Chapter Two Grace
The pill is small and white, and I grab my glass with the last of yesterday's water. Taking a small sip, my nose crinkles.
The glass has been on my nightstand since Tuesday.
I should wash it. I should wash a lot of things…
the glass, the mug in the sink, the jacket I wore home last night that smells of fryer oil and the lavender hand soap from the restaurant bathroom.
Honestly, I couldn’t be bothered. I have a couch, a bed, a table with two chairs I bought from a woman on Craigslist who was moving to Denver, and a kitchen that fits one person if that person doesn't need to open the oven and the fridge at the same time.
I swallow the pill dry because the water is warm and I don't want it.
My throat catches for a second and then it goes down.
Same as every morning. I've been taking these since I was thirteen, prescribed by a doctor whose name I don't remember.
It was one through my foster family, and I have never once thought about it longer than the three seconds it takes to open the bottle and put one in my mouth.
They're for anxiety. I have anxiety. The pills help. End of story.
The bottle goes back on the nightstand next to the warm water.
I should count how many I have left, but I don’t.
I think I have enough to put off calling them for a refill.
They have always made me feel uneasy and now that I’m on my own, I prefer to give them the least amount of energy possible.
A few calls here and there just to let them know I’m alive. Maybe a visit on the holidays.
No real love lost there.
My shift starts at eleven and the walk takes six minutes if I don't stop at the bodega, eight if I do.
Today I stop. Coffee from the pot Rosa keeps behind the register, a dollar twenty-five, same she's been charging me for since I started coming in three years ago.
Rosa is seventy and has opinions about my hair and my weight and my lack of a boyfriend and she delivers all three every morning in the same order.
"Too thin," she says, handing me the cup. "You eat today?"
"I'm going to work at a restaurant, Rosa."
"You work at a restaurant. You don't eat at a restaurant. I see you walk home with nothing in your hands. No bag. No leftovers. Nothing."
"I eat at work."
"You eat bread and whatever Marco burns on the flat top." She waves her hand. "Eat real food. And do something with your hair, you will never get boyfriend looking like you’re trying to attract a family of swallows."
I drink the coffee and leave a two-dollar bill on the counter because Rosa won't take a tip, but she'll take an overpayment if I don't wait for change.
The bell above the door rings when I leave.
The sidewalk is cold through my sneakers.
April can't decide what it wants to be, and today it wants to be forty-three degrees with a wind that comes off the Delaware and pushes through the grid streets without anything to slow it down.
Three blocks. I know every crack. The uneven slab in front of the dry cleaner where I tripped last winter and caught myself on the parking meter.
The storm drain at the corner of Ninth that floods when it rains and sends a sheet of water across the crosswalk that every regular pedestrian knows to walk around.
The front of the restaurant, where the awning is green and the window has a crack in the lower right corner that Danny the owner has been meaning to fix since October and will probably mean to fix until the window breaks and he has to replace the whole thing.
I push through the door, the heat hits me and then the smell hits me.
Garlic, bread, pasta and my shoulders drop an inch.
This is mine. Not in the ownership sense.
In the sense that I know every table and every chair and every chip in the bar top, the wobble in the leg of table six and the light above the register that flickers when the AC kicks on.
I've worked here for four years and there's nothing in this building that surprises me.
I didn't understand how much I needed that until I thought about it just now.
Routine helps settle my anxiety.
"You're early," Javi says from behind the bar.
"I'm on time. You're early."
"I'm always early because I'm proactive and you're punctual."
"You're annoying is what you are."
He grins. Javi has a grin that takes up his whole face and makes it impossible to stay irritated at him for longer than ten seconds.
He's twenty-six, two years older than me, and he's worked here for three of the four years I have, and somewhere in the overlap we became the kind of friends who don't have to explain themselves to each other.
He knows I don't talk about my childhood.
He knows I live alone and don't date and take a pill every morning and have a thing about Italian that I've never explained, and he's never asked about.
He knows these things because he pays attention, and he's never once used what he knows to push past the place where I stop letting people in.
I tie my apron and check the reservation book.
Twelve tables booked for lunch, which is average for a Wednesday.
Two large parties tonight; an eight-top at six thirty and a birthday six-top at eight.
I check the specials board. Marco is doing a pan-seared branzino and a pork shoulder that's been braising since yesterday.
Both of those are going to sell out because Marco is an asshole and a loudmouth and also the best cook I've ever worked for.
"Table two's been here since ten forty-five," Javi says. "Older couple. She wants the eggs Benedict, he wants to argue about the eggs Benedict. I gave them coffee and a minute."
"I'll take them."
I grab the coffee pot and head to table two.
The woman is reading the menu with her glasses on the end of her nose.
The man is reading the menu with his glasses on the table because he broke the arm last week and hasn't fixed them.
I know this because they come in every Wednesday and I've been serving them for two years and I know that Arthur breaks his glasses every six weeks, and Helen pretends not to notice because if she notices she'll have to fix them and she's been fixing Arthur's things for forty years. The poor woman is tired.
"Morning, Helen. Arthur. More coffee?"
"Please," Helen says.
"He says the eggs Benedict aren't real eggs Benedict because the hollandaise isn't made with clarified butter," she says, pointing at her husband.
"Marco's hollandaise is made with clarified butter, Arthur."
"He uses whole butter. I've seen him."
"You've seen him from forty feet away through a pass window."
"I have excellent vision."
"You broke your glasses."
Helen looks at me over the top of her frames, and her mouth does the thing it does when she's trying not to laugh. I pour the coffee and take their order and walk back to the bar and my finger taps the edge of the coffee pot twice.
A habit I’ve always had.
The lunch rush comes and time flies. Marco is in a good mood today, which means the food comes out fast, the plates are clean and he only yells at the line cook twice, both times about the sear on the branzino, and both times the line cook—a nineteen-year-old named Devon who is terrified of Marco and also learning more in this kitchen than he would at any culinary school—adjusts and gets it right.
I carry plates and pour water and refill bread baskets and remember that the woman at table nine is allergic to shellfish and the man at table four takes his steak medium-rare but sends it back if there's any pink touching the bone, which is not how medium-rare works but is how he wants it, and I've learned to tell Marco "medium on the bone side" and everyone's happy.
I'm good at this. I love this. The rhythm of a full restaurant, the sound of a kitchen running well, the satisfaction of a table that came in hungry and left full and tipping twenty percent.
I love the weight of four plates on my arm and the sound of Javi shaking a cocktail behind the bar and the way the dining room fills with noise at peak and then empties over the next hour until it's just the stragglers and the staff meal and the quiet.
This is my whole world, and it fits inside six blocks and I've never wanted it to be bigger.
I hope it never is.
After the rush, Javi and I eat at the bar. Staff meal is the pork shoulder with whatever sides Devon felt like making, which today is roasted potatoes and a green salad that's actually good because Devon has been paying attention when Marco isn't looking.
Javi eats with the focus of a man who skipped breakfast. I eat slower because sometimes eating is hard for me. We don't talk for the first five minutes because we've been talking to other people for three hours straight and the silence is earned.
"My mom wants me to come home for Easter," Javi says.
"So go home for Easter."
"It's a whole thing. My sister's bringing her new boyfriend and my mom wants everyone to be nice to him and last time my sister brought a boyfriend home my uncle asked him what his five-year plan was before he got through the front door."
"Your uncle sounds efficient."
"My uncle sounds like an immigration officer." He takes a bite of pork. "You doing anything for Easter?"
There it is. The question that isn't really about Easter.
Javi doesn't ask me about holidays to find out my plans.
He asks because he knows I don't have plans and he's offering, without saying it, to include me in his.
I love him for it, and I can't accept because the idea of sitting at a table with a family — any family — with the noise and the food and the questions and the casual intimacy of people who share a history makes my chest feel wrong in a way I've never been able to explain.
"Might pick up a shift," I say.
"On Easter."
"Danny pays time and a half."