“Do you think he’ll get a big crowd? With everything that’s going on?”
“Big, yes. Good? That’s the real question.”
“Hi, Cup of Joe.” Gloria rushes into the kitchen rummaging through her purse. “Sorry, sorry.” When she looks up and sees me, she asks me in Spanish, “You’re coming with us?” in a tone that I know is asking not if but will you please.
I smile at Gloria and nod. No one but her gets it. No one else will admit that Joe can be creepy. It’s as if every minute you talk to him, he’s trying to test the boundaries of what he can and can’t say to you. Or maybe he’s just one of those people who is deep down insecure and struggles to hide his awkwardness. That’s still no excuse for the time he asked if I had body piercings he couldn’t see, or told Gloria that the pictures of her school days in Nicaragua were nice because she was so much thinner back then.
It’s why Gloria calls him Cup of Joe. When she learned it was an idiom for coffee she said, “That makes sense. More than one cup and he gets on your last nerve.”
Gloria puts the grocery list in her purse and ties her hair up in a messy bun. Joe’s gaze travels up and down her neck and I push my chair back under our glass table. It scrapes against the marble tiles and startles him.
“We going? I need to be back soon too,” I say.
* * *
While Gloria and I do groceries, Joe wanders to the deli section and orders himself a sub. Chicken tenders and honey mustard on a whole wheat roll with pickles, onions, oil, and vinegar. He says it like it’s all one word.
“You guys want? I can wait for yours to come out while you shop,” he says, pointing at a green wire table by the deli’s café. “I have a bunch of messages I need to take care of anyway.”
“Thanks. I’ll have the same but with muenster and tomatoes,” I tell the woman behind the counter.
“Tell Gloria not to take too long,” Joe says. I shoot him an annoyed look and he adds, “You don’t want your sandwich getting soggy.”
I chuckle at the thought of Joe thinking he knows what I want or don’t want. It’s so typical of Papi’s staff. I’d hate it if it weren’t for the fact that it’s nice to know some things are mine. They can tell me how to dress, what to say, and how to act, but they can’t control the things I feel and want. Even if it’s just a Publix sub that’s a little soaked with tomato juice around the edges.
I grab a basket, find Gloria by the produce, and ask her if I can help.
“Of course. Gracias, Mari.” She tears off a section of the grocery list and hands it to me. It’s all written in Mami’s perfect, nearly microscopic cursive. “Actually, if we hurry, I can convince him to stop by my apartment on the way home. I have some books I need to pick up.”
The thought of seeing Gloria’s apartment excites me. In the four years she’s worked with us, I’ve often wondered where she goes home to on the weekends. The most she’s ever told me is that her place is tiny and she shares it with her roommate, Amarys, who’s from the Dominican Republic and plays practical jokes like putting decals on the windows that make it look like the glass is broken. Amarys loves to make her worry, is what Gloria will say, though she never looks worried, just amused.
We load the groceries into Joe’s trunk and Gloria sits in the front so she can give him directions to her place. It’s a few minutes from the Publix, off a back road that hugs the edge of US 1, right around the corner from the Metrorail station. Joe rolls down his window to spit out his gum and the sound of the train rattling overhead fills the air. We pass a small strip of stores with a Domino’s, a barber shop, and a nail salon with $27 MANI-PEDIS written in blue letters on the glass. Gloria’s place is in the last building on the street, which is about a third the size of the others. It’s shaped like a U that someone divided into several units, and the center courtyard is filled with overgrown palm trees.
Joe parks at a spot marked RESERVED and Gloria and I snap off our seat belts at the same time.
“Entro y salgo. Just wait here,” she tells me. I watch her dash off and disappear behind a staircase as she makes her way up. Through the bars of the hallway balcony, I catch a glimpse of the purple scrubs she wears as a uniform, but I can’t make out which door she goes into.
Joe drums at his steering wheel with his thumbs, even though the radio’s turned way down.
“You okay?” I ask.
“Yeah. Just staying alert. We don’t exactly blend in around this neighborhood with my car, you know?”
I get what he’s implying. “You drive a Subaru, Joe.”
“It’s brand new.”
I roll down the window and let the breeze massage my hair. The driveway is full of potholes and the buildings look nothing like the new ones being constructed in our neighborhood. These have stucco walls and terra-cotta tiles on the roofs, but they’re faded and cracked in places. “It reminds me of one of our old apartments. We lived on the first floor of a building just like this.”
“Bet your parents are glad that’s behind you now.”
“I liked it,” I say, still looking out the window. “I like it.”
What I remember most was all the noise. Kids actually played on the sidewalks, and because our air conditioner was never working, my parents would leave the windows open. I used to stare out at the streets through the screen and pretend the little squares were pieces of the world I could place in my pockets.
Gloria bounces down the steps hugging a stack of books. She’s been studying to take her citizenship exam in a few months.
“Ready to go, muchachas?” Joe emphasizes this word like it’s a joke to him, so exotic. He loves referring to me and Gloria this way, except for when it’s just me. He calls me muchachita, which is even creepier. I’m no one’s little girl. Least of all Joe’s.
“Sorry,” she says, even though she didn’t even take five minutes. “Amarys te manda saludos.”
“Really?” A giddy smile spreads across my face. If Amarys had meant to say hello to both me and Joe, Gloria would’ve said so in English, but she didn’t. “I wish I could meet her.”
“Maybe one of these days,” she says.
I gasp in excitement and cover my mouth.
“What? What?” Joe startles, looking over his shoulder as he pulls out of the parking lot.
“No, nothing. I thought I had to sneeze.”
“Promise you won’t do that during Friday’s interview. It makes you seem flaky.”
Sometimes, and I mean very rarely, I get so annoyed at Joe that I almost feel bad about it. He tries so hard to make everything perfect for my father that he goes too far. And he’s so excited about this nightmare of an interview you’d think it was his dream come true. Well, it definitely wasn’t mine. I never asked to be paraded around in front of millions. I never agreed to offer up my bedroom for the world to dissect. My life is not some throwback MTV Cribs episode.
“How are today’s polls looking?” I ask.
He answers the same way he always does. “Unreliable.”
five