15
Heard/Heard that: When a chef calls out tickets, the cooking staff will shout “Heard!”
or “Heard that!”
to indicate they got the orders.
20
“You’re as ready as you’re going to be.”
Regina chopped onions so fast, Gale’s eyes didn’t have time to water.
“How do you feel?”
Taping was tomorrow.
He felt like crap.
“As good as I’m going to.
I’m nervous. What if I make a fool of myself?”
“It’s a chance you take.
But you won’t.”
She scraped the onions from the cutting board into a mixing bowl.
This afternoon, they were making spaghetti and meatballs for dinner service, a weekly favorite since long before Gale started volunteering.
“What are you even doing here? You should be at home, resting.”
“No way,”
Gale said.
“I’d go insane.
As it is, my boss gave me the night off.”
“Fine.
Help prep dinner and then you’re leaving.
I have servers for tonight.”
As if on cue, his mother shouldered in through the back door, bags of groceries looped over her arms.
It was only Lucy’s second time volunteering in Regina’s Kitchen; she’d had a minor setback, but the doctors approved, as long as she took it easy.
They knew, as well as her family did, she needed more to do than watch television.
“I couldn’t get all the pork you asked for. The ground chicken was on sale, so I supplemented with that. Good?”
“Ground chicken?”
Gale asked.
“In meatballs?”
“It’ll be fine,”
Regina said.
“I’ve done it before.
You have to be able to improvise with what’s available.
That’s the hallmark of a great chef. Now take those bags from your mother. Lucy, pour the milk over the bread.”
“But Gale’s the chef.
I’ll just—”
Regina leveled that glance even Lucy Carmichael didn’t dare argue with.
“How much milk?”
“Until it’s all wet but not pooling.”
Gale watched Lucy, suppressing the urge to take the container of milk from her hand.
She poured just enough, this mother of his who’d never actually cooked anything from scratch in her life.
“Gale, the meat?”
“Oh, right.”
He unpacked the ground beef, pork, and chicken.
In a pinch, he’d have gotten veal, not chicken, but he supposed a soup kitchen couldn’t afford that.
He took the bowl of milky bread from his mother and tipped the meat from their Styrofoam trays into it.
While he mixed by hand—gently, and not too much—Regina added the egg/onion/herb mixture.
“Good, good.”
She slid the massive bowl closer for inspection.
“Just enough.
Lucy, you going to roll with us?”
“Me?”
His mother’s cheeks pinked.
Nice to see.
“I don’t want to mess it up.”
“They’re meatballs.
How bad can you mess up? I’ll show you.”
Gale watched his mother carefully, looking for signs of fatigue as they rolled, but she showed none.
Her meatballs were often too big, or too small.
The first ones were rolled too hard.
“Be gentle,”
Regina corrected.
“You want your meatballs soft, not dense and hard.”
When they were finished, the meatballs were lined up in the industrial tray, an army of fatty, pink warriors standing at perfect attention.
“Gale, sear them off while we get the tomatoes going.”
“I never knew so much went into spaghetti and meatballs,”
Lucy said.
“I never knew my son worked so hard.”
“It’s a chef’s life.”
Searing the meatballs on the stovetop, Gale listened to Regina teach his mother the intricacies of tomato sauce magic with half an ear.
The only two women in his life who mattered were around the same age, both Italian, both blue-collar as blue-collar got.
It was strange to think, after all the weeks, so much time spent toiling in the kitchen, that Gale knew almost nothing about Regina, personally.
Like if she’d ever been married, had kids, worked in a restaurant. Like where she got the money to fund the soup kitchen, what organization she worked for, and if she got paid outside of use of the apartment above.
She doesn’t know anything about you either.
Sean had a point.
But Regina knew all she needed to, really.
He hadn’t fooled her.
Not from day one. An addict knew an addict; she hadn’t fooled him either. It was always safer not to ask.
Gale turned the meatballs again, searing those fatty pink warriors brown.
Focused on that, he tried to let go of the anxiety building, even though he knew he couldn’t.
Wouldn’t.
Not until he was in the Cut! studio. Cooking.
Gale attempted to protest once again, but he left to go home and rest up.
Lucy stayed, even though Regina had a kind-of regular—who could use the twenty bucks—coming in to serve.
But for boiling the pasta, dinner was done.
Still, when the volunteer arrived, her little boy in tow, Lucy lingered on.
“It’s going to get a little hectic.”
Regina dumped the first round of spaghetti into the boiling water.
“They line up before I open for service.
I’ve never run out of food yet, so I don’t know why.”
“Old habits,”
Lucy said.
“Or fears.
Tell me what I can do.”
Regina didn’t have the heart to tell her to go home.
Lucy seemed happy, helping out.
The woman needed a purpose, that much was plain.
“If you get overtired, your son is going to kill me.”
“My son isn’t the boss of me.”
Lucy winked.
“I swear, I’ll take it easy.”
Lucy Carmichael couldn’t take it easy any more than Regina could, which was why she caved.
“Fine.
I’ll plate, you and Janie can deliver.
Her little boy can pass out bread.”
It did get hectic, as always, from six to seven.
After that, stragglers came and went, but by eight o’clock, as always, Regina’s Kitchen closed, having fed the local, hungry destitute.
Janie and her boy went home with full bellies, leftovers, and a twenty in each of their pockets, wherever home was.
Regina hoped it wasn’t one of the nearby abandoned buildings where so many seemed to squat.
“That was fun.”
Lucy dried the industrial pan that had been left soaking in the sink.
“It’s really nice, you doing all this.”
“I do what I can.”
She could do more; not without giving herself away though.
The balance Regina struck had been working since opening the doors.
“The faces here come and go.
Sometimes because people make their way out of this sort of poverty. Sometimes because they die.”
Lucy slid the pan onto the wire rack with the others.
Her shoulders sagged, just a little.
“I could go for a cup of tea.
How about it, before I go?”
Tea.
Like the old days, with Gladys.
Troy’s continued absence had put a stop to their after-service cuppas.
Regina put the kettle on, firmly cutting off that train of thought. “I hope good old Lipton is okay.”
“It’s all I drink.”
“You’re good with caffeine?”
Lucy grimaced.
“I’m not supposed to drink it, but I do.
Not often.
Don’t tell Gale.”
“I won’t.”
Far be it from her to scold a woman about her vices.
Regina got mugs from the rack.
Lucy poured hot water over the tea bags.
Tea was never as good as it was in her Bernardaud teacups, but it would still feel nice going down.
“So.”
Lucy blew across the rim of her mug.
“What do you think Gale’s chances are? For real.”
Regina set the tea bag on a folded paper towel.
She stirred in a bit of sugar, a little milk.
Sipped.
There was nothing quite so comforting as that first sip of tea. Unless it was the first sip of something stronger promising the numbness to come.
Maybe Gale wasn’t the only one anxious.
“He has plenty of talent,”
she said.
“Good instincts when it comes to combining flavors.
Good palate.
Great technique.”
“But?”
“He lacks confidence,”
Regina told her plainly.
“And he lets his nerves get in his way.
Once he’s in the zone? There’s no rattling him.
It’s getting there he has trouble with.”
Lucy’s shoulders sagged again.
She sipped her tea, no sugar, no milk, the tea bag still steeping in the cup.
“He’s always been that way.
Breaks my heart.”
“It’s who he is.
Nothing to be heartbroken about.”
Unlike Regina’s own son; she wasn’t entitled to heartbreak she caused.
“I think it’s why he did what he did,”
Lucy told her.
“I mean, I can relate.
Sometimes, I wish I could turn off all the noise in my head.”
Regina could also relate.
She kept her mouth shut.
“He nearly died a couple years back.
Did he ever tell you?”
He didn’t have to.
Regina blew over the top of her cup.
“Never mentioned it.”
“It was awful.
As if that even comes close.
My boy.
I nearly lost him, but he made it. His friend, Sean, he didn’t. Gale blames himself.”
Lucy thumbed a tear from her cheek.
“It wasn’t his fault.”
Of course he does.
Survivors’ guilt.
Still .
. . “We all make our choices.”
“Yeah.”
She sat, mug in hands, staring at nothing.
A sigh, and Lucy shook it off, smiling tightly.
“Sorry.
Don’t know why I brought all that up.”
Because your son is anxious and it brought back too many bad memories.
“It’s fine.
No worries.”
Lucy got to her feet, dumped what remained of her tea in the sink, washed and dried the mug.
“I guess I should get going.
You must be beat.”
“It’s a permanent state of being for me.”
“I hear you.”
A chuckle? Or an attempt at one.
The tightness around Lucy’s smile showed in her eyes.
“Can I come back next week?”
“Whenever you want to come,”
Regina told her.
Truth was, she didn’t mind Lucy’s company as much as she thought she would.
“I can always use an extra pair of hands.
I give my volunteers twenty bucks at the end of a shift, if you’re—”
“No. Thanks.”
Lucy held up both hands.
“Put it back into the kitchen.”
Regina couldn’t admit she didn’t need that twenty, though she was pretty certain Lucy could use it.
She’d slip it to Gale, next time he was in.
Tell him she forgot to give it to his mother in all the excitement over the competition.
She walked Lucy Carmichael to the service entrance, ready to lock the door behind her when movement in the garden raised her hackles.
Reaching for the long flashlight kept near the door, as much a weapon as a light source, she told herself it was just a straggler looking for something to eat.
Whoever it was, the odds of her knowing them were pretty high.
Unwilling to frighten Lucy, she said nothing until the woman got in her car and pulled out of the driveway behind the kitchen.
Regina switched on the flashlight, shined it at the garden; light caught a faded sheen of papery gold.
“What are you doing here at this hour?”
Regina took the box partially full of poorly picked vegetables from the Burger Queen’s hands.
“Why didn’t you come inside for dinner?”
“I don’t like spaghetti and meatballs.”
She sniffed.
“It gives me heartburn.
You said I could take vegetables whenever I wanted.
Well, I wanted. Anything wrong with that, missy?”
Regina suppressed the exhausted sigh.
Only last week the old woman had devoured two helpings of the spaghetti and meatballs she professed to dislike.
“How did you think you were getting home with this?”
“That nice man said he would help me.”
Burger Queen pointed.
Regina shined her flashlight on the shadow stepping out from behind the compost bin.
A man.
Well-dressed.
Shielding his eyes against the glare. Regina’s breath caught in her throat. She lowered the flashlight.
“For fuck’s sake.”
“Hello, Queenie.”
Marco stepped nearer.
“Long time, no see.”