“Kelly!” says the boy, his eyes bouncing side to side like a doll’s. Kelly?
“Ian, what are you doing here?” says the girl, with a disbelieving shake of her head.
What kind of name is Kelly for an Asian girl? She’s the least Irish-looking young woman he’s ever seen in his life. But then, of course, there’s the late Kevin MacDonald, the world’s only freckled, ginger-headed Islamic terrorist.
“You’re back,” says Ian.
“You took a new job while I was gone?” She’s edging forward, but she’s not lowering her voice. Poor Ian glances to either side, but he can’t back up, and there’s only a dripping wooden spoon between him and the wrath of Kelly. Kevin ducks his head and moves slowly around the end of the buffet to the other side. He still can’t get over this Kelly business, though he supposes it could be worse. They could have named her Colleen. Or Bridget. Or Sinead.
“They called me on Tuesday,” says Ian, “and said they needed me to start right away.”
“Oh really,” says the girl formerly known as Joy Luck. “So… what? They picked your name out of the phone book?”
Ian sighs. Another trattorian has appeared behind the counter, a short, dark young woman in a stained smock, her black hair coiled tightly under a hairnet except for a sweaty strand pasted to her forehead. With obvious effort she’s holding a large, heavy, steaming stockpot by both handles, and she’s glancing anxiously from Ian to Kelly and back again.
“Kelly,” says Ian, gesturing with the wooden spoon.
“Ian,” gasps the short, dark girl. Her wrists are trembling as she holds the pot.
“Maria!” says Ian, startled, and he casts about for someplace to put the spoon, thrusts it under his arm, and takes the pot from her, hefting it onto a burner behind him.
“Golly,” says Kelly, “did I come at a bad time?”
The short girl glances at Kelly, then more meaningfully at Ian, and she scoots away. Ian lights the burner, raising an even rim of blue flame under the pot.
“We’re setting up for lunch, Kell.” Ian’s looking for his spoon, can’t find it anywhere. “Can we talk later?”
Aha! The spoon’s under his arm, and he plunges it into the pot.
“Ian!” She stamps her foot. “What the fuck?”
On the safe side of the buffet a couple of guys stand to either side of Kevin, another man in a business suit and a young guy in cargo shorts and T-shirt. The suit is loading up a takeout box with marinated teriyaki tofu with ponzu sauce, while Cargo Shorts is heaping his with smokey cavatappi pasta salad. All three men exchange glances with each other: Glad it’s not me!
Without looking at Kelly, Ian stirs his pot and gestures at her with his other hand. “It’s a great job, Kell. I couldn’t turn it down.”
“Then what the fuck was I doing in Ann Arbor, looking for an apartment?”
Ann Arbor! Kevin stands a little straighter. Huh!
“I was going to talk to you about it when you got back.” Ian’s stirring so hard that little spatters of red are appearing on his smock, like blood.
“This is how you tell me?” She stamps her foot again, and Kevin can almost feel the floor shake, as if from the approaching stomp of an angry T. rex. Behind the buffet, all three men lower their noses a little closer to the sneeze guard.
“I signed a lease, you asshole. I put down a deposit.”
Kelly’s rage has cleared a space around her in the middle of Gaia. She’s like a neutron bomb — there’s no blast damage, but no people left alive on the other side of the buffet table. Only Kelly shooting gamma rays in every direction, and poor Ian at the epicenter with his wooden spoon. Any second now he’s going to burst into flames, his skeleton turning to dust like a particularly slow-witted vampire on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But he doesn’t, he only scowls at the sauce he’s stirring as if he expects to find a turd in it. The front of his smock is beginning to look like a butcher’s apron. Sweeney Todd, the Asshole Boyfriend of Sixth Street.
Kelly sighs. She droops. “We talked about this.” She’s near tears now, and Kevin feels like he personally let her down. “We decided.”
Ian sighs and stops stirring and drops his broad chin to his chest. Then he looks up and Kevin can see Kelly’s rage reflected back at her. Ian’s eyes are focused and hard. He gestures toward her with his free hand, all five fingertips splayed at her, like Harry Potter casting a spell. Or warding one off.
“You decided,” he says. “I’m not so sure I want to go to Ann Arbor.”
Kelly’s body tightens again. “Fine,” she says, all the hurt burned out of her voice. She and Ian glare across the trattoria counter at each other. The entire store seems to have gone utterly silent, like a forest holding its breath as two snarling jungle cats circle each other. The two men on either side of Kevin slink away with their gourmet flavors, leaving Kevin paralyzed like a rabbit.
Kelly turns abruptly away from the trattoria, and Kevin flinches. Furiously impassive, Ian watches her go, and he slowly starts stirring. Then Kelly stops and turns halfway back, and Kevin flinches again. Her body’s turned toward him, her legs slightly apart, but she’s looking along her handsome shoulder back at Ian. It’s like a dance position, or a martial arts stance, and she jerks her spectacularly firm right arm up at the elbow, and then lets it spring out to its full length, her middle finger cocked like a switchblade at Ian.
“Fuck you, asshole.” Every muscle in that magnificent arm is taut. You could hang a cinderblock off it. “Fuck. You.”
Then she’s gone. Kevin realizes he’s been holding his breath for so long he’s lightheaded, and he touches his fingertips to the edge of the buffet table to keep from toppling over. The murmur of voices flows into the silence, and the store’s music reasserts itself — another boomer anthem, “Stuck in the Middle with You.” Kevin turns as if in a daze, and sees Kelly parting the crowd, twisting her torso like a wide receiver. Folk feigning interest in the contents of their own baskets scurry out of her path, clowns to the left of her, jokers to the right. Kevin glances back once more at Ian, who is frowning at the splashes of red sauce on his jacket, then he draws a breath and starts after Kelly, giddily riding the eddies in her wake.
* * *
Outside the sliding glass doors, the air clings to his skin like cotton, but he just brushes it aside like cobwebs. He doesn’t even take off his jacket. His feet aren’t even touching the ground. All he’s thinking is, she’s moving to Ann Arbor!
Up ahead Kelly glides between the gleaming cars in the Gaia parking lot; the glitter makes Kevin fumble for his sunglasses. His inner Jiminy Cricket is hauling on the reins, pounding his little fists on the inside of Kevin’s skull, screaming in Kevin’s inner ear, “You’re leaving Ann Arbor! You’re moving here! You’ve got a girlfriend! What do you think is going to happen?”
“Shut up,” says Kevin out loud, threading between the cars. Heat radiates off the hot metal, off the pavement at his feet. Kelly waits impatiently at the busy corner of (say the signs) Fifth and Lamar, a phalanx of vehicles streaming down Fifth while a perpendicular phalanx on Lamar idles at the light. But before the light even changes, she sprints across on her toes. In the middle of Fifth her sandal comes off. Kevin’s heart stops as she staggers, turns, and hops on one foot back across the hot asphalt. Cars swerve, horns blare, and Kevin nearly dashes forward, gallant as Sir Walter Raleigh, to sweep her in his arms and carry her to safety. But then she jams her foot into the flip-flop, grips it with her toes, and marches to the curb, while angry vehicles pass only inches behind her. By time Kevin gets to the corner, cars are streaming before him, and Kelly is marching south, toward the river, down into an underpass beneath a railroad bridge. As Kevin jigs on the lee shore, frantic as a five-year-old with a full bladder, she disappears down the hill. Now he sees her only from the waist up, now only the top of her head. And now she’s dropped below the horizon, out of his life, forever.