Chapter 16 Sixteen
Sixteen
The lock to the back door of Lima y Sazón stuck, so much so that the racket Jal made just from trying to turn the key, echoed down the alley that ran the length of the block packed with shops and restaurants.
Inside, any small noise sounded like someone was trying to bust down the door, which was why Elena’s father hadn’t bothered to fix it.
She yanked the door closed and locked it firmly, wiping away the bead of sweat at her temple.
It had been five years since the last robbery attempt, largely thanks to that door, but it didn’t have to be that hard to open.
From deep inside the cavernous kitchen came a sigh of relief.
Jal blinked to adjust to the fluorescent lighting reflecting off spotless stainless steel like the sun beaming onto the windows of a Manhattan skyscraper.
Elena stood alone at one of the prep stations dressed in her usual uniform of a black apron over a sleeveless top, surrounded by an array of small crates and bags of vegetables.
Her caramel-streaked brown hair was tied tightly back in a bun under a backwards black baseball cap.
There was a brilliant smile on her face and a wicked-looking boning knife in her hand, poised over a pork shoulder the size of a breadbox. “Hey, nena.”
Elena called nearly every woman she knew “nena,“ which just meant “girl” in the Spanish of her mother’s native Puerto Rico. At this point, Jal was used to it, but the word still threw Lexi off, something that amused Elena to the point where it had almost fully replaced their friend’s name.
“Hey, yourself,” Jal replied with a warm smile on her face as she crossed the room.
Her head filled with the scents of roasted meat, garlic, citrus, and so many other spices that were a permanent fixture in the room, even when nothing was actively being cooked.
Jal’s stomach growled despite having just eaten breakfast, and she thought, as she had so many times, Lime and Spice, indeed.
She watched in fascination as Elena’s skilled fingers pinched and pulled at the meat, the blade flashing in the light as it sliced through skin and sinew, followed by long sweeps that pared away fat until only a thin layer remained and none of the meat was wasted.
Finally, with a flourish that almost made Jal applaud, Elena deposited the meat into the last remaining spot in a large plastic tub nearly briming with her family’s secret marinade.
It was a concoction of deliciousness that Jal only knew included lime and orange juices, garlic, blended peppers and onions, and a dizzying variety of spices, because she had helped prepare it a time or two.
Elena wiped her hands on a towel and held out an arm for a much-shorter Jal to duck under and give her a brief, tight hug. She picked up the knife and cutting board and gestured with her elbow to the bags of vegetables spread out on one side of the station. “Why don’t you start with the onions?”
Jal dropped her backpack with alacrity on an empty station behind her and followed to the sink to wash her hands. Beside her, Elena rinsed the cutting board and started in on the knife. “Remember how I showed you to chop them all the same size?”
Jal nodded and accepted the towel and cutting board Elena passed to her.
They worked in companiable silence for a while.
The plastic container at Jal’s elbow filling with neat squares of onion.
Jal clutched the knife as Elena had taught her as she first sliced most of the way horizontally through half of the bulb, then cut vertically into strips before finally slicing the other direction.
The knife still felt foreign in her hand, and the movements required almost all of her concentration just to keep from cutting herself with the sharp blade, but there was still something soothing in the repetition.
Before Elena had invited her a few months ago to pick up a knife and help, she’d never really known more than the basics-- if the “basics” could be considered boiling water or punching buttons on a microwave.
Orphaned at seven when her parents died in a car accident, she’d gone to live with her last remaining grandparent in a worn-out trailer in Eastern Pennsylvania who’d lived mostly on frozen dinners and cigarettes.
Spaghetti sauce came from a jar. Macaroni and cheese came from a box, if they were lucky enough to have milk, usually only at the beginning of the month when the food assistance card was reloaded.
Even salad was a delicacy for people far richer than them as far as her grandma was concerned.
When the bag of onions was empty, Elena had her start in on the peppers, stopping her work on more delicate herbs to give Jal another lesson in removing the seeds and trimming the ribs of the peppers to get uniform pieces.
Satisfied, Elena returned to her side of the table and brushed a bead of sweat off her forehead with her forearm.
She picked up her knife, pinched the pile of herbs between her fingers and went back to work.
“So, you fell asleep, huh?” She asked after they’d worked for a few minutes.
“Did that guy have anything to do with that? What’s his name again? Keegan? Kevin?”
“Ciaran,” Jal corrected. “And not exactly.”
Elena set down her knife. “What do you mean ‘not exactly?’” Her dark eyes were full of mischief.
Jal told her everything. From the soccer match to him appearing at the door, to carrying her to the chair, what he had done to her on that chair.
“Remind me never to sit there again.” Elena groused, jumping in before Jal could say anything about what she had done. “That was my favorite chair.”
Jal chuckled, her cheeks warming.
“But good for you, nena!” she exclaimed. “It’s about time.”
Jal ducked her head to hide the blush that darkened her cheeks, not from pleased embarrassment, but from shame, and concentrated on the pepper in front of her.
“What is it?”
Jal kept chopping, even as Elena set her knife aside and circled around to her side of the table.
“Jal?” Elena prompted. Her fingers gently wrapped around Jal’s hand and brought the knife to a stop. “Talk to me.”
Jal let her take the knife and wiped her hands with a towel.
“When Andy and I were together, it didn’t matter what we had done, or how many times either of us had…
you know.” She swallowed hard against the bile rising up her throat at the memories.
“He always had to finish last, and in my mouth. It didn’t matter if I was tired, or didn’t want to do it, if I refused or tried to go to sleep, there would be problems.”
She didn’t elaborate on what those problems were, Elena knew all too well. “It got to the point where I would go on a kind of autopilot. I could say all the right things, do what he wanted and make him think that I enjoyed it, but I’d go somewhere in my head to wait until it was over.”
“Oh Jal,” Elena whispered. “Did that just happen with Ciaran?”
Jal looked up at her friend, and her eyes filled with tears as she nodded.
Elena wrapped her arms around her and held on tight as Jal sobbed into the scratchy apron. The tears didn’t last long, though, and soon Jal eased back and dabbed her eyes with the towel.
“I can’t imagine what Ciaran is thinking right now,” Jal sniffled, and dashed to the office, coming back with a handful of tissues, one of which she used to blow her nose. “He was gone when I woke up. He left his number, but I haven’t worked up the nerve to reach out yet.”
Elena chuckled. “Well, you finally have a phone number, at least.” She perched a hip on the edge of the table, shaking her head wryly. “That has to be a good sign.”
A corner of Jal’s mouth twitched, and needing to do something with her hands, she took up the knife again while she finished the story, reciting Ciaran’s words that he could be trusted with anything she wanted to tell him.
Jal chopped the rest of the pepper before Elena’s hand covered hers on the knife. “He’s out, you know.”
Jal jerked, releasing the blade on the cutting board. Had Elena’s hand not been there, it probably would have hit the floor. Jal’s head whipped around. Only one “he” would put that look on her friend’s face. The one that said, “say the word and I’ll grab the car keys and a shovel.”
Jal’s heart missed a beat, two, as Elena’s words sunk in.
Her legs gave out and she crashed to her knees.
Pain radiated up and down her arm when her elbow hit the counter with an echoing boom, but it was the one thing that kept her from sprawling on the floor.
Elena let out a cry and scrambled to pull her to her feet and deposited her on a stool.
Elena released her, but kept her hands close for a moment, prepared to step in if Jal started to tip over. When it became clear it wasn’t going to happen, she dashed to the sink to fill a glass of water, which she pressed into Jal’s hands.
The cool water sliding down her throat helped to steady her nerves a little, but it did nothing to calm the roaring in her ears.
“What?” she croaked, and took another gulp of water, the glass clenched between both hands, so it didn’t go crashing to the red tile floor. “Why wouldn’t they tell me he was being released?”
Elena crouched in front of her and set the glass aside so she could take both of her hands.
Jal looked down, at those strong, capable hands, a few shades darker than her ivory complexion, and gripped them like a lifeline.
For a long moment, she held on and concentrated on her breathing, the same as she had done in the courtroom two years ago when they’d read out the verdict.
Find three scents: cilantro, and lime, and chili pepper…
Now, three sights: the bank of ovens stacked neatly on top of each other, the chipped paint of the restaurant logo Elena’s mother had painted over the serving window nearly a decade ago, the warm brown of Elena’s eyes as she waited patiently…
Lastly, three things she could feel: the calluses of Elena’s hands, the hard steel of the stool beneath her, the tickle of a lock of hair falling across her cheek…
Slowly, the sensation of breathing through a straw eased and the panic receded enough for her to process what Elena was saying.
“They probably couldn’t find you,” she explained.
“You moved, and you’ve changed your phone number a half-dozen times in the last two years.
” She came around the workstation and took one of her hands. “Not to mention, you changed—“
Jal squeezed her hands tighter, and a wince of pain flashed across Elena’s features. With a grimace, Jal loosened her grip. “How did you find out?”
“He came in yesterday asking for you,” Elena replied, her voice deep and gritty.
“That’s why I was calling you yesterday.
” There was a flush high in her cheeks that wasn’t embarrassment.
Jal was certain that had she been able to hear her friend’s thoughts, they would be in Spanish, full of inventive curses, and none of it complimentary.
“He said he went by the old place and was surprised to find you gone.”
Jal scoffed. “He actually thought I would just be sitting there for two years, waiting for him?” Though she shouldn’t have been surprised. She met Elena’s hard brown eyes. “What did you tell him?”
She dropped Jal’s hands and paced a few feet away to lean on the counter with her hands braced on either side of her generous hips. “I told him that you’d left town after it all happened and I hadn’t heard from you since.”
Jal released a breath and the tightness in her chest eased a little. “Good,” she took another deep breath. “That’s really good. How did he take it?”
“About as well as you could imagine.” Elena said. “Red face, clenched fists, the usual. Thankfully, we were open, so he couldn’t make too much of a show. You know, I don’t know what you ever saw in that guy, Jal.”
Jal chuckled, though there was no humor in the sound, and wrapped her arms around her stomach. “Neither do I.”
“You know, if you want to come stay with me for a little while, you’re welcome.
” Elena’s apartment was in the Kitchen, a few blocks from the restaurant.
It was also small enough that the whole thing would fit in Jal’s living area with plenty of room to spare, but the generosity of the offer meant more than she could possibly know.
Jal shook her head. “Like you said, he doesn’t know where I live now, and it might as well be half-way around the world from the Bronx. I just might want to keep my distance from here for a little while in case he comes back.”
Elena nodded. “Yeah, might be a good idea.” She clicked her tongue. “Though I was going to ask if you could come in more often.“ She winked and a sly smile spread across her lips. “Papá and I will make do somehow.”
Jal managed a weak smile at that, considering she’d only worked maybe a grand total of fifteen hours over the last two months.
Elena and her father Roberto had been part of her life from the moment she’d stepped off the bus at seventeen and staggered up to the first food cart she came across, tired, alone, and clueless on where to start a new life in the big city.
Roberto had taken pity on her and given her a hot meal and a lead on a room for rent from a family friend.
It was a kindness that he didn’t need to make, she knew, and she’d never been able to really feel like she’d repaid him.
Even working in his restaurant, which he and Elena’s mother had opened a few years later, didn’t put much of a dent in that debt.
“Did Andy say anything else?”
Elena shook her head. “Only that he had found a job at an auto shop in Hunts Point and he’s rooming with a buddy near your old place.” she said. “He left his number, but I burned that the second he left. So as long as you stay in Manhattan, you should be good. He’ll give up eventually.”
Jal nodded. “Thanks, nena,“ she said, and eased off the stool. Elena took a step toward her, but Jal’s legs were surprisingly steady. She set the glass in the sink. “I should probably get going.”
Elena smiled, though it was brittle. “I’ll call you. Maybe get the gang together for a night out, all the fancy places that Andy would never think to go.”
Jal nodded and gave Elena a quick hug, then headed for the door. Just as she wrestled the thing open, Elena’s voice called out.
“Ciaran sounds like he’s a good guy,” she said.
Jal’s cheeks flushed and her heart expanded a little, as if just the mention of his name was enough to clear away some of the grime talk of Andy had left on her skin. “Yeah, I think so too.” she replied. “I just have to hope that I haven’t screwed everything up.”