C2 Eli

“You got the thing ready?”

Yup. Smoke detector’s off?”

“Yeah.”

I pause for moment, crouching in front of the glass- doored commercial oven, wearing an oven mitt and holding tongs.

“You are sure that thing’s a jury-rigged kitchen blowtorch and not a pipe bomb, right?” Travis asks. He’s standing slightly to one side, holding a fire extinguisher at the ready.

“I’m about ninety-five percent on that,” I tell him. “It looks a lot more like a kitchen torch than a pipe bomb, that’s for sure.”

“You’ve seen a lot of pipe bombs?”

“No, but I’ve seen a lot of kitchen blowtorches,” I say, adjusting the oven mitt over my hand.

I discovered this gem a few minutes ago, since I’m the last person in the kitchen tonight. I’m usually the last person in the kitchen, the one who makes sure that all the food is put away according to protocol, the one who makes

”?YDAER GNIHT TAHT TOG UOY“

ILE OWT RETPAHC

sure every surface is wiped down, ready for the next day, even though none of that has been my job for years now. Tonight, that seems to include getting a jury-rigged kitchen torch out of the oven. Travis is Le Faisan Rouge’s bartender, and he was unlucky enough to still be here when I discovered this gem.

“You’re here as a last resort,” I remind Travis, who looks like he wishes he’d left ten minutes ago. “Oven’s been off for an hour. I’m pretty sure nothing’s going to happen.”

“All right,” he says. “Let’s do this.”

“On three,” I say, putting my free hand around the oven door handle. “One. Two. Three.”

I jerk the door open. Travis holds out the fire extinguisher like he’s using it to ward off a vampire. Nothing happens.

“Definitely a kitchen torch,” I say, reaching in with the tongs and grabbing it. “Or at least a former kitchen torch.”

He just whistles, lowering the extinguisher.

“The hell?” he asks.

I stand and walk it to the sink, placing it carefully inside. “I believe,” I say slowly as I examine the thing,

“someone’s duct-taped a propane canister for a camp stove to the blowtorch we used for crème brûlée.” We both stare down at the thing in the sink, arms crossed. It’s not pretty: the propane canister is about twice the size of the kitchen torch, the nozzle stuck into the bottom. The entire package is mummified with duct tape.

“And why was it in the oven?” he asks.

“If I had to guess, I’d say whoever came up with this idea also figured that ovens get very hot, and therefore, if something went wrong with the torch, the oven would be the best place for it,” I say. “But that’s just a guess.”

There’s a brief silence as we both try to wrap our heads around this particular conundrum.

“Blow torches don’t even use propane, do they?” “Nope.”

“So...” Travis says, then trails off. “Why...?”

“Why did someone in a busy kitchen take the time to cobble together a solution that clearly didn’t work from camping supplies and duct tape instead of asking someone where the butane refills were?” I supply for Travis. “Beats me. I didn’t even know we had duct tape.”

Now Travis laughs.

“Course we have duct tape,” he says. “You need anything else?”

“Nah, I’m good,” I tell him. “I’m gonna dismantle this thing and then head home.”

“Have a good one,” he says, already walking for the swinging kitchen doors. “I’ll see you around, right?”

“Right,” I call after him, and then he’s gone and I’m alone in the kitchen again.

I look around for another moment, soaking in the quiet, empty kitchen. The gleaming surfaces, the clean floor, the labeled canisters and jars on the shelves. The sense of stillness only possible in a place that’s normally busier than the Tokyo subway at rush hour.

Aside from this kitchen torch incident, my last night at Le Faisan Rouge went beautifully. All my staff turned up when they were supposed to. Only two wine glasses got broken, which is pretty good. Not a single diner sent their food back, which might be a record. I did have to check the men’s room for a dead body, but even that was a false alarm. I sigh and lean over the sink, the stainless steel edge cool against my palms, and contemplate the masterwork of redneck engineering inside. I liked this job, I think, surprising myself. When I took it, I wasn’t sure I would. It was a three- month temporary gig while the head chef was on maternity leave decent pay, a decent restaurant, but the real reason I applied was for the chance to go home for a while. That’s what I wasn’t sure I’d like, but I guess I did, because I’m starting a permanent gig next week at a wedding venue in town.

I grab the contraption out of the sink and start unwinding layer after layer of duct tape from it, the whole time wondering who on earth did this and then left it in an oven. That’s the really baffling part I’ve been around plenty of rednecks in my life, so I’m familiar with the mindset that leads someone to duct-tape together a misguided solution rather than ask for help, but the oven is the real kicker.

I’m just lucky that nothing melted. Then I’d be on the phone with the owner, trying to explain what happened while trying to guess who should be fired. Truth is, there are a couple of candidates, and I’m not at all sorry that it’ll be someone else’s problem. But despite all that, I did like it here. I like being home more than I thought I would. Finally, I remove the last of the duct tape and the propane canister falls away from the kitchen torch, both things scratched up pretty good. I don’t really trust the kitchen torch anymore, so I grab it and the mass of duct tape and push open the door to the dishwashing room, where the back exit is.

I stop in my tracks. There’s a stranger washing dishes. That isn’t what’s peculiar. A dishwashing position in a restaurant tends to have a near-weekly turnover rate, so more often than not the people in it are strangers to me. Infrequently, they’re female. But never before has a dishwasher been wearing a turquoise sundress and heels. At least, not that I’ve ever seen. I’ve also definitely never seen a woman who looks like this washing dishes. The dress hugs her perfectly small waist, full hips, great ass but doesn’t go into detail, so I’ve got an idea of what’s going on but not the full picture.

It’s a great dress. It’s an even better rear end, and as she turns to the left, hoisting another huge stock pot into the industrial sink, I’ve practically got my head tilted like a curious cocker spaniel, watching her. She shoves her hair back off her face with her wrist, tilting her head side to side, like she’s trying to work some tension out of her neck. She balances on one foot and then the other while she leans slightly forward, waiting while water runs into the pot.

I stare. I memorize. I practically take notes. I don’t know what it is, but there’s something in the way she’s standing, the way she moves, that sings to me. There’s poetry in the flick of water off of her yellow dishwashing gloves as she shuts off the water, starts scrubbing out the pot. I lean against the doorframe, busted torch and duct tape still in my hands. I drink in the way the hem of her dress skims her knees, the tilt of her body over the sink, the muscles in her shoulders working, until I can’t stand it anymore.

“Leave it for the morning crew,” I finally say.

She jumps. The pot clatters back into the sink, splashing water on her already-wet dress as she whirls around, startled.

The front of her matches the back, only better: big blue- gray eyes and high, wide cheekbones, her honey-brown hair pulled it into a messy knot on top of her head, strands flying wild around her face. She’s beautiful. She’s otherworldly, even standing there in the bright fluorescent light of the restaurant’s back room, so much that it shocks me into silence for a moment, doing nothing but appreciating her face. Then I realize she’s something else, too.

She’s familiar. She narrows her eyes with equal parts wariness and suspicion, and it only makes her look more familiar. My stomach tightens for reasons I can’t quite name, a bad feeling quickly rising inside me. How the hell could I forget someone who looks like that?

Her lips part slightly. She takes a step back, toward the sink, her hands coming together in front of her, still yellow rubber-clad, and we just look at each other for a long, long moment.

Finally, she speaks first.

“Eli?” she says.

Just like that, I know who she is. The cold, hard ball that’s been gathering in the pit of my stomach falls straight through to my guts and rolls around in there.

“Violet,” I say, and stop. For once, words fail me.

Violet could always smell weakness like a shark smells blood in the water. Give her an opening and she’ll bite your leg off. I’m already tense, alert, the duct tape squeezed tight in my fist.

“What the hell are you doing washing dishes in my kitchen?” I finally ask. I try to sound casual. I’m not sure it works. Violet gives me a full-body, floor-to-head once over and she takes her sweet time about it. Her eyes are the color of sharks. I feel like they’re circling me.

“It’s a long story,” she finally says. “What the hell are you doing back home?”

I give her a once-over, too, just to see how she likes it, and because I like it pretty well.

“Did you try to dine and dash?” I finally ask.

She snorts.

“Of course no”

“You tried to dine and dash and got busted, didn’t you?”

I ask. “Crime never pays, Violet.”

She rolls her eyes and turns back to the sink. Then, suddenly, I put two and two together. “Sure,” she says. “That’s me, some kind of —”

“Your date ditched you,” I say.

Violet says nothing.

“He ditched you, you can’t pay, and that’s why you’re here,” I say. She sloshes water out of the huge pot she’s washing and glances over her shoulder, eyes blazing at me.

“And I assume you’re here because you’re all done with med school and you’re just killing time between shifts as the top-rated neurosurgeon in southwestern Virginia,” she

says. Scrub. Slosh.

“Or did that not work out as planned?” she finishes. Her voice is sharp. Cutting. I don’t want it to hurt but it does, like a scalpel on scar tissue. I remind myself that she’s clearly having a shitty day. I remind myself that I’m nearly thirty years old and I shouldn’t react to her like we’re both in middle school, because I’ve matured past that. I remind myself what my mother always said about flies, honey, and vinegar, but all the reminders in the world can’t override my gut reaction to Violet.

“It’s working out about as well as law school and moving to New York seems like it has for you,” I say. She heaves the pot onto the drainboard, obviously pissed, and reaches for the last one. The ball of duct tape is clenched in my fist, bits sticking between my fingers, but I can’t unclench.

“I’m not the one who swore on his father’s grave that he’d leave Sprucevale forever if it took every cent he made,” she says, her back still to me, her voice placid with forced calm.

Something tightens in my chest. I clench the duct tape harder, knuckles starting to ache. I still feel bad about that particular oath, even though it was fifteen years ago. I feel worse that Violet remembers it.

“What do you say to a man to make him leave in the middle of a date?” I ask, leaning against the door frame, pretending to be casual despite my death grip on the duct tape.

She doesn’t answer me. I snap my fingers like I’ve just remembered something.

“Did he order the wrong wine, so you called him a backwoods pigfucker who could barely add two and two?” I ask. Violet ignores that, but I can see the muscles in her back tighten. I’m clenching the duct tape so hard my hand is shaking.

“Or maybe you told everyone on the debate team that you’d seen him drinking beers in the 7-11 parking lot with his brother so they would vote for you to be captain instead,” I go on.

“No, and I also never told him that the reason he got into college was a cute face and a trailer trash sob story,” she snaps back.

I ignore her.

“Or, you told him that he’d always be a moron who couldn’t tell Togo from Trinidad when you won the geography bee the day after his father died?”

There’s a savage delight in this. I know there shouldn’t be, but there is.

I’m enjoying seeing Violet Tulane, legendary know-it-all and the bane of my existence from ages five to eighteen, knocked down a peg or two. Violet dumps the pot out violently, splashing water far enough that some gets on me, five feet behind her.

“I didn’t know he’d died when I said that,” she gets out between her teeth.

“And it’s such a lovely thing to say otherwise.”

“Fuck off, Eli.”

“No, thanks.”

“Great,” she says, sarcasm dripping from her voice.

“Glad I can entertain the guy who spread the rumor that he saw me making out with a golden retriever. Was being eighth grade class president worth it?”

“Hell yes,” I say, because honestly? It was.

She slams the huge pot upside-down on the sideboard, precariously stacked next to all the other pots, and whips the yellow rubber gloves off.

“Wonderful to see you again, Eli,” she says, already walking for the back door. “I had a super nice time chatting. Bye!”

Violet disappears. Seconds pass. The door slams. I’m vibrating with unreleased tension and the force of acting casual about this.

Slowly, I unclench my fist full of duct tape. There are red lines crisscrossing my palm.

It takes about twenty seconds before I feel bad about riling her up. I’m nearly thirty. I’m grown. I know better. But I never could help riling up Violet Tulane. I never could help holding it over her head when I was in a better position than her. We tortured each other growing up. Sprucevale’s a tiny town with one elementary school, one middle school, and one high school, so for thirteen years she was omnipresent. She always had to be the very best at anything, and woe to anyone who stood in her way usually, me. She was mean. She was petty. She was a bossy know-it-all who treated everyone like they were morons, and she always seemed to get what she wanted.

I had no idea she was still in Sprucevale. I have no idea why she’s still here. I had no idea that she turned into a gorgeous, sexy-as- fuck bombshell. I’d assumed she was gone, probably doing some big important pain-in-the-ass job in a city somewhere — D.C., New York, Philadelphia. I didn’t care where she was, so long as I wasn’t there. After a minute, I follow her out the door and toss the duct tape and defunct torch into the dumpster. I don’t see her. Good. I head back into the kitchen, grab the propane canister, and leave it on the counter along with a note. There, now it’s someone else’s problem. Then I exit through the side door, slipping out into the night and the quiet parking lot. It’s Violet-free. Perfect.