Saint Patrick’s Day weekend at P. J. Mortimer’s was greeted with the kind of frenzy that only accompanied things like flash floods. Special staff meetings were held and memos were distributed making it clear that this was a Very Big Deal and that all of Saratoga was going to descend on Mortimer’s to get their jig on. It was all hands on deck; no one could call in sick. More green food was introduced—spinach pasta, split pea soup, mint ice cream. They had even tried putting some green dye in the onion blossom batter, but this just made the onions look moldy and mossy. Even really drunk people wouldn’t eat them when the batch of testers was offered free at the bar.
On Saturday night Parker stood in the corner during the shift meeting. His brow was furrowed, and he put all of his concentration into drawing little zigzags on the frosted window.
In the middle of her family trauma Mel had heard what had happened between Parker and Nina but hadn’t really been able to say or do anything about it in the last two days.
Parker took his order pad from his pocket and opened it and clapped it shut several times. He refused to look Mel in the eye.
As it turned out, there was a good crowd and a decent hour-long wait, but there definitely wasn’t enough business to justify the fact that they had one server for every two tables. This just overcrowded the pantry, and everyone kept bumping into one another in the doorway. Throughout the shift Mel tried to catch Parker’s eye, but he kept his focus turned away. She finally ended up standing next to him as she waited for the bartender to give her a tray full of Paddy’s Frozen Peppermint Patties and Parker was dully waiting for a few Guinnesses.
“My dad found out,” she said quietly. “About me.”
This, at least, caught his attention.
“Whoa. How’d that happen?” he asked.
“Pretty much the same way you did.” No point in mentioning Nina’s role in all of this.
Parker’s eyes flicked back and forth between the sets of bar taps before settling on Mel.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“It was kind of hard. My dad told my mom. My mom told Avery’s parents. They all had a big meeting, tried to do an intervention on us.”
“Jesus. When did all of this happen?”
“He found out on Thursday.”
“Thursday?” Parker laughed. “Well, that was a banner night for both of us.”
“It’s probably better this way.”
“My mom called yesterday and told me she made me an appointment to go to a psychologist,” Mel said. “But my dad has been good. I don’t think he really understands it, but he’s not going to throw me out or anything.”
They leaned against the edge of the bar and looked down into the tiny pools of beer and icy slush that were all over the rubber mat that covered the servers’ pickup area. Parker flicked a beer cap with his finger, and it flew behind the bar and bounced off a bottle.
“I screwed up,” he said. “Bad.”
“Oh, Park.” Mel wished her friends weren’t going through all this.
“And then, because that wasn’t enough,” he went on, “I got a credit card and bought a metric shitload of DVDs so that she could pick the one she wanted to watch. I was going to return the rest. But the credit card company noticed that the first purchase seemed weird, and fraud protection flagged my card and put a hold on it. So now I might not be able to return them on time, and I’ll have to pay four hundred bucks. Which is just perfect, don’t you think?”
The birthday jig alarm went off. Julie, Avery’s replacement on the keyboard (not that she was anywhere nearly as good as Avery), took her position, and the army of servers descended on the unsuspecting victim. Parker and Mel looked at each other and then quietly stepped away from the bar and slipped through the glut of servers who came forward to stomp around the doomed birthday person’s table. They went right to the pantry and out the service door.
Once outside, they stood coatless in the cold, peering at the massive pile of cartons that preparations for the holiday had generated. They meditated on the garbage and their respective problems for a while; then Mel’s mind drifted back to Avery. She was so relieved that Avery wasn’t “a problem” anymore. Now Avery felt like Avery, her best friend. She’d said that she was nervous about her audition and that she’d wished Mel could be there. If things were how they used to be, Mel probably would have been. In fact, all three members of the Triangle would probably have made a trip of it.
She looked up at Parker suddenly.
“Avery went to New York today,” Mel said. “She has her big audition in the morning.”
“Hooray.” Parker said flatly.
“I want to go, and I want you to come with me.”
“To her audition? What, do you want to sabotage it or something?”
“I’d like to cheer her on.”
“What page of the script are you on?” Parker asked. “I think I just walked into a very special episode of Seventh Heaven.”
“I’m serious,” Mel said.
“Well, in Reality Land, where I live, I work tomorrow.”
“Call in.”
“I would, but I can’t, now that I have this massive credit card bill to pay. Also, Nina hates me now. Also, Avery’s the one who broke up with you, so why are you chasing her to New York to support her? Also, also, also.” He started picking Guinness pins from his suspenders and throwing them angrily across the lot, timing each of his also’s with the hollow ping as they hit the Dumpster.
“Avery said she wanted me there.”
“She dumped you.”
“She’s still Avery.”
“Avery, the girl who decided to make somebody else give you the news that you two were over. You were crying for like two months. Do you and Nina like to date people who don’t call you? Is that like a big turn-on or something? Why didn’t someone tell me that’s all I had to do?”
“She’s been my friend my whole life. She stuck up for me the other night. We stuck up for each other.”
“Okay.” He sighed. “I give. There was sticking. You want to do the rah-rahs for Avery, fine. But why would I go?”
“Because you’re our friend. Because you like Nina.”
“Who probably never wants to see me again.”
“Look,” Mel said firmly. “Do you want to figure it out, or do you just want to complain about it forever? Come with me. Talk to her.”
Parker ran his hand through his hair, then paced over to the Dumpster, retrieved his pins from the ground, and reattached them to his suspenders. Mel could see his lips moving. He was mumbling to himself, trying to figure out what to do. After a few moments of this, he came back over.
“If you can find a way to convince her to spend hours with me in the car, I’ll go,” he said. “But she won’t. I’m telling you, she won’t.
“If I promise you I can do it, will you take off and come with us?”
“If you can do that, then I’ll do anything you want, because that means you have magical powers.”
“Be at my house at eight-thirty. Park down the street.”
He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the door.
“Now you’re scaring me,” he said, finally smiling in the way he usually did. “You’re getting all tough and mastermindy.”
“I know,” Mel said, flushing with pride. “I think I’m a butch.”
“I always think that when I see your sparkly T-shirts.”
“It’s not the clothes,” Mel said, moving him away from the door to go back inside. “It’s the attitude.”