Take-Out

by Rob Hart

  His face was hard as steel. There was nothing she could say that was going to change his mind and she knew that.

  So she went for the last resort.

  “I have vacation time due to me,” she said.

  Cap just frowned and shook his head. At a loss for words.

  Cynthia tried not to think too hard about how that made her feel.

  “YOU CAN’T USE a microwave,” said James. He was standing within arm’s reach of the bars. “Do you have a toaster oven? Like in the break room?”

  “We do.” Cynthia, too, arm’s reach from the bars, on the other side.

  “Heat up the slices on the ‘toast’ setting, but carefully. Watch it close. As soon as you start to smell it, pull it out. You don’t want to go through all of this and burn them.”

  Cynthia nodded. “Should I get any kind of topping?”

  James laughed. “M&C doesn’t need toppings. And…I need to ask you one other favor. And this is an important one”

  He looked around and took a tentative step forward. Cynthia stayed where she was, even though she wanted to take a step toward him, but then he would be within arm’s reach of her, and she wasn’t there yet. She was saving that for when she got back.

  “I want you to get two,” he said. “And I want you to have it with me. I want you to have your first M&C slice and I want to see your reaction when you eat it. It’s not as good as fresh, but it heats up pretty damn well.”

  Cynthia smiled. “Why is that important to you?”

  James shrugged, suddenly taking on the gait and manner of a little boy. “Because I want to see how that pretty face lights up.”

  Cynthia’s cheeks caught fire.

  “Deal,” she said.

  “Good,” James said.

  “NOW BOARDING ALL zones. All zones may board now.”

  Cynthia held her ticket in a tight, sweaty fist. She was in the last zone, nearly maxing out the credit card Doug didn’t know about to get there. She watched the stream of people dragging suitcases and bags onto the plane. Bleary-eyed, frowning, some of them still even wearing pajamas. Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, the sun was just peeking over the horizon.

  She stood there for a long time, watching the line dwindle. Wondering what it would take to get a refund at this point. Whether that was even possible.

  She poked around the Internet the night before but couldn’t find a good resource for how many people were exonerated after they were executed. Municipal governments don’t want to spend money collecting data on things like that. But there were examples of it happening. Evidence or a witness or a new technology that made a dead man innocent too late.

  For the death penalty to be just, it has to operate under a standard of absolutes.

  And clearly, it doesn’t.

  But what if she was wrong? Cynthia couldn’t know, truly know, if James was being honest. But she wanted to believe him. She wanted to believe that someone with eyes that kind couldn’t do something so bad.

  She wanted to believe that people were good.

  She wanted to believe this, in spite of the fact that when Doug found out she spent money on this, he was going to hit her. That her co-workers would lose even that last tiny bit of respect they had for her. That Cap would give her that look, like a parent who’s failed a child.

  For what? James would be dead in the ground, that pizza maybe not even fully digested.

  A young Asian woman in a smart navy blazer looked at Cynthia clutching her ticket, the last person standing in front of the gaping door leading to the airplane, and asked, “Ma’am? Are you ready to board?”

  THE JAGGED SKYLINE of New York City jutted into the air. She got dizzy trying to count the buildings. Cynthia watched it recede, replaced by long stretches of suburbia, until they were up through the clouds and all she could see was blue sky and a carpet of white.

  She tried to watch television, settling on a show about two families renovating their homes in a competition to see who can renovate their home better. The pizza sat in an insulated lunch bag on her lap.

  She watched the color and light that flashed in front of her and tried to imagine what was going to happen. She and James would eat their pizza. James would die the next day. She would go home to Doug because she was unable to escape the gravity of their crumbling bungalow. She would come into work and stare at the Statue of Liberty and dream of seeing it up close.

  Her stomach felt like an empty pit.

  Her first trip to New York, and all those things she wanted to do besides see the statue—ride the Staten Island Ferry, see the Empire State Building, catch a Broadway show—right there at her fingertips. The opportunity disappearing behind her.

  And in that moment, she made herself a promise.

  She would go back.

  Once she saw this through, once she’d proven she could do a difficult thing, she would leave. Doug, the job, everything. She was strong enough. She was proving she was strong enough just by being on the plane.

  Cynthia had flown to New York City for a slice of pizza.

  She could do anything.

  She put her hand on the bag, warm in her lap, and smiled.

  “HEY, IS THAT pizza?”

  Williams lumbered into the break room and cut a line over to the nook with the toaster oven. He peeked in, his shoulder pressing against Cynthia. She shrank away from him.

  “Is that a square slice?” he asked. “I didn’t know you could get square slices.”

  Cynthia nudged him aside and pulled the two slices out, scorching her fingertips as she dragged them onto a thick stack of paper plates. The slices were thick and doughy, and it looked like the cheese was underneath the sauce. There was a snowfield of Parmesan cheese on top and the edges were slightly blackened, but that was okay because they came like that.

  Williams reached out a meaty hand. “Let me get one of those.”

  Cynthia held the plate close to her body and twisted away. “No.”

  “C’mon, you have two. You could stand to watch your figure a little…”

  Cynthia felt the rush of every joke, every comment, every leering glance, and now, coupled with the invasion into her space, something brittle and worn inside her finally snapped. She put the plate down on the counter, out of his reach, and threw her elbow into his gut.

  He took a few steps back as he doubled over, face red, gasping for breath. The shock of it froze Cynthia in place, and then the mandatory twelve hours a year of personal defense training took over. She put her entire body into pushing him.

  For a second she thought he wasn’t going to budge. It was like pushing a fridge. And then he tipped back and crashed into the haphazard arrangement of chairs, going down with enough force, she swore she felt the floor rattle.

  He was crying out, yelling something at her, but she wasn’t listening. She left the kitchen, cutting a path through the infirmary and up two flights of stairs to death row. Delicately balancing the paper plate holding the two slices of pizza.

  Cynthia stopped at her desk. Wondered how she looked. She wished she had time to stop in the bathroom, maybe put on a little foundation or some mascara, but Williams was surely reporting her to Cap, and someone was going to come looking for her.

  When they did come for her, she’d hand over her gear and walk right out. She wouldn’t even go home. She’d get another plane ticket. She’d figure out how to pay for it. Go back to New York.

  No more Doug. No more prison. She’d go and stand on a corner until something magic happened.

  When she reached James’s cell, he was sitting on his bed, legs drawn up, reading The Stranger. He looked at her and his eyes went wide. He put the book aside, stood, took a few steps forward. Even with the bars in the way, Cynthia felt vulnerable, but not in a scared way, in an open way. His voice was quiet, filled with awe. “I can’t believe you actually did it.”

  She held up the plate with the two slices.

  “Like you asked,” she said.

  He stepped
forward until he was at the bars, pressing his forehead against them so he could get a good look. His eyes went glassy, bordering on the verge of crying. “I can remember my first M&C slice with my dad. And now this is the last.” He took a deep breath, got lost in the maze of a memory. Finally, he looked up at Cynthia, a tear cutting a path from his eye and disappearing into his beard. “Do you know what that feels like, to know that?”

  Cynthia didn’t, but she teared up, because the emotion was so thick it was spilling off James and filling her up, too.

  She took a step closer to where he could just barely reach her. The closest they had ever been. She wished she could open the cell, sit with him. Not touch, not that, but just sit next to him on that slab. Feel the warmth and weight of him next to her as they shared his final meal.

  “I’m not an idiot,” Cynthia said. “I just want to thank…”

  “I did it.”

  It was like a punch to the chest, the air getting pushed from her lungs.

  She tried to breathe and found that she’d forgotten how.

  “What?” she asked.

  “I need to be honest,” James said, tears streaming down his face. “I feel like I owe you that. I did it. I killed those girls. I need to say it out loud. But I think you knew that. And it speaks to your character that even someone as damned as I am, that you would do a thing like this.”

  He reached his hand though the bars, nearly brushing the paper plate.

  Cynthia took a big step back.

  Those soft green eyes suddenly didn’t look so soft. That smile looked so much more sinister. She thought of those girls. The sour taste of bile tickling the back of her tongue.

  She let one of the slices fall.

  It tumbled in the air until it splat, top side down, on the filthy concrete floor.

  James fell to his knees, reaching for it, his mouth hanging open.

  She wanted to rage at him. To open the cell and beat him to death. She wanted to inject the pentobarbital herself. She wanted to scream and cry. She wanted the world to open up and swallow her. She wanted a time machine to bring her back to that moment she stood at her desk and wondered what kindness was worth.

  She couldn’t do any of those things.

  So instead, Cynthia picked up the other slice and took a bite.

  She fought to swallow it, her throat thick and hot. James’s face twisted, like someone was dragging a knife across his gut.

  She stepped back, coming to a stop against the far wall, and she slid down it until she was sitting. She kept eating, holding eye contact with James as he wailed like an animal, thrashing on the floor, arm stretched through the bars, trying to reach it with the desperation of a drowning man reaching for a life preserver.

  The ruined slice just a few inches from his fingertips.

  As the metal door at the far end of the hall groaned open, Cynthia took the last bite of her slice. She put the plate down and wiped her mouth and locked eyes with James, who had stopped struggling. He was sobbing, his arm still stretched out.

  “You were right,” she said. “You were right.”

  Harold was dozing, his head resting against the tiled wall behind his chair, when Mr. Mo placed the brown paper bag in front of him. The bag was nested inside a milky-white plastic shopping bag, through which Harold could make out plastic utensils, packets of soy sauce, napkins, and a folded-up menu. Stapled to the top was a slip with an address on Mott Street.

  “Crispy skin fish rolls,” Mr. Mo said, his high voice cracking like a whip.

  The man’s face was flat and unreadable. His blue polo shirt stained with splotches of cooking grease, his slight potbelly and narrow limbs not really fitting into the shirt right. He could have been thirty or fifty. He only ever spoke English when he gave Harold a delivery.

  He spoke English one other time, on Harold’s first night. Harold had sat down and pulled an electronic poker game up on his phone. Mr. Mo took the phone out of his hand, turned it off, and smacked it on the table. He placed a Chinese-language newspaper over the phone.

  “No play,” he said. “Read.”

  “But I can’t read this,” Harold protested.

  “Read,” Mr. Mo said, tapping his finger against the newsprint.

  It had been three weeks, and Harold’s Chinese hadn’t gotten any better, so he looked at the pictures or dozed off until it was time to work.

  Harold picked up the latest delivery and exited Happy Dumpling. The evening air was the kind of humid that made it hard to breathe. It was late, probably getting close to midnight, which meant this would, with any luck, be his last trip for the evening.

  He hefted the bag, trying to guess at the contents. Then he pulled out his phone and punched in the address. It was close—just below Grand. He walked north, cut down Hester, and made a right. Found an apartment building with a nail salon on the first floor. The number 4 was circled on the receipt, so Harold hit 4 on the ancient buzzer.

  After a few moments, the door screamed at him and he pushed it open, climbed the narrow staircase, where he found himself in front of a door painted glossy black, chipped in spots, gunmetal gray underneath. There was a peephole set at eye level.

  The door was ajar, and it opened as soon as Harold stepped in front of it. A frail Chinese man in a wrinkled dress shirt and slacks, his white hair thinning, peered out from inside the darkened apartment.

  Harold opened the bag, first undoing the staple that held it closed, then reaching in for the white take-out container.

  He hated this part. The anticipation.

  Sometimes he had to bring something back to Mr. Mo. Sometimes he didn’t. He wasn’t always sure which. Mr. Mo wasn’t big on instructions. This was the first time he’d gotten an order for crispy skin fish rolls and he wasn’t sure what that meant.

  Harold placed the bag on the ground and opened up the take-out container, his hands shaking a little. Inside was a single pear. He looked at it for a moment, then took it out and offered it to the man, who breathed in sharply and put his hand to his mouth. Tears cut down his cheeks and he began to shake.

  Harold pushed the pear forward into the space between them but the man refused to take it. Instead, he took a step back. Harold got the sense he wouldn’t be bringing anything back to Mr. Mo tonight, so he put the pear on the floor in front of the door and left.

  As he climbed down the stairs, he thought he heard the man weeping.

  “PEARS ARE TABOO in Chinese culture,” said Wen, putting his pint glass on the bar top, missing the coaster by a wide margin because he was looking at the TV mounted in the corner, currently displaying a Yankees game.

  He wiped the sleeve of his MTA-issue baby blue dress shirt across his mouth. “The Chinese word for ‘pear’ sounds like the Chinese word for ‘parting’. If I had to guess, it was a warning or threat. Mr. Mo is going to take something from him.”

  “Not like…his life or something?” Harold asked, his voice low, glancing around the mostly-empty bar to make sure no one else was listening. The only person even close to earshot was the bartender, a pretty college girl in a halter top and a cowboy hat. She was down at the other end of the bar and seemed more interested in something on her phone.

  “Probably not,” Wen said, undoing his ponytail, then doing it back up. After a moment, he repeated himself. “Probably not.”

  “Weird,” Harold said, taking a small pull of his beer. “Something is unlucky just because it sounds like something else that’s not good.”

  “We’re a superstitious people,” Wen said. “In China, the number four is sì. It sounds like sī, the word for death. So four is a very unlucky number. In buildings in China, there’s no fourth floor, or fourteenth, or twenty-fourth.”

  “Why so superstitious?,” Harold asked. “I thought Chinese people were supposed to be like…smart?”

  “First, that’s offensive,” Wen said. “There are plenty of superstitious people in the world. Race has nothing to do with it. Second, it’s just a cultural thing. But
I’m second generation. I don’t actually understand any of this stuff. Mostly just what I remember from my grandparents.”

  Harold exhaled. Contemplated his half-empty beer. It was already warm, but he couldn’t afford another. So he’d have to make this last a little while longer, because it felt good to be out. To pretend like Wen was a real friend, and not just another sad-sack he shared bar space with.

  “At least I didn’t have to deliver anything more than fruit,” Harold said. “Just, you know, I was a little worried when I started this. The kind of stuff he might want me to do.”

  “Mr. Mo doesn’t make his delivery boys do any real dirty work,” said Wen. “He has Triad goons for the real hardcore stuff.”

  “I can’t wait until this is over,” Harold said. “It’s hell on my nerves.”

  The Yankees batter knocked in a home run, putting the team up by two. Wen pumped his first. Probably had money on the game. “You made your bed,” he said. “Now it’s time to curl up and get some sleep.”

  “You’re the one who got me wrapped up in this.”

  Wen shook his head, threw Harold a side-eye glance. “I got you in the door. You lost big and ran a tab on the house. I told you that was a bad idea. That’s on you.”

  As much as Harold wanted to protest, Wen was right.

  He had no one to blame but himself.

  As per usual.

  HAROLD PUSHED THROUGH the door of Happy Dumpling. It was just before the dinner rush but the restaurant still had more full tables than empty tables.

  He walked to the back and the man at the register didn’t acknowledge him as he ducked past the curtain separating the kitchen from the seating area. Harold’s glasses fogged up from steam coming off the dishwashing station. He took them off to rub dry on his shirt and waved to Bai, who was hunched over a wok, swirling something around with a large metal spatula.

  Bai looked up, smiled and nodded, sweat dripping down his bald head.

  Harold was glad Bai was working. The line cook would occasionally come out and offer him plates of food. Dishes he recognized—beef chow fun or pork fried rice—but sometimes things he wasn’t used to, like crispy chicken feet, or a meat he couldn’t identify in a chili bean sauce. All of it absurdly delicious.