The Minotaur: Takes a Cigarette Break

by Steven Sherrill

  The Minotaur finishes quickly. He looks through his closet and drawers, even the laundry hamper, for things to mend. Several of his work pants have small tears. He knows of at least three missing buttons, and a zipper worked free of its teeth and gaping. By the time the Minotaur sits down to sew again he has a small stack of projects laid out on the table. It’s nearly ten o’clock, and the sounds drifting in his window from Lucky-U Mobile Estates are the sounds of night.

  From the Crewses’ trailer comes silence, the horseshoes resting wherever they fell on the last toss. On weeknights they go to bed just after dark. On Fridays and Saturdays it’s not uncommon for them to stay out in the yard until after midnight, drinking, working on the trucks and sometimes, though there is no detectable threat, firing their pistols into the air. But on weeknights all three Crews brothers turn in early.

  The Minotaur hears Sweeny call Buddy in for the night, hears, from Sweeny’s back porch, the sounds of kibbled dog food poured into a shallow metal pot. The Minotaur knows that pot; he remembers bringing it home from Grub’s his second week of work. When he was hired as a line cook at Grub’s many of the pots and sauté pans hung overhead from steel hooks on a piece of flatiron suspended above the stove and the grill. They hung there until the Minotaur burned himself one night reaching for a shrimp that had dropped, then reared his head back in pain and punctured one of the saucepans with the tip of his horn. It was a cheap pot, and Grub really didn’t even get mad, but the next day they rigged up a different storage system for all the pots. Grub told him to take the punctured one home if he could use it for anything.

  Mrs. Smith is watching television—racing, the Minotaur thinks. The Doppler effect is pronounced in the televised races. On the Christian shows, where the measured waves are faith and truth, the science is much more theoretical. Soon she turns it off, and Lucky-U is quiet but for Hank and Josie.

  They usually put Jules and Marvin to bed at nine, or begin to, anyway. Sometimes the ensuing battle can last for an hour or more, all of Lucky-U party to each onslaught, before the boys go, pouting, into the closet-sized bedroom they share. Some nights it’s Hank and Josie who bicker and yell and cry into the night. About Hank: Did he or didn’t he wink at that little slut at the laundromat? About Josie: Can’t she at least scoop the cat shit out of the litter box? Tonight, most likely worn out from playing with the heavy washing machine parts, Jules and Marvin go to sleep without protest. Hank and Josie seem at peace. Their trailer is quiet, and from where the Minotaur sits at his kitchen table he sees that the lights are out.

  Sometime after midnight the Minotaur struggles with the broken zipper in a pair of his work pants. A dog barks far out in the night, is answered by another. On the stillest nights he can hear snoring, glottal and apneic, from around the trailer park. Tonight, though, it’s the open-throated breathy sounds of love that mingle with the chirping and buzzing of insects, with the painfully hollow rattle of pie pans tied in cherry trees bumped by intermittent breezes; it’s love sounds that mix with the electric hum from the light Sweeny erected and spill into the Minotaur’s eager ears. Hank and Josie have sex almost as often, and sometimes as loud, as they fight.

  There is something heroic about this coupling, about the fervor with which these two well-attended young bodies seek each other out. Heroic, and frightening. The Minotaur has known this act in his life, but he doesn’t remember it being so soft and full of easy breath. It stirs a troubled yearning in him.

  “Hank. Hank. Hank,” Josie calls softly when she makes words at all, and Hank with what seems like superhuman endurance carries on. The pitch and tenor of their lovemaking draws the Minotaur from his task. “Oh. Oh. Oh, my,” Josie says. “Mmm. Mmm. Mmm.”

  And Hank, all pectorals and biceps, deltoids and latissimus dorsi, Hank grunts three times in response, as if utterances of three are sacred. “Uh. Uh. Uh.”

  If the Minotaur were a different sort he would consider creeping up to the rear of Hank and Josie’s trailer to witness what seems to him a conversation of flesh. He would crawl shirtless through the crab grass, crawl through the black night and look with his black eye through the open window.

  “Oh, Hank. Oh, Hank. Oh, Hank.”

  If he were, as he wished, a little bolder, more reckless, he would stand with his dark bull’s head obscured by the night, just outside their window, three feet, maybe less, from the tiny single bed on which they perform their gymnastic rites. He would reach out and put his open palm on the moon-white flesh of Josie’s bottom, two untanned islands and the channel that splits them in an ocean of gilded flesh. Touch her as she lies atop Hank. Block and tackle of desire. Fulcrum of need.

  “Unga. Unga. Unga.”

  Or if she were on her knees with the mechanical Hank behind working doggedly, the Minotaur would watch the bob and sway of her breasts, the flutter of eyelids rhythmically registering each time she was entered. The Minotaur would watch this movement—the hypnotic fleshy bags, brown nipples, the nipples of a mother, raking the bedspread—if he were different.

  The Minotaur is not morally opposed to watching Hank and Josie make love without their knowledge. Not at all. Nor is he afraid of getting caught per se. What he is afraid of is the embarrassment that would follow. Rather than crawl up to the window the Minotaur simply goes quietly outside. He sits hunched forward in the dark on his front stoop listening, reaching far back into the opaque miasma of his time on earth, searching for the thread of memory, some image to cast before the sounds he hears, to give them bodies he can see. Five thousand miles away, and perhaps as many years, a bull-roarer, slat of wood and thong, wails in its orbit. The Minotaur listens. And he sits there on his stoop until Hank and Josie finally separate—“Oh. Mercy. Oh. Mercy. Oh. Mercy”—until they pry their flesh apart and succumb to sleep.

  CHAPTER 9

  Sorry,” the Minotaur says, but there’s no one there to hear him. He’s at work. He is chopping herbs. More than anything the Minotaur likes that time in the afternoon before the restaurant opens when his station is set up and ready, the hollandaise and other sauces are made, all the necessary prep work is done and he can take a few sweet minutes to chop the fresh herbs that get sprinkled as garnish over several of the entrees. “Sorry,” he says again, articulating carefully, striving for the right tone. The oily scents rise from the cutting board and the methodical blade, fill the deep wells of his nostrils, fill the kitchen itself with an aeonian sweetness. They say Prometheus brought fire from the sun concealed in a hollow fennel stalk. They say tarragon came to be when a flax seed was pushed into the pierced root of a sea onion and planted after dark. The Minotaur simply likes the smell of chopped herbs. “Sorry,” he says, but the word gets lost in the staccato sound of the blade striking the board.

  Kelly is at work, her first night back since the seizure. The Minotaur saw her folding napkins in the wait station, carefully pressing creases into the starched white linens, making the thin accordion shape that splays fanlike when tucked into the empty water glasses. The Minotaur wants to tell her he is sorry about the seizure, sorry that such a thing had to happen to her, so he practices saying it. “Sorry.” The Minotaur wants to tell her this because he knows the power of errant desire, of the body’s ability to exert its will, to convince, to do as it pleases despite the mind’s protest. “Sorry.”

  Hernando and the Minotaur share the daily chore of the employee meal. A barbecue, a casserole, a hodgepodge of some kind, heavily sauced to hide the fact that they have cleaned out the walk-in cooler in search of food not quite fresh enough to sell. The Minotaur scrapes the herbs into a stainless-steel bowl and puts a damp paper towel over the top. JoeJoe is on the back dock hosing out the waste cans. On the steps the radio spits a frenetic bass beat. David walks through the kitchen whistling and weaving a wine tool batonlike between his fingers. They’re tasting wines at the bar, learning sales tips and what accompanies what from a sweaty ultraserious wine rep who thinks the free corkscrews he gives out should be accepted with more gratitude.
David stops long enough to show a new busboy the rack of clean silverware that needs to be wiped dry and put into the bins in the wait stations. It is ten minutes until five. There is an element of hope in the air, the possibility of a good night.

  From the cooler the Minotaur takes a box of shrimp thawed a few days earlier for a dinner special that didn’t sell. Earlier in the afternoon Hernando made a pot of sticky rice sweetened with vinegar. The Minotaur plans to sauté the shrimp with bell peppers and onions and serve it to the wait staff with the rice and some teriyaki sauce left over from the weekend. Leaning over the sink he peels the shrimp quickly, pinching the twiggy legs between his thumb and forefinger and stripping the shell away with an expert roll of the thumb.

  At five o’clock the waiters and waitresses come up from the bar, giddy, feigning much more drunkenness than possible from the few sips of wine they each got. They gather in front of the hot line. While they wait for their meal Hernando explains the specials and the prices. The Minotaur cooks. Adrienne and Margaret, arms crossed alike, same dour expression on both their faces, stand together whispering. Hernando puts a plate in the window, a flounder fillet broiled and topped with halved grapes and toasted almonds, for the wait staff to taste. Robert drops the first bite before it reaches his mouth and begins cursing the butter stain on his shirt. The Minotaur stirs the black gelatinous teriyaki sauce into the pan of shrimp and vegetables. It thins as it heats. From the corner of his eye, his best vantage point, he watches Kelly come through the swinging door, quiet and cautious, her wide eyes, set in a narrow angular face, nervously scanning the room, like a foraging animal, nocturnal and omnivorous. The Minotaur is stricken with an image: Kelly’s sharp face in the moonlight, dark supple fur, heavy scent of the rut. She stops to take a bite of the flounder and to listen to Hernando describe the other specials, then goes into the walk-in cooler. She meets Cecie coming out.

  “Hey, girl,” Cecie says. “You okay?” Kelly nods and says something the Minotaur can’t hear. The other waiters and waitresses have avoided the question, have all but avoided her even, out of some combination of pity, shame and fear. Kelly seems to appreciate Cecie’s asking.

  The Minotaur is at the sink rinsing parsley in a big dented colander. Just before putting the pan of shrimp and rice up for the wait staff, he arranges a bed of parsley sprigs in one corner. With precision and a well-honed paring knife he peels the skin from an orange in a single thin strip. He twists it into a tight spiral in his palm, sets it like a flower in full bloom in the center of the parsley. The white pith is stark against the orange flesh and tiny green leaves. As he lifts the pan to the shelf, turning it so that his orange flower is prominently displayed, Cecie walks by on her way from the cooler. In one hand she carries a huge waxy cucumber, in the other a bunch of radishes, red as candy—a fistful of hearts. Cecie is predictable, and temptation abounds in the kitchen. She stops behind the Minotaur just as he leans to turn the pan around. Standing on her toes and holding the cucumber and radishes to her crotch, Cecie thrusts her hips toward the Minotaur’s buttocks.

  “Oh, ba-by,” she says, punctuating each syllable with the cucumber’s blunt tip.

  “Ungh!” The Minotaur turns quickly to face Cecie, his horn rattling the pots that hang over her head.

  “Damn, M! You’ve been toting them horns up there for all these years and you still can’t control them?” Cecie says.

  Normally the Minotaur likes this kind of play with Cecie, looks forward to it even. But not this time.

  Although he looms over her by almost a foot, snorting, his hot breath rolling across her face, Cecie isn’t afraid of his sudden reaction. She thinks his embarrassment is funny.

  “You on the rag, honey?” she asks, gently stroking his biceps in mock concern.

  The Minotaur shrugs her off, tries to pretend his reaction was a joke as well, but Cecie isn’t so easily duped.

  “Anybody got a Midol for Miss M?”

  Cecie misjudges the distance as she walks around the table, bangs her skinny hip on the corner. The Minotaur fumbles for a serving spoon, hoping busyness will hide his embarrassment. As covertly as possible he looks around the kitchen to see who has watched the exchange. Adrienne and Margaret are engrossed in their own discussion. Kelly is still in the cooler. Most of the others are too busy spooning out their dinners to have noticed anything, but by the door Mike stands grinning, a glossy red motorcycle helmet in the crook of his arm. Reflected in the dark-tinted face shield, a miniature movie screen, the Minotaur can see an impossibly tiny version of himself at work.

  “You walking on the wild side now, M?” Mike asks.

  The Minotaur ignores him. By the time Kelly comes out of the cooler and brings a plate up for her dinner, the flower made from the orange peel has unraveled and is coated with thick sticky sauce. The Minotaur watches her push it to one side with the spoon and scrape the remaining rice into a small heap before scooping it onto her plate. The Minotaur stands across from her wiping at nonexistent spots on the stainless-steel countertop. He wants to say he is sorry. He mouths the word one time, the movement of his lips all but imperceptible. But by the time he builds the courage to give it voice Kelly has taken her plate to the other side of the kitchen, where she eats standing up. Between bites she arranges and rearranges the selections on the dessert tray. The Minotaur watches her move the plates around. The peanut butter pie beside the Black Forest cake. The tiramisú opposite the flan. She moves them again and again, never quite satisfied with how the plates look on the heavy silver tray.

  When Kelly goes into the dining room and leaves the tray sitting on the counter, the Minotaur takes an apple from the cooler, lifts his apron to polish it. With the paring knife he cuts a thin disk from one side of the fruit, then a thicker slice from the same side, making a flat surface, on which he turns the apple down, its exposed flesh resting against the countertop. First on one side, then on the other, the Minotaur makes careful lengthwise cuts into the meat of the apple, V-shaped wedges, each wider than the last. Using both thumbs he pushes the wedges out, each telescoping from the other. He cuts a small notch between the wings. Then, with some quick whittling from the first piece of the apple that he cut away, the Minotaur carves the graceful neck and delicate beak of a swan. He dips the pieces in lemon juice to keep the pale apple flesh from oxidizing and turning a rusty brown. He rests the bird on a paper doily amid a nest of mint leaves, then sets the whole thing in the center of the dessert tray. He has just enough time to arrange the desserts around the centerpiece and go back behind the line before anyone notices what he is doing.

  “Hey, M,” David says as he walks up. “We have a party of twelve coming in at seven o’clock. Will you make sure Hernando and Cecie know?”

  “Unnh,” the Minotaur says.

  “I don’t think Grub is coming in tonight, so if it gets busy I’ll expedite at least until the party is served.”

  The Minotaur checks the coolers beneath the counter to make sure he has enough appetizers and side dishes prepped. He makes a mental note to take a box of puff pastry out of the freezer.

  “Listen,” David says, checking to make sure the heat lamp is off before leaning his head under it to look at the Minotaur. “Thanks a lot for helping me move my stuff. I’m so glad to be out of that shithole I lived in.”

  “Mm “The Minotaur is uncomfortable accepting gratitude.

  “I brought you something,” David says, and reaches into his pocket. This makes the Minotaur flinch, but no one notices.

  David extends his balled fist beneath the heat lamp toward the Minotaur. When his fingers unfurl what rests in his palm is a pocked misshapen lump of soft metal the size of a marble. The Minotaur reaches out tentatively, takes the gift from David’s hand. Holding it pinched between his thumb and forefinger, the Minotaur cocks his head to see it better.

  “Know what it is?” David asks.

  “Unnh unh.”

  “A bullet. A Civil War bullet from the battlefield at Bull Run.”

&
nbsp; “Mmm.”

  “That thing’s almost a hundred and thirty years old.” David says this as if the Minotaur should be impressed by its age.

  “Mmmhmm.”

  “The way it’s all warped and twisted I’d say it probably hit a bone. A pretty big bone.”

  “Thanks,” the Minotaur says with difficulty.

  “Well, that’s about the sweetest thing I’ve seen all day.” It’s Shane. He stands by the dish machine and wipes a pretend tear from his eye.

  “You’re late, Shane,” David says. “You’ve got section four, and do your side work before you eat.”

  Shane rolls his eyes and starts to say something but decides against it. The Minotaur pulls his apron aside and pushes the artifact deep into his pants pocket. When he cranes his thick neck to see around a stack of plates, looking for Kelly, he sees that the dessert tray is already gone. Whether it was Kelly or some other waitperson who took it out to the dining room, he doesn’t know. But he will spend several hours wondering.

  The night is busy. Tables come and go. People eat and drink, laugh and spend money. Aside from a waitress named Elizabeth dropping a shrimp cocktail on the floor, its thick catsup-y sauce flecked with horseradish spattering across both the patent-leather shoes of her customer and her own starched white shirt, things go smoothly in the dining room. She spends twenty minutes in the employee bathroom, in her bra, trying to wash the stain out. JoeJoe keeps pretending he is about to walk in on her. Aside from one overcooked rib-eye, and aside from Cecie, sometime after nine o’clock, sidling up to the Minotaur and pressing into his hand a sanitary napkin and two Tylenol, then running away laughing, things go smoothly in the kitchen. The night passes quickly.

  At eleven the night is over. David comes back to say that he has locked the door and that there is only a deuce left drinking coffee. Some of the wait staff have already left. Those who remain do their closing side work: breaking down the tea machine and the bar setups, snuffing the flames of the squat glass lamps on each table and refilling the lamps with lemon-scented oil, setting the tables and folding napkins for tomorrow. The tasks are menial and endless. Shortly after the last customers leave, Kelly comes from the dining room holding the dessert tray with both hands. She brings it to the dish area, where the light is good, so she can tell whether the icing has turned dark on the cakes, whether the mousse has begun to separate, whether anything needs to be replaced for the next night. The Minotaur looks around for something dirty, finds a glass and takes it to the dish rack. As long as he is there he decides to break down a tray of glasses from the bar, emptying the butts, toothpicks and other contents into the drain before sorting the glasses into the racks angled at shoulder level in front of him.