Merritt Tierce - Love Me Back

When he calls me to run food he always says Maestra, don’t hate me, you take one mash and one mush to twenty-three please. Or Maestra, ¿sabes que te amo, verdad? I do anything for you; just do this one poquito thing for me please. Sometimes he sneaks me a crab cocktail at the end of the night because he knows I love it, the tender jumbo lump crabmeat lightly dressed with lemon and parsley, a bit of cocktail sauce on the side.

Often the Mexicans ask me if I am enojada, or ¿Por qué estás triste, Mari? they wonder. ¿Que te molesta, Mariquita? It’s because I’m perpetually lost in thought and wear a sunken, anxious face. I say No, I’m not mad. I’m not sad either. Nothing’s bothering me. Miguel asks me Maestra, what are you thinking about? He doesn’t love you anymore? I say He never loved me, he just fucks me. Miguel tells me that last year the woman he loved was pregnant with twins, his first children. For reasons no sabemos she decided to have an abortion and she left him. He tells me he couldn’t work, he would cry while he was running the line every day, every night he would get so drunk. He kept trying to quit but Danny wouldn’t let him. He says to me And now, Maestra, I’m fine. See? Look at me. I want to die then. But now — what can you do? Stop thinking about it, thinking is no good for you. I say Okay, Maestro, claro. No más thinking.

He’s right, it’s important to buck up every night and breathe deeply and be happy for the people so they’ll want to believe you when you call the $140 Kobe filet the best beef in the world and promise it will actually melt in their mouths. You have to stay bright to get them on a bottle of Caymus or Cakebread, you can’t be lurking in the back of your melancholy head. Sometimes I think this is why Danny says Suck my balls whenever I walk past him — it’s spoken with the utmost affection and the utmost defiance. When he says Suck it he’s saying It’s a circus, honey-love, so fuck those motherfuckers. And when my retort is Get it out I’m saying Here we are being hard and relentlessly dazzling in spite of whatever shit. We are saying to each other If you have an affliction, any remorse or anguish, eat it, drink it, snort it, fuck it, use it, suck it, kill it.

I work five shifts and I pay for your after-school care and your health insurance and I give your dad a third of the money I make. He brings you by the restaurant each Friday, because I have to come in to pick up my tips for the week and it’s closer to him than my apartment. Plus you like it, and I like showing you off. You’re just old enough to know we’ve been through something and young enough to not hold it against me. Your dad drives through the porte cochere around dusk, before many guests have arrived, and you get a kick out of how the valets open your door and call you ma’am. I wait for you in the lobby, enjoying the luxuries of sitting and street clothes. The maître d’ greets you with Good evening, miss, and a peppermint and you run to me.

One Friday Cal intercepts you, asking you where you’re going so fast, like you’re in trouble. When Cal is giving you all his mischievous attention like that you feel like you’re the one. To my mama, you say, laughing. No you stay with me, Cal says, stay with me until you tell me where you got those blue eyes. From God, you say. That’s right, Cal says, and then to me, You been takin this child to church? No sir, I say, it wasn’t me. Well Miss Mamalisa is it that time? Cal asks you. Ana -lisa, you laugh. That’s what I said, he says, is it time, Mamalisa? Ana -lisa! you say, not laughing. That’s what I said! You got a hearing problem? He looks at me. Have you had her ears checked? I think it’s yours that are malfunctioning, I say to Cal, and I can tell you are happy I am on your side. What do you mean, says Cal, I’m just asking Mamalisa here if it’s Shirley Temple time or not! Mama, make him stop, you say to me, scrambling around Cal to come sit with me. I can’t make him do anything, I say, he does what he wants. I don’t like it when he calls me Mama, you say. She doesn’t like it when you call her Mama, I say to Cal. Okay ladies, Ana, I’m sorry, Marie, I apologize, shall we step into the bar? he says, offering us his arms. Ana, can I call your mama Mama? Is that okay with you? he asks you. Yes, you say, Mama’s Mama.

We go out to dinner at La Calle Doce with a friend who says you make him think of the song Jolene. You color a sombrero and eat chips and bar garnishes — orange wedges, maraschino cherries, cucumber slices. You color maracas. My friend buys a song from the mariachis for you. Don Gato: You follow the story as if it is the most important news, and when Don Gato comes back to life at the end your relief is immense.

There is a wishing well in the middle of the dining room, a koi pond lit amber. You ask for a penny and then you sit on the low mosaic tile wall through three entire courses while we talk. After dessert I come to collect you, thinking you have been mesmerized by so many iridescent fish all this time. But your face is troubled. What’s wrong? I say.

Mama, you say, I don’t know what to wish for.

You give me the sweaty penny and say You can have my wish.

Thank you, I say. That’s thoughtful.

I think, my arm around your waist. I close my eyes for effect and I see The Restaurant. I see the way Casey stands when he takes an order at a table. I hear Asami’s beautiful laugh. I’m so glad that in this one exact moment I’m not waiting tables, not locked into that place across town for the night. But I still feel it going on. It’s always there. I flick the coin into the water and open my eyes. We watch it flutter to the bottom, and then we go home.

Shaila has a body to break your mind. You scan it once expecting a flaw, twice not believing there isn’t one, three times for the exhilaration. The way her legs are tan, a real brown sugar tan, her calves all cut up and high, her toes manicured but in that simple nude style, her ass so round, so beautiful. Her slender waist, her perfect all-real breasts floating and pulling the world to her, nipples often showing — just a bit, if she turns — through whatever silk dress she’s wearing. She has long straight dirty blond hair that falls over her face when she checks her phone. She’s gorgeous but in a porchy Alabama way, not the way women in Dallas usually look if they’re trying. Like you look at her and think that must be about how she looked before she went into her big bathroom to get ready.

I’m good enough to get the once-over in the bar at The Restaurant, I see them thinking my smallness is appealing, my ass and face are cute enough, I see them thinking that short haircut might be sexy. I’m always in a backless cocktail dress and heels, I’m flat chested and a tad muscular so they ask me if I’m a dancer and say Call me sometime, let’s have a drink. It took me a while to understand you’re supposed to work that for your money but you can let the willingness fall right off your face when you turn around. It took me a while to understand that of course men fling their entreaties out in swarms, like schools of sperm, hoping one will stick. They’re expecting to be turned down so you shouldn’t feel any obligation.

I’ve seen every woman in Dallas bring her best into the bar but Shaila’s the one who stops time and mouths. She’s easy like a man too which makes them insane. God she’s dirty, they slobber. They’re all after her and she gives them all their turns, letting them outspend each other. Ahmed owns a pizza company that runs catchy snarky ads, he’s a Pakistani New Yorker who knows Danny from the Bronx. He left his wife and four kids for Shaila but now he sits at the corner of the bar all sad and blurred, staring into the middle whiskey distance.