Shit Building Mixer #2
My heart is good now.” As if to prove his vitality, he lifts his foot. “That was just my fancy shoes being too smooth.” There’s
a sweetness to the way Abu looks at Sami, so much love below the surface.
“Okay, yeah.” The tension eases from Sami’s face. “Have fun, guys. Call me if you need a lift. Love you.” Sami gives a small
wave and rests his hands on the metal edge of the counter as he watches them go. Once they’re out the door he mutters, “He
needs to take it easy.”
“His heart isn’t good?” I don’t mean for my voice to croak, but I realize how disturbed I am by this news.
Sami’s gaze cuts to me. “It’s better, they say, but I thought it was fine five years ago, when he had a heart attack, so who
knows.” He’s doing that thing where he phrases it almost like a joke to defuse the tension, but I can see the weight in his
shoulders.
“I’m so sorry. That must’ve been scary.”
“Thanks, but honestly I wasn’t here when it happened, so I don’t know what it was like.” His jaw ticks like he’s holding back
some big emotion, then he lets out a breathless chuckle. “I was working an intense shift under this militant head chef, so
I didn’t even look at my phone. I didn’t even know that he was in hospital until like seven hours after he fell in front of
Carmen, actually. I could’ve missed the whole thing had he . . .” He doesn’t need to finish.
Behind my eyes, it plays on repeat: myself rushing to the hospital, staring at my mom’s text on my phone. Sami was lucky,
I want to tell him.
“You worked elsewhere?” I say instead as I gaze around this cozy place that seems so much a part of Sami. It’s hard to believe
he ever left.
“Briefly, yeah.” He grabs a cloth and wipes a clean part of the counter that he’d just wiped again. “I was the sous at this
up-and-coming restaurant on Stephen Ave. It was cool, but it was a lot.”
I try to picture him in chef’s whites, plating an intricate little dish, but I don’t quite see it. “You didn’t like it?”
His smile is sheepish. “It’s wild, because I really loved working there, but after that day . . . I guess I just never thought
about how Abu was too old to be working so much, and there was so much to do here, and . . .” He chuckles. “Long story short,
I never returned to that restaurant. I basically broke my apartment lease too. I’m probably blacklisted as a ghoster, but
maybe I was never meant to leave.” He chuckles again, but there’s pain in it.
“Oh, Sami, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry about me.” Sami’s expression brightens just a bit. “It wasn’t exactly what I planned, but I like making people happy with food, and what my parents built is special. I’m lucky.”
If my parents were like Sami’s there’s no way I’d want to leave either. I sip my wine to hide my dejection. “I get it. Abu’s
great. It’s great you have this time together.”
“Ha.” Sami’s smile becomes real. “Mostly he spends his time pestering me. He’s really found his stride.”
We both laugh, and I try not to think about all the unanswered messages my dad sent me those last few months. There was a
reason I cut him out, I remind myself. My dad wasn’t like Abu. Sometimes coming home isn’t a comfort.
“Oh shit, I almost forgot.” Sami disappears into the kitchen and quickly emerges with a whole plate of sandwiches that look
like juicy mini burgers with crusty buns and an herby cream sauce. “Kotlet sliders,” he announces. “My dad thinks it’s messed
up, but I think it works.”
Sami holds out the plate to me. I pick one up and take an initial bite. The pickles, onion, sabzi, and garlicky cucumber yogurt
mix together so perfectly that I could almost cry. Mouth too full to express my euphoria, I slap Sami’s arm, but then my fingers
kind of graze over his forearm and it turns into a squeeze (totally by accident). He instantly locks eyes with me, and I realize
I’m an idiot.
I swallow hard and pull back. “This is amazing. I think you just healed all my ailments.”
He can’t hide his delight. “Really?”
I nod vigorously. “I want to eat this every day. No, that’s not enough, I want to immerse myself in it. I want to become it.”
His lips twitch into a smirk. “Now I know you’re full of shit.”
“Seriously!” I press. “You should add this to the menu. You’d have a line around the block.”
“I doubt that,” Sami says, suddenly a little softer.
“You could call it Sami’s Sammie! I bet the folks at marketing would have a field day.”
He rolls his eyes. “I bet the folks at marketing would never stoop that low.”
The music on the jukebox suddenly cuts out with a fuzzy sound. The giant black clock on the wall indicates that the mixer
started ten minutes ago, yet it’s still just me and Sami. Even that soup-breakdown guy has disappeared, leaving a stack of
coins on his table.
A nervous energy trickles in. What if nobody shows up to this mixer?
Have I really sunk so low that I’m going to get stood up by these fuckers?
I slowly sip my wine while Sami’s eyes linger on the door. Only a few seconds later, the bell of the door chimes. I pop higher
in my seat.
It’s just Jane. One of the few people I don’t actually need to speak with now that she’s given Jamie and me permission to enter her suite. She perks up when she sees me at the counter,
and I try not to let my disappointment show as I give her a friendly wave.
She’s in a bright-pink fur coat, a black slip dress, and a pair of pink tights with holes that reveal orange tights underneath.
Her hair is a new color, a frizzy yellow almost like straw. Somehow she makes it work with the high bun.
“Oh good, you’re alone!” she mutters as she sidles in and grabs one of Sami’s sandwiches off the platter. She turns to Sami.
“Hey! I’ll have what Mona’s having.”
“Excellent.” He pours her a glass of white and passes it to her before making his way across the diner to clear off soup kid’s
dirty table.
“These are good,” she says through her first big bite.
Then she places her napkin on the counter and opens the sandwich, takes a knife to the pattie and starts mincing it into smaller pieces, mixing the yogurt sauce in.
Once she’s done whatever that is, she closes the sandwich and looks at me again.
“So, I wanted to talk to you about the . . . Well, you know, it’s pretty
obvious.”
I nod like I know exactly what she’s talking about. But it’s her nervous energy that throws me. I’m weirdly drawn in by the
way her hands clench the fabric of her dress and turn white at the knuckles.
“That’s what we’re here for,” I mutter.
Smile lines fill around her eyes before quickly fading. “Has your underwear gone missing from the laundry room too?”
I almost cough into my wineglass, glancing at Sami over my shoulder, but his back is to us. “Oh, right. I’m not sure.”
She nods steadily, like she expected this. “At first I wasn’t sure if I was just mistaken, but I had this one pair with cherries
on it that was lucky.” She leans in closer and the scent of something synthetically fruity comes with her. “I washed them
in preparation for this interview I had lined up, and when I went to get them, they were nowhere to be seen.” She blinks slowly,
accentuating her clumped mascara. “I checked everywhere. There’s only one explanation left.”
I nod, not knowing what to say.
She notices the skepticism on my face. “You don’t believe me?”
“Oh, no, of course I do,” I say. I should believe her. Although if I’m truly honest, she does seem scattered enough to misplace her undies without the help of a thief,
and it’s possible that she’s let her true-crime obsession create this.
“Well, I started counting before I do laundry, and twice now I’ve had a pair go missing. Isn’t that creepy?”
“And you think it’s Carmen?” I ask as quietly as possible, remembering their spat in the lobby.