by Mike Wehner
This wasn’t the first dash from the restaurant to the emergency room, Erin told me. Her knuckles were white and injured hand clenched to make sure what blood she had left stayed put.
“I’ve had worse,” she said staring into her hand. She’d given worse too, but she was split open and I was happy for the moment.
“You didn’t have to cut yourself to go home early.” She hummed at me like the humor failed but it was appreciated.
“I like scars, I want something to talk about with the nurse changing my diaper when I’m old.” I liked her defeatist mentality, the who could love me, I’ll be alone forever in her voice, a remnant of remorse I didn’t expect.
“What was the worst kitchen injury you’ve had?” I asked with a perked tone that made her suck her teeth.
“An early job, classic French. They had this old beige food processor that looked like it was from a disco-era infomercial. The chef/owner was so cheap he probably got it at a garage sale. It was really hard to get it to turn on, even when it was snapped in correctly. I got tired of jiggling and fussing with it so I smashed the safety switch with a bent fork, that way it’d turn on even if a base wasn’t attached.”
“Right or left at the next light?”
“Right, all the way down the hill. I was breaking up some peppers inside it with a spoon when someone bumped me from behind. My hands went out on the table to catch my balance but I inadvertently pushed the processor on and knocked it over at the same time. The blades whirled and the spoon went rocketing into my hand.” She let go of the gauze and turned the back of her hand to me. Under the first knuckle was a centipede scar that reached down the opposite side and stopped at the lump of bone where her wrist began.
“How many stitches?”
“Thirty-four, I think. It’s that tall building on the left.”
I drove into the parking lot instead of stopping at the front entrance to let her out.
She looked at me, then looked down, “you don’t have to stay.”
Oh yes I did, she could scream or cry or die. Worst case she’d get doped up and chatty.
Fifteen
The waiting room was so full I had to walk the seating area twice to find two empty seats next to each other. I wondered if other people avoided my seat because an oozing monstrosity sat here first, infecting it. I didn’t like hospitals, they were better equipped to get you sick than get you healthy. A raisin-headed lady sharing the end table beside me dropped used tissues on top of a food magazine, the bottom line reading the top ten best burgers.
“Super glue is the best way to avoid this place,” Erin said. “It can hold a cut shut really well.” Noted.
I went up to the window to retrieve Erin’s insurance card and ID when they called her name. The nurse slid them under a glass safety window designed to protect the employees from the bacterial weaponry floating in the waiting area and said it might be a while.
Every chair had thin, slatted arms and I jiggled towards Erin with as much subterfuge as I could manage until the arms kissed. I sucked myself into my seat, not touching or breathing more than necessary. Erin was nonchalant about being a bloody mess, she sat facing me with one foot up on the chair bottom and leaned against the far arm in a family-TV-night pose. Her upward arm covered the stain on her shirt so the only blood I could see in the frame was stuck in the loose tangles of hair that fell and swung like tiny wrecking balls. The buzz/glow of the overhead lights shined up the spots on her cheeks where she’d wiped globs from her face. Erin’s disembodied head floated in a box above her arm.
“This was karma,” she said.
“How’s that?” more snotty tissues hit the table behind me. Each time the woman with the tiny head coughed air puffed against the back of my neck.
“I cut myself because I was off in my head being nasty. Crafting long letters to blogs in all caps and all fucks to get them to remove Jamie’s bullshit. I’m glad this happened, I would have made things much worse.”
“Resolution is better than reaction,” I said and got temporarily confused by my own cognitive dissonance.
“Sounds like a quote with a penciled bust of a dead guy in a tunic next to it, got anything more honest?”
She was right, it was a bit kitsch even if it was original. Revenge wasn’t snickering at a flesh wound. I still didn’t know if I was being patient or procrastinating. She was missing half her blood and some part of me felt bad. The patient man’s fury lays waste to all, but what if I wasn’t building towards a release, what if I was digging in the dark to justify a manufactured rage?
“Do you know it was him?” I asked.
“I think it’s obvious.”
“Certain?”
“No.”
“In my experience there’s no way you’ll have the motivation or the right to give him what he deserves unless you know what he did and why he did it, besides it’ll be fun.”
“I think you’re saying that because you want an excuse to fling shit on him yourself.” Erin’s chin rested on her shoulder. Knots of hair swayed back and forth, back and forth.
“If only. Speaking of poop, how do you know Mike?” Back and forth she lulled me.
“He walked into the restaurant the first day we opened holding a freeze dried pouch, one of those military meals that last fifty years.”
“He was in the military?”
“The Army I think, he worked nearby at the time and said he’d eat lunch here every day if we could recreate it.”
“I wonder if he ever killed anyone.” Soft flecks of cough grazed my arm so I turned in towards Erin. I put my arm up on the rest and dropped my head into the palm of my hand. Our faces were so close that everything was out of focus except for her watermelon eyes.
“He never saw combat, he just liked them. I guess they sit around like bags of chips for guys to snack on.” Erin jammed her cheek into the crook of her elbow to keep her arm up. The blood on the gauze was dry and black.
“Was it a flavored paste, like astronaut food?”
“No, it’s real food, you heat it with a salt water chemical reaction. Chili mac, looked like dog vomit.” I’d eaten MREs on camping trips with Charlie. The food goes in a bag with magnesium powder that reacts with salt water to boil it. Erin knew this, but she didn’t have the need to prove she was smart.
“So you made it for him?”
“Emily begged me to do it, she thought he was so cute. Now she makes it for him so I don’t have to deal with it.”
“I’m confused, when you invited me go with you to,” she cut me off.
“I know, I know, I feel so stupid saying this, not just because I am sort of flipping you off right now, but the other night when I told you there was a guy or whatever I said, I was talking about you.”
“Erin,” the nurse said opening a wheelchair wide aluminum door, “Erin Rhodes.”
Erin got up without looking at me and walked through the stark white passage, the two-way door swung shut and then in a little bit, out, in, out, and closed. On the back it read: Entrance Only. I searched for a bathroom and next to the glass box where we checked in was a matching door stamped: Exit Only. Erin was stuck somewhere in the hallways that connected them and I was left to decide whether to leave or follow. To be patient or procrastinate. I jogged into the men’s room and puked in the sink before I could get to a stall. I pumped a handful of pink soap onto my hand and then slathered it on my neck like sunscreen. The cold goo ran down my spine and stuck the middle of my shirt to my back. I puked again.
Sixteen
There was no arguing with Erin, twenty-one stitches wasn’t enough to keep her from going back to work. It wasn’t that I cared, after what she’d said in the waiting room I didn’t want to see her face the rest of the day. It was a silent ride back to the restaurant. I didn’t turn my head once to see her expression as her words of affection turned my world into the sort of unimaginable bizarre you can only find in a Salvador Dali painting. Erin didn’t say a word either, probably because sh
e felt awkward and vulnerable.
The blood in her hair was no longer comforting, it was bothersome, unclean. Thankfully she spent most of that night in her office but every few hours she’d trudge up the stairs and offer us a few criticisms. I understood her game, she felt exposed and this was her way of reclaiming control by belittling my hard work.
It was overwhelming to think about going on a date with her while trying to help with service. Getting close to her was one thing but I couldn’t imagine holding her hand like it was anything but the tail of a dead possum. I thought about her jutted face, what I would do if she tried to press it against mine and gulp. And her lips that arched and puckered when she talked, pursed when she thought, and smack when she tasted—what would I do if they came after me? No part of her was safe, all of her was out to get me.
Once the tickets were cleared and cleaning began I wandered below to tell her terrible lips what a terrible idea this was. To make the thin and translucent edges of her mouth, inviting like moldy yogurt, take back what she said and avoid disaster.
It was a wicked opportunity, not like a regular first date where you are filling in the basics. I’d get to dig deep. A first date with someone you work with is less an interview and more an invasion of privacy, questions get asked that might not come up in the first year of a relationship. You know what they like to eat, what kind of phone person they are, if they’re afraid of thunder. It was a godsend and a death sentence. No alibi, no self-control, no quarter.
“Go. Home,” Gail repeated when I got to the office door.
Erin held up the back of her arm and the swaddle of gauze around her swollen middle digit let her know she wasn’t going anywhere. Unable to cook, Erin spent the evening printing and plastering every defamatory comment and review she could find on the otherwise barren drywall. I read the nearest batch from the doorway.
User MorelHunter22 rated 1/5 stars: The food was uninspired, boring, bland. Grandma’s cooking if she forgot love AND salt. The ambiance disconnected me from the experience, modern paintings on the walls but glops and slops on the plate. It just isn’t good.
Reply from MartyFoieGras: That was not my experience with the service at Essen at all. I am opened minded but my server trounced over with a frown and neck tattoos, her hair was tussled like she’d spent the last ten minutes in bathroom with one of the waiters. She was greasy! All may have been forgiven if she didn’t chop at me with some of the big no-nos any decent restaurant would train out of their staff. She told me and my wife that she’d be “takin’ care of us” and asked my wife if she was “done workin’ on that” while pawing under her plate like it was biscuits and gravy in a late-night truck stop. The food was unmemorable and over-priced, the service: abhorrent.
User FiddleheadLover rated 1/10 smiles: The only dining experience I’ve had worse than this was forcing down one of those rotating hot dogs at a rural gas station on a road trip. Essen did not deliver the refined comfort food it promised. This place IS the new American cuisine. Overpriced and pretentious.
I snapped the last sheet off the wall and waved it saying, “This guy said you were better than gas station food!” She forced a grin, I wasn’t sure what I was seeing in the walking Rorschach mess of her sticky hair.
“I know it’s him. Done working on that? If I ever heard a server say that I’d punch them in the throat.”
“You can’t react until you know,” I said and picked at other reviews. They were tacked all over the wall in an upside down parabola, the shape of a mountain. Each one was diverse in tone and content. I knew it was Jamie too but if I told Erin to stab back in the dark then what did that say about me?
The reviews hit on different fears that chefs have, a scattershot approach to make sure he nailed whatever her weakness was. She sorted them based on content. The base of the mountain was an overlapped mess, thumbed up without thought, all accusations of mechanical failure. A dirty fork, the wrong wine suggestion, odor. Up the hill the attacks became more personal, addressing specific aspects like ambiance. At the top were the ones that got to her, the identity assassinations, that the concept of the restaurant itself failed to deliver. Only another chef would attack that.
“How do we find out?” she said.
“I have a friend coming to town soon, if I can have that weekend off we’ll find out.”
“Done. You aren’t fast enough to be here during weekend service anyways. I’m really sorry about earlier, I know that was uncomfortable,” her injured hand was flat on the desk and the good fingers were covered in fresh, red polish.
“Did you mean it?” I asked.
“Mean what?”
“That shit about liking me.”
“No, I’d lost a lot of blood,” she snorted and it was sort of cute given the situation, “I don’t know why I told you that.”
“Then why did you say it?” I said and plopped into the chair across from her feeling relieved.
A thumbtack fell off the wall and hit the floor with a ting. The light from the geometric screen saver on her computer screen swirled across her eyes and I hung in the spiral, over and back around.
“Do you really want to do this right now?” Erin said, down a pint of blood and looking the color of a boiled turnip. There was half a milkshake in her left hand.
“Yeah, most of the time I’m here you’re calling my work garbage, it’s a strange thing for you to say.”
“Being your boss has nothing to do with,” she sighed “with, that.” The width of her lips crunched under her nose and spread so thin they were barely there at the ends. Two fat isosceles triangles set back to back and slathered a color halfway from orange to white. A pencil was jabbed through her bun like a magician jabs swords though his exotic assistant in a rattan box.
“Then why the hell did you say it? I need to know, it’s weird, but I need to know so we can move on.”
“I haven’t gone on a date in years, years Alex. I told myself a while back that the next guy I met who was positive, nice, decent looking, that I’d ask him out. I mean what’s the worst that could happen, right? But you’re my employee, I wasn’t thinking straight.”
She knew how to pick them, the compliment broke something in me. I pitied her, her instincts. She didn’t attract chaos, she was attracted to it. She was no longer a faceless package of bacon, she was a pig with a name. Like that pig the rest of her days deserved to be happy until that bad one, the day the lights get turned out.
“I’ll make you a deal,” I offered, “if you go home and get some rest we can go out for dinner and I’ll prove what a horrible idea this is.” A small concession to get this pity out of my system.
“Alex, no, I was way out of line.”
“Breakfast then?” It was then I understood why she’d called me positive.
“Have you ever been in a bad relationship?” she said looking down.
“Sure.”
“Really bad?”
“Alex, get your ass up here,” Tommy called from the top of the stairs.
“He’s right, you should go.”
“Should we pretend like this never happened?”
“I’ll make you a deal Alex. You come with me tomorrow afternoon and if after that you still want to take me to dinner then we can go.”
“I guess so. I wasn’t trying to be pushy. I can be obsessive, I like closure,” I said.
“I’ve noticed, that’s why I’m offering. Sometimes I push the dry goods containers out of line because I know it bothers you.”
“Mean. I need to go.”
“One more thing, stop changing my fucking writing on the white board.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I stood up. “I’m off tomorrow, what time?” She told me while I sulked off to clean.
I mopped and wiped the rest of the night. The drone of cleaning had me questioning what the hell I was doing. I couldn’t figure out if my niceties were a guise, some costume I wore to prevent myself from falling into an abyss of despair. Or was
it a sincere, human reaction to try to climb out of all the awfulness I’d turned my world towards. Maybe I was the pig and not Erin, enjoying my time in the pasture, sucking up the corn and dirt in the rain and unknowingly awaiting my bad day.
Seventeen
DAY 967
Mike dove his head into my chest and I tumbled onto the blacktop. Basketball under his arm, he helped me up.
“Can’t we play horse instead?” I asked.
“You need exercise,” he bounced me the ball.
It was early the next morning at a park in town. A group of boys ran back and forth flying a drone like I’d done with a kite. They zoomed around the chain-link fence that surrounded the court a half dozen times. The drone sputtered as the battery died and it jerked its way down to the ground. One of them scooped it up and they ran off.
Our game had escalated from friendly hang out to violent melee in the span of three or four possessions. It’s a mistake to call football the contact sport. Football is a collision sport, basketball is a contact sport. Greasy elbows mash cheeks, forearms scrape across sweat soaked shirts. It’s gross but fun, until our thirty-year-old knees began to feel their age.
“H,” Mike said as my three-point shot bricked off the front of the rim. “You want to get some lunch after this, I don’t have anything going on today.”
“Yeah, I’m meeting up with Erin this afternoon so can we stay around here?”
Mike stood behind the backboard and threw the ball straight up and over, a trick shot I used to practice in my driveway.
“Work thing?”
“Don’t think so.”
“You guys aren’t dating are you?”
“That’s stupid, of course not.” I ran my fingers over the leather looking for worn spots that were soft and smooth. “Why, you into her?” I hit a jumper from 20 feet on the baseline.
