Adi Alsaid - North Of Happy

“You’re back,” she says, so quickly that I wonder if we had a longer conversation than I remember. I do that classic look-behind-to-make-sure-it’s-me-she’s-talking-to thing. “Hoping for a cancellation?”

“Yeah,” I say. “Didn’t have anything better to do.”

She gives me a long look, and I wonder if what I said came across weird in some way. Her glasses are perched on her head, loose strands of hair coming out from her ponytail. Something about her feels familiar, but that’s a stupid thought because how could it? I’m in a different world.

“Why don’t you take a seat?” she asks, eyebrows raised. For the second time today, I’ve been staring at her, because clearly I’m not a fully functioning human. I sit down at a nearby chair, wondering if this is just how it’s going to be for me from now on. This is who I am now, the dude who stares and doesn’t know how to interact with strangers.

Her phone rings, and as she picks up the receiver she tucks a pen behind her ear.

I raise my eyes up to take a look around the restaurant. Servers in black shirts carrying plates of artfully arranged food of all shapes and colors, food in all its limitless forms. Everyone in the dining room is the picture of happiness. A table of hip-looking twenty-somethings laughing as they listen to their friend’s story, a woman with orange hair closing her eyes as she savors a dish’s last bite. Felix seats himself next to a couple on the patio, clinks wineglasses with them. Golden light washes over everyone.

I wait. I try to settle in. It’s Sunday evening. My phone is still on airplane mode, so who knows how many calls and texts have come my way over the last twelve hours or so. Right now Mexico City is a world away, an entire life away.

Every now and then, my eyes flit toward the hostess. She greets customers with a brilliant smile, leads them to their tables, rolls her eyes at the jerks when she thinks no one is watching. She answers her phone and chats with another hostess, every now and then looking at me and offering a smile.

It makes me feel a little less see-through, even though I’ve been sitting for nearly an hour like a weirdo, and Felix keeps running around trying to make me laugh or talk.

After a long stretch without a phone call, the hostess comes back from seating a couple and says, “You want some coffee?”

I smile, rise to my feet, though I’m not sure if I should so I kind of end up squatting. “Sure. But aren’t you working?”

She laughs. “Yeah, dude. Just gonna grab some from the back. I figured since you’re sticking around you might want some.”

“Oh. Yeah, thanks.” I’m still standing up, not sure if I should offer to help or what. “I’m Carlos,” I say, holding out my hand, thanking god that I remembered no one does the whole cheek-to-cheek kiss thing here.

She shakes it. “I’m Emma. Now sit,” she says. “If the phone rings, just pick it up and shriek into it, will you?”

I sit down. “You want one continuous shriek or multiple bursts of shrieking?”

“Either way, they’ll complain,” Emma says, maybe a little too loudly for how many customers are standing around waiting for tables. I watch her head to the back of the restaurant, and before the double doors that lead to the kitchen swing shut I can see the cook with the tattooed arms walk past, carrying a slab of meat. I think I even see Felix back there, a frying pan in hand, flames licking out at him. God, what it would be like to inhabit that world, food surrounding you.

Emma comes back out, two coffees in paper cups in hand. “One’s black, one’s sweetened and creamy. I don’t care which I get.” I grab the sweetened one, thank her, stand and then sit and then stand again.

She takes the lid off her coffee, sets it next to the phone that’s been ringing so constantly that I’m pretty sure this place is booked for the next year. She blows away the steam from her cup. “So, have you always lived in Mexico?”

“Yup. Born and raised.”

“Your English is really good.”

“Only when I’m speaking. You should have heard me screeching at your customers a second ago. My accent’s embarrassing.” Whoa. Was that my second joke already? I don’t think I’ve cracked so much as a pun since the Night of the Perfect Taco.

“You screeched?!? I said shriek . Shit.” She takes her glasses off, rubs them clean on the hem of her sweatshirt. “If we go out of business, I’m telling the chef it’s your fault.”

“That probably lowers my chances of sneaking in on a cancellation, right?”

“I’d say so.” Emma sips again from her coffee and then gives a chuckle. The phone rings again, and now, while she’s on it, I’m not looking around the restaurant but rather opening my mouth like I’m shrieking and trying to make her laugh. I’m not sure why I am so at ease all of a sudden. Joking around in the last few months has felt like pretending, even if I’m doing it with my friends. But her laughter makes me want to try for more.

When she hangs up, she throws her coffee lid at me. A woman wrapped in a silk shawl glares at her, but Emma ignores the look. “So, is that really why you’re here? You decided to take an international flight for one meal?”

For a moment I consider just telling her everything. Felix is dead and this is a link to him. We loved food together and he wrote the name of this place in a notebook once, so now I’m here. To eat on my dead brother’s behalf. There’s an icebreaker for you.

I do think about how good it would feel to finally tell someone that I can see him. Maybe that’s all it would take to get him to leave. Instead I shrug and say yes, and Emma gives me another long look before she turns to help some customer.

I end up staying at the restaurant far longer than I planned to. I thought maybe I’d stick around an hour or two and then go exploring like Felix suggested. But the wider world doesn’t call out to me. I just want to wait, watch the food go by, sit in this little corner of the world and not worry about anything else.

“You are the most patient person I’ve ever met,” Emma says at one point. The sun’s set over the horizon; the restaurant is aglow with soft lighting from scentless candles and the twinkling bulbs in the patio. “You know you have a reservation for Tuesday, right?”

“I’m kind of enjoying myself, though,” I say.

“That’s a little weird.”

I sink into my chair, blood rushing to my cheeks. I go the next hour without saying a word. A dozen different Felixes show up. He’s a server carrying one plate in each hand, thumbs off the edges, a customer checking in for a reservation. Some versions of him make a little less sense: a miniature version swimming in my coffee, telling me to relax.

Emma greets a party of six and as she walks them over to their table, I think I see her glance over her shoulder at me as she goes. She’s probably noticed me staring at people, trying to suppress the urge to talk back to Felix.

At ten o’clock, the restaurant is seating its last reservations. Emma’s wiping off menus with a napkin, and she jokes that I’ve been here so long I should have gotten paid. I try to act normal as a thought bubble sprouts out of my head and Felix shows me a flashback of the Night of the Perfect Taco: us at the stand in that one market, Felix teasing me that I should work with food.

“Yup, I’m for sure qualified to work here,” I tell Emma. “I watch the Food Network.”

“Don’t tell anyone in the kitchen that. They keep special knives to stab people with just for that occasion.”

I laugh, she laughs and we fall into a silence that lasts until I finally say good-night. “See you Tuesday,” she says.

CHAPTER 5