Her Good-Luck Charm, page 15
Before the door swung closed behind him, though, she heard him start whistling “Fly Me to the Moon” again, and a chill actually went down her spine.
“He was cute,” Hanh said. “Kind of a weirdo. But cute.”
Definitely a weirdo, Rory thought. And, to her, at least, in no way cute.
“Hanh, if he comes in again, let me know, okay?”
Hanh looked at her, clearly concerned. “You think he’s dangerous?”
“Maybe.”
Now Hanh smiled. “Cool.”
Rory shook her head. Maybe it wasn’t so great to be a teenager in Endicott, Indiana. No sense of self-preservation whatsoever. Even though it was still half an hour to closing time, she crossed to the front door and locked it.
“Go ahead and close the register,” she told Hanh. “I think we’re done for the day.”
Chapter Eleven
“Chica, I just had the weirdest day at the restaurant that I’ve ever had in my life.”
Felix looked at Rory, who was standing on the other side of her front door—next to, he couldn’t help noticing, her newly installed keypad lock—in pajama pants spattered with red rosebuds and a red T-shirt...and who was staring back at him with much annoyance. Okay, so maybe coming to her place unannounced after midnight wasn’t something he normally did. Or, you know, ever did. At least not before this week. It had just been that kind of day. All day. From the minute Rory had walked sleepily into his living room looking like she belonged there, all the way up to dinner. Dinner had actually been the strangest part of all.
“Felix, I was just about to turn in,” she told him. “I had a pretty weird day, too.”
“Oh, no,” he told her. “Not until I tell you who came into La Mariposa tonight.”
“Tracksuit Guy,” she replied without missing a beat.
His eyebrows shot up at that. “Yeah. How did you know?”
“He came into my shop, too.”
His eyebrows couldn’t go any higher, so his mouth dropped open instead. “And you were going to tell me about this when?”
“Tomorrow,” she said. “La Mariposa was just getting into the swing by the time it happened. I was going to tell you tonight, but I stopped outside the kitchen door before coming in because you were yelling something in Spanish that sounded like you were in deep doo-doo. I didn’t want to interrupt you.”
Felix tried to remember the moment she described, then figured it could have been just about any moment that evening. So he only said, “You could’ve interrupted me to tell me that.”
She shook her head wearily. “All he did was buy an arrangement for someone who probably doesn’t even exist. Hanh was in the shop with me the whole time. And Ezra was in back. Frankie didn’t—”
“Frankie?” Felix interjected. “He actually gave you a name?”
“Only a first name. And that probably wasn’t real, either. He paid in cash, so...”
“You should’ve told me,” Felix repeated.
“It was fine, Felix. I was going to tell you all about it tomorrow.”
“Well, after he came in to see you, he stopped in to see me. And dios mío, que bicho raro.”
“Sorry,” Rory said, “but that’s beyond my translation ability.”
“What a weirdo,” Felix told her.
“Did the weirdo at least pay with a credit card?” Rory asked hopefully. “With his full name on it? That we could google and find out where he lives?”
“No,” Felix told her. “He paid in cash. But I mean, come on. That accent? He had to be from New York or New Jersey.”
“No kidding.”
When she didn’t seem to make the connection he had, Felix added, “You know. Probably somewhere around I-95.”
Her eyes snapped open at that. “Oh, wow. I was so exhausted by the time I had to deal with him, that never even occurred to me.” She opened her door wider. “You should probably come in.”
He shook his head. “No, you should come out.”
She looked at him with even more annoyance than before. “Felix, you may have noticed I’m kind of in for the night.”
“That’s okay. I was going to invite you to do this anyway tonight, but now that we have a lot to talk about, it’s even more important.”
“Do what? What’s so important?”
“Just come out.”
She looked like she was going to balk. Then, softly, she said, “Let me just grab a jacket.”
It was the first time he’d noticed how much cooler the night was than the day that had preceded it. Although he’d gone home after work long enough to shower and change into a white T-shirt and black sweatpants, he still felt hot from the kitchen as he always did, even hours after knocking off for the day. Rory returned, having thrown on a white hoodie, and started to make her way to the other door that led to the stairs outside. But Felix stopped her.
“We’re not going out that way,” he said.
She looked confused.
He tilted his head to the right. “We’re going out that way.”
His statement only compounded her confusion. “But the only thing down there is the roof access.”
He smiled. “Don’t tell me that in the whole time you’ve lived here, you’ve never gone up to the roof.”
“Only when I looked at the place before buying it.”
He shook his head in disappointment. The roof was one of his favorite places to go. Some of his first memories of his childhood had been when Tita had taken him up there with her to watch the fireworks for the Fourth of July and New Year’s Eve. She’d make them a big bowl of popcorn and a pitcher of Kool-Aid—he’d had simple tastes when he was a toddler—and they’d unfold a blanket and throw down some pillows, and he would stay up way past his bedtime and feel like the luckiest kid in the world. The rooftop was a magical place, saved only for the most momentous occasions. And tonight was certainly one of those.
She shrugged. “I’ve never had any other reason to go up to there.”
Felix grinned. “Well, tonight, you do.”
She sighed heavily. “Fine.”
“Bueno.”
He extended his hand to the right, as if he were a circus ringmaster leading her to the most magical event of the evening. Which he kind of was, but let her figure that out for herself. She locked her door behind herself—couldn’t be too careful after having her place broken into—then made her way past Felix and the door to her storeroom to the ladder at the end of the hall. Hanging at shoulder height was a key, and she plucked it from the hook before placing her foot on the first rung.
At the top of the ladder was a metal hatch with a padlock that she made short work of. Then she pushed it upward with a rusty creeeaaak. He had the same setup in his own place, but he never bothered to lock his hatch. Until now, he’d wondered why anyone would bother. But after what happened to Rory last night, he was starting to reconsider.
Nah, he told himself. Her break-in hadn’t been some random act of mischief and mayhem. It had been the result of someone who’d targeted her specifically because he was specifically interested in her. Which actually made it worse. But if Frankie the tracksuit guy had wanted to hurt Rory, he’d had plenty of opportunity to do that. It looked like, until last night, anyway, he’d just wanted to snoop around in the shadows.
So why had he made himself so blatantly known—to both of them—today?
Once Rory was safely up top, Felix swiftly followed. When he exited the hatch onto her roof, he found her standing in the middle of it, her arms at her sides, staring up at the sky. The sky that was spattered with what looked like billions of stars, interrupted by a thin slice of moon and a comet winking to its left. Bob was a little brighter tonight than he was last night. In a couple of hours, he’d be making his pass as close to the planet as he would be this year. But he’d be visible to the naked eye for another week or so before disappearing onto his next journey around the sun.
All over town tonight, teenagers who’d been born in Endicott the last time Bob came around would be making wishes for things they wanted to have or happen fifteen years from now. The same way he had himself when he was that age. Felix couldn’t imagine where he would be fifteen years from tonight. But looking at Rory right now...
“I can’t believe we can still see so many stars,” she said, “even being in the heart of town, with the streetlights on.”
“Yeah, well, part of Old Town Endicott’s charm is the old-fashioned streetlights that only give off about as much light as the gas ones they were a couple centuries ago,” he said. Not to mention that the trees planted around the same time obscured much of the illumination over them this high up. “So, yeah. Pretty easy to see the night sky up here. But we’re not going to watch it from your roof,” he added.
She turned to look at him, curious.
He dipped his head to the right again. “We’re going next door to my place.”
A short brick wall separated each of the storefront properties along the building, low enough for them to lever themselves over it. Felix was kind of surprised when Rory followed him without question, but she did. Once they crossed to his side, he held up both arms to create an L-shape, once again the ringmaster, to frame the scene he’d set out before going to her place—a blanket on the ground with two pillows on one side and a pair of Collins glasses on the other. Beside them was a frosty ice bucket filled with ice, along with a cocktail shaker full of mojitos. The perfect comet-watching setup.
She chuckled softly when she saw it. “What’s all this?”
“Comet Bob is at his closest point to the planet tonight,” Felix told her. “It’s kind of a special night around here. Fifteen-year-olds all over town are wishing harder tonight than they did on Christmas Eve when they still believed in Santa.”
Rory continued to smile as she drew nearer. “Yeah, well, Santa ended up not being real, didn’t he? But a comet that you can actually see in the sky? That’s gotta be a sure thing, right?”
He remembered telling her what he wished for when he was fifteen. For something interesting to happen in Endicott. He looked at Rory again. When she’d first told him about her amnesia, he’d thought the whole thing was ridiculous, not interesting. Since then, however... Well, now Felix couldn’t help thinking that Bob had definitely delivered for him.
He sat on the blanket and reached for the cocktail shaker, giving it a couple of swirls before pouring the first of two glasses. “Hey, Rory,” he said.
She turned, and, when she saw him sitting on the blanket, covered the half-dozen strides it took to join him. “What?” she asked on the way.
“If you were a fifteen-year-old kid this year,” he said, “and you could make a wish on the comet that would come true when you were thirty, what would you wish for? And I know,” he added as she sat down beside him, her mouth open to object, “you don’t remember who or where you were when you were fifteen.” He handed her the mojito, then went to pour one for himself. “But pretend. Think about the girl with the pink bedroom who wanted a horse for her birthday and to play for the WNBA. And who rode in the back of a big car while her dad sang Frank Sinatra tunes to her. And who danced barefoot at her friend’s quinceañera to ‘Gasolina.’ What would she have wished for?”
She looked at him in clear astonishment, but said nothing.
“What?” he asked.
She shook her head in wonder. “Wow, you really were listening to me.”
He found the remark odd. “Of course I was listening. Why wouldn’t I be?”
She smiled again, but there was something a little melancholy in the gesture this time. “I don’t know. But for some reason, I feel surprised that someone was actually paying attention to me.”
The comment hit Felix harder than it probably should have. Just what kind of life had Rory been living when she lost her memory? He pushed the thought away and continued, “Anyway, think about her. What do you think she would have wished for?”
Rory inhaled a deep breath and held it, then closed her eyes and turned her face up to the night sky. “I think...” she began. “I think she would have wished for...”
A long minute passed, one he knew better than to interrupt. Finally, she nodded once, then opened her eyes and gazed at the sky again, right where Bob was flashing back at her. And he knew then what she had done.
“What did you wish for?” he asked.
Now she turned to look at Felix. “I wished that Bob would let her grow up to be herself. Whoever that ended up being.”
At first, Felix thought it was kind of an odd wish. But after a moment, he thought he understood.
“You think you were unhappy, the way you were living before your accident, because you were living for someone else instead of yourself,” he said. It was a statement, not a question, because it was suddenly pretty obvious.
She nodded. “Yeah, I do. I think I was unhappy, at any rate. There have been so many times this week when there have been visions and impressions, just out of my reach, that I know were twinges of recent memory. But as soon as I thought I knew what they were, as soon as I thought they were going to materialize into something concrete and tell me who I really am now and where I really live now and what I’m really doing now, they evaporated again without telling me any more than that maybe I’m just happier not knowing those things.”
He shrugged. “Maybe you are.”
“Maybe...” She took a sip of her drink. “Hey, this is really good.”
“Better than a dirty martini, right?”
She enjoyed another taste. “Yeah. Way better. Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
Rory smiled at him. Felix smiled back. A feeling settled over them that wasn’t exactly awkward, but wasn’t quite comfortable, either. For a long moment, they only sipped their drinks and gazed at each other, and he tried really hard to think of something to say. For some reason, though, talking didn’t quite feel necessary.
Rory finally broke the silence with “So, my life before the accident.”
Right. They were supposed to be talking about real things, not getting lost in something nebulous he couldn’t even identify.
She continued, “Do you think Frankie is part of the life I left behind?”
Felix nodded. “I do, actually. In some way.”
“Then why didn’t he tell me that?”
“I don’t know. But he’s definitely got some link to you.”
“But is it my Spanish-speaking me or my Italian-speaking me?”
“Definitely Italian,” Felix said. “Marita served him at La Mariposa tonight, and she said he barely looked at the menu, that when he saw spaghetti—which is actually chicken spaghetti that’s just on the kids’ menu, because they can be so picky—he immediately ordered it. I mean, adults order it sometimes, if they don’t think they’re going to like Cuban food, and that’s cool. But why come into a Cuban restaurant in the first place if you don’t like Cuban food? And this guy... Dios mío.”
“What happened?” Rory asked.
“Marita said she put it on the table and he dug right in, then spit it out again. Actually spit it out,” Felix repeated indignantly, feeling outraged all over again. “Then he demanded she get him the menu, and he reread the description. Then he got mad all over again and demanded to see me. And when I went to the table, before I could even say a word, he lit into me, asking me what the hell are sazon and adobo, and what in the name of God are they doing in spaghetti sauce, which should have basil and oregano, and oh, by the way, there’s a typo on the menu, since it should be pollo di, spaghetti not pollo de—duh—and what the hell did I think I was doing using chicken in spaghetti in the first place, that was just an affront to God and pasta both.”
He could see Rory trying to hide a smile, but not very well.
“It’s not funny,” Felix said.
She bit her lip to keep her smile from growing bigger. “Of course it isn’t.”
“It’s not. I take a lot of pride in my menu. That guy had no idea what he was talking about.”
“Clearly,” Rory agreed. Still smiling. “But that does make him sound pretty Italian, all right. Also, the almost certainly phony aunt he was buying flowers for was named Donatella, and she had allegedly just married his uncle Basilio, so... Yeah. Definitely part of my Italian life.”
“Yeah, if he’d been Latino, he would have loved that spaghetti.”
Rory sighed. “I should tell you something else.”
His stomach knotted at the sound of apprehension in her voice. “What?”
“The night he broke into my apartment?”
“Yeah?”
“He did steal something. Actually, two things.”
Her admission surprised Felix. He would have thought that by now, the two of them could have told each other anything. Then he asked himself why he would assume that, when he’d never given Rory any reason to feel that way. Over the past few days, he’d spent way too much time assuring her he was only with her because she was pressuring him to be with her and had made clear, right off the bat, that he wanted nothing to do with helping her figure out who she was. Then he made clear that the only reason he was with her was to help her figure out who she was, and that was it.
How could he have told her that? he wondered now. How could he have wanted to keep her at arm’s length? Especially when, at the moment, all he wanted to do was pull her into his arms and hold her close.
“What did he steal?” he asked instead.
