A Brisket, a Casket

by Delia Rosen

  I zoned in on it, and was thinking I’d take a few extra slices for Cazzie and the kids in case they came over or Caz invited me over to their place to watch a movie or something. Then it struck me that I really needed more than a single slice of pie for myself—at least two anyway—not because I was greedy, oh no, but so as to be a giving and considerate neighbor, since it was bound to make Caz and her little darlings feel awkward if I finished my slice before they ate theirs and then sat around looking envious and needy while they stuffed their faces. Finally, I decided it only made sense to take the whole pie home. My vice…ah, slice count was already up to five or six after all. Five or six slices minimum, and what if Jimmy and Cole asked for second helpings? I had to be ready, and that would barely leave enough cashew pie at the restaurant to be called a legitimate pie. Say, for example, a bunch of customers asked for slices at the same time. And say we could only fill some of their orders. Nothing made a diner more crotchety than being the odd man out.

  Okay, then, it was settled. The whole pie it would be. I’d leave a note for Newt to bake a fresh one in the morning. He wouldn’t mind. In fact, he’d probably be flattered to know the Johnny Cashew was such a huge hit with me.

  I would remember being about to step deeper into the refrigerator and pull out the shelf that was loaded up with pies. I’d also remember my thoughts about Newt. But these things would be all I remembered clearly for a while except for the hard, violent shove from behind that knocked me forward off my feet and into the wall of desserts. After that, I would have vaguer recollections of my forehead crunching against the front edge of a metal shelf with tremendous force, and maybe of bouncing backward to hit the floor of the refrigerator on my side, landing on my wrist as it twisted under me at a bad angle.

  And there was one other memory that would return to me in time. Although I guess you could count it as two.

  I would recall the sound of the walk-in’s door slamming shut behind me and my abrupt plunge into darkness.

  And finally…

  Put the words “out” and “cold” side by side and you wind up with “out cold,” which very accurately described how I lay sprawled at the rear of the refrigerator, shut away inside its thick steel walls with not a soul to help me as I grew colder and colder by the second.

  Chapter Twelve

  I was cold longer than I was out. Luckily, I would discover.

  I didn’t know how long I’d lain unconscious on the floor of the refrigerator before my eyes fuzzily opened in the darkness. Nor did I know what hit me at first. Then I realized it was my head that had done the actual hitting when it clunked against a metal pullout shelf. And then I remembered that I’d been pushed into the shelf…which to me was practically the same as being hit.

  I won’t claim I preferred being the hittee to the hitter. True, it would have been ignominious to have tripped over my own feet while snatching a nosh. True too, I had already damaged my ego by having somehow managed to run Uncle Murray’s legacy as a restaurant owner onto the rocks in no time flat. Nobody enjoys being a loser, and feeling like a gold-medal klutz was adding insult to injury.

  But never mind my bruised ego. I knew the throbbing bruise on my forehead hadn’t resulted from an accident. Somebody had been lurking in the deli after it closed, waiting to attack me after everyone else left. And that was a scary thought. Scarier when I remembered the refrigerator door slamming shut with a decisive bang. Scarier still because my teeth were chattering and my skin was goose-bumpy from the cold and everything around me was pitch black.

  And the scariness didn’t exactly end there.

  As I rolled from my side onto my stomach, bracing myself on both hands so I could stand up, I felt a bolt of pain shoot through my right wrist. Wincing, I remembered falling on top of it, shifted my weight onto my left hand, and then pushed to my feet—only to lose my balance and go teetering to the extreme right.

  Fortunately, I was able to steady myself before I went down in a heap. But I’d realized my right shoe was gone. I had worn three-inch dress wedges to work, and one of them must have flown off my foot when the pusher hit me, or hitter pushed me, take your pick. It had left me standing at a tilt, the bottom of my shoeless foot covered only in thin nylon hose and freezing on the grilled metal floor.

  I crouched and blindly felt around for the shoe. No go. That stunk, and if I kicked off my other shoe to even my balance, I’d have not one but a pair of frigid feet. My only real option was to hobble around in the dark.

  And then there was my wrist. Not to be surpassed, it had given me sharp twinges as I’d fumbled for the lost wedge. Whatever was wrong with it, I had a sneaking suspicion the problem wasn’t altogether minor. I gently checked it out, pressing it with the fingers of my left hand. Ouuuch. It was tender and swollen to the touch.

  Great going, Gwen. And thank you, wrist, for getting twisted. Thank you too, grilled metal floor, for being so hard.

  I sighed. It felt like ice water shooting down my throat. My mouth shut…but not before my lungs seemed to fill with frost. Okay, I thought. First rule of thumb, no sighing inside a refrigerator unless I wanted an instant upper respiratory infection. Second, if I was going to talk to myself, I might as well offer constructive advice. And babbling to the floor—or scolding my appendages, for that matter—was probably a waste of time.

  “I need to get out of here,” I said aloud. “Find the door and get out.”

  There. Now that sounded like a plan. The trouble was that I’d have to feel my way around the sides of the unit in the dark. And without coming to a premature conclusion, I worried that my predicament might prove a little thornier than simply finding the door. If its slamming behind me hadn’t sounded like a loud and clear mission statement, I did not know what would…and I suspected opening it might be another story. But since my goal was to get out of the refrigerator before I turned into a chilled leftover, I had to stay positive.

  Then I realized something—my purse was still hanging over my shoulder. You’d have thought I’d have lost it when I was bowled over, but nice little purse that it was, it had stuck with me.

  I patted it like a well-behaved dog, opened the zipper, and reached inside. My cell phone was in its pouch and I figured calling out for help was worth a try. But the refrigerator’s insulated steel walls were over four inches thick, making it a long shot that I’d get a signal.

  As expected, the cell was dead. I was okay with it, though. I already had another idea.

  Returning the cell to its pouch, I reached into the purse’s main compartment and got out my cigarette lighter. It was a lacquered Coco Chanel butane that I’d bought back in New York at a fancy little chocolate stand upstairs in Bloomingdale’s. There had been a handful of vintage items in a glass case, the lighter among them, and I’d swung a good deal for it after buying a fifty-dollar box of truffles. Of course, my budget had gotten killed on the pricey truffles…but we won’t go there.

  I found the lighter, thumbed the starter button, and a small orange flame sprouted up. Then—presto! Its glow revealed the refrigerator door to my right, and then my missing wedge in a corner under the meat and poultry shelves. There’d be no need to do any groping after all.

  The little flame held out in front of me, I tottered over to the shoe, slid my foot into it, and rushed over to the door. There was a manual light switch beside it, and I flipped it on to override the automatic cutoff. As brightness filled the space around me, I blinked a few times, dropped the lighter back into my purse, and pushed on the door handle.

  The door didn’t open.

  I pushed again, harder, and pretended not to notice the vapor puffing from my mouth.

  It wouldn’t budge.

  I couldn’t have said I was surprised. Disheartened, frightened, and increasingly desperate, sure. But the real surprise would have been if the door opened. Whoever pushed me had obviously meant business. Something was jamming it shut from the outside.

  So now what?

  I figured I could sc
ream and bawl for starters. Except there was nobody around to hear me, and hysterics wouldn’t make the door open on its own. All it would do, in fact, was exhaust me…and the oxygen in the unit.

  On the other hand, the cold had gotten so unbearable, my teeth were rattling like maracas. I couldn’t take much more of it. And I was not about to rumba.

  “C’mon,” I whispered to myself. “Can we please have some inspiration here?”

  I reached into my purse for a cigarette. Though I had no intention of lighting up, it would assuage my oral fixation and maybe let me calm down enough to think.

  I poked it into my mouth. And thought. I couldn’t open the door. I also couldn’t stay where I was all night without hypothermia setting in. My only way out was to get help to come. But that wouldn’t be as easy as getting my cigarette lighter out of my purse. How…?

  My forehead might have creased. I wasn’t positive because the cold had completely numbed it. Like my lips, cheeks, and fingertips. But I had a habit of wrinkling my brow when brainstorms struck.

  I looked up at the refrigerator’s ceiling panel and carefully examined it. Besides the light fixture, it was featureless except for two rows of nozzles angling downward from pipes along the left and right sides of the unit.

  I had a tendency to think of the refrigerator as a room. That was wrong, though. What it was, was a giant appliance. And the pipe and nozzle assemblies were part of the appliance’s fire-suppression system. When I inherited the restaurant, our insurance agent had informed me that it had been installed quite a while back and used a chemical powder to extinguish flames. She had explained that modern systems used a more efficient liquid agent, and had offered to significantly lower my premiums if I replaced the old one. I’d had no beef with the recommendation, but had found the new systems pricey and decided to hold off on the switch until the deli started bringing in some revenue.

  My eyes traced the pipes along their path below the welded seams where the walls met the ceiling. Searching, searching—and then they stopped.

  “There,” I said. “There you are.”

  I’d located the mechanism that would trigger the system in the event of a fire…two metal links held together by a strip of red plastic. As our insurance agent had explained it, if the plastic was exposed to high heat, the fusible links would separate and initiate an automatic process that released the chemical powder. But that wasn’t all. There were sensors—microswitches, the agent had called them—that would activate a fire alarm and shut down the cold-air blowers, exhaust fans, and other electrical equipment that might cause the flames to spread.

  “Okeydoke.” My head was craned so far back that the Pall Mall I’d lipped was pointing almost straight upward. “Now…how’m I supposed to reach you?”

  Okeydoke? How’m? Where had they come from? Next thing I knew, I’d be ya’alling.

  But never mind that, I thought. On a good day, when my posture wasn’t too slouchy, I stood about five-four. That would make me five-seven with my wedges on—a stable, unwobbly height on both sides now that I’d recovered my right shoe. It left over two feet between the top of my head and the ceiling, and the fire-suppression system’s piping hung a few inches below the ceiling.

  I moved to where I’d spotted the fusible link above some cartons of soda near the produce shelves, carefully stepped up onto one, and reached for the link with my good hand. My fingertips came a little short of touching it. Standing on my toes wasn’t an option in the wedges—I’d just rock forward in them and take another spill. So what then?

  I looked around for something to boost me up, my eyes landing on the hand truck that I’d spotted before. It was on the opposite side of the refrigerator by the milk crates, and though it didn’t stand very high, there were three metal crossbars running across the frame kind of like rungs on a ladder. If I could wheel it over and climb up onto the middle rung…it might give me the boost I needed.

  I hurried to the hand truck, rolled it over, engaged the wheel lock, and leaned it over the soda cartons so its handle was braced against the wall. Then I pushed down on it, testing to make sure it stayed put. Finally, I got the Chanel lighter out of my purse, turned its butane control knob to its highest setting, and stepped up onto the hand truck’s middle rung, gripping one side of the frame with my right hand despite the fresh cry of misery it prompted from my wrist.

  Holding the lighter over my head, I clicked on the flame and it jumped up to the fusible link. Then I waited anxiously, vapor puffing from my nose and mouth in the awful refrigerator cold.

  Seconds passed. The flame licked at the plastic band. I didn’t have a clue how long the lighter would burn. I couldn’t know whether the fire would be hot enough to melt the band. I could only hope.

  Soon the lighter began to get uncomfortably warm in my grip…and with the flame burning so high, it was no wonder. It didn’t seem to be doing much to the fuse, though, and that hardly encouraged me.

  My confidence took another hit when I noticed the lighter starting to flicker a little. I had a hunch one of my question marks was about to be erased, and not as I’d wished for. Although the flame was still hot, I was growing fearful it would peter out before it melted the fuse. And would that honestly be a surprise? A cigarette lighter wasn’t a torch after all.

  I could feel my heart sinking like a weight. No, it definitely wasn’t a torch, I thought. It wasn’t meant to sustain an intense flame. The butane canister just didn’t contain enough of a charge to let it burn for an extended per—

  Keep ridin’ Gwennie! Stay on the horse and keep ridin’! You know it’s what I’d do!

  I resisted the impulse to snap a glance back over my shoulder. It was impossible, of course. But I could have sworn….

  No. I wouldn’t even let myself contemplate it. I mean, come on. I did not believe in guardian angels, and pinning my hopes on one now would be beyond pathetic. Besides, I knew Uncle Murray. He’d have found better ways to spend his afterlife than haunting a walk-in refrigerator. This was still a Saturday night, and if anything he would be on some boozy cloud jamming with the ghostly bar band of his choice. Maybe, he’d have talked the spirits of Buck Owens and Les Paul into backing him on guitar. Possibly, he’d even charmed the shade of Tammy Wynette into a vocal duet. Among other things to follow.

  Still, I’d give Uncle Murray’s benevolent specter his due. Though my arm was already tired from holding the lighter steady over my head, and the flame was visibly lower than before, I would keep the lighter up to the fuse strip until it altogether petered out. What other choice was there besides quitting? And how would that do me any good?

  Definitely Tammy Wynette on vocals, I thought, trying to take my mind off my straining, upraised arm. With apologies to Ms. Lynn and her eensie squaw mini-dress, Murray’d always had a special thing for Tammy, who would have gotten his internal fire alarms ringing as loud as the alarm I’d suddenly heard kick in somewhere around me, and—and—wait a minute…the fire alarm was ringing?

  I blinked, looked up, and barely had time to register that the plastic strip had melted from the fuse mechanism’s links when streams of talcy powder started gushing from the nozzles under the ceiling, billowing all around the walk-in’s interior, blanketing everything in whiteness. It was as if I’d found myself in the heart of a wild, enveloping blizzard—the stuff was smothering me, getting into my eyes, my nose, my mouth, blinding and choking me even as fire bells clanged relentlessly away outside the steel-plated walls of the refrigerator.

  Coughing, wheezing, I teetered on the rung of the hand truck, unable to keep my balance. I thought I heard myself scream, but might have only imagined it as I involuntarily let go of the hand cart’s frame and went crashing down hard on my back, smacking into the thick drifts of powder that had overspread the shelves, carton, and floor. And speaking of the floor…as I sprawled there again, the dry fire suppressant covering me till I resembled one of those Pompeii people in natural history exhibits, I couldn’t help but wonder about somethin
g.

  In hindsight, would it have been so very awful if I’d tried to wait out the night in the fridge after all?

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Gwen?” Beau McClintock said. “Are you okay?”

  Crouched in the middle of the refrigerator with a large cookie sheet over my head, I peered at the detective through a haze of floating powder. He hadn’t arrived alone—firefighters, uniformed police officers, and men in EMT clothing had come racing in with him as the unit’s door flew open.

  “Y-yeah,” I sputtered. I slanted one end of the cookie sheet downward and a heap of fire suppressant spilled off. It felt as if the accumulated load had weighed a pound. “What…how did you…?”

  I let the sentence dangle, not sure what I’d meant to ask him. Or maybe it was that I didn’t know which of my questions to ask first. Needless to say I was pretty out of it.

  McClintock relieved me of the baking sheet and made way for an emergency services tech, who knelt in front of me and draped a blanket over my shoulders.

  A big, strong guy with a shaved head and star tattoo on his neck, he started to slide two fingers under my right wrist, saw me withdraw it protectively, then noticed the swelling and carefully explored it with his fingers.

  “Looks like you’ve got a sprain there, ma’am…nothing too bad,” he said. “We’ll get a pressure wrap around it. In the meantime, I’ll use your left arm to take your pulse if that’s okay.”

  I nodded as he went about his business, glancing at his wristwatch to measure my pulse rate.

  “Appears you’re alive,” he said. An ophthalmoscope had appeared in his hand. “You have any pain or numbness…especially in your fingers, toes, lips or ears?”

  “They were a little numb before,” I said. “It’s nothing worse than I used to feel every winter in New York.”