He picked up the notepad and stared at his sketch for a few seconds. “Here’s what I had in mind,” he said. He stood next to me and pointed out his plan for reorganizing the shelves to accommodate more merchandise. When he finished, he turned back to face me. “If you want to go ahead with this, I can start moving the merchandise so you’ll have a place to store these boxes.”
I agreed. One by one I sliced through the packing tape and peeked inside. Not only had we gained several alien costumes, but also an array of dark suits with government identification clipped to the lapel and a couple of cardboard models of scientific equipment that would make great backdrops for the windows. Three of the boxes were filled with panels that fit together to depict a laboratory. Another box held fog machines and jugs of the juice that went in them. I filled one of the machines and plugged it in. While the machine warmed up, I snuck out to the shop and squirreled Soot into the stockroom with me. I set him down when a cloudy layer of fog crept across the floor, and I ducked behind one of the larger boxes.
“What the heck?” Tak said. Fog swirled around his ankles. Soot walked over to him and Tak jumped like he’d seen a ghost. When he recovered, he looked from side to side and finally saw me peeking around from behind a stack of boxes. I stood up and stepped away from my cover. I switched the fog machine off and smiled.
“You don’t grow up in a costume shop and not learn to enjoy the props,” I said.
“It must have been fun growing up in this world. I bet your parents threw the best parties in town.”
“It’s just my dad and me. My mother died when I was born. Ebony started looking after me when I was five, and she’s been the closest thing I’ve had to a mom ever since.” I’d surprised myself. Usually I didn’t like to talk about my family to strangers, but with Tak, something was different.
He didn’t say anything at first. He didn’t offer to hug me like guys I’d dated who saw that admission as a cry for consolation. I liked him a little bit more for that. He reached up and held on to the bracket to one of the metal shelves.
“My dad and I aren’t talking right now. He doesn’t understand what happened with my job at the DA’s office. There’s some questionable activity going on there and I didn’t want to be a part of it, so I resigned. My boss wouldn’t accept my resignation, so it’s on the books as an unpaid leave.”
“What does your mom think?”
“My mom wants me to be happy. And she wants my dad to be happy. And she wants us all to get along, which might never happen. To him, quitting is a sign of a poor work ethic. You just don’t do it. He thinks I should put my nose to the grindstone and barrel on through, regardless of what’s going down.”
“Do you think whatever’s happening there is illegal?”
“No, but I think there’s some stretching of the law, and that makes me uncomfortable. It was best for everybody if I left and they found someone better suited for the job.”
Tak’s story was oddly comforting. It made me feel less alone in my struggle to help the two people I loved the most. It also let me see that he was an ordinary guy with ordinary problems. Suddenly, it didn’t seem so important to keep everything to myself.
“Would you like to go out to get some dinner?” I asked suddenly. “No strings attached and we don’t have to talk about anything important.”
He reached up and tucked his longish black hair behind his ear and then smiled. “I’d like that.”
*
TEN minutes later, Tak and I shared a booth at Catch-22, a restaurant that boasted twenty-two different ways to serve fish. For a seafood restaurant in the middle of the desert, it was surprisingly popular. Tonight the featured “Catch of the Day” was shrimp, so I ordered the Salvadorian shrimp salad, and Tak ordered his shrimp Cajun style. We filled the time between ordering and the food arriving with chitchat that came surprisingly easily. Despite the fact that it was the two of us out to dinner, there were no first-date nerves. Still, I couldn’t help notice the looks we attracted from the other diners in the restaurant. I figured only about half of them were due to my ladies of the ’80s suspenders and side ponytail.
“How’s your dad?” Tak asked.
“He’s steady. The doctors said they might release him by the end of the week. The only reason they haven’t yet is because it’s his second heart attack in two weeks and they want to be sure he’s stable. I want him to come home, but I hope things calm down before he gets here.”
“Does he know about everything that’s been happening?”
“He knows Blitz was murdered at the party and he knows something’s up with Ebony. But she’s not involved. Detective Nichols is being stupid if she thinks she is.” As soon as I said the words, I regretted them. “I didn’t say that because she’s your girlfriend. I really mean she’s wrong if she thinks Ebony is involved.”
“Detective Nichols isn’t my girlfriend,” Tak said. “She was, but it’s—we’re—we broke up.”
“Oh,” I said, clearly losing the ability to converse.
“I—you thought I’d say yes to a date with you if I had a girlfriend?”
“This is a date?”