cholesterol is still too high. Mom's gone vegetarian.”

A longer look from her brother while she scooped frozen yogurt and spooned mashed strawberries into the bowl, then he said, “Based on the way you're attacking that tub of fake ice cream I'd say they had you roasted.”

She slid him a glance. “Dad talked to Lee McCullough at Lancaster Life about a job for me.”

“And?”

“And I don't want to develop communication strategies for a mutual insurance company,” she said as she snapped the top on the container of strawberries.

Her mother's lowered voice filtered through the pass-through. “… should be watching out for Cesar, not dragging him into … admire her initiative, but … isn't going anywhere.”

Caleb gave her a wry smile, then opened the fridge for her and said, “I've got your back, sister dear,” then swung through the door to the dining room. Eve put the yogurt back in the freezer, then followed him. Her brother waited until she had a spoonful of strawberries in her mouth, then said, “So, Mom, who's pregnant?”

Eve glared at him, but the look slid right past their mother, who'd brightened right up. “Melissa Reyes just had her baby boy, and Trina Martin is due any day now. It's her first. Poor thing, she's so uncomfortable in this heat.”

“That's wonderful,” Caleb said, smiling right at her. “They must be so happy. Children are such a blessing, and the first one's really a special experience for the parents.”

Goddammit, Caleb.

She made her escape an hour later but waited beside her brother's Mercedes until Caleb emerged, a plastic container of red sauce and purple goop in one hand.

“Thanks for all your help in there,” she said.

He shrugged. “You're not going to change their minds, Evie, so you might as well have a little fun with it.” With complete disregard for the supple, tan leather, he tossed the container onto the passenger seat. “After the way they grew up, Mom and Dad have a finely honed sense of what's right and proper. I'm not saying you should spend your life trying to meet their expectations, but you have to understand where they're coming from.”

“I know all about what
respectable people do,
” she said. “I grew up respectably. I am respectable!”

“Do you want their approval?”

“No,” she said simply. “If I did I would have quit the Met ten years ago. I want their acceptance. The same acceptance they give you.”

And, if she were honest, maybe their approval …

He gave her a slightly twisted, very un-Caleb smile. “Acceptance isn't all it's cracked up to be, Evie, because it usually means you're going up in flames on the pyre of expectations. You could get married. That might help.”

“You're older.
You
get married.”

He ignored her. “I missed the boyfriend discussion. You seeing anyone? Quinn asked about you again.”

“I'm not going out with your partner, much less marrying him.”

“He's a good guy,” Caleb said mildly.

“Blond laid-back ex-surfer dudes are not my type.”

“Eve, just define some parameters for me and I'll solve all your problems with Mom and Dad. Every unattached male at the firm's Christmas party last year asked me for your number, and a couple of the married ones too.”

With Eye Candy's plans already set in motion, she'd served as her brother's hostess for the party to make connections, and would do so again this year. She rolled her eyes. “Men are dogs. Barking, rutting dogs.”

He didn't deny it. “What are you looking for? An intellectual property attorney making half a million a year? A level-headed mediator leaving a trail of peace and calm wherever he goes? A public defender on a crusade against crooked cops?”

Completely unbidden, the image of Chad, his eyes dark and heavy-lidded as he watched her grind against him, bloomed in her mind. Tall, with boxer's hands and broad shoulders, and something dark lurking in his serious hazel eyes. The questions he asked about her, about Eye Candy, like he really saw her, really liked her.

“What he does for a living doesn't matter. When I do start looking seriously, I want someone who sees me for me, not as a piece of ass to bang for a few weeks, or a trophy wife to go with his car and his house and his big-screen TV.”

“That's going to considerably limit my candidate pool,” Caleb said wryly.

“I
have
met your colleagues,” she said, then eased up a little. “Stop being such a big brother. You've got lots of time because I'm not looking for anyone now,” she said, then pointed at the eggplant leftovers steaming up the Tupperware plastic interior. “You don't want to eat that.”