I have accepted that, somehow, Martin and Aubrey believe that I always knew what I wanted and was implacable in getting it. “She has your eyes.”
“I thought she might. From the Facebook photos. Everything else is you, though. Thank God.”
“She’d love to meet you.” I point to the trailer. “There’s no one there.”
“No. This isn’t the right time for that. This is her time. Can we stay here for a while longer? Just watch her?”
“Sure, Martin. Of course.”
We spy on them from our hidden spot for a long time until Martin says, “Be right back,” and ducks into the clothing store behind us. I assume he’s going to search out a restroom, but through the store window I watch him charm the owner into letting him use her computer.
On the square, the businesses all around close. One by one, the lights in the card store, the tile store, the coffee shop go out; the owners emerge and stroll down the block to line up and buy dinner from the newcomers to Parkhaven Square. They’re obviously a tight group. They chat amiably, joke with one another as they carry their food to the tables chained to the tall oaks, then eat and visit as the sun sets and the day starts to cool.
Martin is back by my side when Aubrey opens the trailer’s door. As she stoops through the low doorway and puts her foot onto the metal step, her new neighbors, the other business owners, hold up their cups and the paper trays of the food Aubrey made, and cheer her. Tyler hangs back at the open doorway, letting Aubrey have her moment.
Martin whispers to me as if Aubrey were near enough to hear, “This area, very good location. Very underserved. Ripe for exactly what she’s doing.”
All I can think is that I’m watching a thirty-thousand-dollar party.
“Can you believe she did this all by herself? She’s so intrepid, isn’t she?”
“I still haven’t gotten past the lying and fraud.”
“We’ll deal with that.”
I don’t know how I feel about him saying “we,” but I don’t comment, and Martin never stops gazing at his daughter.
A pair of young men, one wearing a fedora, both in short-sleeved Western shirts, hurries past us, heading toward the trailer. They stare into iPhones as if they were holding Geiger counters that will lead them to the places that are hot.
“I knew it,” Martin says. “I knew that the foodies would be all over this.”
One of the young men pauses to read the name off a street sign, then works his thumbs, checking the spelling of the street as he enters that information.
Martin nods gleefully at the busy thumbs. “Let the Tweets begin.”
I point a finger behind me at the clothing store computer he had borrowed earlier. “Did you …?”
“Yep. Got the word out. The kids’ complete lack of business savvy actually works in their favor with the cognoscenti. Foodies live for a discovery like this.”
The kids. He called them “the kids.”
He was right. More clumps arrive. They’re mostly young with interesting haircuts, all of them eager, filled with purpose. Like shoppers on Black Friday, rushing to get a cut-rate laptop, they hurry to the order window, eat their food, discuss, trade bites, begin texting. A little while later, more clumps arrive.
We keep up our stakeout as it grows dark and the twinkle lights really do seem festive shining down on tables full of customers. After each new surge, Tyler comes out and wipes some menu item off the dry-erase board that we are too far away to read.
“Oh, that is fantastic,” Martin says. “They’re running out of food.”
“That’s good? Seems like poor planning to me.”
“No, it’s really good. Foodies love scarce and hard-to-get only slightly more than they love exotic. Hey, look, they’re taking menus with them.”
It’s true; almost everyone grabs a menu from the rack outside the order window. When a couple hustles past us—both of them in thick, black, dorky-chic glasses—Martin asks if he could have one of the menus they’ve taken.
“It’s my daughter’s place,” he explains. “But we don’t want to intrude on her big night.”
The young woman hands him a menu, tells him that the food is “surprisingly imaginative” and that they’re coming back. “Soon.”
Martin and I read the menu together. At the top of the sheet is the name “FalaFellows.”
“FalaFellows?” I say out loud.
I read and reread the menu my daughter has created. In addition to daily specials like coffee-braised brisket and chicken and dumplings, their mainstay is falafel, a salad with