TWENTY ONE

After Dad insisted that we stop at the very authentic Mexican place on our way home that my mother never let us eat at and I had to say no to everything good that I really like because I didn’t want to risk eating garlic and onions and ending up with stink breath on my date, finally I was back home.

It was a relief to be home. For some completely irrational reason I’d felt like crying after the boat ride. Me–a tough bad ass spy girl! How could Jaisen go out with Alice? For everything that he did that got on my nerves I never thought that he was sleazy. It was like he was a traitor to girls everywhere. Or just me. I thought that he was different.

I ran myself a bath and threw in a Lush Bath Ballistic. The delicious aroma filled the bathroom and the water fizzed a pinky orange. I was going out with my dream guy. I didn’t have time to think about Jaisen.

After going out as a boy the past two nights I needed a girly bath. I poked my toe into the steaming water and added more hot water. I wondered where in the world Alex and I were going. I slid down into the tub and leaned back. I let all of the tension of the mission melt away. Tonight, I was not a secret agent, just plain old Katie Carlyle. Not such an exciting name, but hey, Katie Carlyle had a date with a guitar playing hottie, so maybe just for tonight it was better than Veronica LeSage, Secret Agent, anyway.

By the time the doorbell rang and I rushed out of my bedroom and down the stairs to answer it, I had changed clothes twelve times. I was hopeless without Emma and she was still at her grandma’s house. I wasn’t looking to be the height of fashion or anything, but I had some spy sensibility that made me want to be dressed to fit in.

I settled on a casual jeans and funky t-shirt sort of look, hair in a ponytail. We must be going somewhere musical–Alex was a musician. For one fleeting moment, my hand on the door knob, I longed for the very cool Stacey Malone clothes that I had worn the night before, but I knew that I could never pull it off. I was no Stacey Malone, even if I could play her.

I opened the front door and found Alex in green army pants and a t-shirt with a band logo on the front. They were several sizes to big for him and hung off of his skinny frame. In a very hip sort of way, of course. Good. We matched.

“Hi,” I said, smiling.

“Ready?”

“Um, yeah, I just need to get my purse, why don’t you come in for a minute?” I said, my purse being in the living room where my parents were sitting, waiting.

“Sure.” Alex nodded.

A burst of relief shot through me. I really did not want to explain about how my parents wouldn’t let me go out with a guy that they had never met and that he actually had to come in and meet them.

Alex followed me into the living room. If he was surprised to see my parents sitting side by side on the couch, he didn’t say anything. My parents’ noses both wrinkled as though they smelled something bad when Alex walked in the room and maybe they did, but didn’t they understand that musical rebels could not always smell springtime fresh? They had better things to do with their time. Like learning guitars riffs and seeing into my soul.

Introductions were made, rice krispie treats refused, and I was ready to grab Alex’s arm in one hand, my purse in the other and run when my mother asked, “Where are you going tonight, Alex?” from her spot on the couch.

Alex opened his mouth and said “Tutto Va Bene” and I almost died right there. Dad didn’t say anything so he must not have been paying close attention to Jaisen earlier when he said that he was going to the exact same place.

No, Dad didn’t have a clue. He just said, “That’s nice.”

I could tell that my mother wanted to say something about the way that we were dressed, which I have to admit I kind of did too, but she kept her mouth firmly closed. I was no Emma Krimstein, but even I knew that we were in no way dressed to go to Tutto Va Bene. Didn’t Alex notice this? Maybe he didn’t know what kind of a restaurant Tutto Va Bene was. I wondered if he could afford it.

We said good-bye and left. This was bad. Jaisen was totally going to think that I was following him or something.

“Tutto Va Bene?” I asked, seated in the car next to him. I tried to think of how to phrase my next question without sounding stupid. “Are you sure that you want to eat there?” Lame, lame, lame.

Alex nodded his head. “Chicks dig that sort of thing.”

I wanted to say something, but I couldn’t. I certainly didn’t want him to think that I was not the sort of chick that he thought I was. Because whatever sort of chick he thought I was, was the chick who he had asked out on a date and it was too soon to let him know that I really didn’t need to go to a fancy restaurant. Particularly, this fancy restaurant.

Alex turned on the car stereo. “This is my band,” he said.

“Oh,” I said. “Great.” I smiled and nodded my head in case he couldn’t hear me over the music.

I tried to remember what Tutto Va Bene was like. I had only been there once, when my brother Michael had graduated from high school, which had to have been at least five years ago. My other brother Paul had decided on Burger Paradise for his graduation dinner and I had never been back to Tutto Va Bene. I couldn’t remember much. I knew it more for its pricey reputation than anything else. Was it possible that it was a big enough place that we wouldn’t run into Jaisen and Alice?

Could the music in the car be any louder? It was really hard to think with music blaring and I was thinking as hard as I could. Where were my problem solving skills when I really needed them?

We pulled up to the restaurant and Alex turned off the car and the stereo went silent. A pleasant hush followed while Alex got out and came around to open my door.

“Thanks,” I said and followed him into the restaurant.

Tutto Va Bene was not large. Turns out it was small and exclusive. This was bad as far as hiding from Jaisen was concerned but still a brief flicker of hope flared. Maybe it was such an exclusive place that we needed reservations? Maybe there was a dress code?

Alex scoped the room and for a second I thought he was realizing this wasn’t the place for us, but instead, with a satisfied look on his face, he went up to the maître d’ and said he had reservations. Reservations. I watched in shock as they nodded and checked his name off the list, not giving us a second glance. Apparently, there was no dress code.

We sat down and were handed our menus. I covertly glanced around the white tablecloth laden restaurant from behind my menu. I didn’t see any other young people. Most of the other tables had people my parents age or older.

I caught the gaze of someone at a table a few over from ours. There was an elderly woman looking right at us. Oh my god. I almost dropped my menu. Not just any elderly woman was staring at me. Mrs. Patent was staring at me from two tables over.

What was she doing here? Maybe she was thinking the same thing. She certainly fit in with the ritzy crowd at the restaurant better than I did. Was she staring at me because of my blue jeans or did she recognize me from the Save the Whales dinner?

I turned my gaze back to the menu as slowly as I could. I tried to keep any look of recognition from my face.

I made small talk.

“What do you think you are going to order?” I asked Alex.

Before he could answer I heard an exclamation of surprise from behind me spoken by a very familiar voice. My heart stopped.

“Katie?” Jaisen said. I felt his hand on my shoulder. I looked up at his smiling face. “I did not know that you were coming here this evening.” He wrinkled his nose, undoubtedly remembering the disparaging comment that I had made earlier about Tutto Va Bene.

“Neither did I,” I said.

“Apparently,” Alice said in her baby doll voice, as she looked over my outfit. Alice was dressed in a tight little red dress with her blonde curls piled on top of her head and was just covered up enough to not quite look like a prostitute. In other words she, unlike me, was dressed well enough to be eating at a restaurant like Tutto Va Bene. Jaisen was also dressed well enough to be eating here and had exchanged his casual clothes from earlier for a dark grey suit.

I briefly introduced everyone and before I could politely say good bye go eat your dinner or something of that nature, Alex piped in with “Dude, you have one wicked accent.” He grinned and nodded his head at Jaisen. “Are you like German or something?” Jaisen’s accent was going strong, my guess was on account of his lovely date and the strange lure that guys with accents held for southern California teenage girls.

I was sending mental messages to Alex to please stop talking and let the happy couple go on their merry way, but for a guy who I was certain could see into my soul, he seemed immune to my mental messages.

“Actually, I spent the last few years in a small town in Germany, but—” Jaisen began but was cut off.

“That is so cool,” Alex said, bouncing on his seat, his long hair swinging around his face. “You probably speak German, am I right?”

“Yes,” Jaisen said tentatively, a bit as though he were talking to a crazy person, which I was beginning to wonder myself because having lived in Germany for several years who wouldn’t speak German?

“I’m in this band,” Alex continued. “And we’ve been thinking translations are really hot right now. Americans eat them up. They’re all dude I don’t know what that guys sayin but it sounds good. Especially German. Everything in German sounds angry. We think that our audience would get really into that.”

Jaisen, Alice, and I stared at Alex. Jaisen hadn’t even told him that he wasn’t actually German. Didn’t Alex realize that he was being totally offensive to a potential German person? I continued with my mental messages full on.

“If you’re ever interested, it would be so cool to have a real German speaker working with the band, ya know? Not that anyone around here would notice if we screw things up, but we’re thinking big–we could be over on the continent in no time.”

Jaisen seemed to have picked up a stray mental message that I had aimed at Alex, because he politely declined and before things got even more uncomfortable said, “We should let you get back to ordering. See you later.” He guided Alice away from the table and turned around and winked at me behind Alex’s back before pulling out a chair for Alice and seating himself a couple of tables down from us.

I wondered when Jaisen would notice Mrs. Patent or if he would be able to tear his gaze away from his luscious dinner date long enough to notice Mrs. Patent at all. I looked over the top of my menu to see if he was looking around. He was seated facing me and he caught me looking at him and smiled.

I looked down quickly. Silence descended on the table.

“I think that I’m going to get the ravioli,” I said to Alex.

“Cool,” Alex said.

I tried to think of something else to say, preferably something witty. All I could think was, Alex must think that I’m a bit on the nutty side, not talking to him and peeking around the restaurant at the other diners. But he did have those soul seeing brown eyes surrounded by a frame of long hair, so maybe he understood, even if he wasn’t altogether quite in tune with my mental message throwing quite yet.

I was awash in a sea of tea candles glittering in crystal and eyes flickering upon me. I must have imagined the eyes, for whenever I looked up, neither Jaisen nor Mrs. Patent were looking at me. I attempted conversation but only managed to take short paths down dead ends. Our meals arrived and I found that the pasta really was half rate as I had predicted. I tried to focus. I was beginning to feel light headed, as though I had stood up too quickly.

Half way through our meal Mrs. Patent left with the other members of her table. I felt one set of imaginary eyes disappear and at the same time I struck upon the magic words with Alex.

“Tell me about your band,” I said. It was as though the floodgates had been opened and a torrent of information came out of my dining companion.

Most of this information meant nothing to me and I realized that if I really wanted to date a guy who played the guitar I should probably do some research into music. I caught phrases here and there and something about how his band was on the verge of making it big if they only had some money to make a clean recording and promote themselves.

How, I wondered, was paying for this fancy dinner getting him any closer to that goal? I didn’t ponder this idea for long. Maybe he didn’t see the connection between his lack of funds and his spending of funds. My brother Paul was kind of like that. He didn’t comprehend that spending $150 on comic books and beer would not leave enough money left over from his low paying coffee shop job for such essentials as food. There was no understanding of input/output differentials.

I, on the other hand, paid close attention to my input and output. Of course, there was very little output as the brunt of my salary as a secret agent was sent directly to a secret U.E. trust fund that I couldn’t access until I was eighteen. Money was building up nicely in my trust fund and it was satisfying to know that I would be able to take care of myself after I graduated from high school. Unlike my brothers, I would not be making emergency phone calls to my parents for money while in college.

Maybe Alex and his band needed a money manager. I could totally do it. Would that make me part of the band? It would probably be my only chance to be in a band, what with my aversion to performing in front of people and all. Even if, I had to admit, Alex’s band was a little bit rough around the edges, it would still be cool to be part of a band. Especially one Alex was in. Maybe they just needed more practice. And a money manager like myself who could politely guide them away from the shrieking type of singing that they seemed to favor. I thought I should probably get to know Alex a little bit better before I told him this great idea of mine to become his band’s money manager. I didn’t want him to think I was pushy or anything.

Our plates were cleared from the table and we stood up to leave. Jaisen and his date were lingering over dessert. It was still early and I wondered where we would go next.

I needn’t have wondered. I was never going to find out what else Alex had planned. No sooner were we in the parking lot then we were attacked.