Switched (7 page)

I did a double take when he called me a terrorist and then I heard a little voice in my head say, “Duh!”

I stood up and stuck my finger in his face as if I was going to pick his nose.

“You!” I yelled.

“Me!” he agreed.

“You!” I repeated.

“Oh, lord,” Maisey said. “You know each other? Was his willie the willie that got you into this predicament?”

“What predicament?” he asked. “Wait—willie?”

“No, not his willie. Another willie,” I told Maisey.

“Did you willie her?” Maisey asked him.

“I don’t normally say this, but let’s keep my willie out of this,” he said.

“He interrogated me,” I spat. “He put me in a cell!”

“Correction. I let you
out
of a cell. Actually, it was just a room,” he said.

He had a point.

“Still,” I said.

“Big bad copper!” Maisey shouted at him.

He put his hand out for me to shake it. “Doyle,” he said. “Maisey’s brother, unfortunately.”

“Hello, Doyle. You know my name,” I told him.

“And your social security number,” he added.

“Jack-booted Fascist!” Maisey yelled.

“Come on. I’ll show you the café and your new place,” he said to me, gesturing with his head. He started walking, and I followed him, leaving Maisey behind to finish her coffee with a big grin on her face.

No frills. Inside the tiny café there were no frills whatsoever. Only four or five tables dotted the floor, obviously leaving the majority of diners to eat outside. A long bar ran the length of the café with a mirror behind it. Framed photos of London and people were the only decoration.

“Why is an English cop working as a bartender in Mallorca?” I asked Doyle.

“I own the place,” he said. He stepped behind the bar and put a loaf of bread on it. “Hungry?” he asked me. “I’m making a sandwich.”

He never looked quite at me, more like around me. It got to the point where I wiped at my face, wondering if something was on it that shouldn’t be there.

“I just ate,” I said. “You eat a lot of sandwiches.”

“Do I?” He smeared the bread with mayo and slapped some ham and cheese on it. Finished, he took a big bite. “Let’s go,” he said with his mouth full.

“This is the café,” he explained, gesturing to the room. “You won’t serve a lot in here, mostly outside. And here’s the kitchen.” He opened the kitchen door for me, and I walked through it. It was much cleaner than I had expected. Sparkly. Two young men sat in a corner, playing cards.

“Juan Carlos and Gunnar,” Doyle said by way of introduction. “The cooks. Stay on their good sides. This is Debra, our new waitress.”

“New waitress?” asked Gunnar. “What happened to Felicity?”

“Probably partying on a boat somewhere,” Doyle said. “Debra’s only temporary.”

“Hola, temporary Debra.” Juan Carlos waved at me but never took his eyes off his cards.

“You put the orders here,” Doyle explained. “Have you worked as a waitress before? No, scratch that. I don’t want to know. Goddamned Maisey.”

“Have I ever waitressed before?” I said, as if I ate, drank, and slept waitressing.

I had never worked as a waitress before.

“Oh, God,” Doyle moaned.

Upstairs there was a larger-than-expected apartment with four bedrooms, a small kitchen, and a common area with two couches, a TV, and a table with chairs. Doyle opened a door to a small room that had a double bed, a nightstand, and a chest of drawers. Batik cloths lined the walls like flowy, colorful wallpaper, and the bed was covered with a tie-dyed duvet. Stuffed animals and beauty supplies covered every available surface. It was a girly room. Happy.

“This is yours until Felicity comes back, you understand?” Doyle asked me.

“Absolutely.”

Doyle caught my eye, and I froze like a deer in the headlights.

“I’m not a terrorist,” I said.

“And not a waitress, either, I’m betting.” He clapped his hands together. “Okay, then. You rest up an hour or two and then come down for the dinner crowd.”

I lay down on Felicity's bed and took a deep breath. Her room smelled of pot and cheap perfume, and it lulled me to sleep.

I dreamed that I was a Tahitian girl, beautiful with large brown eyes and long hair down to my waist. I was walking topless on a pristine beach full of white sand and turquoise water and tall mountains in the background. A colorful batik cloth was tied around my hips, and my perfect breasts were only just hidden by my flowing locks. I was smiling, happy as could be.

I walked up to a man with no face and wrapped him in my arms. “I love you,” I started to say but was interrupted by a horde of mice that came out of nowhere and ran over my feet. I tried to scream but I couldn’t make a sound. “Don’t worry. I’ll help you,” I heard a voice tell me. I wasn’t sure if it was the man in my arms or someone else that I couldn’t see. I felt a rush of relief but looked down to see in place of the mice, a river of blood running down the beach. Just as it was sweeping out to a bloody sea, I woke up.

“Wakey wakey, dearie,” Maisey said, nudging my shoulder. “It’s time for your trial by fire.”

“I must have fallen asleep.”

Maisey checked out her makeup in the mirror. “Like the dead. Four hours.”

“Four hours?” I had cocooned myself in Felicity’s duvet, and I had to unwrap myself to get out of bed. “I must have been tired.”

“You’re about to wait on the tourist dinner crowd. Talk about tired. How’s your German?”

“My German?”

Maisey turned around and adjusted her boobs in her bra. Then she counted on her fingers. “We have three menus here: Spanish, English, and German. How’s your German?”

“I’ve seen
Hogan’s Heroes.
”

“Okay, just throw me your German customers.”

***

You know how sometimes everything comes together magically? How you walk into a new situation, and amazingly, wonderfully, you are the master and commander of your new reality? That’s the way it was my first night as a waitress.

Even though I had no idea what I was doing, even though I couldn’t understand a word anybody said to me, I floated from table to table, taking orders and bringing food like a prima ballerina. I was the star of Mallorca. It didn’t matter that the restaurant was swamped with international tourists impatient for supper. I was seamless, flawless. Zoom! I brought the German tourists their schnitzel. Bam! I threw eggs and chips to a group of English rugby players. It was quite a night.

Oh, if only.

Actually, it was the Bermuda Triangle of waitressing debuts. Like the Bay of Pigs but a much bigger screw up.

After Maisey had woken me, I ran a brush through my hair and tied it back into a ponytail, and we walked downstairs. It was 7:00 P.M., three hours before sunset and already the place was packed to the rafters with hungry tourists.

Doyle gave us the slant eye when we got downstairs. “Don’t start with me. Nobody will starve,” Maisey said in his direction.

“You have tables six through fourteen,” Maisey told me.

“Which tables are those?”

I didn’t know anything. I didn’t know which tables were which, where the menus were, what was on the menus, or how to write down orders. I couldn’t remember who ordered what food, and I didn’t know I had to clear the tables myself.

On the bright side, I did learn a whole slew of German curse words that night because half of Munich was there for dinner, and they all thought I was a verdammt schwachkopf.

And I was.

To his credit, Doyle was patient for the first three hours. When I burned his hand trying to steam milk with the espresso machine, he didn’t say a word. When I dropped three plates of pasta, he only rolled his eyes. When a group of Swiss tourists tried to have me arrested after I accidentally stabbed one of them with a steak knife, Doyle punched the biggest one in the face and kicked them out.

But when I forgot to charge two tables for their dinners and then slipped in a puddle, taking Doyle down with me hard on the linoleum floor, he had had enough.

“I think,” he said through clenched teeth with me spread-eagle on top of him, “that you’ve had enough for your first night.”

“Are you sure? The place is pretty packed.”

“No, you’ve done enough. More than enough even,” he said. He looked pained, and I wondered if he felt something for me, especially with us in such a compromising position.

“Are you okay? Your breath is labored,” I noted.

“You’re smothering me,” he said. “I’m suffocating. I can’t—breathe.”

I pushed off him. “Sorry. I’ve been eating a lot of carbs lately.”

Back upstairs, I remembered that Nataniel had planned on bringing my luggage to the hotel lobby. He had most likely come and gone. It was another hassle, but it was too late to handle it now. I would have liked to have clean clothes, though.

Alone in the living room, I began to brew a major anxiety attack. I felt disoriented, off balance. In order to calm myself, I turned on the television and searched the kitchen for a drink. I took a cold beer out of the refrigerator and was thrilled to find a
Sex and the City
marathon in English. I watched six full episodes before Maisey and Doyle returned.

“What a night!” Maisey exclaimed and plopped down on the couch next to me. “My ass is black and blue. It was the night of the pinchers. It was like they had bionic fingers. I was lucky they didn’t pull my buttocks clean off. Yow.”

“Yeah, it was rough,” I said. Actually I hadn’t gotten pinched once. It was either because nobody liked my ass or they were afraid I was going to spill something hot on them or stab them with a knife. I mean, I had done all that and more this evening so those fears weren’t unfounded.

“Time to party!” Maisey hollered but kept her feet up on the coffee table. Doyle popped open a beer and sat on the other couch. He grabbed the remote control and turned to a soccer game.

“Party now? It’s late,” I said.

“This is Mallorca, dearie,” she said. “Just as soon as my feet un-swell enough to fit into my slag heels, we’re going. All three of us.”

It was already past one in the morning, and I didn’t know how long it took Maisey’s feet to un-swell. I couldn’t imagine where we would party and for how long, considering the time. Besides, even if Maisey was going to drag me out for a couple hours of debauchery, one thing was certain: Doyle Wellington wasn’t going out. He definitely didn’t party.

Right. At least I was consistent. I was wrong about Doyle just like I had been wrong about everything in my life lately.

Doyle was a major partier. Perhaps not major in terms of Mallorca party standards, but major in terms of my party standards. It took Maisey’s feet thirty minutes to un-swell and then she changed her top, sprayed on some perfume, glued on really long eyelashes, and slipped into her slag heels.

Meanwhile, Doyle took a quick shower and changed into fresh shorts and T-shirt. He smelled good, too. Because I had no clothes, Maisey insisted I wear some of Felicity’s.

“She won’t mind. She’s probably found a man of means and will never come back to pick up her tie-dye collection,” Maisey insisted.

She also insisted that I wear a micro-mini batik skirt and a white lace camisole, but I refused to wear heels, preferring to keep my comfortable sandals. We walked a couple blocks along the boardwalk until we got to a club that had people spilling out onto the street. Booming techno music and a glowing blue light announced the club from outside.

As we walked into the club, I felt the gaze of men checking me out, as if I was rump roast on daily special at Trader Joe’s. I was relieved when Doyle wrapped a protective arm around my waist. Maisey didn’t care about being on display. She danced her way into the club, shaking her hips and waving her hands over her head.

Once we got inside, I thought my chest would explode from the
boom, boom, boom
of the so-called music. My kingdom for some Frank Sinatra, I thought.

I’m not exactly cool.

Maisey was swept up into a crowd of men, and I began to follow her when Doyle took me by the shoulders and guided me in the other direction toward the bar.

“Gin and tonic!” I shouted over the music. Doyle cupped his ear and shook his head. It was really loud in the club. “Gin and tonic!” I shouted again, but to no avail.

“Oy, Glen! Two pints!” Doyle yelled at the bartender. “Anything on tap!”

The bartender handed us our beers, and Doyle clinked his glass against mine. “I’ll try to do better tomorrow!” I shouted.

Doyle shrugged. “I don’t doubt you’ll
try
. If you could avoid stabbing my clientele, that would be a big plus.”

“You say ‘stab’ like it’s a bad thing.”

I knocked back the beer and before I knew it I had three free drinks in front of me. It was some kind of Twilight Zone club where men actually outnumbered women. It was like shooting fish in a barrel. Scads of men were after me. But barrel or no, I wasn’t interested in shooting any fish. I was off men. I was trying to find myself again. Get reborn. Nobody gets reborn with a man trying to get in her pants.

But there wasn’t any harm in letting men
try
to get in my pants, because I knew I wouldn’t let them make any progress. It was actually nice to get the attention, and it helped my healing from the big rejection.

“Woo hoo!” I heard someone yell. Maybe it was me. “Don’t let me drink too much!” I ordered Doyle and began to tackle a round of tequila shots with a large group of young men.

The rest was a blur until I was lying on the beach looking up at the stars.

“How did I get here?” I asked into the darkness.

“I carried you.” Doyle was somewhere next to me on the beach, but I couldn’t turn my head or my eyeballs would fall off the earth. Well, you know what I’m saying. I was drunk.

“You promised not to let me drink too much,” I moaned.

“By that time you were completely arseholed. There was no going back.”

“I think I’m going to throw up.”

“It would be a miracle if you didn’t.”

I moaned the moan of the dying. “Here it comes. Here it comes. Tell my brother I loved him.” I moaned again. “Ohhhhh,” I said. “Nope. False alarm.”