ROBIN AND RUBY

KENSINGTON BOOKS

Chapter One

The Friday dinner shift at Rosellen's had started deadly: just one table in Robin's section for the first hour, and then an unexpected surge of customers, and suddenly he was in the weeds, juggling an indecisive four-top and this party of eight professionals lobbing one highly specific demand after another: five different temperatures of steak; an omelet from the brunch menu but with egg whites only; two pepper grinders to be left on the table, even though he assured them that Rosellen's Upscale Southern Cuisine was perfectly spiced. One guy wanted his salad with dressing on the side; another wanted his salad with dressing "extra tossed," whatever that meant. The whole bunch of them seemed to be trying to prove that they were in charge, as if the monumental shoulder pads in their pin-striped power suits didn't already send that message. But the fussiness of their needs made them all seem like little kids.

Then they ordered wine. In thirty minutes' time, they ordered four fucking bottles! Uncorking wine is Robin's personal doom. You're supposed to keep up a conversation with the table while you finesse the captain's knife, and you're supposed to make it look effortless, like tying your shoes, but for Robin it's more like tying a tie: too short, too long, too short again, almost right but not quite. He sweated through the first Bordeaux, the bottle wedged in his armpit instead of in the crook of his elbow where it's supposed to be. The second one also took effort, but it came out more smoothly, and maybe he got too confident, because with the third bottle, he snapped the cork in two and had to return to the bar for a replacement. Rosellen would take that one out of his check.

Now here he is with a fourth red, so stressed out that he decides to just rest it on the floor, clamped between his feet. Bending over, he announces, "Ladies and gentlemen, whatever it takes," and yanks up with all his strength. Splup! The cork emerges, miraculously intact. Robin waves it in the air on the tip of the corkscrew, a little flourish, the end of a magic trick. A couple of the diners, already tipsy, put their hands together and applaud.

He sees all of this unfold in the enormous rectangular mirror on the wall behind the table, as if he is starring in a short, comic film about a clown in a crisp white shirt.

There in the mirror, he spots George across the dining room, mouth hanging open. George, who's not just a coworker but his roommate and his best friend, smiles at him, even as he shakes his head in disbelief. Robin simply shrugs and lets his gaze float upward, miming, What else could I do? Acting his part: the boy who just can't help himself. But he's also aware that the hostess and the bartender have witnessed the bottle-on-the-floor stunt, and so word of this will travel back to Rosellen, who won't be amused.

The shift ticks by in a kind of blur. The awareness of having messed up has a way of seeping out and saturating all his thoughts, leaving Robin feeling strangely indistinct, as if the separate edges of things are melting together. He starts to think he has a low-grade fever, and he touches his forehead, which is maybe a bit warm. Could he have picked up a cold, a summer flu? He touches his neck, poking at his glands, and that does it: triggers the mental spiral, the one he can't avoid, the one he still can't shut down, even after the test results assured him he was negative. This is not a cold, it's a symptom of the Big One, the first sign of the virus that's been lying in wait, ready to erupt and take him down, once and for all....

"Do I feel a little warm to you?" he asks George.

George puts his hand on Robin's forehead.

"I'm having a freak-out, about, you know-"

"Shh. Not here," George says, looking around to see if anyone is in earshot. And then, more gently, he adds, "You're in a restaurant kitchen in the middle of June. Of course you're warm."

In spite of everything, Robin lets himself smile, though it's a smile with a tint of the gallows: If you get sick, you'll never have to serve another table of yuppies another bottle of wine again.

As he makes his way to the kitchen to check on his last order for the night, he feels a pinch against his thigh: the folded corner of the envelope he's been carrying all day in his pocket. He'd almost forgotten it was there. Now he rubs his fingertips along its smooth surface, as if it's a talisman that will remove all obstacles from his path.

It had arrived in the mail that morning, before he left for work: the letter he was sure would never be sent.

Congratulations. A slot in our London theatre program has become available for next spring's semester. Because you were first on the waiting list, we're happy to extend to you ...

A semester abroad, studying theater. Only a handful of college juniors are invited. Someone has apparently backed out, and now Robin gets to take his place. A few months ago, when the original letter came, the one saying, "Sorry, but ..." his mother had insisted he not give up hope, you never knew what might happen. She said she had a feeling about this one. One of Dorothy's famous "feelings." He didn't give it much weight. She was wrong as often as she was right.

But here it is on paper, his name, Robin MacKenzie, and the date, June 11, 1985, a few days ago, and the official signature of the Chair of the School of Drama. Congratulations. You won't be spending the spring of your senior year on campus, in Pittsburgh; you'll spend it in London. You might actually, one day, be an actor. You might even have talent.

Might, because amid the elation, he feels something else: the lingering pinprick of embarrassment from the original rejection.

George had retrieved the letter from their mailbox this morning. Robin was ironing their work shirts at the time. (George was useless with an iron, and not much better at most other household tasks, and Rosellen would probably send him home if he came to work in a wrinkled shirt.) After he read the letter, Robin went back to ironing.

"It's great news," George said. "Why don't you look like you're into it?"

"Because first on the waiting list still means second-best."

George put his hand on the back of Robin's head and rubbed, in that comforting way he had of asserting their friendship, and it did make Robin feel better, to know that George believed in him, wanted the best for him, wanted to see this as a prize, rather than some new setup for failure.

"You know I'll come to visit," George told him.

"I'll sneak you over in my suitcase. You might fit." A timeworn joke: at five-feet-seven, George is four inches shorter than him.

"Is Margaret Thatcher letting any more black boys into her country?" George asks. Race riots in England have been showing up in the news, and after what happened in West Philly last month, George has been paying attention.

Now, hours later, the letter is already rumpled. After sharing it with George, Robin called his mother and read it over the phone to her ("Didn't I tell you!" Dorothy proclaimed) and then listened as she repeated the news to his sister, Ruby. "You're so lucky," Ruby said, which gave him a moment's pause: was that it? Luck, and not talent?

By the time he was ready to call Peter, he'd read the letter so many times he nearly had it memorized....