Wonder if he’s a drunk. If he is, he’s a cute one. Late for him, actually, he’s usually in here for a wine or cerveza by eleven. Work all night, drink all day, but he doesn’t seem to drink that much, just unsteady and bright-eyed from fatigue and coffee. He was a cute kid back in high school, junior high, always down at the pool looking at me, I wonder does he remember, does he know I remember? I looked at him, too.
José was taking the order of Dr. Bell and the guy who came in with her. Funny Ybor didn’t know about Dr. Bell and the aliens, right in the building next door. Physics and astrology. Astrophysics, they just said, probably a combination.
Astrology had helped her a lot. Some of it was just made up, maybe all of it, but you had to make a decision one way or the other, might as well ask your chart. She carried hers in her purse usually, but this morning the battery light was on, so she left it plugged in at the house. She could get along without it for a day. Maybe when she got home she would ask it Is Ybor a drunk? Would he fuck a woman with a body like hers? She knew the answer to that and looked away from him as she pressed her knees together and felt a small helpless ripple of desire, not for Ybor in particular. Time to go to a feelie, or maybe back to Orlando to get serviced for real. There was a place in Gainesville but if she used it Willy Joe would find out. She would have to kill him. It would be a public-health measure, but they’d probably put her in jail anyhow. She thought about last time in Orlando and felt warm and wet and knew she was blushing, the big black man who called her his little doll. What was the name of that place, the Bluebird, the Blackbird? She knew where it was and knew the man’s name, John Henry, claro.
José was in front of her. “Two Tecates on five?” he asked. “Preparadas. I’ve got my hands full.”
“Tecates,” she said slowly.
“You okay, amiga?” He stood there with order pad and frying pan.
Sara laughed. “Just thinking. Not used to it, I guess.”
She opened the two cans of beer and sprinkled a pinch of rock salt on the top of each, and topped them off with lime. Disgusting combination, but the customer was always right, or at least was always the customer.
She carried the two beers over to table five and gave them to Rory and Pepe. “I saw Norman in the mercado this morning. He was acting funny.”
“He usually acts funny,” Rory said.
“I didn’t know you were famous then. He was probably thinking about being second fiddle.”
“Not his instrument,” Rory said, and they both laughed. There was a loud crash in the kitchen and Sara went to check.