Gathered outside, though, is everyone I’d thought had already taken off for the night, Emma included. She’s the first to meet my eyes, and she offers a smile that seems to justify all the thoughts I’ve spent on her throughout the day. I approach the circle, squeeze myself in between her and Elias.
Matt’s nearby, smoking as always. Memo’s got a tiny black backpack on, his eyes bloodshot but smiling a big goofy grin. Morris and Boris are both looking down at their phones, speaking out loud their intentions to invite so-and-so from other restaurants around town.
“I’ll see you fuckers at The Crown,” Vee calls out, breaking the circle.
“Hey,” I try to stage-whisper to Emma.
She widens her eyes, smiling. “Hey, yourself. I hear you’ve got yourself a job.”
“I owe you a thanks.”
“Not a big deal,” she says, as if it isn’t. “You seemed happy here last night.”
I’m about to laugh and say that maybe that wasn’t because of a desire to work in restaurants when Elias turns to me, hand outstretched. “What was your name, man?”
I shake his hand, not wanting to turn away from Emma but happy that someone’s talking to me. Hardly anyone said a word to me all day, and I was starting to worry that I’m not just imagining myself disappearing, that it’s really happening. “Carlos,” I say.
“Where you from?”
I tell him, and he raises his eyebrows. “No shit. My family’s from there.” He switches over into Spanish. “How’d you end up here?”
Unconsciously, I look around for Felix. I don’t see him anywhere, though. In Mexico, his appearances felt like ambushes. Here, they feel a little different. “Kind of a long story. My brother, more or less.”
He nods a couple of times. The crowd around us starts to disperse, more people heading out to the bar. Elias follows them with his eyes and then looks back at me and Emma. “You guys coming?”
A minute or two ago I would have said that there was no chance in hell that I’d be up for anything except sleep, many uninterrupted hours of it. Now I hesitate and glance sideways at Emma. When she looks back at me I try to pretend I’m not so damn transparent.
“I don’t know how the hell you guys have the energy to keep going,” I say, stalling, not wanting to say yes or no until I know I won’t be missing out on Emma’s company. I really don’t want to go to a bar right now, but for a re-creation of last night I would give up all my sleep hours for the week.
“It’s ’cause we’re not lame pieces of shit,” Matt says, exhaling a malignant cloud of smoke.
Boris cracks up at this. “Yeah, come on, new guy. What, you’re too good for us?”
I want to come up with some biting retort but instead look blankly at Matt’s cigarette smoke swirling in the night air. I look at Emma, glasses perched on her head, checking a message she just got on her phone.
It feels like a whole day goes by before Matt scoffs. “If he’s struggling this hard already, dude’s not gonna be able to keep up anyway. He’ll be gone by the end of the week.”
“I’m in,” Emma says, almost at the same time, putting her phone away. The group is already starting to break away, led by Matt and Boris. I know I should go home, but as soon as I see Emma turn along with them, like she’s ready to leave without a good-bye, I can’t help but give in.
I trail behind the group because my feet are so tired. The whole time Felix is hassling me to go to bed. It’s not a long walk, though, and there’s something exciting about all of this.
The Crown is a small pub with a few pool tables in the back, booths lining the wall. The cooks from Provecho are already boisterous and spread out, but otherwise the place is pretty empty. Isaiah is at the electronic jukebox in the corner, and everyone else from Provecho stands at the bar. It smells like stale smoke and spilled beer, exactly what I’d imagined a small-town bar might smell like.
I always had this idea that American bars are insanely strict with who they serve. But I know Emma is eighteen, and Matt—who is at most a couple years older than us—goes straight to the bar without blinking an eye.
“Hey, man,” Elias says to me, “let me buy you a drink. As a welcome-to-the-team kind of thing.”
“Sure,” I say, thrilled, though any sort of booze right now will probably make me fall asleep on the floor. I’m here anyway. I might as well. I don’t know how long this little adventure will last, and I’m happy not to be talking to Felix right now.
I follow Elias’s lead and get a beer and a shot, and when we clink glasses it feels like I’ve finally stepped out from the partition between the sink and the rest of the kitchen. “Salud,” Elias says.
“Salud,” I return.
“You ever been here before?”
I shake my head.
“No place like it,” he says. “Saved my life.”
The Australian bartender pours herself a drink too, greeting everyone but me by name. Elias leaves me to go play pool before I can ask him about what he said, so I decide to join Emma because it feels like I’m supposed to.
She’s raising a shot glass to the group. “May misfortune follow you the rest of your lives,” she says, pausing when she notices me. “And may it never catch up.” She tilts her glass in my direction and warmth bubbles in my stomach as if I’m the one who took the shot. Setting the glass down on the bar, she comes over to me, gives me an unexpected hug.
“Are you staying?” she asks. I nod, unable to hide a smile at the fact that she wants me here at the bar. Only after she steps away do I wonder if that’s what she was asking.
Emma is a firefly. She glimmers, leads me to a table, bathes me in her light, flickers off and appears in another part of the bar, talking to someone else. I stare out, looking for her to reappear, sticking to myself since no one else seems interested. For maybe the first time, I want Felix’s company, just because I feel like a tool sitting here all alone.
Then Emma’s right back in front of me, eyes bright with joy. “Tell me everything you know about quesadillas,” she says. “Are they a real thing, or just an American invention, a twist on grilled cheese sandwiches?”
“They’re real,” I say, shoulders hunched toward the table, like we’re co-conspirators. “Sometimes they’re a smaller version of what you see here, just the tortilla and cheese, and sometimes they’re made with fried corn dough and stuffed with all sorts of things. Sometimes there’s not even cheese in them.”
Her eyes flit toward the bar, and I rack my brains for a way to interest her enough to stick around.
“Strangely enough,” I say, “you’re more likely to find ants on quesadillas than guac and sour cream like you do here.”
Success. She raises an eyebrow. “Shut up, I don’t believe you.”
“It’s true,” I say. “They’re called escamoles. Usually they’re fried in butter and garlic and eaten with omelets or tacos. Technically ant larvae, but yeah.”
She wrinkles her nose. “Are they good?”
“They’re okay.”