The Last Romantics(73)
Dima turned and reentered the restaurant floor, poured two more glasses of expensive cabernet for the two men in gray suits, and then returned to this tired-looking woman.
“Is Luna here?” she asked. “I have something I need to give her.”
Dima shook his head. “I’m sorry. I didn’t see her.” He shrugged and began cutting limes into neat wedges with a short, very sharp knife.
The woman exhaled. “Sorry, but what time did you say Luna was coming in?” she asked.
Dima sighed. He considered honesty his single greatest flaw. “Seven o’clock,” he answered. “You want to leave it, the thing for Luna?”
The woman shook her head. “No. I’ll wait.” She settled on a barstool and took out her phone.
“Can I get you something?”
“Gin,” she said. “I’ll have a gin and tonic.”
*
As Renee waited at the bar, Luna arrived for work through the back service entrance. She squeezed past the boxes of ketchup and sriracha, sidestepped the tower of just-delivered fresh white napkins and tablecloths tied with string, and then she searched inside the dry-storage room for a clean black apron, which she found and wrapped around her waist as she exited to the kitchen. She called hello to Luis, the dishwasher Riley, the waitresses Estella and Sue, and was on her way out to the bar when Jorge said her name.
“Luna, stop.” He walked around the order-up line of heat lamps, their bulbs not yet turned to hot, and met her by the doors.
“What is it?” she asked. Jorge rarely crossed into the service area; his realm was the kitchen, where he was king.
“There’s someone looking for you, Dima said. I don’t know . . .” Jorge shrugged. “Maybe just take a peek before you go out.”
“The detectives?”
“No, not police. Dima said a woman.”
A tepid flare of hope: Mariana? But Jorge saw it and shook his head. “No, not your sister.”
“Thanks, Jorge,” Luna said, and he winked, this gray-haired man, small and wrinkled, his eyes heavy with concern and affection.
Jorge returned to his post behind the order-up line, his apron fresh and white, his fingers nimble, and began the delicate process of deboning a skate. Luna pushed open the swinging door and paused, shielding herself behind the black velvet curtain that separated the restaurant from the kitchen. The bar stretched to her left, just beyond the curtain and the swinging chrome doors, the doors that divided calm from chaos, leisure from work, rich from poor, and they would swing ceaselessly—enter to the right, exit from the left—until the kitchen closed at midnight.
Dima was polishing wineglasses with studious concentration. One customer sat at the far end of the bar. Luna saw the woman in profile, her face half obscured by a phone pressed to her ear. She seemed agitated, twisting and shifting on the stool, her free hand shredding a white cocktail napkin into little rough-edged scraps. But even in this disturbed posture, the woman gave an impression of confidence and low-key affluence: two thick rings on the hand that held the phone, the precise cut of her dress, shoulder-length dark brown hair that shone and rippled as she moved. Luna recognized the woman from the photographs: it was Renee, Joe’s oldest sister.
Dima looked up and saw Luna standing there. His eyes grew wide, and he angled his head toward Renee. “I’m not here,” Luna mouthed. But Dima didn’t understand. He squinted at her, shook his big leonine head. Oh, Dima. Luna waved him over.
“I don’t want to see her,” she whispered, feeling meek and small, but the idea of talking now to one of Joe’s sisters cut her down. She wasn’t ready. “If she asks, tell her I called in sick. Tell her I’m not coming in tonight.”
Dima nodded. He didn’t ask why, and Luna squeezed his arm. Once they had slept together, in the first months after he’d started working here last year, and it had not been horrible, it had not been great, but they shared that knowledge of each other, and now Luna was glad for it.
Renee called loudly, “Excuse me? Bartender?”
Luna met Dima’s eyes. “Go, go,” she said, and he turned back to the bar. Luna retreated farther within the curtain. She didn’t want to go into the kitchen, where Rodrigo would undoubtedly tell her to get to work. Until Renee left, Luna was trapped here, and she sank to the floor, pulled up her knees, and closed her eyes.
*
The bartender appeared again. “Yes, ma’am? What can I get you?” He balled up the bits of napkin Renee had shredded. The sight of them embarrassed her, a sign of her unstable mind. She had called Detective Henry again to ask questions she was sure he had not yet considered. But the detective had answered with a maddening calm.
No reason to suspect . . .
No evidence of . . .
No motive for . . .
All valuables still . . .
Let me assure you . . .
And then: “I’ve seen this sort of thing before. You’re looking for someone to blame. I get it. I understand what you’re going through. It’s a hard truth. Sometimes bad things happen to those we love, and it’s no one’s fault.”
No one’s fault. It seemed impossible to Renee that an event as momentous as this one, a happening so profound, could occur without a push. And a push needs a pusher. Someone, something, somehow. A finger on the trigger. A bad heart. A mutating virus. Years of neglect. But an ice cube? An ice cube melted, evaporated, disappeared. An ice cube was not enough.