"I am...going to be. In like an hour," I replied, straightening up. "You said you weren't coming until four."
"I thought you said three," she said, shrugging.
"So you show up at two-thirty,?" I said, raising my eyebrows at her.
"Better early than never. You can always walk home, you know," she retorted.
"Hi, Gina," Dave, an elderly guy I work with, said, coming up to where Gina and I were the standing. I've always suspected he has a bit of a crush on her. It's kind of cute, really.
Gina smiled at Dave warmly. "Hi, Dave," she answered back, giving a little wave.
"What're you doing here?"
"Just came to pick up Parker a little bit early," she answerd, putting her hand on my back.
"Why is that?" he asked in what I assumed he thought was his flirtatious voice.
"Today's his birthday and we're going out for dinner," she answered.
"Think you could cover for me, Dave?" I asked.
He nodded. "Sure, Parker."
"Okay, cool," I said. "Thanks."
"No problem, kiddo," he said.
I rolled my eyes at the nickname. Gina snickered, knowing it was the nickname that I had asked her not to use on me only a week before. I gave her a death glare as we walked away from where Dave picked up where I left off.
"Ready to go?" she asked.
"Yeah, just let me tell Leslie I'm leaving," I said, pointing over my shoulder with my thumb at Leslie, my supervisor.
She nodded and stopped walking. I informed Leslie I was leaving, afraid that she was going to give me a hard time like she usually did when it came to leaving early for any reason but, surprisingly, she didn't and so I rejoined Gina and we exited the store with a few of my friends calling good-bye behind us.
"Where are we going?" she asked.
"I don't know. How does the Outback sound?" I said, struggling to get my blue apron off. She rolled her eyes, stopping me in the middle of my tracks and turning me around so that my back was facing her.
"You are such a guy," she complained, untying the knotted apron for me.
"Thanks," I said, slipping it off the rest of the way as we resumed walking.
"Yup."
We got into the car, Gina getting into the driver's seat and me sitting shotgun. She started the car, pointed in the general direction of the restaurant and said, "To the Outback!" and we were on our way.
Halfway there, no words had passed between us and, apparently, bored, Gina leaned over and turned on the radio. The first thing that filled our ears was a long, drawn-out, emotional, "sometimes...." coming from a voice that I had come to know all too well.
"Ick, gag me," I said as the DJ came on and started to babble about nothing like they normally do on that particular radio station.
"What?"
"No, I just don't like that band that they were playing," I said, gesturing toward the radio.
"What band was it?"
"Hanson," I answered.
"You mean that band you're going to see with Theresa next month?"
"That wasn't a bad dream?"
She chuckled. "No. Why don't you like them?"
"I don't know," I answered honestly. "Probably because everyone is always saying how much I looik like the lead singer and I'm just getting sick of it."
"Why? Is the lead singer ugly?" she asked.
"Not in the opinion of a female, no," I replied.
"Oh gee," she said sarcastically, "how unlucky can you be?"
"Well, considering the opinion of a male would be that he looks like a girl, pretty unlucky," I replied.
"Oh, I see," she said. "Well, don't feel bad. In high school, I used to have a boyfriend who looked like David Bowie. The guys kept making fun of him, saying that he looked like a woman or was gay or something. What made them start leaving him alone was the fact that he got all the got all the girls."
"Yeah right," I said sarcastically. "I've seen your yearbooks, Gina. You never knew a guy who looked like David Bowie."
She rolled her eyes at me.
"He didn't go to my school," she said as if that should've been obvious. "He was a friend of my neighbor, Walker's. We met at a party of his."
"Oh."
"The name of the band is Hanson?" she said.
The sudden change of subject threw me and it took a moment for me to recover. "Yeah. I said that like four times," I said, though I knew I hadn't.
"Oh. Hmmm," she said. Her expression changed to one of thoughfulness and I knew from experience that it would be useless to ask her any questions about what that was supposed mean. So, deciding to forget the subject as a commercial came on, I stared out the window at the darkening sky.
The station was in the middle of the same commercial break when we arrived at the restaurant about ten minutes later. Now, for those of you who don't know, the Outback is a quote unquote "Australian" restaurant. You may or may not have seen their commercials on television where they brag about their big, sharp knives. There isn't really much to it besides that. Not that I'm exactly familiar with the difference between the diet of an American and that of an Australian, but I'm pretty sure the food is pretty much American and so are all the employees. In fact, the only part of the restaurant that could possibly classify it as Australian is the fact that they use Australian slang on the menu and their main beer is Foster's (which, if you recall from the company's commercials, is "Australian for beer"). The food is good at least. And the waiters are cute. According to Gina anyway.
We went into the restaurant and paused a moment to let our eyes adjust to the dark lighting. I've never understood why they keep it so dark in there. Probably so that you don't see the imperfections on the faces of the otherwise perfect employees. We told the hostess we wanted a table for two in non-smoking and she checked a chart. It was twenty minutes before we got to sit down. That's how popular the place is.
To skip over boring details, we sat down, ordered, and the food came. It wasn't until I was halfway through my meal that Gina suddenly bent over, picked up her purse, and, setting it on the table, began to dig through it.
"What're you doing?" I asked curiously.
"Looking for something," she said, glancing up at me momentarily before resuming her search. "Aha! Here it is," she said a second later, pulling out what appeared to be a normal white envelope that you would send a letter to someone in. She slid it across the table to me and I hesitantly picked it up, confused.
"What is it?" I asked though I knew the question would be futile, as I examined each side carefully, finding both sides blank. It confused me that Gina of all people should be handing me an envelope for my birthday. She doesn't believe in greeting cards or giving money for birthdays. The quick thought that it might be something bad like emancipation papers or something like that passed through my mind and only worsened when I saw the rather grim expression Gina wore, watching me turn the envelope over in my hands.
"Open it," she said tiredly, gesturing toward it and sighing.
I turned the envelope one more time so that the side where you normally tear it open was facing me, putting my thumb between the little crack where the flap and the rest of the envelope were separated from lack of something wet to keep them together. I slid my thumb along, separating the rest of the flap from the envelope.
The first thing I saw as I pulled out what the envelope contained was the word "Kodak" printed over and over and over again in faded gray letters going diagonally across the rectangle of paper.
Even more puzzled than ever, I turned it over and was faced with a photograph of two babies. They were smiling baby grins: toothless and gleeful. One was reaching toward the camera, the other was sitting politely, apparently either used to posing or born photogenic. I gasped, not needing to be told who these two babies were.
Gina felt the need to explain anyway. She leaned over across the table and, pointing with her forefinger, said, "This one is you," pointing to the one who was reaching toward the camera, "and this one is your twin brother, Jordan," pointing to the little ham.
"Wow," I said, my voice not louder than a whisper.
So my brother had a name. I hadn't realized that all my life I had just known him as "my brother" or "my twin brother," not ever knowing his name. Until now. And his name was Jordan. I seriously hoped he was just named after someone and my mother didn't really have that bad of taste in names.
"It was the best I could do," Gina said in an apologetic tone, interrupting my thoughts.
I looked up at her and smiled reassuringly, finding that that was all I could do.
Later, I placed the picture in a spare frame I had laying around and put it in an honored place on my dresser, where all the pictures that are important to me sit, stand, or hang over. I backed away from it, not taking my eyes off of it, and sat down on my bed to stare at it, my Tonic CD playing softly in the background.