by Adriana Peck
Rupert the contractor hands me a hard hat as I walk through the front door. Around us, men are hard at work, hammering in nails, screwing in screws. Everything here smells of either sawdust or stainless steel. I’m already impressed at how far along we’ve come in just a few days.
“You’re going to need this, boss,” Rupert tells me as I put the hard hat on, making sure it’s snug enough to stay on my head.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
“Ceiling. We’re tearing down the old stuff, it’s that nasty popcorn tiling or whatever I’m supposed to call it. Those flaky, crumbly bits that apparently absorb sound or debris or whatever. You saw it when you bought the place, I assume. And you obviously already know it’s a major health hazard for any restaurant.”
“Why would the previous owner have such a blatant health risk just sitting above a kitchen?” I ask quizzically.
“Probably the reason they had to sell the place, I’d wager,” Rupert says. “I see health code violation after health code violation every time I look around. Did this place…cost a lot?”
“No, it was on the cheaper side.”
“Makes sense,” Rupert chuckles. “You get what you pay for.”
The contractor shows me a crack in the wall, hidden carefully by the previous owner behind the oven rack. It’s huge, almost as tall as me at six feet, and as wide as my arm. It zig-zags upwards, reaching up toward the ceiling that other laborers are scraping and replacing as we inspect the crack. The thing looks as if it will bring down the whole restaurant if left untouched.
“That’s why we’re taking this wall out,” Rupert explains, lifting his arms to show me that he’s serious about taking the whole wall out. “We have to get this addressed. It’s one hell of a safety hazard, if you can imagine. You’re probably going to want to step out for today, if I’m being brutally honest. It’s going to get messy, and we don’t want the owner getting hurt.”
“You don’t want the ceiling to collapse on me until I’m able to pay you, right?”
“Exactly,” Rupert laughs. And with that, I head out the back door into the alleyway. I stand out in the alley next to the dumpster for a minute or two, pondering what I should do with the rest of my day. It’s hard to relax when your livelihood that you’ve dropped thousands of thousands of dollars on is apparently plagued with health and safety hazards, but whatever. Nothing I can do about it now, anyways. Besides, I need to clear my head.
I can sense my thoughts creeping back to Rosa this, Rosa that. It’s been more intense this past week, ever since we went out for coffee after meeting with the realtor. It all feels wrong, working on the restaurant without a Head Chef to supervise the operation in the kitchen. I debate calling her. Will she pick up? Has she made up her mind about my offer? Is she busy? Should I just text her instead?
All of this is too much. I need a cigarette.
I tell Rupert I’ll be back in half an hour as I walk out the back door and into the alley. I peer around the corner, checking my bearings. I know there’s a gas station a couple blocks south, so that’s where I start walking. Rosa probably wouldn’t approve, but she’s not here. So I’m going to do what I want.
The morning air is crisp and cool as I walk though the downtown area. Not a lot of people are up this early on a Saturday. It makes the whole thing much more quaint, and I appreciate the solitude. Too many people around makes me anxious, which makes me sound like the biggest idiot in the world for wanting to own a restaurant, right?
But it’s what I’ve always wanted. Owning my own restaurant was a dream of mine ever since I was a little boy. I loved cooking dinner for my parents as a kid, I loved cooking dinner for Carly when she was still around. I bet I could cook for Rosa sometime, too. She’d probably like to have someone else cooking for her for once.
My thoughts trail off as I reach the gas station. Inside, the crusty old attendant sells me a pack of Wealthy Cigs, my favorite brand. I light up outside, and the heavy tobacco brings me back down to earth. Rosa probably wouldn’t want me to cook for her, she’s a chef. If anything, she’d probably cook for me. She wouldn’t want a former cook-turned-waiter preparing a meal for her. I shake the thought away, pulling out my phone and scrolling to Rosa’s contact number as I finish my cigarette and put it out.
I press call and dial her number, raising my phone to my ear.
Rosa answers immediately with a bright and chipper “Hey!” and I find myself struggling to find the words to ask her out.
“What are you doing today?”
“Nothing much,” she says through the static of the phone. “Just cooking and unpacking, like every day before.” She laughs. “I know it’s super boring, but that’s the truth.”
“Not boring at all,” I say. “Need any help?”
Rosa hesitates, and in this moment I worry I’ve come on too strong already. But, just as I start to say a casual nevermind, Rosa says:
“Sure, come on over. I’ll buzz you up when you get here.”
She gives me her address, and I write it down in her contact information in my phone. My heart starts to race, oddly enough, as I tell Rosa I’ll head over to her place in a little while.
I know where her apartment building is, it’s not too far from the Restaurante Porto. I light up another cigarette for the walk there and my feet begin to carry me to my destination in stride.
Sixteen
Mason is at my place faster than I would have imagined. The BUZZ cuts through the air and jolts me out of my half-awake daze as I practically throw down my coffee cup as I do some last minute re-arranging of my place. After I buzz Mason up, I shove a box inside a closet. Two boxes. Three. I hope Mason doesn’t bring a coat or anything, because the whole space is stuffed from floor to ceiling. Fortunately, those were the only boxes I had yet to unpack—the rest of my apartment seems like a clean-ish arrangement now. I’ve got all my artwork hung up. Some family photos. My television is now balanced on an entertainment stand instead of propped up against the wall on the floor like a college-aged savage. My kitchen is the highlight, however. All my utensils and tools are hung up on hooks that were installed into the tile wall by the previous tenant. Pots and pans hang evenly up above. My fridge and pantry are finally stocked. Just as I finish looking over the place one last time, it happens:
Knock, knock.
Mason’s at the door, and I stifle a gasp. He’s here. Outside my apartment. Just a few short months ago, I would have sworn we would be enemies for life. Our rivalry at the Restaurante Porto was one for the ages, a rivalry that could have carried on for as long as we both lived. Or for as long as we knew each other, whichever was shorter. But that’s no longer the case. He’s opening an untitled restaurant. And he asked me to be his Head Chef. Also, did I mention that Mason is here?
I open the door for him, and he’s standing there with his arms crossed in his usual stance. He’s wearing a hoodie and sweatpants. His sleeves are rolled up, I can see his tattoos doting up and down his toned muscular forearms. A faint smile perfectly decorates his chiseled jaw. For the first time, I know I am truly, one hundred per-cent attracted to Mason.
“Can I come in?” he asks after a few seconds, and I realize now that I’d been checking him out. He probably noticed, but he doesn’t seem to mind all that much. Mark one point for me.
“Sure,” I smile and hold the door cartoonishly wide-open for him as I make a sweeping gesture. “My humble abode awaits.”
He looks around, and heads immediately to the kitchen. “I’ve been curious to see what kind of setup a top chef has in her home. Wow, it’s…something, alright.”
“Glad to know you’re easily impressed,” I reply with playful snark. “I bet you’d kill for me to design the interior of your restaurant.”
Mason gets the hint. He cuts to the chase: “So, want to talk about my offer again? The head chef thing?”
“What about it?”
“You know it still stands, right? I still need a Head Chef, and the rest of the sta
ff, too. You’re the best chef I know, that’s a fact.”
“I’m probably the only one you know,” I find myself chiding Mason. “And you don’t know if I’ll necessarily be a good fit, do you?”
“I think I would know what’s best for my restaurant,” Mason says. “And I know that having you around would only be good for business.”
I want to swoon, but I can’t. I shouldn’t. Instead, I nod. “I’m still thinking about it. How long do I have until you put an ad out in the classifieds?”
“Two weeks,” Mason says. “In three weeks, the contractors will be finished with their work, and I’ll have to start seriously building a menu and finding the rest of my staff. I’ll want the head chef there with me every step of the way. Two weeks,” he repeats himself. “You’ve got some time, Rosa. But I’d like an answer from you before I’m forced to hire an unknown.”
“Is that so?”
“You can bet the family farm on it,” Mason shoots back. “Imagine what we could accomplish together.”
He really did come to recruit me, didn’t he?
I try to change the subject. “So, you hungry at all? I know they don’t have the ovens turned on at your restaurant yet. How about we grab a bite to eat?”
“I was hoping we could cook something. Together,” Mason says. “If you want we can go back to my place.”
I smile. “No, we can stay here. I’d love to cook something. Nothing would make me happier.”
We spend the rest of the afternoon cooking Spaghetti Aglio e Olio. It’s an incredibly simple home-style Italian dish that anyone can make with a stove and the right ingredients. Plus, it helps me get closer to Mason.
I prep the veggies in oil, heating up some onions and garlic to sauté. Mason makes the pasta and boils the salt water, throwing in some pepper as he comically tastes the water and smacks his lips. I laugh at his antics. He really is fun to have around sometimes. We throw the noodles into the boiling water, set the sauté to low heat, and wait.
As I stir the now golden-browned onions and garlic, I lift the pan up and get ready to add some spices and herbs. At the same time, Mason is getting up to drain the finished noodles, and we bump into one another.
I carefully yank my pan to the right, and he yanks his pot hard to my left, spilling over just-boiling water. Fortunately, we both have kitchen experience and Mason manages to aim the water directly into my sink. It splashes some other dirty dishes, leaving my countertop and floor perfectly dry. I spin about, checking my pan for spillage. None. The onions and garlic and olive oil are safe, and I look back to Mason, who has managed to turn this accident into an easy draining of the noodles. It’s impressive. I can already see how well he’d run his own kitchen.
Suddenly, he turns around too, and we’re face to face. I’m still holding my pan, and Mason his. I’m very aware of how tall Mason is. He’s looking down at me, and I assume we are both thinking the same thing.
I can’t forget the kiss in the pantry; a kiss that felt more like a power move at the time, an “I can do anything I want to” kiss that I could no longer get out of my head. I feel my head spin, but I keep making eye contact with Mason just the same.
He’s looking down at me, and I can’t think straight anymore. My legs are turning to jelly, and I’m suddenly aware of how heavy this pan really is in my hands. Mason sets the pot back down on the stove, turns the heat off. If only he could do the same to me. I feel like I’m going to break out in a sweat any second now. The moment is gone, fleeting, over just as quickly as it begun.
We could have kissed, but we didn’t.
“Where are your bowls at, Rosa?” Mason asks, breaking the tension in the air. I show him where they are in the pantry, and we both make a dish for ourselves. Pasta noodles, olive oil, sautéed onion and garlic sprinkled with parmesan cheese. That’s how easy it is to make Aglio e Olio, a favorite lazy-day dish of mine.
Mason and I eat at my kitchen table, making small-talk about the times past at the Restaurante Porto. We tell stories about Benicio, Robby, Julia, and even re-tell some of Gambio’s terrible jokes ourselves. Somehow, we make them even funnier.
“Knock, knock,” Mason asks.
“Who’s there?”
“Pasta.”
“Pasta, who?”
“Pasta pizza already, I’m starving ova’ here!”
Mason can barely finish the joke without laughing. I snicker, covering my mouth so I don’t spit food all over him like an animal. I’m self-conscious about how fast I’m eating at this point, and I compare how much food I have left to Mason. It’s weird how you get thinking about those sorts of things when you’re sitting across from someone you want to kiss really really bad. Like they’re not going to want to kiss you because you’re friends, or because you eat faster than him. It’s weird.
“Rosa, can I ask you something?”
“Sure,” I say as I dab my mouth with a napkin. I add, without trying to sound desperate: “Anything.”
“I get that you want to mull things over about my offer. I get it. But I still want…” he trails off, swallows. I assume he is looking for the words to say. My heart races again. It’s been a lot today.
“I’d still like to see you again, is what I’m saying. No matter what your answer is to my job offer.”
“What do you mean?”
Mason laughs, wipes his face with a napkin and gets up. “Finished?” he takes my plate, drops it off in the sink. As he’s running water over the dishes, he looks out the window. “I mean, like, get a beer downtown sometime. Or a glass of wine. Whichever you prefer.”
I smile. “You think an Italian girl like me only drinks wine?”
“What else is there?”
I shrug. “Cocktails. Mimosas, I really like those.”
He laughs. “Okay, then, would you care to join me for a mimosa sometime?”
“Sure,” I smile. “As friends?” And with that, Mason pauses.
“No,” he says. “Not as friends.”
I shoot up out of my chair, which startles Mason a little bit. “Yes,” I say. “Yes, I would like that. I would like that quite a lot.”
We both laugh at the awkwardness of the situation, but fortunately the silence is broken by a cell phone ring. It’s Mason’s. He answers, says “uh-huh,” about ten times, sighs, and then hangs up.
“Rupert, my contractor. They’ve been working on this giant crack in the wall as of late, and now I guess it’s brought down part of the wall.” Mason sighs again. “Guess I gotta head out there.”
Just like that, he’s out the door. We arrange a time to text about the date later, I say a quick goodbye before he’s gone, down the stairs to my apartment lobby.
I suppose I have a date later. Things are starting to look up after all.
Seventeen
I feel seriously on-edge the night of the date with Rosa. This is the first time I’ve asked someone out since Carly all those years ago, and I don’t like to think about how that ended. Not good, that’s all I’ll say.
I spend the day leading up to the date working with Rupert and the rest of my contracting team. We’re making real headway on the back of the house right now as we finish installing various appliances in the kitchen and making sure they all run correctly after hooking up to the gas and electric lines.
After all the contractors have gone home for the day, I find a dilapidated table out in the lobby of my restaurant to sit down at. There’s still a few chairs left here from the previous owner, so I pull one up to the only table still remaining in the lobby and pull out my cell. I figure I should I call ahead to a bar a friend of mine from college happens to own. It’s a little dive bar, Loudmouth Louie’s, tucked away in an alley a couple blocks away from the downtown square. Things usually get a little heavy there on Saturday nights, so I call ahead to see if I can get ahold of Louis, the owner. Maybe he can reserve us a table. After all, what else are old friends for?
“Mason, how are you?!” Louie’s voice screams through the
phone. Yup, that’s Loudmouth Louie for you. Big, portly, always sweaty. And he always seemed to be screaming about something related to this or that, God help you if you try to keep up with him in conversation. If he wasn’t mad about something going wrong at his bar, he was screaming about how much he loved this person, or that person, or whoever.
“Mason!” Louie screams. “I haven’t seen you in months! How are YOU?!”
“Louie!” I find myself shouting back even though my restaurant’s dead quiet. “I’m great! Things are fine! I’m starting my own restaurant! How are YOU?!”
“Things are fine, things are fine! I’m just dandy!” I can hear the Loudmouth's background, his bar is already packed with patrons from the sound of it. Probably that’s why he always shouts. Unlike Gambio, whose restaurant is usually on the quieter side, I imagine that Louis probably has some hearing damage after owning a bar for the better part of twenty years. I check my watch, it’s 5:30 p.m.. Of course a bar’s busy, it’s quitting time for all the office jocks and cubicle slaves, Louie’s usual clientele. I’m glad he’s able to stay in business after all these years. You’d think the yelling would turn customers away, but you’d be dead wrong.
After all, the sign out front does say ‘Loudmouth Louie’s’.
“To what do I owe the pleasure of this call, Masie?” His old nickname for me. Great. Didn’t think I’d have to hear that one, but here we are.
“Louis, how packed is it going to be there over at your place tonight?”
“Masie, my boy, it’s going to be a busy night! I can feel it in my bones, I can!"
“Think you can hold me a table? I’ve got a hot date later this evening. I need backup in case it goes south.”
“Backup, like a friend, or backup, like alcohol?”
“Both, I guess.”
“Consider it done, friend. What time?”
“Ten-thirty sharp. Make sure it’s away from any rowdy ones, okay? You know how they get sometimes.”
