by Matt Wallace
Dorsky sighs. “All right, yeah, fair, so I owe you an apology for that, too. My point is, you stepped up for the line in a big way when we’d all turned on you, and you shouldn’t have had to do it yourselves. Evil fuckin’ snare-bitch or not, I feel like . . . like maybe I made it easy for her to divide and conquer us. I was pissed at Lena for taking off without so much as a voice mail, and I was pissed at you for being on her side when she came back, which is stupid, I know.”
“It is. It is very stupid.”
“I get that. And as long as I’m apologizing, I might as well go all the way back to what happened with us . . . before. I liked being with you, but I didn’t treat you so good when we weren’t alone.”
“You treated me like Danny Zuko when he first saw Sandy again in Grease.”
He furrows his brow at her. “Is that the play or, like, the movie? I’ve never seen—”
“Never mind, Tag. Why . . . What brought all this on? Seriously? This is the most un-Dorsky-like behavior I’ve ever witnessed, and that includes when you were under the total control of an evil she-demon.”
He looks genuinely frustrated, and it’s that more than anything he’s said thus far convincing Nikki he may be sincere.
“I don’t know. I don’t . . . I don’t want to be that guy who talks a bunch of shit about who they are and then fails spectacularly to live up to it. That guy raised me. Fuck him. I always tell myself, and everyone else, the line means everything to me. I’d do anything for my line. More than that, I call myself a leader of that line. I haven’t been living up to any of that lately. You and Lena have. You’ve done more than your share for this place. You deserve better. You deserve better . . . from me.”
“Wow” is all Nikki can say at first. Then: “Well. Thanks. I mean it. Thank you. That is shockingly mature of you. And I appreciate it.”
Dorsky nods, seeming at least slightly appeased.
“Can I have some of that cake?” he asks.
Nikki giggles. “Yeah. Sure. I think you’ve earned cake.”
As she sets about cutting him a healthy slice, Nikki asks, “What about Lena? Are you going to have this talk with her?”
“Yeah, I need to,” he admits. “It’s just . . . there’s going to be more to say with her. It’s more . . . complicated.”
“Like an adult relationship?”
“I’m not the dumb jock in a John Hughes movie, Nik; I know what sarcasm is.”
Nikki slides a plate in front of him with a wedge of cake and a fork on it.
“So, what are you going to say to her?”
“I don’t know,” Dorsky says, forking an inhuman-sized bite and somehow managing to fit it all inside his mouth.
He says something else, but the words get lost amid the layers of frosting and crumbs being broken down between his jaws.
“What was that?” she asks.
He swallows. “Where is she at with Ritter?”
Nikki frowns. “That’s not a question to ask me, Tag. It’s none of my business.”
“I just want to know if it’s even worth bringing up all the other stuff, or if I should just say I’m sorry like I just did and leave it at that.”
“Ask Lena, and then you’ll know.”
“It’s not that easy.”
“It’s always that easy. People are just dumb.”
Dorsky cuts another forkful and relishes the bite.
“This cake is fucking awesome.”
“Of course it is,” Nikki confirms without hesitation. “I made it.”
STOP THREE: THE WITCHES OF WILLIAMSBURG
“Hey, this is my neighborhood.”
Lena recognizes her favorite Chinese takeout restaurant, Family Garden, on the corner before noticing they’ve turned onto Metropolitan Avenue.
Bronko grunts as some sort of basic acknowledgment that a fact has been stated in his presence.
“Good Ecuadorian joint around here, I recall,” he mutters a moment later.
He double-parks the catering van in the middle of a block only five up from Lena and Darren’s apartment building. Bronko hits the hazard lights, ignoring a horn blast from a dry-cleaning van careening past his window.
“This’ll be a quick one,” he assures her. “There’s a cooler behind your seat. Grab it and follow me.”
He reaches behind his seat and with a grunt of exertion, hefts a large open box up onto his lap. Lena glances inside as Bronko reaches for the door handle. The box is filled with various sundries and dry foods. Lena realizes it must be for a home filled with women. She spots tampons, sanitary napkins, “lady” shaving razors, and several other hygiene products made specifically for women.
Before she can question him, Bronko has left the pilot seat of the van. Lena opens her door and climbs down from the passenger seat. She needs both hands to pop the handle and pull apart the side cargo door, and it strains her considerable forearm muscles in the process. The cooler behind her seat is of the large Styrofoam gas-station variety, although knowing Bronko, it’s filled with dry ice and who knows what kinds of product.
Lena fills both arms with the cumbersome object and lifts it out of the van. “What’s in the cooler this time, Chef?”
“Vacuum-sealed entrees and sides, mostly. Ya got some of my vegetarian tequila and lime risotto balls. Got some nice Jack-and-cherry-glazed tri-tip I stayed up all night doin’ at home. And, o’ course, Mama Luck’s own bacon-and-turnip soup. All ready to be sous-vide and served.”
“Is this for some kind of tapas bar for the homeless or something?”
“Not hardly. Think of ’em as Chef Luck’s Extra-Fancy Teeee-Veeee Dinners.”
For the last sentence, he puts on his hammiest performance voice, as if he’s back on his old cable cooking show.
Lena can’t help laughing.
“C’mon,” he bids her.
They’re standing in front of a small art supply store, but rather than lead Lena inside, Bronko walks over to the lowered ladder of the building’s fire escape beside the storefront.
“Chef—”
“No talkin’,” he hisses at her. “Just do what I do and follow me back to our ride.”
Bronko, with surprising speed and grace for a man of his bulk and advancing years, trots up the rungs of the ladder, assisted only by one hand as his opposite arm is occupied with the box. Bronko stops short of ascending onto the first fire-escape balcony. Instead, he hoists the box through the opening in the black steel grate and slides it directly beneath a closed and gray-curtained window on the second story.
Descending halfway back down the ladder, he reaches out to Lena silently for the cooler. She offers it up, expression curious even as she remains quiet, and Bronko takes it from her easily. He’s up the ladder, depositing the cooler beside the box, and back down again in less than ten seconds. As soon as his booted feet hit the pavement, he pushes the ladder back up into its cradle above the sidewalk.
“It’s kind of a safe house,” Bronko informs her as they climb back inside the van.
“Like, for battered women?”
“Witches.”
Lena blinks.
“Excuse me?”
“Witches,” Bronko repeats, staring past her, through the passenger window at the fire escape where he left their special delivery. “Real ones, I mean. None of that Internet Wiccan crap. The Sceadu and Allensworth’s people regulate the hell out of ’em. You can only practice as part of a licensed coven. Witches without covens are called ‘solitaires.’ They’re illegal, leastwise in America. They’re hunted down. And worse.”
Lena, horrified, looks out her window and up at the fire escape. A moment later, the curtains part, the window there opens, and slender, tattooed arms extend to pull the box and the cooler inside. They quickly slam the window shut and draw the curtains.
Lena frowns. “If Allensworth hunts them, why does he let you do this?”
Bronko shrugs, starting up the van. “I assume he knows and lets it slide. What does he care? He’s a big-pic
ture kinda guy, after all. If it keeps the wheels greased and the machine runnin’, he’ll let us feed a few solitaires holed up in Williamsburg.”
Before they pull away, Lena’s eyes are drawn to another window, this one on the third floor. The curtains part and Lena can just make out a very small, white face, wild tendrils of stark white hair framing it. She sees the dot of a fingertip touch the glass and begin to spell something out in the thin sheen of dust there.
Then it’s all gone, left behind as the van pulls forward and rejoins the metallic blood flow of the city’s veins.
“You’re a helluvan extra-worldly philanthropist, Chef,” Lena says a few blocks later.
“Oh, that back there?” he asks. “That’s not me. That’s Ritter. He asked me as a favor to front it. Covers it all outta his pocket; just doesn’t want ’em to ever see his face.”
Lena feels a lump swelling in her throat.
“Why is Ritter sponsoring a shelter for runaway witches? And why anonymously?”
Bronko shrugs. “You’d have to ask him that. Not my business.”
By the time they return to Sin du Jour, it’s the end of the day and Lena feels drunk.
“You do this every week?” she asks Bronko as they roll through the waning industrial blocks of Long Island City.
He grunts. “If I didn’t, wouldn’t nobody else do it.”
Lena settles back into her seat, staring out through the windshield. The city looks like a painting hung on a bent nail, somewhere very far away.
“Why did you bring me along this week, Chef?” she finally asks.
Bronko parks the van next to its twin on the curb in front of the red brick fortress that is their company headquarters. As he reaches for the key in the ignition to kill the engine, he pauses and looks over at her.
“Couple reasons, I suppose. I want you to see . . . to know . . . that there’s more to what we do than what you’ve seen so far. We dance with the devil, sure, but we don’t go home with Him. Now, from talkin’ to Consoné, we know there’s a shit storm a’brewing. We don’t know when or how it’ll affect us, but I need y’all to know that if there’s a fight comin’, it’s not . . . it can’t just be about survivin’. Y’understand? I need you to believe that this place and what we do are worth fighting for.”
Lena finds she’s nodding slowly and involuntarily as he speaks. She stops.
“What’s the other reason?” she asks after clearing her throat.
Bronko draws a deep breath and holds it in for a long time before exhaling to answer her.
“I ain’t always going to be around, Tarr. Today, we just ran a few errands, y’know? This was all just the tip of a big-ass iceberg. Who’s gonna take those reins when I’m gone? Dorsky don’t give a shit about anything outside his own kitchen. Nikki, she got the heart, and Lord knows that girl is hard as stale French bread when she needs to be, but she don’t wanna lead. Never has. But you . . . you’re more like me, if you won’t take unkindly to the comparison.”
On the contrary, few words spoken to Lena throughout her life to this point have meant as much as those four.
“I don’t know what to say to any of that, Chef,” she says, determined to be as honest as possible with him, even if all she can offer is confusion and uncertainty. “None of this is . . . easy. It’s not one thing, with one side.”
“And it ain’t never gonna be,” he assures her, firmly but gently. “All you can decide is whether or not it’s worth doin’. That’s all. That’s what I did.”
She nods, accepting that.
“Anyway. It’s Saturday night and you’re still young enough that means something. Thank you for puttin’ in the overtime and riding shotgun with an old man.”
Bronko climbs down from the van. Before he shuts the door, he leans back inside, looking at her.
“Hopefully, we have some time yet,” he says. “Hopefully, we’ll just get to cook a while and be like a regular ol’ line in a regular ol’ kitchen.”
Lena’s grin is as bitter as baker’s chocolate.
“That’ll be the day, Chef,” she says.
PART II
ALL ENEMIES, FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC
THE RESULTS ARE IN
The vintage Triumph, noisy as hell and vibrating like something barely tethered to this plane, ducks down the alley and pulls up to Sin du Jour’s service entrance. Lena kills the engine and heels the kickstand, leaning the bike to rest directly across from Ryland’s ancient RV. As she dismounts, Lena marvels at the brand-new tires on the hulking beige ruin, not to mention a complete lack of city-imposed boots on those tires. It’s also missing its protective sheen of petrified mud, as if it’s been newly washed (or more likely decontaminated).
Ryland is reclining in a Hello Kitty lawn chair he must’ve purchased either because it was the first one he saw or the cheapest or both. He’s wearing a plastic baseball helmet, the novelty variety with cup holders and built-in rubber straws. Those straws have been cut and elongated with additional tubing and duct tape to accommodate two tall glass wine bottles settled precariously into the cup holders.
The second-generation alchemist has had to MacGyver a chin strap for the helmet out of more duct tape to stabilize it against the additional weight.
“I never thought I’d say this,” Lena admits, “but it’s good to see you and that roach coach back here where they belong.”
“Aye. I’ll have you know I’ve no tolerance for infestation, besides which nothing that isn’t me can live in this roving poison farm, and that’s merely because I’ve been accruing an immunity to said poisons since boyhood.”
She can barely understand him due to the fact that two rubber tubes filled with wine and a lit cigarette are all jammed simultaneously in his mouth, but Lena gets the point.
“Right. Well, welcome back, Ryland.”
Lena undoes her chin strap and stashes her motorcycle helmet beneath one arm, walking up to the service entrance door.
“Would you like to go out with me sometime?” he calls after her. “I’ve begun studying the Kama Sutra in earnest.”
“Sure,” Lena shouts back at him. “You settle yourself into position fifty-nine, the sloppy crab, and I’ll join you later.”
“Truly?” Ryland asks, surprised.
The slamming of the back door answers him.
There’s a staff meeting in the kitchen in five minutes, but Lena wants to make one quick stop first. She trots through the winding, seemingly directionless and architecturally impossible corridors, still shocked she half-knows where she’s going.
She hears the distinct rattling around and barely audible recriminations before the door to the apothecary is even within sight. Lena finds Boosha in the middle of restocking her high shelves of curios, books, pots, pans, and items that defy human description. The ancient woman has almost gotten the place back in order again, no small feat considering it looked as though a hurricane had rolled through after Allensworth’s succubus attacked her.
Boosha speaks quietly to each inanimate object as if it were a wayward child before stowing it away.
Watching her makes Lena smile.
“You are coming here for something?” Boosha asks without turning away from her work.
Lena blinks. She’s slightly startled but quickly shakes her head.
“I just wanted to see how you were doing, first day back and all.”
“My home is a shambles!” Boosha squawks, gathering her many ragged skirts and climbing down from the steep stool atop which she’d been perilously leaning.
“Yeah, I know. We would’ve cleaned up for you, but everyone was kind of afraid to touch your stuff or put it back in the wrong place.”
Boosha nods, grunting. “As it should be.”
Her green-tinted face with its offset features looks almost fully healed. There are still a few light bruises, but none of it seems to have slowed her down.
“I’m glad you’re okay,” Lena says. “And thank you for your help when you were in the hospita
l. Leaving that book out made all the difference.”
“You would have managed without me,” Boosha assures her. “You are smart girl. You will be good leader when your time comes.”
“I . . . What do you mean? When my time comes for what?”
Boosha waves her off impatiently, bending to pick up more displaced paraphernalia. “When time comes, you will know for what. Now off with you. Have much work to do here.”
Lena sighs. She wants to press Boosha further, but she knows better by now.
“Welcome back” is all she says in the end, leaving the ancient creature who is not quite any one discernible race to her tasks.
The first thing Lena sees upon entering Sin du Jour’s main kitchen is Dorsky and Nikki, standing shoulder to shoulder against one of the gas ranges, laughing about something.
It feels slightly like walking into an alternate reality, a subtle one where everything else is the same except all people wear cheese boxes instead of shoes.
Lena walks up to them, arms folded across her chest. “This must be one universally funny joke.”
Dorsky stares at her, immediately lost. “Huh?”
Nikki’s smile doesn’t disappear, but it does noticeably fade. “No, uh . . . we were just . . . you know . . . talking about everything that’s happened lately. Trying to see the funny side.”
“Hey, can I talk to you after the meeting?” Dorsky asks Lena.
She nods, feeling even more off-kilter now. “Yeah, sure.”
The rest of the line cooks are spread out around the kitchen. Lena takes a place next to James, who is sitting alone at one of the prep stations.
“Where’s Darren?” she asks him.
He doesn’t quite frown, but Lena can see it takes effort to hold his smile. It’s difficult for Lena to picture James without that smile; he wears it like armor, and the optimism and outlook that accompany it are as central to who he is as his faith. He might as well be shedding tears in that moment.
“I do not know,” James says. “We rode in to work together. He has been . . . very quiet. And he dreams . . . terrible dreams. He will not say they are, but I see it when he sleeps.”