Way to Go (10 page)

“Yeah, sounds good.” I kept my head down, concentrating intently on the cheese I was grating.

“So I called Kierce,” she said.

“Yeah, I heard.” I turned away to grab a bowl from the shelf. “He called me this morning. That's cool.”

When I turned back, she was looking at me with her head tilted sideways as if she was trying to figure something out. Before she could say anything, JP called out her order, and she took off to the dining room.

After we closed for the night, I was cleaning up my workstation and she came back to see me again. “So Kierce and I kind of have plans tonight.”

“Yeah, no sweat. I'll ask Maisie or Denise to give me a ride home.”

“Don't be crazy. I'll totally still drive you. I just won't be able to hang out for long.”

I shrugged. “If you really don't mind.”

“Of course I don't mind. You know I love hanging out with you after work.”

Before driving me home, she drove down the hill to the beach parking lot to have a smoke. I didn't say much, just stared out the car window at the lighthouse in the distance.

“What's bothering you, big guy?” she finally said.

“Nothing.”

“C'mon, D. I'm not stupid. You've been ignoring me all day, and now you're acting like the saddest little boy on earth.”

“Okay, fine. I just don't understand this thing with Kierce. It just came out of nowhere. What the hell do you see in him anyway?”

She pulled back and looked at me with surprise. “Okay, hold on a minute. What do you mean, what do I see in him? I thought he was one of your best friends.”

“He is,” I said. “But it's not like you guys have anything in common.”
Not like you and me
.

“It's not as if I'm
interested
in him,” she said. “It's not like it's some big
thing
, or whatever. I told you last night, I just think he's cool and funny and cute.”

“Cute, great.”

She turned her head and blew smoke out of the window. “Yeah, cute. I hate to break it to you, Danny, but you're not the only cute guy in Deep Cove. Don't tell me you're jealous.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“It doesn't mean anything! I just wondered—shit, I don't know—I kind of thought maybe you weren't interested, you know, in girls.”

“What?”

“I'm sorry, I just—it felt like—I don't know. I didn't think anything was going to happen between us. But then that night on the hill, I really thought maybe you were going to try to kiss me, and then you didn't, and it got me thinking that you might be gay…”

I stared at her with no idea what to say. My brain scrambled, trying to find the right words. She made it sound so normal, like being gay was just an everyday thing. I felt my heart drop into my stomach, and I had a powerful urge to tell her everything. My brain immediately fought against it, screaming,
No! Tell her she's wrong
!
Nobody can know
! My brain won.

“Well, you were wrong,” I said. I knew I sounded cold and mean, but I didn't care. “Maybe some guys don't think you're very hot. I know I don't. Maybe that's hard for you to believe.”

She flinched as if I'd slapped her. “Of course it isn't,” she said. “I don't think I'm perfect or anything. I don't understand. I didn't think you'd care about the Kierce thing, I just thought it might be fun…”

“You know what?” I said. “Fuck you, Lisa. I'm not some stupid faggot you can just toy around with, okay?”

Neither of us said anything for a moment. She just sat there staring at me with her mouth hanging open. I got out of the car, slammed the door behind me and ran into the shadows of the sand dunes as fast as I could, dropping to hide behind some tall grass. I heard her car door open. Then she was yelling.

“Danny! Come on! I'm sorry! Really!”

I didn't move. I didn't want her to drive me home, and I didn't want her pity. Most of all, I wanted to be alone. I didn't know why I'd exploded at her. I felt like I was losing my mind.

I was happy that she didn't try to find me. I felt stupid enough already without being chased through the dunes. Finally, after about ten minutes, I heard her get back into her car and drive away. I backtracked through the dunes to the parking lot, walked up to the road and made my way home. It took me over an hour, and when I finally got there, the lights were out and everyone was asleep.

THE NEXT MORNING
, I woke up in a foul, depressed mood. I couldn't believe that Lisa, of all people, was now on the
Danny must be gay
bandwagon. At the same time, I felt like a complete idiot for freaking out at her. I'd been pretty nasty. I doubted she'd ever want to talk to me again. She'd probably tell Kierce everything, and I'd be a laughing stock.

I was lying on the couch wondering if I should just bite the bullet, put together a hobo sack and run away from home, when Alma came in and flopped into the chair next to me.

“Danny, why don't you have a girlfriend?”

What the hell? Had someone formed a committee to harass me? I sat up and looked at her. “Where did that come from?”

“I dunno, I was just wondering if you were sweet on anyone. You know, like Warren Beatty and Natalie Wood in
Splendor in the Grass
. Although hopefully not
totally
like that, because Natalie Wood's character went bonkers. Besides, you aren't nearly as handsome as Warren Beatty.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“Hey, don't take it personally. Warren Beatty was a total hottie. So why don't you? Have a girlfriend, that is.”

I closed my eyes and made a face. I wished I had a real answer for that one.

“I dunno, Al. I guess I haven't found the right girl yet.”

“Huh. Well, don't you think you should be looking? You're not getting any younger.”

“Alma! I'm only seventeen. Why does it matter?”

“I told you, I was just thinking about it. Anyway, I think I might have some ideas about what kind of girl you should go out with.”

“Oh yeah? Fill me in.” At this point, I was willing to take love lessons from anyone.

She chewed on her bottom lip. “Well, she'd probably have kind of a Rita Hayworth thing going on. Thick red hair, pale skin.”

“Okay,” I said. “Sounds good. What else?”

“Well, she'd probably dress kind of like Annie Hall.”

“That sounds like a decent combo,” I said.

“You think so? Because I'm pretty sure she just pulled into the driveway in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.”

I jumped up and looked out the window. Sure enough, Old Bessie was parked in the driveway, and Lisa was sitting behind the wheel.

“Alma! How long has she been out there?”

“Just a few minutes.”

“Thanks a lot for telling me.” I headed to the front door and turned around before going outside. “By the way, she's not my girlfriend.”

“Well, you never know. ‘This could be the start of a beautiful friendship.' ”

I walked up to Old Bessie and knocked on the window. I half expected that Lisa had come just to tell me off, so I was relieved when she smiled up at me and pointed to the seat next to her. I got into the car.

“Hey,” I said.

“Listen, D,” she said, talking fast. “I know I hurt your feelings last night, and I'd feel really bad if we couldn't still be friends and I'm really sorry and can we please just forget that it ever happened?

“You didn't hurt my feelings,” I lied. “You just kind of took me by surprise.”

“Well, if I—I don't know—offended your manhood, or anything like that, I didn't mean to insinuate anything. It was stupid of me.”

I didn't say anything. She reached over and put her hand on my arm, and I looked at her reluctantly. She pulled her sunglasses down her nose so I could see her eyes. She looked really sincere, which made me feel even worse about freaking out at her.

“Can we please be friends again?” she said. “I don't know what I'd do if I had to spend the rest of the summer not hanging out with you.”

“You don't have to apologize,” I said. “I was a total asshole. It's just that you aren't the first person who's said that to me recently—about being gay. I'm pretty sick of it.”

“Hey, I totally get it. I shouldn't have been so quick to jump to conclusions. Listen, let's start fresh and pretend that last night never happened.”

I nodded. “Sounds good.”

“Awesome!” she said. “Now that we're best friends again, I have a great idea. Why don't we make it our mission for the rest of the summer to find you an awesome girl?”

“Sure,” I said, trying to sound enthusiastic, but wishing I had the balls to tell her the truth.

“You know,” she said, “you really don't have to worry about me not hanging out with you anymore. This Kierce thing—it's just a summer fling.”

FOURTEEN

“If you know how to cook, you will never go hungry,” JP said, “and you will always have work, wherever you go. The world needs chefs like it needs carpenters. Governments might collapse, and aliens might invade, but people will always want to eat good food.”

He turned to the stove and flicked on a burner, grabbed some olive oil and swirled it into a pan, and followed it up with some garlic.

“If we had fresh chilis, I'd use those, but we don't, so we'll improvise. Get me that red bottle on that shelf over there,” he directed. I grabbed the plastic squeeze bottle and passed it to him. He held it up and showed me the label, a rooster surrounded by Asian characters. “Sriracha sauce,” he said. “Chilis, vinegar, garlic and salt. Delicious. Every kitchen needs some. Good on eggs, good in a marinade, you name it. But today, we make pasta
aglio e olio
.”

Sree rotcha sauce. Pasta ally-oh ee oh-lee-oh. I was getting used to hearing lots of names for things that I doubted I'd remember, let alone be able to spell.

He squeezed some of the sauce into the pan. Then he reached into the fridge for a container full of linguine that I'd cooked and oiled that morning, grabbed a handful and tossed it in the pan. He poured in some more oil, shook it all around and slid it onto two small plates. Then he finished them with some cheese and handed one to me.

“Mmm,” I said, my mouth full. “Spicy. Good.”

“About fifty cents a plate. Another reason a cook never goes hungry. If you know what you're doing, you can make delicious food for very little money. Even a chef without two dimes to rub together can eat well, always.”

I was still spending a lot of time chopping and peeling, but JP had been teaching me more stuff every day. He'd gradually introduced me to actual cooking by letting me try my hand at pasta.

“There are two things to remember when cooking pasta,” he said. “The water should be as salty as the sea, and you must never overcook it. It should be
al dente
. Firm, not hard. The mouth should feel it, should need to chew it.”

Every couple of days, he'd teach me something new. He showed me how to make a medium-poached egg, his idea of the perfect food. We made pastry, chilling the ingredients first and then working quickly so the end result would be flaky and light. We picked fresh herbs from the pots he'd planted out back, and he showed me which ones to use with which foods. One day, we butchered a side of beef into various steaks and roasts, and then roasted the leftover bits and bones and made a rich stock.

But it was when he began to demonstrate sauces that I finally fell completely in love with cooking. I had a hard time believing that there were so many thousands of ways to complement food with pan reductions and vinaigrettes and marinades. I slowly whisked lemon juice into butter and egg yolks, and stirred in fragrant chopped dill for smooth, rich hollandaise sauce. Fresh figs and balsamic vinegar, cooked over very low heat for a long time, created a sweet and tart syrup that could be drizzled over goat cheese and fresh greens, or pooled underneath golden-seared scallops. I opened cans of Italian plum tomatoes and crushed them up with my hands, threw them into a pot with some sautéed onion and garlic, and let the whole mess simmer with a handful of fresh basil and oregano for marinara sauce that I imagined smelled and tasted like the Italian countryside.

Cooking created endless possibilities. I began to realize that you could travel the world without leaving your kitchen.

It was the first time I had ever been really good at something. JP told me that I was a natural, and I actually believed him. The more he showed me, the more I wanted to learn. As I watched him confidently throw down dozens of perfectly cooked plates during one busy shift after another, it began to dawn on me that I could picture myself in his shoes. I belonged in the kitchen.

“How did you become a chef?” I asked JP one day when he was showing me how to make a compound butter by mashing cheese, herbs and butter into a paste and rolling it in plastic wrap.

“I did it the hard way,” he said. “I started off where you are.
Lower
than where you are, and I worked my way up through the kitchen. I couldn't afford to go to school, so I had to pay my dues in the trenches.”

“There are schools?”

“Sure. These days there are lots of them. In my opinion, the best one in the country is in Montreal. The Atwater Culinary Institute. They have some great teachers.” He stopped what he was doing and looked at me. “Have you been thinking about becoming a chef?”

I imagined living in a city like Montreal, wearing a beret and a striped scarf and biking through the old city to a school full of cute guys with French accents. There was bound to be an endless supply of exotic groceries, not to mention hundreds of fantastic restaurants where I could work to pay my way through school.

“Yeah,” I said. “I've been thinking that I might want to be a chef. Like you.”