Bret Anthony Johnston

“Why does Carlos always talk about buying the restaurant,” I asked Melinda. We were eating a late lunch and trying out one of his new recipes. When he brought out the plates — steak picado in a taco shell bowl — he'd said, In my restaurant, this dish goes on the menu. The Melinda and Julian Special.

Melinda dabbed her mouth with a napkin and stared out the window, thinking. Puddles of heat radiated on the sidewalk, the grass across the street was as dry and blonde as hay. I felt lucky to be in the air-conditioning, eating food that tasted of beer. The phone rang, and Mrs. Martinez answered, then walked the order into the kitchen. This was my favorite time of the day to look at Melinda, when her lipstick had worn off and her ponytail was loose. I imagined her looking this way just after waking. I wanted to stay in that booth forever.

She said, “Because Carlos is an optimist, like you.”

“Like me?”

“He's always jabbered about owning a restaurant. For years he played the lottery, before that it was bingo. Now he thinks this girl's mother will be his ticket. Carlos thinks money will fall in his lap if he just waits long enough.”

“And me? What am I waiting for?”

She took a long drink of sweet tea, crunched an ice cube. She said, “Me.”

Mrs. Martinez ambled across the restaurant and handed me a bag of taquitos. She said, “To Beechwood Nursery, on Padre Island. Vamos, before the causeway gets bumper to bumper.”

After she'd left I stood and looked down at Melinda. I said, “If I wait long enough, will something happen?”

She took a bite and chewed slowly, staring at me and smirking. “Do you think Carlos will ever buy La Cocina?”

As often as he'd mentioned it, I'd never really considered that possibility, and realizing that I didn't have an answer puzzled me. I felt shamefully confident that he'd never hear from the Garretts again — a month had passed — but that alone didn't preclude him from owning a restaurant. I said, “I hope so.”

“Me, too,” she said. Then she winked at me. “Plus, if he gets his own place, he's naming it Melinda's.”

I thought she was joking, but then it clicked. I said, “You're Carlos's daughter?”

“Stepdaughter,” she said.

Then, before I could stop myself, I said, “Melinda, I lied about my mother. She's not dead. She left my father to live with a lawyer in Arizona.”

She took another bite, and my palms went clammy. Mrs. Martinez started feeding her plants behind me, though I could feel her leering at us. The phone rang again. I knew I needed to leave before I got stuck with another delivery, but my feet were rooted, like I'd stepped in drying cement.

Finally, Melinda said, “So it all makes sense.”

“What does?”

“Your father,” she said. “He's another optimist.”

Driving to the nursery, I thought about this, my father being an optimist. He threw horseshoes alone in our backyard and listened to Bach suites while tinkering at his workbench. He read books about surviving divorce, and maybe because a book advised it, he'd started writing in a diary that he hid in his nightstand. I'd read a few pages, but then guilt swamped me and I returned the notebook to its hiding place. He'd lectured me on responsibility because I'd ignored the ragtop, and when I told him about Carlos saving Whitney Garrett, he said, “I hope she wanted to be saved.”

Roundtrip, the delivery took me two hours because the causeway had clogged with civilians leaving the Naval Air Station after their shifts. By the time I made it back to La Cocina, the health inspector had come and gone. The restaurant was empty, the door locked. The CLOSED notice and our failed inspection were posted in the window like new, elaborate menus.

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