are popular. Ninety percent of the guys have some kind of
facial hair and would look better if they shaved it off.
During lunch, Marty generally joins a group of card
sharps for few hands of Spades. Spencer and I sit together
and shoot the shit with anyone who cares to join us.
He wants to be a chef and is taking classes at some sort
of culinary academy; I want to be something, too, but I
don’t know what.
NITA WORKS IN THE front office, where she doesn’t really
fit in with the others who are ten to twenty years older, so
she generally has lunch with me and Spencer. (I think she
has a crush on him.)
I must admit I find one of Nita’s office mates, Ariel
Donatello, attractive enough to imagine myself boning
her. She’s the hot redhead I’ve flirted with a few times.
Nita calls her a cougar and says all I’d have to do is say the
word and she’d do me like there’s no tomorrow.
Nita could be right.
But she also laughs when she sees me think about it.
Like she can read my perverted mind. Not that I would
actually cheat on Tanya.
10
Happily?
WE’RE ALL SITTING AT the Lakeside Cafe in Shoreline
Park, drinking coffee, and watching a lone windsurfer.
This whole area used to be a garbage dump. Now it’s a
golf course and a man-made lake.
Marty tilts his head toward Spencer, and we all see that
he’s down in the dumps, as usual. We close our eyes and
shake our heads, then return our attention to the
struggling windsurfer.
Marty claps Spencer on the shoulder.
“Cheer up, Dude,” he says.
Spencer ignores him.
I look over at Tanya and she’s not listening either. I
wonder what she’s thinking.
“Hey, I know,” Marty says. “You want us to fix you up
with a blind date?”
The windsurfer mounts his board, positions his sail,
starts to move, loses his balance, falls back into the water.
“Nita, you’ve got a sister, don’t you?”
AL RISKE
“She’s married.”
For better or worse, there’s not much wind on this
sunny April morning. We sip our coffee and watch as our
would-be surfer gets up, falls down, begins again.
Marty still thinks he could be on to something.
“Happily married?” he asks.
Nita laughs.
“No.”
“Well, then?”
That gets her. She laughs so hard she starts to snort,
which always embarrasses her. The kid likes it, though.
She’s got little Kayla with her today. The girl is so shy she
will bury her face in her mother’s side if you so much as
look at her, but right now she’s perched on a bright pink
booster seat—same pink as Nita’s bob—with nowhere to
hide. We all do our best not to let her catch us looking at
her.
“I’m sure Spencer could do a lot better,” Nita says.
“Him? Are you kidding? He needs our help.”
Spencer finally glances at us, clearly annoyed.
“Thanks a lot,” he says.
Then he looks out at the lake again and so do we.
No doubt we’re all thinking the same thing: More wind,
please.
12
Seriously?
TANYA AND I ARE at the Starbucks next to our apartment
building. It’s one of the last ones with overstuffed
armchairs, and we’re sitting in them, drinking tall mochas,
while everyone else shifts uncomfortably in their
hardwood counterparts. Tanya is wearing a black leather
biker’s jacket and a pretty polka dot dress—a look that I
love—and I’m happy to have some time with her away
from her business books.
She says, “I’m sorry, Luke, but I want you to move
out.”
“What? Why?”
Tanya shakes her head, then hooks her long black hair
back behind her ears.
“A lot of reasons,” she says. “Too many to name.”
“Just give me one, then.”
She sighs. A big heavy sigh, too.
“You don’t take me seriously,” she says.
“That’s not true.”
AL RISKE
“It is, Luke. It is true. You don’t take anything
seriously.”
“So you shouldn’t feel bad,” I say.
She stares at me.
“I mean, if that’s true, you shouldn’t take it personally,
right?”
She continues to stare at me. It does not feel good.
“This is really bad timing,” I say.
“What would be a good time to break up?”
“I don’t know,” I say, “maybe when I was gainfully
employed. You know, not…”
“What?”
“Not the day I get laid off.”
She looks me in the eyes.
“I’m not joking!” I say. “Me, Spencer, Marty . . . We’re
all goners.”
Tanya pries the plastic lid off her mocha, which I now
realize is black coffee because, unlike me, she hates
mocha. She takes a sip.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I had no idea.”
“So I can stay?”
She shakes her head.
At first I think this is one of her semi-exasperated,
what-am-I-going-to-do-with-you? head shakes. It isn’t.
14
Home Again
MY PARENTS SEEM GENUINELY glad to see me when I turn
up at their door, a little less glad when I ask if I can stay.
“Tanya and I broke up,” I say by way of explanation.
We’re in the kitchen and Mom is pouring me a glass of
lemonade, with ice, because it’s ninety-seven in the shade.
She sets it on the counter and hugs me.
“Good,” she says.
“Good?”
“She doesn’t deserve you.”
“Also, I lost my job.”
Dad says, “Laid off?”
I nod.
“You’ll find something better.”
“For sure,” I say.
Almost anything would be better.
Dad picks up the lemonade, takes a big gulp. I look at
Mom.
“You want one, too?” she asks.
AL RISKE
MY OLD ROOM IS the new study, but my parents let me
stay in the guest room, which is great.
I don’t have a lot of stuff, just some clothes I bring
over in two Hefty bags. All the stuff in the apartment—
the bed, sofa, table and chairs, TV, books, and stereo—
belong to Tanya.
Tanya is a serious person who has been busy collecting
the essentials, the basics, and the nice-to-have items I tend
to take for granted or simply do without.
I own some books—I’m not a cretin—but they’re
already (still) here, in boxes in the garage.
16
New Jobs
SPENCER ANSWERS AN AD offering training in European-
style cooking and gets himself hired at this fancy eatery,
Bistro 227, on Santana Row, home to a collection of
upscale shops and restaurants in San Jose. He introduces
me to Patrick, the sous-chef, who tells me they have an
opening in pantry
.
“Where’s that?” I ask.
He points over his shoulder and goes on talking.
I’m thinking “Pantry” is a sister restaurant or maybe a
small town I’ve never heard of. Finally I catch on. It’s the
part of the kitchen where salads, appetizers and desserts
are assembled.
I agree to take the job and he puts me to work right
away.
I change into the white uniform and hat the restaurant
provides (in the closest approximation of my size I can
find). The cooks all bring their own knives, and Patrick
suggests I do the same, but there are a couple of beat up
AL RISKE
ten-inch chef’s knives that belong to the bistro. He finds
one and shows me how to sharpen it on a well-oiled
sandstone block, then sets me to dicing onions.
LATER, HE SHOWS ME how to peel and devein prawns, skin
and gut calamari, clean and crack crab . . .
I like knowing how to do these things.
The kitchen is small and hot—up to 110 degrees on the
line where Spencer works, grilling snapper, shark, sea bass,
and sand dabs, but it’s not so bad in pantry.
18
Almost Half Human
SPENCER’S CAR IS IN the shop, again, and he’s trying to
save enough money to buy something more dependable.
I’ve never owned a car—I’ve always gotten around on my
bike or the bus—but I figure it’s time to get myself
motorized. I’ve got my eye on a sweet Suzuki but haven’t
put enough aside yet.
In the meantime, Valley Transit gets us to our new
jobs.
We get on the bus this one time and at first it’s quiet,
which is great because I, for one, feel like Jose Cuervo
kicked me in the head with his blue agave boots. Then we
hear this fat chick across the aisle talking to her skinny
friend:
“She started sayin’ a bunch a shit about Sherry, so I
told her she’d better watch her fuckin’ mouth ’cuz Sherry’s
my friend, but she kept on. So I told Sherry what she said.
That bitch is gonna get her ass kicked if she don’t shut
up.”
AL RISKE
They get off at the next stop and it’s quiet again for
about half a block. Then there’s this voice from clear in
the back:
“I said, ‘What, you gonna hit me again? Does it make
you feel like a man?’”
It’s a woman on a flip phone.
“Ya see, I broke up with him,” she says, “but he come
beggin’, come crawlin’. So I took him back. Then he hit
me again. I said, ‘That’s the last time, boy, and I left.’”
The woman pulls the cord, the bus stops, and she gets
off, still talking.
I CLOSE MY EYES, rub my face, and try to hold my skull
together. I’m pretty sure it has a crack somehow and I
don’t want my brain to ooze out. It’s quiet for about thirty
seconds, until we get to the next stop.
TWO GUYS GET ON, one younger, one older. They sit
across the aisle from each other, silent as monks, but
then…
“I don’t go to school anymore,” the kid says. “I’m too
smart for school.”
The older guy isn’t sure he heard right.
“What’s that?” he asks.
20
THEN WE’D BE HAPPY
“I said I’m too smart.”
“Too smart to go or too smart not to?”
“Too smart to go. They can’t teach me anything.”
The kid starts talking about this construction job he’s
got and all the money he’s going to make. The older guy
can’t believe it.
“You think you’re worth that much?”
“Sure I am. You should’ve seen me yesterday, climbin’
on that roof. It was so steep I slid down, had to grab hold
of the gutter. I was just hangin’ there and started yellin’.
They had to come put up a ladder so I could get down.”
Spencer and I look at each other and shake our heads.
AS WE GET OFF the bus, there’s this grizzled old guy in a
trench coat and a fresh-faced brunette in a floaty summer
dress who’s trying to get past all of us who have just
flooded the sidewalk.
The old man says, “Hello, there, how are you?”
The girl glances at him, mumbles “Okay,” and tries to
pick her way through the crowd.
“You’re a real cutie, you know that?”
The old codger is grinning like a fool. We try to get out
of the girl’s way.
“You sure are a cutie.”
21
AL RISKE
She ignores his repeated praise and darts between
Spencer and me.
“Well, go to hell,” the old guy says. “I’m almost half
human.”
22
Chance Meeting
SO IT’S SUNDAY AFTERNOON and I’m hanging out at this
place in Mountain View where Tanya and I used to
hang—the cafe upstairs at Books Inc.
Tanya comes up the stairs, her thick black mane
Damn! I love that look.
She’s also wearing heels that make her legs look even
longer, her butt even rounder.
I can’t help but smile and I’m about to wave when I see
there’s this guy behind her and now he has his hand on
her waist. There are flecks of gray in his short black hair
and I can tell he’s rich by the way his clothes fit and how
soft they look.
I watch them order sandwiches and soup. He pays, of
course.
Tanya starts to move in my direction and sees me
sitting at what was always our favorite table. She flashes a
AL RISKE
quick half-smile and turns around, steers her new man in
the opposite direction.
She needn’t have bothered. I’m leaving.
24
Happiness Lost
A HARD MATTRESS IN a dark room.
A dream of happiness lost.
Wet sheets, cold air.
The Dinner Shift
WE WORK THE DINNER shift, which means we come in at
three to get things ready.
I peel shrimp, clean calamari, tear lettuce, and boil
pasta to a minute shy of perfection. Then I drain and cool
the noodles before twisting them into single-serving
bundles that I set into a tub, separating the layers with
damp towels. Later, when an order comes in, all the cook
has to do is grab a bundle, toss it into a wire basket, drop
that into boiling water, and a minute later it’s done. Just
add sauce.
At four-thirty, the cooks sit down to eat in the dining
room, a short break before the doors open at five.
Saturday night is the busiest.
Servers bring tickets to the sous chef, who calls out
orders to the line cooks, starting with whatever will take
the longest to cook and going down the list from there.
Getting all dishes to a given table at the same time is
impressive enough. Soon there are dozens of tables. (More
THEN WE’D BE HAPPY
than a hundred meals will be served over the course of the
evenin
g.)
I NOTICE THE CHEF has a collection of burns on his arms
where he has reached into the oven too quickly and
carelessly. He gets irate if plates sit too long before the
server picks them up. Too long under the heating lamps
and sauces get skins on them.
Servers also bring tickets to me over in pantry. I
assemble salads and crab cocktails. I shuck oysters and
clams and send them out on beds of crushed ice. I slice
the cheesecake and scoop the gelato.
The last ticket comes in at ten o’clock. But nobody ever
gets kicked out and diners sometimes stay as late as
midnight. Meanwhile, we shut down the ovens, the grills,
and the steam table, put everything away, and clean our
stations. I have to wait in case any stragglers want dessert,
but I can do that from the bar with the rest of the staff.
27
Messed Up
THE THING ABOUT ME that’s kind of screwed up is, well,
I’m not unfriendly but…
I’m not that interested in meeting new people, either.
Except girls. I like girls.
Except when I don’t.
Except when they want more from me than I can give
them.
I don’t like it when people expect things from me. Girl
or guy—doesn’t matter. Expectations are hell.
Don’t get me wrong. I keep my word and all that. If I
say I’ll be there I’ll be there. The expectations I’m talking
about are unspoken. Which means maybe I don’t even
know about them, see?
I don’t read minds.
Or maybe I know somehow but I never signed up for
that—whatever it is.
Don’t try to hold me to something I never agreed to in
the first place. That’s messed up.
In Awe
IT’S A SUNDAY MORNING. Not much of a crowd has come
into the restaurant for brunch. Spencer and I are standing