Double Shots, Donuts, And Dead Dudes

Chapter 2

“Hello, my friends! How are you today?” Pablo set our drinks down on our table almost immediately after we sat down. We didn’t even order them. He just knew. It was one of the reasons we always asked to sit in his section. “Agua para Señorita Francesca, y Coca de Dieta para Señor Matteo. And you want una margarita y una cerveza? It’s Friday night!”

“Of course!” Matt replied.

“Y tu?” Pablo asked, looking at me.

“Sí, por favor,” I said. Pablo had been pushing me to learn Spanish—at least restaurant Spanish—for a while now. “It’s just like Italian! Just a little different,” he would tell me. I tried to tell him I barely spoke any Italian, certainly not enough to be able to muddle through any similarities to Spanish, but he wasn’t having it. So I used what Spanish I could here and there to make him happy.

“And you two know what you want to eat?”

We hadn’t even picked up our menus, but we really didn’t have to. Matt, as usual, ordered the biggest monstrosity of a burrito they had on the menu. My order, too, was my usual.

“Chicken fajitas.”

“Ah-ah-ah!” Pablo clucked, wagging his finger at me.

“Fajitas de pollo,” I corrected.

Pablo smiled. “Right out!” he said and took off to put our orders in.

The warm chips and fresh salsa I’d been dreaming about appeared at our table in the next instant, along with a bowl of queso. Bill winked at me as he set it down. I knew he probably wasn’t supposed to give it away, but somehow it always appeared on our table and never on our bill, no matter who was working.

As Matt and I dug into our chips and salsa, we chatted about work for a few minutes before I ruled it off limits. Pablo returned with our drinks before we had a chance to move on to anything else.

“Una margarita y una cerveza,” he said, setting them down. He glanced up at one of the TVs above the bar that was advertising the lottery drawing later that night. “You two buy tickets? It’s a big one!”

It was a big one. Almost a billion—yes, billion with a B—dollars. I shook my head. I never played the lottery. It seemed silly to me when there was such a tiny chance of winning. But to my surprise, Matt nodded.

“You better believe it!” he said.

“You did?” I asked.

“Of course I did! It’s a billion dollars, Franny. A billion. You know what you could do with that kind of money?”

“Do you know how unlikely it is that you would win? Or that you’d get all of it if you did?”

“Yeah, but with that kind of money, you could split it with ten people and still be rolling in it. It’s a billion dollars. Frankly, I think it’s almost irresponsible not to play with that kind of jackpot.”

Pablo nodded as he tucked the polished black stone rosary he always wore back inside his shirt pocket, a ritual I’d seen him do probably a hundred times since it always seemed to be falling out. “A billion dollars is a lot of money, Señorita Francesca. You could solve a lot of problems with that kind of money. And me, I got kids. I gotta take care of them. Kids cost a lotta money these days.”

“How are your kids these days?” I asked, eager to find an opening to talk about anything other than the ridiculous lottery jackpot.

“They’re good! They’re good! My boy, he’s living with me. He wants to join the Army after he graduates. Says they’ll pay for him to go to college! And that’s good because I’ve seen how much those colleges cost, and it’s a lot. And my boy, he’s smart. He should go to school so he can get a good job where he doesn’t have to walk around all day like his papá!” Pablo rubbed his leg. He’d mentioned before that he’d had an injury many years before that still acted up once in a while, especially when it was cold. Massachusetts winters being what they were, the leg had been bothering him a lot lately.

“Now my girl,” he went on, obviously happy to be talking about his kids, “she lives over with her mamá. She’s been asking me for that new phone, the one that costs a thousand dollars.” He whistled. “That girl got expensive taste, my friends. No five-year-old phone for her. Not like me.” He pulled his phone out of his apron pocket. A little piece of paper slipped out, too, which he grabbed and stuffed back in before showing us his phone. “See this? I bought this for my son five years ago. He get a new one. He pass this one down to me. But my girlie? No, no hand-down phones for her. She always gotta have the newest and best.” His phone screen came on.

“Is that your daughter?” I asked, seeing the picture of a pretty, dark-haired girl in a big poofy dress as his background.

“Sí! Yes, that’s my Adriana.” He quickly unlocked his phone and went to his pictures. He handed the phone to me with another version of his background picture on it. “Isn’t she beautiful? From her quinceañera last month. You talk about expensive taste. I’ll be paying for that party until I die!”

I flipped through the pictures. His daughter really was beautiful. It was hard to believe she’d just had her fifteenth birthday party. I definitely hadn’t looked like that at fifteen. Of course, maybe if I’d gotten dolled up for a big party in my honor, I might have made an attempt, but Adriana was clearly a natural beauty.

“She’s gorgeous,” I said, handing the phone back to him.

“I tell her she’s not allowed to date until she’s thirty. I beat the boys off with a stick if I have to!”

I laughed. “That’s exactly what my grandfather said when I was her age.”

“And see? It worked out! Look at you now. You grown up, you beautiful, you have your own business, a nice man.” He craned his neck to look at something. I realized it was my hand. “No babies yet and no ring, but I think they coming.”

My face flushed hot red, and I looked down at the table and covered my face with my hands. I had no idea what Matt did except laugh.

“Ahh, Señorita Francesca is embarrassed!” Pablo said, patting me on the back. “Don’t be embarrassed, Señorita Francesca! Nothing wrong with wanting to get married and have babies! I see that look in Señor Matteo’s eyes. You’ll see.” He patted me on the back again. “I gotta go check on my tables. Your food be right out.”

I didn’t look up, even after he walked away. Matt and I hadn’t even begun to talk about marriage and kids. I wasn’t even sure if I was ready to have that conversation.

“It’s okay, Franny. He’s gone,” Matt said, still chuckling.

Reluctantly, I lifted my head to look up at him.

He had a mischievous twinkle in his eye that I didn’t trust. “So, about what he said…”

My eyes widened. Even if I was ready to talk about the future, I didn’t think I wanted to do it immediately, especially not smack in the middle of a restaurant.

“…I’ve been thinking I need a new phone. I dropped mine the other day, and that crack in the screen got worse. I know I could just get the screen replaced, but I feel like I’d rather just get a new phone.”

I stared at him for a second then exhaled in relief. He laughed at me.

“You’re too easy to mess with, Franny.”

“You’re my boyfriend! You’re supposed to be nice to me.”

“I am nice to you. I’m so nice to you I even let you have the last chip.” He pushed the basket over to me.

I took the last chip and dunked it in the queso. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” he said just as Pablo walked by our table. Matt picked up the empty chip basket. “Hey, Pablo, could we get some more chips?”

I rolled my eyes. So much for him being so nice to me.

Pablo took the basket from him and brought back a new one overflowing with chips just as the screens on all the TVs around the room changed to show the lottery drawing. For a second, the hubbub in the room increased, then it got quiet. I looked around and realized that everyone was focused on the drawing, even the wait staff. Several people clutched lottery tickets in their hands. Across from me, Matt got his wallet out and slipped out his ticket. Pablo, standing at the bar, held his own ticket. He kept looking from the TV to his ticket and back again, even though they hadn’t started the drawing—they were just in the long tension-building part where they did a couple of smaller drawings and talked up the size of the prize.

From the feeling in the room, I began to think that I was in the minority of people who didn’t play, and I wondered if maybe I was the crazy one. After all, tickets were just a dollar or so, and though the chances were slim, the reward was astronomical. I briefly entertained the thought of running out of the restaurant and going to the nearest gas station to buy what would obviously be the sole winning ticket, but I knew it was ridiculous. The closest gas station was at least a mile away, and I wasn’t a fast runner anyway. Besides, the drawing was already starting.

Double Shots, Donuts, And Dead Dudes

Chapter 2

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