by Lisa Sorbe
“You’re speaking to him.” One corner of his lips perks up – a crack in his otherwise deadpan face.
My mouth drops. “You?” I scoff. “You’re the boss? You own this place?” I step back, appraising him. Cock my head and squint. His body is long and lean. I can’t make out much of his physic through his shapeless coveralls, but he does fill them out rather nicely. (I hate to admit it.) Although, I have a feeling any muscles he has lurking under that uniform came from hard labor and not from time in a gym. He doesn’t seem the meathead, health-nut type. His hair is short, although not neat; it sits atop his head in a disheveled mess. His face is stubble free, and he has the sort of cheeks that beg to be pinched. His eyes are his most striking feature; they’re the colors of a warm Indian Summer day – a soft mixture of earth tones kissed by the gilded light of autumn’s sun.
Gorgeous eyes aside, however, he looks like the nerdy kid from high school that never quite blossomed.
“What are you? Twelve?”
Miles chuckles. “No, I’m thirty – just tuned, actually. And I’ve been the owner here since, oh, eight o’clock this morning.” And with that, he brushes past me and back to his workbench, where he punches the button on an old silver ghetto blaster that’s covered in more grime that he is. The shop falls into a silence so deep it makes the back of my neck itch.
The clock above his head – a round monstrosity with the word Pennzoil written across its yellow face – reads three-thirty.
I roll my head, plant my hands on my hips and sigh. I need another tactic here.
He turns around, leans against the work bench, and crosses one boot over the other.
Stare down, commence.
Pasting a smile to my face, I soften my features and slip into my damsel in distress mode. It’s not a role I like to play, but it rarely fails to get me what I want. “Look, we got off on the wrong foot here. Okay?” I lift up my broken sandal, give my best self-deprecating chuckle. “I mean, literally. Right?”
Perhaps it should scare me how easily I can alter my personality and become someone else in the blink of an eye. An entirely different person with a softer voice, a more innocent doe-eyed expression. Manipulation is just so… effortless. It’s like breathing – false flattery, remorse I don’t feel, acting like I give a shit when I don’t.
Julian once joked that I could coerce a dying man into giving me his last breath.
Miles doesn’t seem to see the humor in my joke. He doesn’t laugh. Doesn’t even crack a smile. Doesn’t give me any sign he’s buying my little act. In fact, I can tell I’m losing him. He pulled his phone from the pocket of his coveralls during my little spiel and is now busy sliding his dirty finger over the screen.
“It’s just… I’m sorta desperate here.” Ugh. I sound so pathetic. This is the lowest of my lows. I inject a tiny sob into my plea, giving a small sniffle before continuing. “You see, I baked these pies for the soup kitchen” – his eyes flick up when I mention that – “and they were supposed to be there by four, but my tire blew and now they’re late.” I bite my lip and hug my arms, the fact that I seem to have finally won his attention inspiring me to slip further into my role.
He slides the phone back in his pocket and crosses his arms. “You?” he asks, and I can tell he’s mocking the disbelief I expressed earlier when I found out he owned this shop. “You baked pies for the Rothchester House Soup Kitchen?” His smirk is crooked and annoying and kind of makes him look hot in a geeky sort of way. And all of it combined almost causes my deplorable façade to slip.
Almost.
I nod and allow my eyes to mist over for emphasis. Not enough tears to start flowing, of course. That would be overkill. But just enough to give them a desperate sheen, adding a little more humility to my appeal.
It makes me seem more human. Something, at times, I’m not so sure I am.
I don’t cry much. In fact, I haven’t cried for real in a long, long time. And the one time I did cry – dropped my shield and felt the sort of pain, the sort of loss that makes you wish you were dead – I cried enough for a thousand lifetimes.
Miles may or may not be buying my act. If he’s not, he’s definitely the first person in a long time (aside from my brother) to see through my shit. But when he pushes off the work bench and says, “Let’s have a look at these pies,” I smile.
A real, honest to goodness fucking smile.
“Sorry about the mess.”
I don’t respond. Instead I just close my eyes and will this little trip to be over as fast as possible. Which, fortunately, doesn’t seem like it’ll be long; I can see the sign for the soup kitchen just a block away. Turns out Miles’s shop is just a five-minute drive from it.
We hit a bump in the road – the pot holes in this part of town are ridiculous – and I grab on to the armrest as I bounce in my seat. Miles doesn’t seem to be trying to avoid the jagged dips and holes, and I swear I see him bite back a smile every time he barrels over one.
His truck is mid-nineties ancient and smells like his shop. The leather interior is cracked and gray, and the floor is littered with all kinds of miscellaneous crap: tools, trampled auto parts boxes, half a dozen pairs of leather work gloves, countless cardboard coffee cups bearing the pink logo from the bikini barista shop down the street, a half-empty bag of cat food, a rank-looking pair of cleats, and a baseball glove.
I nudge the cleats away with my foot and try not to breathe through my nose.
After looking at what was left of my tire and telling me he didn’t have one on hand – of course he didn’t – he made a few calls and found a match through a local tire dealer just down the street. So, the plan was he’d take me to drop off the pies and then we’d trek a few more blocks over to grab the tire. Hence the reason I am, literally, stuck in this filthy mess.
I close my eyes and grab onto the armrest for dear life one more time as Miles swings the truck into the parking lot of the soup kitchen. Palming the wheel, he pulls into a spot by the back door and throws it into park. “I’ll grab the coolers,” he says, hopping out.
After peeling my fingertips from the armrest, I unbuckle my seatbelt and shimmy out of the vehicle. The tires on this thing are huge, and I practically need a step ladder to reach the ground. I changed into a pair of slip-on platform sandals I found in the cargo haul of my Rover, and I lose one on the way down. The concrete is searing, and I yelp when my skin makes contact with the sunbaked pavement. Balancing on one foot, I shove my other back into my sandal and look around.
The Rothchester House Soup Kitchen is based in an old high school that’s been turned into a shelter for displaced families and teens. The building takes up an entire city block but, from what I understand, there still aren’t enough spaces to house everyone. The Kitchen is on the first floor and serves dinner every day of the week, from four to six. The entrance to the cafeteria is on the opposite side of the building from that of the living quarters and, at five minutes to four, already has at least a dozen people in line.
While Cedar Hill’s isn’t a big city like, say, Chicago, it isn’t small, and we have our share of riff raff lining the streets, begging for handouts on the corners, drinking and scuffling in alleyways.
Or so I hear. I never come down here.
Miles rounds the side of the truck, a red nylon cooler clutched in each hand. He tips his head in the direction of the door. “You coming or what?”
I force a tight-lipped smile while mentally telling him where he can shove it. Even though he’s agreed to help me, it’s not like we’re on great terms. Or even good ones. Our interaction since leaving his shop has been short and hardly sweet. I have a feeling if I hadn’t mentioned the charity pies I’d probably still be sitting in my Rover and waiting for whatever cheap ass roadside assistance my insurance company provided.
The door to the back entrance is covered in chipped blue paint, and Miles pulls it open and disappears through it, allowing it to slam shut just as I reach for it.
Jerk.
The door is steel, heavy and, with the late afternoon sun cooking this side of the building, scorching. I grab the metal rung just under the Employees Only sign, my fingertips burning on contact, and am about to tug it open when a man dressed in a shabby suit that looks like it was new back in the seventies shuffles around the corner. His face is wizened, and when he sees me, he smiles. Or, at least I think that’s what he’s doing. It’s hard to see his mouth through his wiry, overgrown beard. Gray streaks his shaggy hair, and the portion of his mustache dancing above his upper lip is stained with that sickly yellow color that reminds me of snot. As he shuffles closer – lord, he’s heading straight for me – I can smell his stink.
He smells like an armpit. A big, hairy armpit that’s been sweating in the sun all day.
I skitter through the door but, before I can shut it behind me, the man somehow sidles half of his body in the crack. His face is so close to mine I can smell his coffee breath, and it makes me want to gag.
“Hey there, Missy.”
His voice is dry and grating, like sandpaper, and it hurts my throat just listening to him. He’s missing one of his top front teeth, and his S’s slip through the gaping hole in a whistle.
“I… I don’t think you’re supposed…” As I back away, the heel of my foot slips over the side of my sandal, and my ankle twists. I teeter as, for the third time that afternoon, I almost fall on my ass. I’m quickly steadied by a pair of hands, their grip rough and scratchy against my skin.
“God, can’t you walk? Are you always this klutzy?” Miles release me with a sigh and brushes past, heading for the door. He tosses me a smirk over his shoulder before turning around. “Hey, Merv.”
The man’s grin splits wider when he sees Miles. “Marty’s Boy!” He sidles more of his frail body through the door. “Sure smells good in here, don’t it Marty’s Boy?”
I, on the other hand, beg to differ. The aroma takes me back to my elementary school cafeteria and reminds me of Fish Stick Fridays. In fact, between breathing in this horrid stench and the utter grossness of the man before me, it’s taking everything I have to keep the green smoothie I had for lunch in my stomach.
Miles nods, addressing the man like he’s a friend rather than a bum off the street. “It does. But dude, you know you can’t come back here. You have to use the front door, like everyone else.”
But the bum – Merv – shakes his head. “It’s okay, it’s okay. It’s all good. See?” He holds up a black violin case in his gnarled hands and whistles through his teeth. “I’m the evening’s entertainment, Marty’s Boy. I’m allowed. Betsy, she says…”
“Betsy says you need to go to the front and wait in line like everyone else.”
I turn to see a woman about my age, pastel locks the color of cotton candy twisted up in plump top knot and wire-rimmed glasses perched on her long nose. White earrings in the shape of lightning bolts hang from her lobes, dangling all the way down to her shoulders. Her black tank top is cropped with the words Miami Beach scrawled across the front. One strap has slipped down on her shoulder, partially obscuring a large flower tattoo; the cluster of peonies inked onto her upper arm are practically dripping from her skin in vibrant shades of red, purple and pink. Cutoff jean shorts and black ankle boots with studded straps complete the look. Her lips, colored in a hot pink stain, are pursed.
This must be the Betsy my mom was referring to. I appraise her like I do with any new woman I come across, instantly judging her size and style. It’s behavior I can’t help; my brain immediately starts churning and comparing and tearing apart. Maybe it has to do with all the fashion magazines I devoured when I was an impressionable youth. Or maybe it just has to do with society’s supposedly harsh beauty standards. Or maybe it all started years later, when Julian brought a woman back to our place so he could fuck her right under my nose.
Regardless, I can’t help but view each and every female in my immediate radius as competition. As a possible threat. Even when, like now, there’s no one around worth competing for. Unless you count Miles, and – blech – no thank you.
I guess someone out there might find her attractive, if that someone is in to the sort of wild-child, rebel, devil-may-care sort of look she exudes. Right now, with her hands on her hips and the no nonsense look she’s shooting the bum at the door, she’s exuding a vibe that says don’t fucking mess with me.
“You’re bustin’ my balls here, Merv. You know that?” And then she smiles.
“C’mon, Merv.” Miles rests a hand the old man’s shoulder, gently nudging him back outside. “I’ll walk you out.” Just as he’s about to close the door behind him, he pokes his head back in. His eyes meet mine, and he winks. “Oh, and I’ll pick you up at six.”
My mouth drops as the door slams shut.
I feel an arm slip through mine, and then Betsy’s pulling me along with her, deeper into the kitchen. “Jen,” she gushes as we move, “it’s so nice to finally meet you! Your mom is always going on and on about her kids and her granddaughter. I feel like I know you all already! I got a chance to meet your brother when he donated some furniture to the housing units and he’s such a sweetheart. I heard he just got engaged, too! Which is so cool because he’s such a great guy. Not to mention hot. But, I mean, of course looks aren’t everything. Right? And your mom is thrilled! It’s all she can talk about…”
My head is spinning. Betsy is rambling so fast I can barely keep up with her. Technically, we haven’t even been formally introduced. But the main question that begs to be answered… Why the hell am I still here?
The kitchen is a decent size, roughly the dimensions of a tennis ball court, with an open window that looks out onto the cafeteria on one side and a wall of cupboards and an industrial-size fridge and oven on the other. Metal tubs filled with salad and bread rolls and lasagna crowd the serving table under the window. A plump woman my mom’s age is standing near the stovetop, her wooden spoon stuck in a gigantic steel pot and stirring what I can only assume is soup. Her white hair has been braided into a low bun and she’s wearing jean shorts, white tennis shoes, and a faded red t-shirt with the words My Granddaughter is a Pit Bull across her chest. She grins when we enter the room and offers a wave before turning back to her cooking.
“Smells good, Marilyn!” Betsy calls out as we fly by. She turns back to me, her brows knit together. “I’m so sorry to hear about your car. That totally sucks. Couldn’t have happened in a better spot, though. Miles will take care of it. He’s such a great guy.”
Releasing my arm, she deposits me next to a large stainless-steel work table. Sitting on top of it are both of my mom’s nylon coolers alongside a pile of plastic plates and a pie serving set. “Let me get you some gloves. Oh, and you’ll need a hairnet, too. I’ll be back in a jiff!” She pauses on her heel, giving my shoulder a squeeze. “It’s so nice of you to offer to help serve tonight!”
And with that, she bounces away. Apparently to get me gloves. And a fucking hairnet.
Miles, I fume.
Miles, Miles, Miles…
“Well, aren’t you a vision.”
Miles appears out of nowhere, snags one of the pies I’ve just plated, and spoons a heaping mouthful into his wide-open trap. It looks like he’s managed to shower and change since I saw him last – a bonus, for sure. The grease stains and coveralls are gone, and the foul stench of gasoline and burnt Cheetos no longer wafts from his pores. Instead, he smells sweet and woodsy, like citrus pine laced with a hint of mint. His cheeks are still pinchable, and his hair is still an unruly mess. Although now that it’s damp it looks darker, making the green and gold flecks in his eyes stand out even more. His white t-shirt is simple, stretching tight over his broad shoulders and hanging loose around his narrow waist.
Clean, yes. But still annoying.
I huff, blowing a strand of hair that escaped from my hairnet out of my eye. I want to tell him where to shove it, but I refuse to let him know he’s getting to me. “I’m just happy I can help.” I plop my last piece
of pie – thank god hallelujah – onto a plate, drop the server, and flex my fingers. Fourteen pies at six to eight slices each took me almost two hours to cut, plate, and serve.
No joke. These people like their dessert.
“It’s just nice to be able to do something for someone else. You know, give something back to the community.” I paste a sweet smile onto my face, the one that can bullshit a bullshitter, and peel off my gloves.
Miles takes another bite. Chews. “Wow,” he says, his voice dry and thick with pie. “You’re such an inspiration.”
Before I can respond, Betsy breezes over. She’s smiling, like she’s been smiling the last two hours, and I wonder how she can find so much joy in this shit. I’m sweating because it’s hotter than a mutha in here, my hair is probably a bird’s nest right now, and I’m pretty sure I smell like Merv’s armpit.
“Miles!” Betsy pulls him in for a brief, one-armed hug. “I take it you got Jen’s car fixed and ready to go?”
Miles slides his eyes my way, his grin mocking. “Oh, yeah. Jenny’s car is all fixed and ready to roll.”
I frown. “It’s Jen, actually.”
Miles ignores me completely and turns back to Betsy. His face takes on a whole new shine when speaking with her: his eyes go soft, the smile playing on his lips a laugh waiting to erupt, the tone of his voice sweet as syrup. “You guys looked busy tonight.”
I humph as I start packing the empty pie pans back into the coolers.
What a fake.
Betsy swipes the back of her hand over her forehead and sighs. “Yeah, but it seems every night is like that lately.” Then she shrugs, her smile still dazzling. “But that’s what we’re here for, right?” Miles scoops the last of the pie into his mouth, and she reaches out for the empty plate. She looks between us, her eyes wide. “You guys staying for the show?”
Miles swallows. “Nah, not tonight. Gotta drop Jenny here” – he winks at me, and I glare back – “off at her car, and then I’ve got plans.”
