Smart Mouth Waitress (8 page)

I've always been responsible with my money, putting a portion away to savings, starting with every allowance, and now with every paycheck. At times I wonder if that was the best strategy, because Courtney spends every dollar she gets and then begs her parents for more, and they always give it to her.

I wondered if Britain was a saver or a spend-now-whine-for-more-later type.

When we got to Commercial Drive, which is just a ten-minute drive from where Courtney lives, Britain proved to be not great at parallel parking. Her ineptitude gave me joy, because I rock at parking. I opened the back door on the passenger side and said to Courtney, “Hey can you google map me to the sidewalk from here? I'm a little lost.”

“Everyone's a critic,” Britain said, slamming her door.

“It was a joke,” I said.

“No, it wasn't. Jokes are funny. You're just acting like Whitney Cummings.”

“Thank you!”

“That wasn't a compliment,” Britain said, angrily shoving toonies—two dollar coins—into the parking meter.

I was perplexed by Britain. She was tall, thin, pretty, and drove a SAAB. What made her such a hater? Why do people who already have so much get bitter about those who have a little more?

Honestly, you don't have to think Whitney Cummings is the greatest comedian in the world, but you have to respect her for trying, and she did create one of the most wonderfully brilliant-slash-awful shows in TV history with her
2 Broke Girls
. The show is about two sassy waitresses, so you can guess who's a huge fan and watches every episode twice.

Actually, don't even get me started about that show, or I'll never get to the next part of what happened that Tuesday night, once we got inside the art show.

First of all, the art was nothing to talk about. The paintings were all inoffensive swooshes of color on mostly-neutral backgrounds—the kind of art that looks fabulous in a photograph of a room, or in a condo sales center. I found one swirly mess that seemed to suggest a pair of big breasts and stationed myself in front of it, looking around casually for Marc.

Marc had invaded my thoughts and taken up residence on the boundary line between good and bad. Actually, he was on the good side and over on the bad was his identical twin, Crossword Guy, who didn't smile.

When I finally spotted Marc, standing with a group of silver-haired people, all holding wine and nodding in front of a five-foot-wide canvas with three stripes, my heart got a swelling feeling. And by
my heart
, I don't mean my heart at all. I got that same feeling I get watching
Dirty Dancing
, and sometimes
A Walk to Remember
.

Marc's gaze swept across me casually, and I felt it like a touch. For a moment, I was back in junior high, being looked at by Scott Weaver, before the
Ne-ne Ne-ne Incident.

Courtney and Britain were together at the bar, getting those square-looking plastic glasses of wine while talking to some older professor-looking guys.

As people glanced over at me, I tried to look like I belonged to someone.

Chapter 6

The gallery was pretty big for being at the back of a restaurant—over a thousand square feet—and quickly filling up with people and their various perfumes as well as body heat.

“How do you like the painting?” a male voice asked.

In a rare moment of self-restraint, I did not make a comment about the thousand-dollar price tag, nor the fact I could smear paint on a canvas just as nicely using only my feet. The presence of Marc had made me cautious, and my speech bubbles were routing through my brain for a change.

“Love it. I'm going to buy this one,” I said.

The fair-haired, athletic-looking guy pointed to the red dot sticker on the card next to the painting. “You can't, it's already been sold. That's what the red dots mean.”

“Oh, I thought that meant the painting was Hindu.”

Surprise and amusement crossed his blue eyes. “Actually, bindis are worn by women in other cultures as well. Muslim women in Bangladesh also wear the red dot.”

As he talked, I admired the young man's stubbly jawline, light hair, and overall wholesomeness. He could sell cereal.
He could sell diet cereal.

He seemed to be waiting for a response from me, so I said, “What's the connection between bindis and red dots on sold paintings?”

“There is no connection. One of life's great mysteries. I'm Cooper.”

He shook my little hand in his big, warm hand.

“Cooper. You're one of those last-name guys.”

His eyebrows went up. “Yes, I am. My first name is Chris, but every classroom was fifty-percent Chris, boys and girls, so Cooper stuck. And you're Peridot. Am I saying it right?”

“You can call me Per or Perry.” Someone took a flash photo, blinding me, and simultaneously, I realized Cooper was Christopher W. Cooper, the artist, and Marc's friend. “I'm a friend of Marc's,” I said, embarrassed to be telling him what he already knew.

He tipped back his tiny plastic cup of white wine, drinking half, then said, “Oh, I heard all about you. You're the smart mouth waitress.”

“I'm not just a waitress. I do other things. I can sorta juggle, but only with three things, and they have to be soft.” I leaned to the side to look around the wall of Cooper, to see Marc talking to an attractive girl with blue hair and multiple butterfly tattoos across her exposed back. She kept touching his arm and laughing.

“That would be Marc's ex-girlfriend,” Cooper said.

“No kidding.” Suddenly I was feeling very bland and regretting wearing a pearl-button cardigan over my borrowed green dress instead of my puffy army jacket. “He dates girls with blue hair?” I asked.

Cooper turned to study them, rubbing his eyebrow. “The exact opposite, actually. He doesn't like the weird hair and tattoos. She didn't look that way a year ago. She was sweet and innocent-looking.” He took another sip of his wine.

“Sounds like you're pretty hard-up for her yourself.”

He spat wine out of his mouth in a spray. “She's my sister.”

“She's a lovely girl. Ah, I see it now, a bit. Do you both have some of that quality Scottish DNA?”

“Not that I know of.” His mouth twisted with amusement, which made my head feel light and my smile grow wider.

I turned back to the canvas, which truly was growing on me. “I'm actually digging the art now,” I said. “Don't get your hopes up—I'm not buying any, but I like what you're doing here.”

“If you're not buying, I'd better go chat up some rich ladies who are.”

“You should.”

He continued to stand in front of me, so I grabbed him by the elbows and rotated him to face the crowd of people who'd just walked in.

He turned his face toward me, ducking his chin to his shoulder, and said, “I'm scared, Peridot. Give me a push.”

Standing behind him, I looped my arms under his and waved my hands in front of him, like they were his. “Don't be scared, I'll be your hands. We'll do it together.”

Cooper transferred his empty wine glass to my left hand, then tucked his hands behind his back and pressed his arms down, gripping my arms firmly, so I was stuck with him, being his arms. I rested my face between his shoulder blades and enjoyed the contact.

He walked us up to a lady and said, “Hello, I'm Cooper. Shake my little girlie hand.”

The lady went along with it and shook my hand like a champ. “No wonder your work shows such sensitivity,” she said.

“All in my magic hands,” he said.

Someone tapped me on the shoulder—Marc, looking embarrassed on my behalf. “I didn't think you'd come,” he said.

“Try and stop me.”

I withdrew my arms, and Cooper carried on without missing a beat, talking to the interested lady about the relative light temperature of rooms facing north versus rooms facing west.

Marc said something else as we walked toward an empty corner to talk, but I couldn't hear him over the noise. The gallery had filled up—there must have been a hundred people—and the bare concrete floors and white walls did nothing to buffer the noise. Back at The Whistle, we have an acoustic-tile ceiling, painted teal, to help keep the din of conversation pleasant in such a crammed space.

Marc repeated himself for the third time, nearly shouting, “I like your buns!”

I had forgotten my hair was twisted up in two buns and thought he was being
extremely
cheeky, so I said, “You can grab them if you want.”

He reached up gingerly and touched my hair, to my disappointment. “This look is so much better for you than the dirty mats.”

“They're not mats, they're called dreads. And they weren't dirty. I washed them once a week.”

“Well, I'm glad they're gone.” He wasn't looking at me, but near me, over my shoulder. “You look nice.”

I turned to see his ex nearby, the one with the blue hair and the butterfly tattoos.

“Marc, do you have really rigid ideas about how a woman should look?”

With that, I had his full attention. He looked deep into me with his gold-flecked, light brown eyes that matched his tortoiseshell-framed glasses. I had a crush on him, and a separate but equally strong crush on those glasses. I wanted to put them in my mouth.

“I'm a fan of authenticity,” he said. “Truth. Honesty. Not artifice.”

“I'm down with authenticity.”

“Says the girl with the false eyelashes,” he said.

I'd forgotten I was wearing those, courtesy of Courtney's supply. They weren't so uncomfortable after all, once you got used to them. “What's wrong with a little window dressing?”

He tugged at his shirt collar, and I realized he was wearing an actual tie, along with pants and a jacket that could have come from my father's closet. I was used to seeing him in more casual clothes, but I liked him in a suit. The tie, however, could have been more interesting.

“The art's great,” I said. Behind Marc, Courtney passed by, giving me a subtle thumbs-up.

Brightly, he said, “Thanks for coming by. These events always go better when there's a crowd.”

He reached his hand out and shook mine, which seemed formal, but appropriate enough for the sophisticated atmosphere. I turned to look for Courtney, to re-introduce them now that we were outside the restaurant, but she'd disappeared on me. When I turned back, Marc had also disappeared into the crowd.

I couldn't see Blue Hair in the gallery, and I had a feeling Marc was off somewhere with her. Later on, after I left the art show, I would become angry at him for inviting me out and then not paying attention to me, but, in the moment, in the crowd, I was simply confused.

I was lost.

The first time I'd walked home from school by myself, as a little kid, I took a wrong turn and ended up on a street that looked like the one I lived on, complete with a house that looked like mine, but wasn't mine. I couldn't figure out what to do next, and feared if I kept walking, I'd only get more lost, so I sat down on the sidewalk and waited for my mother to come find me.

The problem with being lost at the art show was nobody would be coming for me.

A waiter passed by with a tray of something aromatic. “Yes, please,” I said to get his attention.

He tilted the tray my way, displaying crumbs and prawn tails. “I'm afraid that's the last of them.”

“No kidding. All the good ones are taken. Isn't that always the way.”

He gave me a quick nod and disappeared as well.

Courtney and Britain were engrossed in conversation with some other girls who looked a little familiar.

I stood near a wall, as forlorn as a dog turd in the middle of the sidewalk, and mumbled to myself, “I do not speak any English.”

I'd really worked myself up to a good pout by the time Courtney came by to see if I wanted to go for dinner with her and Britain.

“No. She's the devil,” I said.

Courtney laughed.

“I'm dead serious. You left me alone in your room with her for a minute and she threatened to eat my future babies. She has it in for me.”

Courtney shook her head and laughed again. Her cheeks were really flushed from the wine. “That's her sense of humor, silly. She's just teasing you.”

“Like hell.”

Courtney pouted her lips. “Don't be a lawn-pooper.”

“I'm going to record her with a nanny cam and show you. She was really mean to me.”

“I told her all about you,” Courtney said. “You guys just need to spend more time together.”

“What do you mean, you
told her
? Did she say something about me?”

“No,” she lied.

Courtney is a terrible liar—her whole face practically twitches—so I
knew
she was lying. If Britain had been talking about me, that meant she was threatening me to my face as well as sabotaging me behind my back.

“You two young lovers have fun,” I said. “I've got bus tickets that'll get me home.”

She didn't make any effort to convince me to stay, and Marc was nowhere to be seen, so I headed for the exit before my night could get worse.

Outside, I caught a B-Line full of every creepy, smelly weirdo within Metro Vancouver. At least the bright interior lights mercifully dimmed once we got rolling, and the B-Line is pretty fast, because it zips along Broadway with minimal stops. I'd be at my home near Main Street in no time.