James Hynes - Next

The first time Kevin laid eyes on Beth, he vainly waved his ticket at her as she whispered with another haughty Drake’s girl, the two of them casually ignoring him. He hadn’t been in Drake’s since he’d graduated, despite working only a block away at Big Star for years, but this was his first week at the Asia Center, and he figured, if you work at the U, you might as well eat at Drake’s at least once. Plus the girls behind the counter were usually cute, despite the shapeless green tunics they wore, and looking back at that first exchange of glances now, as he steps up out of the crosswalk at Sixth and Congress in Austin, Texas, it comes to him as a much-belated revelation that it was probably her Drakette hauteur that drew him to Beth in the first place. At last she pried herself away from her conversation with the other girl — Debra, Kevin learned later, shorter but equally cute; how different would his life have been if she ’d come to take his order? — and carried herself down the narrow aisle behind the counter as imperiously as a runway model, tall, clear-skinned, wide-eyed. She fixed him with her gaze and, without a word, plucked the ticket from Kevin’s hand with two fingers and pivoted away, her hair swinging. Kevin, who fell easily and hard, felt a tingle that started in his balls and reverberated all the way up his spine and down his arms to the tips of his fingers. And she knew it, too. When she called him back to pick up his sandwich, she thrust her lower lip at him and slid the plate across the counter with a surly clatter, fixing him with her gaze again as if daring him to say something. He started back to his booth, heart pounding, then turned and carried it back to the counter, where he lifted his finger to get the tall girl’s attention. She exchanged a look with Debra — what does this idiot want? — and carried herself down the aisle to Kevin again. She placed her long, pale fingers on the countertop, canted her hip, and lifted an eyebrow.

Kevin leaned on the counter, extracted a toothpick, and peeled back the top of one quarter of his sandwich. He frowned sheepishly. “Is this tuna?” he said.

For a long, thrilling moment she locked eyes with him, then deigned to drop her gaze to the pink clot of chunky paste he’d laid bare. They both regarded it for a moment, then looked at each other again. “What do you think it is?” she said.

“I’m not sure.”

She angled her head, as if to regard the sandwich in a slightly better light. “Why don’t you try it and see?”

“Well,” said Kevin, keenly aware, in his peripheral vision, of the lovely Debra trying not to laugh, “if I’m not sure what it is, I don’t think I want to put it in my mouth.”

“I see,” said the tall girl, speaking with faux gravity. She pinned him once more with her gaze, and Kevin thought he might never breathe again. Then he felt the sandwich moving under his hands as the girl slid her hand across the counter and hooked one long, pale finger over the lip of the plate. She never took her eyes off Kevin’s as she pulled it toward her. The little flap of bread Kevin had lifted curled slowly back down.

“Only one way to find out,” she said, and she picked up the triangle of sandwich and bit it in two. Kevin gasped and stood up straight. Debra turned sharply away, lips pinched bloodlessly shut, while the enormous old man on his stool at the end of the counter sat as immobile as the Buddha. Meanwhile the tall girl deliberately masticated one-eighth of Kevin’s lunch, gazing pensively upward.

“Well,” she said, and paused to push a loose fleck of whatever back into the corner of her lips with her pinky, “it tastes like tuna to me.”

Kevin watched the girl in astonishment. His blood was singing. Finally she swallowed and replaced the uneaten half of the triangle with a little pat and nudged the plate back toward Kevin. Who picked it up, fastidiously turned her teethmarks toward him, and put the rest of the section in his mouth. As he swallowed it whole, nearly choking on tuna and his own laughter, the girl smiled and turned a dark shade of red.

“You’re right,” he said, tapping his sternum lightly. “It is tuna.”

Thus began a battle of wills that lasted thirteen years. God knows it was her Drakette hauteur on display that day in the bath when she told him she was leaving. Several years ago now, and it still stings as if it had happened this morning. It stings right now, in fact, along with the sudden, unbidden taste of tuna in the vault of his palate. Beth, what hath thou wrought? If it weren’t for her, he probably wouldn’t be sweltering outside Starbucks on a street corner in subtropical Austin. He touches the taste of tuna with the tip of his tongue, the taste of Beth. The men in khakis are walking toward the capitol, still laughing, while the camisole girls sway fetchingly in the other direction, as hearty as Minoan dancing girls. On a bus stop bench a couple of Hispanic girls hunch together in matching fast-food uniforms and consult a sheet of paper. One girl runs her blunt finger along a line, syllable by syllable, while the other girl reads haltingly, “Heh, hel-lo. Wel-come. To. Pancho’s Taco. Ex, express. Hah, how. May I. Heh, heh, help you?”

“Bueno.” The first girl nods and moves her finger down a line. “El siguiente,” she says. Next.

Kevin veers to the steps of Starbucks, which are guarded by a street musician — dirty gray beard, sleeveless T-shirt, pale upper arms — standing against the wall, aimlessly but vigorously strumming a guitar. Is he in his forties, Kevin wonders, or his fifties? He’s so frayed by bad luck it’s hard to tell, but even in the heat Kevin feels the cold breath of time brush them both. The guy’s eyes shift mournfully from side to side, following passersby, and Kevin wonders, what memory is he trying to erase? Is he another McNulty, hitting rock bottom? The man’s scuffed guitar case is closed at his feet. Perhaps he’s forgotten to open it, or maybe it’s a rare example of ars gratia artis. Kevin steps past him up into the coffee shop.

The morning rush is nearly over, and the place is disheveled — napkins on the floor, crumbs underfoot, a plastic stirrer in a little pool of coffee on the countertop. Behind the counter a black girl with dreadlocks hangs on a lever at the espresso machine, and a golden-haired white girl with a stain on the breast of her company tunic slouches at the register. They each have that end-of-shift, thousand-yard stare that Kevin recognizes from his own days in retail. Meanwhile a rotund young woman with a buzz cut works up a sweat changing out the trash bins; she yanks a bulging bag of cups into the air and twists it sharply, as if snapping its neck. The only person ahead of Kevin is a businesswoman in her late thirties — no, thinks Kevin, looking closer through her makeup at the crinkled corners of her eyes, mid forties. She steps aside and smiles at him. “I’m waiting,” she says.

Kevin needs to wash the taste of Beth out of his mouth, so he orders an iced tea.

“With legs?” says the golden blond, absently pressing a key on the register.

“Pardon?” Starbucks is like its own country, you have to know the silly argot.

“To go?” says the fortysomething woman, in a rising, Texas singsong. “ ‘With legs’ means ‘to go.’ ”

Cheerleader, thinks Kevin. Sorority girl, marketing major, party girl once upon a time. A Republican, maybe, but a fun Republican, a sexy Republican. He smiles and she purses her lips — nicely red, but not too red, sort of business sensual — which Kevin finds mildly flirty, and instinctively, in spite of himself, before his forebrain can get a word in edgewise, he looks her up and down. She’s pretty, formerly pert, now softening around the edges. Brown hair pulled back with a ribbon the same color as her lipstick. Wide eyes, cornflower blue, a little too made-up for close range, but just right (Kevin’s guessing) for a presentation in front of a boardroom. Snug jacket, but not too snug, knee-length skirt. Matching nail polish, no wedding ring. A little wide in the hips, but nice calves. Kevin’s appraising gaze glides back up to her face, and she blushes and looks away, over the counter, at nothing in particular.