Chapter 4
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“José Napoleoni’s Rio Grande Trattoria?” That’s what the sign says, so I’m not sure why it comes out of my mouth as a question. Maybe just because I’m struggling with the concept of Mexican-Italian fusion, especially housed in what is clearly a former Pizza Hut just off the highway.
“It’s either this or fast food,” Hollis says. Before I can tease him for being a snob, he adds, “I don’t mind fast food, if that’s what you want. My tastes are pretty much the opposite of bougie. But I figure we can wait out some of the traffic if we sit down to eat here.”
He has a point. Fast food would be, well, faster. But it’s not like rush hour is about to magically disappear, and I’ll dwell less on the ticking clock if we’re eating a decent meal than if I’m sitting helplessly in the passenger seat with nothing to do but wait and imagine the worst.
There are only three cars in the restaurant’s parking lot, which isn’t the best sign.
Then again, this isn’t exactly a bustling area— wherever it is in Virginia we even are—so maybe three cars is an absolute crush for slightly before dinnertime on a Thursday.
I look the place up on my phone and find that it only opened within the last month and therefore has a whopping four reviews, one of which is inexplicably in Polish.
Hollis peeks at my phone, then throws his head back against the driver’s seat. “Jesus. You are the most... the most—”
“The most what?”
“Just the absolute goddamn most, Millicent.”
“Thank you,” I say, still focused on the reviews. Maybe I will suddenly know how to read Polish if I stare at my phone hard enough. I want to know why they gave José Napoleoni’s one star when the other three ratings were comment-less fives, but not enough to bother messing with Google Translate.
“You’ll get into a car with any ol’ stranger you meet at the airport, but when it comes to trying a new restaurant you’re all ‘Ah, I don’t know, I really better do my research before agreeing to this.’?”
“Listen.” I turn my body in my seat to give Hollis my full attention, because this is important for him to understand if we’re going to be spending a significant amount of time together.
“I have never once claimed to make sense as a person. And I would appreciate it if you would stop remarking on my idiosyncrasies as if you’ve caught me in some continuity error. ”
His C -on-its-face frown flattens into a contrite straight line. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
My head tilts and my eyes narrow in confusion; it’s as if Hollis is speaking to me in an extinct language. “Wait. That was an apology. A real one, with no ‘but’ or ‘it’s just that’ trailing behind.”
“Yeah. Do you have to sound so accusatory about it? I did something that upset you. I don’t want to do that. I’m not that much of a jerk. So I said I’m sorry, and I’m going to stop doing the thing. This isn’t exactly rocket science.”
“You wouldn’t think so, no,” I say.
You can always judge a person by the quality of their apology , Mrs. Nash reminds me from inside the memory of when I found out someone in my grad cohort was hosting Penelope to the Past viewing parties for the rest of our classmates.
I exhale, blowing away the grief that threatens to envelop me like a thick fog.
“Also, you didn’t upset me. Just annoyed me a little. ”
“Oh. Well, apology rescinded then. Because you’ve annoyed me a little for the past two and a half hours, so we’ll just call it even.”
“Whatever, let’s eat.”
“Let’s,” Hollis says, unbuckling his seat belt.
José Napoleoni, ready your spaghetti tacos. Here we come.
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I’m not surprised by the restaurant’s red/green/white color scheme—I mean, it’s the obvious choice, isn’t it?
But I am surprised by the giant sombrero-wearing taxidermy bear by the hostess stand, which is presumably posed to be mid-roar but looks more mid-yawn.
And I suddenly want nothing more than to put my fingers in the stuffed bear’s mouth and see what it feels like in there.
Even if I stand on my tiptoes, though, I think I’ll still be about two inches too short to reach.
Before I can ask Hollis for a boost—which I’m sure would have gone over great —a short man with gelled-back black hair and medium-bronze skin appears beside the Please Wait To Be Seated sign.
“Hola and buonasera,” he says, a large, toothy grin peeking out from under an impressive mustache with the ends waxed into curlicues.
“Welcome to José Napoleoni’s Rio Grande Trattoria.
I’m José, and I will be happy to take care of you this evening. Follow me, please.”
Hollis and I slide into opposite sides of a booth, and a young waiter with a few wispy black hairs above his top lip trudges over with two glasses of ice water.
“Focaccia and salsa,” José says to him. “My son,” he explains with a fond smile as the teenager walks with an impressive lack of urgency to the kitchen. “Now, what can I get you folks to drink?”
“Just water for me, thanks,” Hollis says, his face buried in the menu.
Okay, I love this place. First the unexpected sleepy bear. Now I find my favorite drink of all time on the menu, and with free refills . “I’ll have a Shirley Temple.”
“One Shirley coming right up. Ah, thanks, Marco.” José takes the basket of bread from his son and places it in the middle of the red-and-white checkered tablecloth.
Marco places a dish of chunky fresh salsa beside it.
“Rock salt and cilantro focaccia with fresh pico de gallo,” José explains. “Enjoy.”
“This is certainly interesting,” Hollis says, dipping the bread into the salsa. I watch as he brings it to his mouth and his teeth disappear into the pillowy focaccia. He has a really nice mouth when it’s not scowling at me. “It’s like... Mexican bruschetta?”
“Hmm.” I take a bite. “It’s definitely not bad.”
“What are you getting?” he asks, returning to his menu.
“No idea,” I say. “I usually panic while ordering anyway, so it’s easier not to decide on anything.”
He lowers his menu to reveal his dark eyebrows in a V over his eyes. His heterochromia isn’t as obvious under the red-and-green stained-glass pendant light hanging above our booth.
“You panic?” he asks.
I nod and use the small spoon in the salsa dish to scoop more tomato and onion onto my bread.
“Sometimes when faced with too many choices, I panic when it comes time to commit and I choose something completely different. Like I’ll want the chicken, but find myself ordering steak.
And it’s always fine. I’m not picky or anything.
But then I always regret not getting the chicken.
So if I never decide to want the chicken to begin with, I won’t be as disappointed when I don’t order it. ”
He closes his menu and lays it on the table. “That might be the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”
“I find that hard to believe considering I told you not three hours ago that I’m on a mission to deliver the human remains in my backpack to an elderly woman in Key West.”
Hollis’s arm reaches across the table and his long fingers flip my menu back open in front of me. “Figure out what you want,” he says.
I let out a huff of a sigh. Great. Another man who thinks he can make me more normal by telling me to simply do the normal thing and isn’t that so easy . “Hollis. I just told you—”
“Figure out what you want,” he repeats. “And then tell me what it is. I’ll order for you so you don’t have to worry about panicking.”
“Oh,” I say. And there it is again. That kindness. A firefly-like ember of warmth flits around inside my rib cage.
“Don’t read into it. It’s only because I don’t want to hear you complaining for the next three hours about how you wish you’d ordered something different.”
“Right, of course,” I say, a smile stretching across my face. “You’re just being selfish again.”
“Yep.”
The menu is certainly eclectic. Like the focaccia and pico de gallo, everything is a hybrid of Mexican and Italian classics.
My eyes keep returning to the appetizer section, where there’s a picture of fried ravioli arranged in a starburst pattern on a large red plate.
Fried Ravioli Sampler: An assortment of cheese, chorizo, ground beef, and shredded chicken ravioli, fried golden brown, with a trio of dipping sauces.
They look like a bunch of tiny empanadas, and I crave them with a burning passion.
“Fried ravioli sampler,” I announce, slapping my menu shut.
“Fried ravioli sampler it is.”
José brings my Shirley Temple. “I apologize for the wait,” he says. “I got a little carried away with the garnishes.”
He isn’t kidding; the glass he places in front of me has three of those tiny plastic swords protruding from the top, each speared with cherries and orange slices.
It reminds me of when Mrs. Nash and I got tipsy on mai tais on New Year’s Eve and watched a bunch of YouTube tutorials on how to tie cherry stems with our tongues.
She spent hours laughing at my vain attempts while she turned out perfect knot after perfect knot.
“Now,” José says, distracting me from the uncomfortable sensation the memory sparks—kind of like hundreds of those tiny plastic swords stabbing me repeatedly in the heart, “are there any questions I can answer for you?”
I’m tempted to ask him about the taxidermy bear’s provenance, but I assume he means questions regarding the menu.
“No, I think we’re ready,” Hollis says. “We’ll have a fried ravioli sampler and the fideo with meatballs. Brought out at the same time. Thanks.”
We hand our menus over to José, and he passes them along to Marco before he hurries to the kitchen. Marco stares at the menus in his hands and lets out the most teenagery sigh I’ve ever heard before plunking them on a random table.
“Thank you,” I say to Hollis.
He shrugs but doesn’t verbally respond.
I look around the restaurant. We’re the only customers here except for two men drinking and watching soccer at the big, U-shaped bar in the center of the room.
Hollis pushes up the sleeves of his hoodie and oh no, I can’t stop staring at his forearms. They look as if he writes his books by hand with a thirty-pound pencil.
And they’ve got this dark brown hair all over them that reminds me of the bear out front, and now I can’t remember if I want my fingers in the bear’s mouth or in Hollis’s. He does have a really great mouth...
“Millicent,” he says, ducking his head into my field of vision. “Are you listening to me?”
My eyes jump to meet his. “Yeah, sorry. What?”
His lips do that thing where they curve only at the edge. “I said you should tell me more about Mrs. Nash and Elsie while we wait.”
That sure swats away the rest of my daydreams. My fists clench under the table, wishing they’d taken him up on his offer to let me do him minor bodily harm back at the gas station.
For some reason, this man really makes my long-dormant bloodlust bubble to the surface.
“Why? Why would I want to tell you more after the way you responded?”
“I’m sorry about that. It wasn’t my place to say those things.”
“No. It wasn’t.”
“I promise I won’t let my—what did you call it? Lack of emotional fortitude?”
“I believe that is what I said, yes.”
His lips curve further. I can’t quite decide if I’m insulted or charmed. “I promise I won’t let my lack of emotional fortitude intrude on the story this time.” Hollis’s eyebrows raise and he stares into my eyes. “I promise,” he repeats.
“Ugh. Fine. Where was I?”
“They met at the beach. Elsie lured Rose to her room with chocolates.”
José brings me another Shirley Temple (less heavily garnished this time) and whisks away the empty glass I have no memory of draining. “Right, right. Okay...”