Bret Anthony Johnston

I drove by two and three times a day, testing the lock and pressing my forehead to the window. The restaurant was like a diorama, and the longer I was kept out, the more I wanted back in, the more I felt that I'd never worked there at all. I loitered in the parking lot, hoping Carlos or Melinda would happen by, but they never did and nothing ever changed. The notice stayed on the door, the chairs waited to be lifted onto the tables. Through the windows I watched the leaves of Mrs. Martinez's plants wilt and fall to the floor. Eventually, a moving crew carted the booths and tables and refrigerators onto a flatbed trailer; two weeks later, a wig store opened in our space.

When the phone rang one evening, I expected to hear Carlos's slurred voice on the line, but my mother said, “Do you hate me as much as your father does?”

Outside, I could hear him tightening a bolt with his drill. I remembered watching him thrash the ragtop, hearing him cry in his bedroom. In his journal, he'd written, I hope Jay never loves someone the way I love you. I said, “He doesn't hate you.”

“That's a surprise,” she said. “Your father, he's a — ”

“An optimist,” I said. I liked saying that, liked how it made me think of Melinda.

“An optimist. That's sweet of you. You're a good egg, Jay,” she said. “Do you know when I think about him most? Around an election, when everyone blabs about democrats and republicans. Remember? Republican.”

Every pawnshop has a code that it uses for pricing — a ten-letter word with no repeating characters — and Blue Water's was Republican. Each letter represents a numeral (R is 1, E is 2, all the way through 0), so pawnbrokers can openly discuss how much to buy or sell merchandise for without betraying anything to customers. My father had taught us the code years before, so when he said he'd paid I-N-N for the Caddy, I knew he'd bought it for seven hundred. I'd tried to explain the code to Carlos one afternoon, and he said, “Julian, you shouldn't discuss politics at work.”

My mother said, “I loved hearing the pawnshop guys talk that way. It excited me, a language you didn't hear if you didn't speak it. I still size things up like that. I'll think, Do I want to pay A-L for a blouse? Is an espresso really worth B? Is R-N-N-N too much to send in my Jay's birthday card?”

“I never got a birthday card,” I said.

She went quiet. I listened to the static crackling on the line, to my father putting away his tools in the garage. He'd been working out there for hours each evening and I'd been dodging him.

My mother said, “Maybe my calling was a bad idea, maybe I'll let you go.”

“I'm glad you called,” I said.

“That's nice to hear,” she said and started crying a little. Once she'd composed herself, she said, “So, the check's in the mail, as they say.”

“Thank you.”

“And Jay, when you get your money, treat your father to a fancy restaurant. Or, one night when he's not expecting it, bring him home a steak and asparagus. That's his favorite meal and he'd like you showing up with it.”

Outside, our automatic garage door started closing. The light on the driveway diminished, diminished, diminished, and I heard my father run water to rinse his hands with the garden hose.

I said, “I'll deliver it in a limo.”

* * *

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