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“I just want to go to the restaurant,” I say, watching people brush sand off their belongings, parents trying to corral their sunburnt children.
“You came all the way here. I’m excited about the meal too, but there’s more to this place, don’t you think?”
I don’t say anything.
Eventually we head back to the restaurant. I regret it a little when I see that Emma’s not at the hostess stand because I liked how it felt to talk to her the other day. But I don’t regret it enough to go back out into the world. The new girl at the hostess stand gives me a strange look when I say I’ll wait three hours for my reserved table, which I guess is a reasonable reaction. I watch the servers go up to the kitchen window, watch the looks on people’s faces when they get their food, when they take their first bite.
Suddenly, I’m thinking about all I didn’t know about Felix’s life. What he ate at the Israeli restaurant, for example, the meal that made him want to come here.
“Endive salad with creamy yuzu dressing, followed by three-chili shrimp scampi,” Felix cuts in. “For dessert: white chocolate gelato with fresh pomegranate and a passionfruit drizzle.”
I sigh loudly, which is another tactic I’ve had to develop to stifle the urge to respond to him in public. Hallucination or ghost, I’m not sure whether I should strictly believe anything he says since he’s died. If they’re somehow his memories or just what I think his memories would sound like. Easier just to sigh.
The hours go by, surprisingly easy. I don’t have to talk to anyone, don’t have to interact with Dad’s business partners, don’t have to force jokes so that Mom and everyone else will believe I’m okay. I can just look at food, and people, and a world unlike the one I’ll eventually go back to. My normal life will consume me soon enough, so for now I want to dive into this. I will honor Felix and then cast him away. Then I’ll be okay.
Finally, the hostess calls my name and leads me to a table in the back, near a window looking out at the patio. If I tried, I could easily eavesdrop on half a dozen conversations around me. The hostess places a black leather menu on the table, says someone will be around shortly to take my order. I’m shocked I hadn’t thought to open a menu up until this point. It reads like a dream.
When I put the menu down, Felix is sitting in front of me in a tuxedo.
He conjures up tears to his eyes. “I can’t believe you brought me here. You’re such a good brother.”
“Shut up,” I mumble, pretending to take a sip of water so no one sees my lips move.
Felix holds his hands up in surrender. “Okay, okay, we won’t get emotional.” He opens a menu, though there’s only one on the table and it’s under my elbow. “Please tell me you got the sweetbreads for us.”
I look out at the patio. A full moon’s reflected in the water, and the other islands in the distance are impossibly easy to see through the darkness. “I got the sweetbreads,” I say, hating him for making me say it out loud, for knowing damn well that the sweetbreads are not for us.
He starts off on some story about his travels, and I just stare out the window until my food arrives, listening. It’s easy to forget myself. Andouille-spiced sweetbreads, pork belly ceviche as appetizers, something called Duck in a Jar for my entrée, a side order of squash poutine. The descriptions alone were a fantasy, and I was sure that there’d be no way the dishes could match up to my expectations. I was wrong.
Felix eats too. Twin plates show up when the server sets mine in front of me. Felix lays out his napkin across his lap and rubs his hands together like a cartoon villain planning his takeover.
He takes a bite of the duck breast and dips it in the sriracha au jus. “Que jalada,” he moans with pleasure, scoops out some more. Except I know there’s nothing there across the table from me. It’s just me eating. One meal, not two.
These bites are what I’m here for, I remind myself. I try to savor them instead of diluting them with my thoughts.
For dessert: dulce de leche fondant cake with banana-cardamom gelato and orange-zest white-chocolate chips. My brother eats a spoonful as slowly as he always did when he was alive. He used to eat desserts so glacially that he could never get ice cream in cones. They’d drip down his arm, half the scoop wasted on the sidewalk.
The gelato on his plate is pooling right now, but it’s a fucking lie. There is no gelato. This has been one of the best meals of my life, but it’s been a solitary one. My brother isn’t sitting in front of me. I’m alone in this restaurant, on this island. I came here to honor some unrealized dream of his based on a journal entry. A stupid journal entry, as if it could have told me what Felix would have done with one more day. As if he’d be here if he really could. As if this undoes anything, fixes anything.
“Hey,” I hear him say. Soft clink of his spoon hitting the plate. “I would be. I am.”
But I can’t bear the sight of him/not him. I never wanted him to come back. I never wanted him gone.
My breath starts to come quick and shallow. I can see Felix in the reflection of the window but somehow can’t see myself. The background noise of the restaurant, so manageable when I sat down, is suddenly building to a roar.
“How was everything?” My chipper server has the bill in her hand. If I hand her my credit card, sign my receipt, my little mission here is over.
I try to smile at her, but it’s just not happening. To keep from revealing myself as completely out of my mind, I manage to stammer out: “Bathroom?”
She points the way, and I speed-walk to the privacy of a stall as if I’m about to be sick. Inside, I take a seat, doubling over, trying to take deep breaths but failing to. It feels like the opposite is happening, like air is being squeezed out of my lungs. My hands are gripping at my knees, but I can’t even see my fingers doing it, just the little indents in the fabric where I know my fingers should be.
Without Felix, I am not myself.
Shaken, I walk over to the sink, splash some water on my face. I avoid looking at my reflection, just keep my eyes down and try to convince myself that it’s all okay. When I manage to take a deep breath without it hurting, I leave the bathroom.
Right by the exit, in the little corridor between the bathrooms, I see Emma leaning against the wall. She’s in her work shirt, her hair in a bun. “Hey,” she says when she sees me. “You okay? I saw you rushing in there looking like you were about to pass out. Wanted to make sure we hadn’t poisoned you or something.” She looks over her shoulder toward the kitchen. “I probably shouldn’t say that so loud.”
I somehow manage a laugh. “Yeah, I’m okay.” Not sure I even believe that, but what the hell else should I say?
I’m expecting her to nod, lead me back to my table, say good-bye.
Instead, she pulls her phone out of her pocket and checks the time. Then she says, “Are you done eating?” I nod. “Can you give me, like, five minutes? Then wait for me outside?”
“Um,” I say. “Why?”
“I have this weird thing where if I only see someone in one location I can’t ever be sure that they’re a real person.” She readjusts her glasses so that they’re not on the bridge of her nose but out of the way, up above her forehead. Two tiny indents mark the spot where they’ve rested all day. “Plus, you’re new to town. I like showing people around. You’re free, right?”
I manage a smile. “Yeah,” I say.
“Five minutes,” she says. “Don’t bail on me.” She turns the corner. Outside, tourists walk by holding dripping ice-cream cones, changed out of their beachwear into pleated shorts and sundresses. I’m constantly on the lookout for that rising feeling of dread in my chest again, but everything seems calm within me.
Emma appears in front of me, her work shirt unbuttoned to the tank top beneath it, her bag slung over her shoulder, glasses still resting on her head.
“So, am I a real person now?” I ask, getting up.
“Yet to be determined,” she says. “We’re still too close to the restaurant. Ghosts have some range.”
“Ah, of course. I knew that.” I smirk at the irony.
Emma asks if I’ve seen the lake yet, and I admit that I haven’t even really thought about visiting it. “I saw the beach,” I offer.
“Ugh to the beach.” She looks at her phone for a second and then drops it into her bag. “Do you have any shattered dreams?”
“What does that mean?”
“Any huge disappointments? Life stomping down on you? Hope flittering away from you like sand spilling from the cracks between your fingers?”
I blink at her.
“Good,” she says. “This lake can unshatter dreams. Guaranteed. Dip a single toe in and your hopes are restored.”
She leads us away from downtown, up a street that turns into a hill. It’s a full moon, and I’m amazed by how much light it provides. There’s no real sidewalk, just the side of the road, grassy banks next to the shoulder. Few cars pass by us, and I’m constantly shocked by how quiet things are here.
“How does it do that?”
She gives me this excited look, eyebrows cartoonishly raised, goofy smile. “I want to keep it a secret but suck at keeping secrets, so we have to change the subject while we walk or I’m gonna ruin it.”
“Okay,” I say. “What about...um...” I ransack my thoughts for anything funny to say, anything that’ll make her want to keep this walk going. I look around for clues, see that it’s all moonlit shadows and trees. I finally land, somehow, on: “My brother died.”
Emma meets my eyes, and I realize what a colossally poor conversation subject this is. Emma doesn’t say anything, because I just held a pillow over this conversation’s face and watched the breath drain out of it.
“When you said ‘change the subject,’ you meant to the most depressing thing I could think of, right?”
I’m not sure if I’m digging myself into a deeper hole, but Emma laughs and says, “Yeah, that was rough. But at least now I know taking you to the lake is a good call.” We walk quietly for a while. “Is that why you had that little moment in the restaurant? Because he’s dead?”
I turn to look at her, taken aback. “Basically,” I say.
“I never had any siblings,” Emma says. “I always wanted them, though. I usually pretended friends were sisters or just made them up inside my head. They’d only show up at night, when I was waiting for my parents to get home and relieve the babysitter. I’d pretend they were taking care of me instead of whichever neighbor’s teen daughter was watching me.
“My parents are both chefs so they were always working a lot,” she says, grabbing at a long stalk of grass and twisting it in her hands. “This was back when they were still together and we lived in New York. But they could barely handle being parents and cooks at the same time, and they sure as shit couldn’t handle a marriage on top of it. Anyway, it’s probably why I always have a book on me now. I need something to keep me company.”
In the silence that follows, I glance over at Emma, seeing her face in the moonlight. “That’s also why I’m constantly inviting people to do things with me,” she jokes, not meeting my eye.
“Including near-strangers-slash-possible-ghosts that hang around your place of work.”
“Exactly.” Emma finds another nearly invisible break in the woods, leads us back out to the street. I can see the lights from downtown, and I’m surprised to see how high we’ve gone up the hill. “Wait for it,” Emma says, reading my expression. “It gets so much better.”
Near the top of the hill there’s a scenic overlook on the side of the road, but Emma leads me across the street and into the woods again. We have to fight through brambles to reach the peak, me and this girl I don’t really know.
On one side, the moon reflects off the crystalline lake that’s at the near end of the island and gives the place its name. It really does look like a needle’s eye. The moon looks like some fantastical orb that lives in the lake, only visible from this one spot. It’s as if we’re witnessing something in another dimension. To the other side there’s the town, a spattering of lights that would pale in comparison to any neighborhood in Mexico City, even its most remote suburbs.
All around us, the ocean does a weak impersonation of the lake’s reflection of the moon, the waves too disruptive for the water to be a mirror but still stained beautifully by the silver glow. And to the east, just beyond the silhouette of another island, the lights of Seattle are a haze on the horizon.
“How do you know about all these amazing spots?” I ask.
“My mom and I moved here right after the divorce. I had a lot of alone time,” Emma says. “Gave me time to explore.”
I take in the view, unable to decide in which direction I want to look. Hands on hips, still a little winded from the climb, or maybe actually struck breathless, I say, “This place is magical.”
“Yeah,” Emma responds. “I’m glad you think so.”
She’s standing only a few steps away, arms still folded across her chest, looking in the direction of Seattle. A breeze picks up, and I can see goose bumps appear on her arms.
“Look at all this, man,” Felix says, appearing at my side, putting an arm over my shoulder. “I wish I could have seen this for real.”
Go away, I think. Emma and I are having a nice moment here. We’re quiet for long enough that my words have a chance to echo in my head. Tears come to my eyes, and I have to pretend the wind is to blame.
Emma catches on to some extent, and she reaches out and gives me a reassuring forearm touch that lasts only a second but still does what it’s meant to. Then she pulls away, grabs her sweatshirt from out of her bag and slips it on as I compose myself.
Felix stands by, hands in his pockets, his gaze going from me to Emma and then out at the expanse of the island. His shirt wrinkles in the breeze, and I remember how Mom would always say the shirt was one strong gust of wind away from disintegrating. Two red bursts of blood start spreading across his chest, and though I want to look away I force myself to keep my eyes on him. I think for a second that this is it, this is when Felix leaves me. Then Felix looks down at the blood and groans. “Every time,” he says, taking out one of those stain-remover pens and starting to dab furiously and futilely at the still-growing splotches.
Felix doesn’t disappear; I’m still half-here.
CHAPTER 6 (#uda688454-fc94-5f12-a98e-eb95253a8a72)
SEAWEED SALAD
50 grams rehydrated wakame
1 cucumber, julienned
1 stick surimi, shredded
¼ cup scallions
1 tablespoon mirin
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon sesame oil
1 teaspoon rice vinegar
1 teaspoon wasabi paste
METHOD:
Emma glances down at her phone. She looks indecisive for a moment and then types something. A little sound effect swoosh tells me she just sent a message. “We’re gonna meet up with my friends at the lake, if that’s okay?”
“Sure,” I say. We stand up, brush away the loose strands of dried grass. I hope Felix stays gone, but I hope it a little more gently this time. “That’s so quaintly small-town American, hanging out at the lake. What do you guys do there?”
“The usual. Bonfire, drinks if we can get them, or someone brings weed, or we play charades. Why? What do you do for fun in Mexico City?”
Sit on the couch alone watching cooking shows, have my friends drag me out to parties because they don’t know how else to deal with me. “Umm, I don’t know,” I say. “We have these things called comidas, where everyone from school gathers at a house for tacos and a shit-show amount of drinks. It’s supposed to be a lunch, but it’s really just an afternoon party.”
We fight through the bramble again, start to descend the hill. I still can’t believe how much I can see of the woods. Each branch and leaf is lit up as if it’s beneath a spotlight. This place feels like a fantasy, like any minute now we’ll cross paths with a group of fairies, and Emma will simply wave hello at them, used to the sight. “Parents are just cool with that?” Emma asks.
“Whoever’s hosting usually has parents out of town or something. I haven’t been to one in a while.” I think out loud. “That might just be a thing that’s specific to my school, though. My school is kind of its own world: lots of rich kids, embassy kids, people who move every two years and have lived all over the world. I’m never really sure if my experiences are typically Mexican or not.”
“Sounds like maybe not,” Emma says. “But what the hell do I know?”
We break through into another clearing, with another insane view.
“So, what else do you do?” Emma says. “Like, for fun?”
“I mostly just go to movies, I guess,” I say, with a chuckle wrought mostly from nerves. Then I add, “I like cooking.”
“Really? How come?”
I’ve answered this question in my own head for years now, as if waiting to defend myself from someone’s accusations. Maybe the way Dad treated Felix’s love of travel helped prompt the preparation. “I love food and the joys it brings people. Cooking, to me, is an easy way to provide joy to myself and to others.”
Emma cocks her eyebrow. “Good answer,” she says.
“My brother may have helped me phrase it. He was much better with words than I am.” I duck away from some low-hanging branches. “What about you?” I ask, thankful but not wanting to just keep coming back to my dead brother. “What do you do for fun?”
“I walk with ghosts through the woods,” she says with a smile, and I laugh more than I probably should.
* * *
