by Liz Hickok
“How’s the soup?” I asked, really wanting to know.
“God, it’s great,” he said as if he was glad I’d asked. “Here, try some.”
He handed me the bowl. I took a silent swallow as he eagerly awaited my reaction. He raised one of his thick eyebrows in a request to get my review.
As I’d never had the soup before, my eyes closed in sincere pleasure at the perfect amount of salt, the hint of mint, multi-layers of spices and a finishing of acid that I didn’t think was lemon. “Amazing,” I said, handing the soup back to him.
He set the bowl down and unnecessarily stirred the broth with a spoon. He hadn’t taken his eyes off of me.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll tell you something.”
“Good, but try the crab first,” he said, not hiding his desire to have some himself.
I reached for the crab cracker, then thought better of it. This time was for him as much as for me, and at home, I never used a crab cracker, other than my fingers and teeth. Picking up a medium sized leg, I placed the upper end of it in my mouth, enjoying the slight garlic, salt and heat from the chili flakes. I used my teeth to break the larger section of the leg in half and fished out the thick, juicy meat with my fingers. Jace seemed to lean in for a better experience. The garlic butter sauce coated and dripped off the meat after I dunked it. I offered it to him, but he quickly shook his head no.
“Go ahead,” he said softly.
I did, chewing slowly to allow the sweet softness of the meat to envelop my taste buds. “Snow crab is my favorite, and they’ve prepared it excellently. Take some, Jace, please,” I pleaded, needing us both to share in this. He did, and his delight was clearly portrayed in the peacefulness of his face.
“Our clients call on me after they’ve gotten into situations they can’t clean up on their own,” I said suddenly.
He stopped chewing, or had already finished, and beseeched me with his eyes to continue.
“It can be a dirty job.”
“In more ways than one, I’m sure,” Jace said with no hint of judgment. Smoothly, he glanced up as the waitress brought his chicken. Something in his smile convinced her to leave without a word after placing the dish in front of him. “I got tired of dirty jobs,” he went on, “which was why I recently changed.”
We studied each other as we both reached for more crab. Jace picked up the crab cracker, when my phone rang. Another blocked call.
“Something you need to get?” he asked while cracking open the crab.
“I think I should. Don’t know who it is. I’ll be right back, Jace.” I rushed toward the bathroom as I answered.
“Are you with Jace Williams?” a voice I immediately knew asked.
“Wha-what? How did you know?”
“He’s your next job.”
“What do you mean?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I didn’t get easily shocked, but I was feeling like I’d been had.
“We think his boss saw you earlier this week and he was sent to check you out. Nothing to worry about. It’s happened before, in the Francis case. I’m sure you remember.”
I did remember. But they had never made contact with me, only watched from a distance. “You’re sure I don’t need to worry?”
“Positive. He didn’t need to talk with you, but I guess you caught his interest,” said with playful insinuation. “His people will want him back in a couple of hours. No later.”
“You don’t have to worry about that,” I said, not hiding my anger at being played by Jace.
“Hey, enjoy yourself. You know you could use it. No harm, no foul. And make sure he’s back in a couple. They’d left him a message as well, but he must have turned his phone down for you.”
“We were in the Tombs.”
“Hmm.”
The phone disconnected. I went on to use the facilities, trying to get a handle on this turn of events and my anger.
As I walked back to the table, his gaze was fixed on me. I sat down.
“I haven’t lied to you,” Jace said sitting up straight, chicken still untouched.
“No? Changed fields? New certificate?” I felt my eyes heat up as if steam were emanating from them. “I see you got your message.”
“Yes I did. But what I told you was all true. Well, maybe a little misleading on the certificate part, but I did get a new one that’s enhanced my employment cachet.”
He lowered his head and, with a little smile, said, “We’ve got to try this chicken.”
I looked down at it, and it did look delicious with curls of steam still rising from the reddish orange glaze speckled with maybe parsley.
“What do you do, Jace?”
He used a fork and knife to lift a couple of drumettes and placed them on my plate. “It seems I’m one of those who causes you to have more work, which was the case today, so I’ve learned.” He used the same utensils and dug into a portion himself. After a while, he gestured to me. “Try it. The best chicken wings I’ve ever had.”
I was calming down by the minute, but having a difficult time connecting this enticing time with Jace and my work, which was anything but sensual. I picked up a wing with my fingertips and took a bite into the tender, tangy sweet meat. We both smiled pleasingly.
“So in a couple of hours you have to be back?” I said, not wanting to be overcome by the tactility of our meal and Jace’s near irresistible allure.
“Isn’t that plenty of time?”
“What do you have to get back to?”
“Well, I’d told you my firm has ended it with a client.”
“I remember.”
“Let’s say, I’m the one who ended it…and someone on your team had to clean up afterward, since you were done for the day.”
I was learning that this Jace had the ability to shock me like no one else. “And why follow me? Why this charade?”
“No charade, Lara. I’d been watching your firm for the past week, making sure it was not harboring any government employees or being observed by them. Everything else I told you was the truth. I had time today and wanted to eat with you, especially given how hungry you…sounded.” He picked up a crab leg, cracked it, withdrew the meat with a fork, dipped it in the butter sauce and offered it to me. “Take some more. Please. I haven’t lied to you, and I do love to watch you eat.”
I took the fork, ate the crab and put the fork on his plate. He used it to place more chicken on my plate. He smiled at me longingly and began to cut into some chicken for himself.
Still confused, I asked, “You ‘finished it’ with a ‘client’ today, yet you’re my next job? How’s that?”
“My firm will have the need for your services after my next job later tonight, so I just found out about.”
I scrutinized him, wanting to ask more but knowing better. “What’d you do before?” I asked, remembering the roughness of his hand on my arm.
“Let’s say I had more of an ‘earthy’ position, finding the best locations for people’s final resting place.”
I had always imagined what happened to the bodies that were always gone by the time I’d arrive to clean up our clients’ dirty work. “I’d like to stay mad at you, Jace.” I leaned back, took a long, deep breath and continued with resignation, “But there’s no use.”
“There really isn’t, is there? I’ve still got some time. How about dessert?” His chair had somehow gotten closer to mine and he rested his hand affectionately on my hand lying on my thigh.
“What do you have in mind?”
Picking up the dessert menu, he perused it, eying me with each item that seemed to catch his interesting. “I’m thinking maybe this: chocolate truffle Martini with dulce de leche rum butter truffles. Or…the chocolate panna cotta with port wine pomegranate sauce.”
I give a hint of a smile with his second choice. “Something that might be even better,” I said, leaning in closer, though not only to view the menu selections, “and that may represent the heat of our budding ‘friendship’ yet cool us down a
bit…” I held off, letting his curiosity rise.
An eyebrow perked up. “What would that be?”
“This,” I said, pointing it out to him.
“Mm. Baked Alaska with cherry wine sauce. ‘A burning delight that brings a great end to any meal, or a wonderful beginning to a relationship.’ What a description. It does kinda fit us, don’t you think?”
“But who’s the fire and who’s the ice?” I said a bit icily.
“I’m sure those designations will alternate from time to time. For now, I think the ice you had moments ago has melted, and that this is something we can possibly do again…like tomorrow at noon?”
My heart swooned at his ravishing smile. “It depends on how dirty my job will be tomorrow.” I squinted at him with feigned accusation, and his smile deepened.
Our eyes locked, relaying how hungry we both were to learn the details our next jobs and see if a mealtime rendezvous could definitely happen tomorrow… and the day after… and….
Fish Tails
By Pooja Kale
Happy with the deal she had scored at the fish market, Chaya smiled as she placed her piscine loot under running water. A tiny bit of the ocean trickled in, as a briny, sea smell took over her newly-renovated kitchen. Old memories stirred from deep slumber and another kitchen, a smaller, older one with pale blue walls and a window full of summer sun floated up to her conscious. She smiled as she dropped peeled garlic into the mixer-grinder where ginger, tamarind, red chilies, freshly-grated coconut were stacked on top of each other. With a few minutes of loud scrunching and scratching, the contraption transformed everything into a smooth, orange-pink paste. She popped the lid open and took a whiff without realizing it.
Her usual vendor, Kumud, a middle-aged Koli woman, had already gutted and cut the fish for her, but her mother would have preferred buying the whole fish, cleaning and gutting it herself. She would first chop off the head and then put her index finger through the gaping hole and pull out slimy, reddish brown innards. It wasn’t pretty but Chaya still would squat next to her observing everything.
“Amma, look, that’s the heart,” her eight-year-old self would squeal. She would even accompany her mother to the fish market, it was all so fascinating to her - a place where everyone seemed to know each other, where cats and kittens roamed about freely, snacking on anything that was available, while cranes and crows swooped in on unwanted fish bits. The local fish market with its unique, unsettling smells, silvery-metallic fish and crustaceans everywhere, and loud, bargaining sounds, had held some sort of mystique, in her imagination.
As if that weren’t enough, her mother’s famous cooking would transform the catch of the day into these wonderful experiences, the taste of which would linger on forever. The curry she was making today was her absolute favorite, Amma called it tikshe amshe. Doing justice to its name, which meant spicy and sour, it was this rich and smooth coconut-y curry that was pungent and tangy at all the right places. “Remember, it should be just as spicy as it is tangy,” her mother had said over the phone, about two decades ago, when she had called to ask her the recipe. There were no specific measurements to Amma’s recipes, just a whole lot of ‘sprinklings’, ‘dashes’ and such. And yet, or perhaps because of it, everything she cooked tasted so amazing.
She set a kadhaai on the cooktop now, and when the oil was appropriately hot, she tossed in a couple Sichuan peppercorns. Then came the coconut paste, which she folded in with an experienced hand. As wisps of steam rose from the vessel, a wonderful new aroma hung over the kitchen. Chaya then put in all the seerfish: surmaai her mother called it.
Even before entering the house, she would know that her Amma had made fish. “Amma, bhook!” she would yell from the door, before taking off her school shoes.
“Wash your hands and feet first,” her mother would call out from the kitchen, and she could only start eating after she had changed out of her school uniform.
The fish curry in front of her bubbled contentedly, a deeper shade of orange now. It was time she attended to the remaining fish now; it was a different kind - black pomfret.
“Halwa,” Amma had enunciated.
“Halwa? Like the dessert?” she had asked.
“Yes, same word but means different things.”
“That’s so confusing! What if you have a vegetarian over for dinner and you ask them if they wanted halwa and they say yes thinking it is the dessert kind?”
“Pishi!” Amma had said while chuckling. Crazy girl. She reached for the old brass mortar and pestle; although it was heavy and cold, it felt oddly comforting in her hands. She had nicked it from her mother’s kitchen the very year she had gotten married. The ginger and garlic she crushed with it was duly applied to the black pomfret fillets along with some salt, turmeric powder and red chili powder. She then drew some atta flour from a large container and mixed it with semolina, salt, and red chili powder on a dish where she rolled the fillets before sliding them onto the hot iron skillet. They swooshed and sizzled dramatically, making the sweetest sounds to ever come out of a kitchen… and just like that, she was transported back to her mother’s dingy kitchen.
There she was, all of thirteen, lapping up piping hot meal with her mother sitting beside her. “Kay kelo?” she would ask, and Chaya would go on about her day, her school, her teachers and her friends. Between mouthfuls of rice and fish curry, she would let slip unmentionable secrets. Amma used this weakness to her advantage, asking about her crushes, and about her older sisters’ budding love lives. She often got into trouble with her sisters for it. “Amma’s chamchi” they would call her.
She was smiling when the pressure cooker’s whistling brought her back to the present. Finally done with cooking, she pulled out a Vitrelle plate and bowl. Both were a part of the set that her mother had gifted them for their tenth anniversary. Pretty, tiny blue doves flew around the edges of the tableware. She traced the slightly embossed bird with her fingers. By the time she was done arranging it, a small mountain of rice dominated the plate, and the bowl was filled up with the aromatic red-orange curry. The garnish came in form of two fried halwa fillets.
She carried it out, in the dining area, where the intended recipient of the meal was sitting. She was facing the window. Silver ringlets that fringed her temples danced in breeze. Her hands were on the table, a map of blue veins and wrinkles like tiny rivers and mountains across a narrow, snowy continent. Her skin, more delicate than Chaya remembered, glistened in the sun. A book lay open besides them, forgotten.
“I hope you’re hungry!” she called out.
“Mmm… smells nice. Halwa?” the older woman turned around to asked.
“Yes. Your favorite! Go wash your hands first.”
“My hands are clean,” she protested.
“Don’t argue, Amma, haath dhun yo,” Chaya reprimanded her mother.
She grumbled a little before making her way to the sink in the kitchen. After a couple minutes, Amma was back in the dining area again. “Oh good! You made fish! You remember how much you love halwa?” she smiled at the plate on the table.
“Yes, I remember. You sit and enjoy your lunch, I’ll get your pills,” Chaya said walking toward the cabinet where everyone kept their medicines. During the first ten years of their wedding, the cabinet only housed first aid, cough drops, syrups and stomachache meds for the kids. When she and Sanjeev turned forty, they had stacked their respective medicine boxes there.
I swear, those boxes keep getting bigger every passing year she thought to herself as she plucked four pills from a considerably larger box; Amma’s pills had been added only last year. She had initially been adamant about leaving her house, but together, they had convinced her to move in with them.
When she returned, Amma was standing at the window. “It must be after one already,” she said when she noticed her daughter standing behind her.
“Yes, Amma, time to have lunch. Come on, it’s getting cold.”
“Didn’t I eat already?”
&nb
sp; “No, come, I think you’ll like what I made today,” Chaya said as she gently veered toward the table with her mother.
“Mmm… Smells nice! You made halwa!” she was smiling.
“Yes, and surmaiche tikshe amshe.”
“How you loved fish, Chaya, mazzor! Cat.”
She looked down at her plate and began eating. “Delicious! The curry is perfect! You learnt finally, eh?”
Chaya smiled, “I did, but yours still tastes the best.”
“Hmm… you loved fish, remember?” her mother asked, looking at her with all interest.
“Really? I don’t remember!” she chuckled.
“Oh yes, of course! See, I don’t forget,” Amma declared.
“No! You? Forget? Never!” Chaya chortled as she took a seat next to her Amma.
Sneaky Pete’s
By Allen R. Rosenberg
The road-weary Subaru Outback slows as it nears the Four Aces Bar and makes a U-turn. The driver jockeys the car into a parking space. He steps from the car and stretches his cramped muscles, takes a moment to survey his surroundings, and then heads across the street to the Four Aces Bar. It’s 1:00 a.m. The driver is in his early twenties, no older. Six feet, piercing blue eyes, and a good physique. The kind of good looks that turn women’s heads. Inside the Four Aces, a handful of regulars sit at the bar hunched over their drinks and lost in thought. He takes a seat at the end of the bar and orders a beer. The bartender cards him and then nods an okay. At 2:00, the music stops abruptly. The silence is deafening. The overhead lights flicker off and on. The bartender shouts, “Last call,” and begins clearing glasses and wiping down the bar. All but the driver and two other customers file out the door.
The Bartender approaches George Weber, at the far end of the bar, and offers to pour a last drink. George shakes his head no. “I’m good.” he says. He swirls the melting ice cubes and the last drops of Scotch in his glass and then quickly swallows the mixture. George Weber is more than forty less than fifty. He has the look of a former athlete gone to seed. His sandy hair is dusty with grey streaks, slicked back, and shiny. He is affable when he needs to be, but he is a bull-shitter and a manipulator.