Relative Strangers by A.H. Kim

Author:A.H. Kim
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Graydon House Books
Published: 2024-02-08T13:37:38+00:00

* * *

For the rest of the bird-watching hike, Mom looks over at me like I’m a wounded animal. She keeps stroking my hair and removing invisible pieces of lint from my hoodie. This is exactly the reason I never told Mom or Eleanor or anyone about why Nils and I closed Loca and split up: I didn’t want to be the pathetic object of their sympathy. I already felt bad enough about myself without everyone piling on to the Amelia pity party. Given my mother’s teary reaction, I refrain from telling her the details of the pivotal final scenes of the Nils-Amelia disaster movie.

Nils and I had put in another fourteen-hour day preparing and serving an inspired twelve-course meal to our discriminating Loca patrons when we finally collapsed into bed. I was barely asleep when I heard pounding on our cabin door.

“Sheriff’s department, open up,” a voice shouted.

I stood behind Nils in my silky pajamas as he opened the cabin door to a barrel-chested sheriff with a couple of rifle-toting deputies providing backup.

“What’s the matter, Sheriff?” Nils asked through the screen door.

“We’ve got reason to believe you’ve been engaging in unlawful activities at this establishment in violation of Section 597 of the state penal code,” the sheriff shouted in a rat-a-tat voice. He sounded like Tommy Lee Jones in The Fugitive.

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand,” Nils said. From the confusion on the sheriff’s face, it was clear the feelings were mutual. Nils’ Norwegian accent was always more pronounced when he was tired, and in that moment, Nils was exhausted.

“Do either of you speak English?” the sheriff asked, elongating the words and looking from Nils to me and back again. As the two deputies exchanged goofy grins, I glanced down and realized my cheongsam-style pajamas made me appear as if I had just stepped out of The World of Suzie Wong.

“Yes, we speak English,” Nils said, speaking more loudly, “I just don’t understand the charge.” He stepped forward to open the screen door, causing the deputies to raise their rifles.

“Hey, guys, I don’t think that’s necessary,” I shouted, emerging from behind Nils. “We run a restaurant here. What do you think we’re going to do, julienne you to death?”

Apparently, the Mendocino County sheriff’s department didn’t have a sense of humor or working knowledge of French cooking terms. They took my little joke as a personal threat. The sheriff and deputies handcuffed me and Nils on the spot, pushing us into separate cruisers. When we got to the sheriff’s department, we used our one phone call to leave an urgent voice mail for our business lawyer in Manhattan. We spent the rest of the night in his and hers concrete-block cells, with two obnoxious drunks as Nils’ cellmates and a very twitchy meth-head as mine.

Our New York lawyer referred us to a local criminal defense specialist who advised us to make a plea. He said the evidence against us was overwhelming. The sheriff’s office found Nils’ air rifle, boxes of BB

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