Xhenet Aliu: Brass

I waited two more minutes and then threw a little rock at the employee door, assuming he’d lost track of time and needed to be jarred into checking a clock, but still I found myself standing alone, waiting to be courted in a car before walking into the Ross alone, pretending nobody had figured out what was going on with us. That’s when the bad thoughts came: he had an accident and was comatose at St. Mary’s, and Gjonni and Yllka never bothered to call me because they were just as aware that I was not Bashkim’s wife as they were that I was his lovergirl, to quote the Teena Marie song that was dated even then but on near-constant rotation in the miniature jukeboxes in the booths at the Ross. But the Fiero was parked right where it was always parked, in the farthest-off corner space. I walked over to it and peered inside but Bashkim wasn’t waiting in there, either. Then the thoughts got even worse: he wasn’t head-injured at all, he had just walked away. Just like that, I was another past he left behind.

I ran back to the employee entrance but walked through it slowly, trying to play it cool. And there he was, Bashkim looking straight into my eyes before he turned his back to me, as if he would turn to salt if he so much as caught another glimpse of my face. So I changed my plan. Screw cool; I was no cool kid, I was no club-hopping New Haven scenester, I was a hard-knocked Brass Valley bitch and I was going to prove it by marching right up to him and turning him around and slapping his face with the spatula I pulled right out of his own greasy hand. But my legs missed their cue and instead marched me all the way out to the dining room, and I sat down in an empty booth and began counting backward from ten over and over again to calm myself and get the nerve to walk back into the kitchen. It was too neon-bright in the dining room, but it was empty enough to hide out in. I had to share it with only a couple of old ladies still mobile enough to walk up the street from the old lady home, and a kid serving his time-out sentence in a booth far away from the one where his mother was sucking down Newport Lights.

“Waiting for someone to take your order?” Cheryl said, once she noticed me there. Cheryl was a skinny pockmarked waitress who I was always stuck working with, obviously a punishment from Yllka, who clearly hated me. “Get up, slowpoke, you’re late for your shift as it is.”

“I’ll be there in a second. I don’t feel too good,” I said.

“None of us feel good. Look around you. You think you’re supposed to feel good?”

“Just a second. I’m coming.”

“That’s what he said. Get it? No, really, though, on your feet, girly.” She shot me a look that dared me to disobey, and even though she was my elder by about twenty years, she wasn’t my superior, so I took my time unfurling, at least until I noticed Yllka at the front counter. She wasn’t looking at me, but I bet she could smell trouble even over all the grilled meats.

“Thank you, princess,” Cheryl said. “Jesus, what’s up with this place tonight? Bashkim’s panties are in a bunch, too.”

“What’s that got to do with me?” I said.

“Oh, nothing, I was just remarking,” she said, which she and the other waitress, Janice, found hilarious for no reason I could figure out. Maybe remarking was a vocab word on the GED test both of them were studying for, the two of them bosom buddies even though one didn’t have bosoms and the other had enough for three or four women. Like a horse, Cheryl lifted her top lip over her buckteeth in something kind of like a smile. Mrs. Ed, I called her under my breath. The name I bet she had for me wasn’t quite as nice as horse, although it sounded a lot like it.

But who were they to talk, even if they’d figured out what Bashkim and I were up to in the parking lot? Bashkim loved me, he told me so every other night, starting from before he even knew my last name. He got into his quiet moods sometimes, when it was like he’d forgotten all his words, but when he got his voice back he made up for them by telling me about the necklace he was going to buy for my birthday, or what he was going to do to me later in his car. It was Cheryl and Janice who made it through every one of the back of the house staff in exchange for a free meatloaf special or sometimes even actual money, at least a couple of quarters to feed the fortune-teller machine out in the lobby. They tested their fortunes at least three times a night, until finally the fortune-teller fed them the answers they wanted in return for pocket change, which they should’ve used for ramen noodles to feed their kids.

But never mind them. I wasn’t like those ladies. No way would I let their fates happen to me.

I’d gotten some of my nerve back and I steeled myself to walk into the kitchen, but I was intercepted again, this time by Yllka. This whole place was booby-trapped, only as far as I could tell, there were no secret treasures around to protect.

“Where are you going?” Yllka asked me. She held an envelope in one hand, tapped it into the other.

“To work?” I said.

“What do you need in the kitchen? You haven’t taken any orders yet.”

“A rack of coffee cups?”

“Are you asking or telling?”

“Telling?” I said.

“Cheryl can get the cups. You have a table that was just sat.”

I started walking away, grateful for the out, but she stopped me before I took three full steps.

“Actually, here, take this to Bashkim. He forgot it out here,” she said and handed me the envelope.

“What is it?”

“A letter,” she said. “From Aggie, his wife.” She smiled a little, just a tiny little bit, just enough for me to understand that she knew what she was doing.

“Fine,” I said, though I was burning so hot that I felt like any piece of paper could turn to tinder in my hands. The white envelope had those red and blue stripes around the edges, the same colors as the American flag but clearly from someplace where Americans couldn’t really ever go. France, for example. I’d had a French pen pal in middle school, if you could call someone you exchanged one letter with for a French class assignment a pal. I told mon ami I danced jazz and wore Levis et T-shirts, and he sent back a photo of what was clearly an actor from a French après école special. I knew how letters could lie. I bet I could pick out all the lies in Aggie’s letter without even being able to read the text. I bet it said:

Dear Bashkim,

Everything is fine, really, just fine. The bread I eat for dinner is satisfying, the crumbs make a perfect confetti to celebrate the close of another day. I want for nothing. I feel your love from here.

Love,

Agnes

So finally I had an excuse to talk to Bashkim, but now looking at him was impossible.

“I got something for you,” I said, holding the envelope straight out to him like a sword. “It’s from your wife.”

He blew his nose into a hankie and stuffed the envelope into the pocket of his apron.

“What’s it say? Does she miss you so much? She can’t wait for that Mercedes you’re going to buy her?”

He pulled a Marlboro from behind his ear and lit it on the gas flame before walking outside.

“Asshole,” I said, once he was safely out the door. I was going to follow him there, but Yllka had been watching the whole thing.

“I told him not to mess around with that stuff,” she said. “I told him, ‘Bashkim, there is no shortcut to make money. You work and you save, and that’s it.’ ”

“What stuff?” I said, a little defensively, because I knew she wouldn’t be talking to me about anything unless it somehow had the potential to hurt me.

“His investments, as he calls them. You know, the money he probably promised you the world with.”