by Mia Hopkins
I find myself wondering about her. How did she end up here? What drives her? And what drove her to sleep with me, a stranger and an ex-con, all those months ago, in a shitty trailer in a community garden?
As Boner and I finish cleaning up after service, she stops by our station. My heart starts beating like a subwoofer.
“Are you both settled in now?” She looks straight at Boner.
“Yes, Chef,” we say in unison.
“Good.”
Then?
Nothing. She walks away.
For days, I watch her, and she ignores me. I know she can see me—she sees everything in that goddamn kitchen, and probably everything in the dining room too. When it’s time for the staff meal, both the front- and back-of-house workers gather together to eat. But Carmen makes a plate for herself and hides in the office.
On the down-low, I ask Rigoberto questions about her.
“How long has Chef Centeno been working here?”
“Maybe three years? Chef Moretti hired her after she graduated from culinary school, I think. She worked her way up. She’s very good.”
“Does she speak Spanish?”
“Yes. Spanish and English. And a little Italian too.”
Okay, that’s fucking hot. “Is she married?”
He gives me a sideways glare. Like the rest of the staff, he’s defensive of her. “Not married. She lives with her parents.”
“Boyfriend?” I pause. “Girlfriend?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know. You’re so curious, ask her yourself.”
I’m curious but I’m not brave enough. Not yet, anyway.
Before the restaurant opens for the evening, I sneak into the dining room to see what customers see. The waitstaff is setting the tables with white tablecloths. The room is dark. Each table has its own little spotlight, as if dinner were a stage show. All of the servers are dressed in head-to-toe black with long black aprons that reach down to their shins.
The wall by the hostess stand is full of framed reviews about Giacomo’s. Chef Moretti looks like Dino, just older and thinner. He’s smiling in every photo, dressed in his chef’s jacket. On a shelf by the door are his cookbooks—big, hardback, shiny. Fifty bucks apiece. I wipe my hands on my pants, pick one up, and look through it.
I’ve worked here now for almost two weeks and still I’ve never seen Chef Moretti. Carmen runs this kitchen. She’s nowhere in the articles, nowhere in the cookbooks—not even the acknowledgements. It’s weird—this place would fall apart without her.
That night, Boner looks like hell. He has a cold. He looks pale and moves in slow motion. I ask Rigoberto to ask Chef Centeno to send him home early. She comes to the dish pit. For the first time since day one, she addresses me with a direct question. “We’re three-quarters through service. Can you handle the rest of the shift by yourself?”
Her eyes are intensely dark. I’m speechless for a second.
“Yeah.” I clear my throat. “I mean, yes, Chef.”
Boner goes home. I get the work done by myself, even though it takes a little longer. By the time the last line cook leaves, the half-dark kitchen is clean as a hospital, quiet and still. I mop up my station, hang up my gloves, throw away my plastic apron, and go back to the lockers to get changed.
On my way out the door, I pass the office. The light is still on.
I pause.
Should I?
Now or never.
Before I lose my nerve, I approach the door.
Four
Carmen sits at the computer with a clipboard. A half-empty bottle of Tums and an empty bottle of Pellegrino sit by the keyboard. The clock on the wall says ten to one. The security monitors show everyone has gone home except for Dino—he’s at the hostess stand looking over reservations on the computer.
Carmen has unbuttoned her chef’s jacket. She’s wearing a gray tank top, and underneath that I can see the edge of her purple bra.
God help me.
I knock gently on the doorframe. “Hey,” I say.
“Are you finished?” She doesn’t look up. I don’t know why she’s physically unable to look me in the eye. Is it because she wants to remind me she’s a hardass? Or is it because she doesn’t want to remember what happened between us?
“I, uh, wanted to check in before I left,” I say, “to see if you needed anything else.”
She shakes her head, her eyes still on the computer screen. “No, that’s it. Have a good night.”
I look behind me. There’s no one in the kitchen. The small hallway is empty. This is the first time we’ve been alone since I started working here.
Fuck, what do I tell her? I haven’t really thought this through. To stall, I clear my throat again, and finally—finally—she looks up at me. Her dark eyes are blank.
“Anything wrong?” she asks.
“No. Nothing’s wrong. I just thought I should, uh, say thank you. For the second chance. After that first night, I thought I was done. Gone. So thank you.”
She scans my face. She’s still wearing her Chef Centeno mask, but a tiny muscle in her throat flexes when I fold my arms and lean against the doorframe. She stops typing and reaches for the empty Pellegrino bottle. She puts it to her lips and drinks an imaginary sip. Her movements are nervous, a little jerky.
That’s when I realize she’s as uncomfortable around me as I am around her.
As an experiment, I flex my chest a little so she can see the muscles through my clothes.
She catches herself staring. Quickly, she puts the bottle down and smiles at me, a fake plastic smile that tells me only that she wants me to get out of her office, out of her personal space. “I can’t take credit for that,” she says. “Dino wanted you both to stay on. But I’m glad it worked out.”
I stall some more. “Rigoberto is a good teacher. And Boner, he’s a good dishwasher. He’s coming around.”
“Good. I’m glad.” Her voice is flat.
“I know that Boner is interested in learning about cooking. I think he’d make a good prep cook, if you’re looking for one,” I say. “He works really hard.”
“We’re full up, but I’ll consider him if a position opens.” She turns back to her computer but when I don’t leave, she looks at me again. “Is there anything else?”
Anything else?
Is she kidding?
Now I’m really pulling conversation points out of my ass. “Uh, what are you doing?” I ask.
“What do you mean, what am I doing?”
I step closer and stand behind her. I point to the screen. “There, on the computer? What are you doing?”
Her deep voice wavers a little. “Just putting an order in to one of our vendors.”
“Do you do that every night?”
“No, not every night,” she says.
My heart is beating so hard I’m surprised she can’t hear it. After six months, I feel like I’ll go crazy if I don’t touch her. As slowly as I can, I rest my hands on her shoulders. She jumps a little and freezes. Her breath stops.
“So, how do you know how much to order so that you don’t run out?” I ask quietly.
She grips the edges of the clipboard but she doesn’t move away. “We look at past data and t-try to make an informed estimate.”
“Oh,” I say. With gentle, firm pressure, I begin to massage her through the thick cotton of her white jacket. All of the tendons in her shoulders and neck are stiff with tension. With my thumbs, I massage the back of her silky neck. My fingers brush the sides of her throat. Her pulse races and her skin grows warm.
“Do you ever order too much?” I ask. “Or too little?”
“That happens.” Her voice shakes. “Every now and then.”
“Hmm.” I look down at her tight black bun. It gives me a flashback. I see her silky black hair falling down over both of us as she rides me, grinding her way to a shaking orgasm on my cock. My throat is dry. “What happens then?”
“We have to find a way to improvise—to make something spec
ial with the leftovers, or to find a creative substitute.” I find a knot at the base of her neck and circle it slowly with my thumbs. Her chin drops forward and she takes a deep breath. “N-Nothing can go to waste.”
“Nothing?”
Her voice gets softer with each answer. “No.”
I massage her. As if I’m back in a dream, she lets me. She groans softly when I rub the tight bands of muscle across her shoulders. But for the first time, the thought hits me—I don’t know her at all. Not really. And I’m dying to.
“Carmen,” I whisper in her ear. “I wondered what your name was. Did you know my name?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
She says nothing.
Feeling braver, I whisper, “Say it.”
“Trouble.”
The word sounds all wrong in her mouth. “No,” I say. “The other one.”
“Eddie. Eddie Rosas.”
“Is that why you ran off and never came back? Because you heard I was a Rosas brother?”
“No—”
“Because I’m in East Side Hollenbeck?”
“No.” She turns the chair, breaking both the spell and my hold on her shoulders. When she opens her eyes, I see the real Carmen at last—that spark of the dark fire burning inside her. “None of that mattered to me.”
“Then why? Why did you take off? That wasn’t just hooking up, Carmen.” I try to get under her skin. “That wasn’t just fucking,” I whisper, “and you know it.”
“But that’s exactly what it was.” She looks almost sick as she says this. “I’m sorry that you read more into it, but that’s all it was to me.”
I stand up straight. I think of all the nights I jacked off rivers to my memories of her. “I don’t believe you.”
“I don’t care if you believe me or not,” she snaps back.
I’m silent.
This isn’t going well.
When our eyes meet again, her frown fades a little. Jesus Christ. Am I wearing my emotions on my face? I concentrate hard on going neutral so she can’t see the mixture of embarrassment and hurt I’m trying to hide, but I’m pretty sure it’s too late.
“I’m flattered, really,” she says in a quieter voice, “but for me, that was just hooking up. I wasn’t looking for anything more. That’s why I left before you woke up.”
My mind races to bridge the empty gap between us. Before I got locked up, I thought I was a player. A homeboy with a reputation as a ladies’ man. In reality, I was a horny teenager whose membership in ESHB made me an easy mark for neighborhood women who had a hard-on for gangsters. Any gangster would do, even me. Looking back, I wasn’t special, even though I thought I was.
To top it off, when I got sentenced, my sexual development froze in time.
These days, I worry I’m awkward. I worry I’m this eighteen-year-old kid in a twenty-three-year-old body, acting stupid and believing I’m hot shit when I’m obviously not.
I’m so angry at my heart—for what, exactly?
For wanting closeness with her that I haven’t earned.
With that thought, I take a step back from her and give her some space.
“All right,” I say. “Okay.”
Her shoulders relax. She takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. I worry that I’ve scared her. In as gentle a voice as I can, I say, “Before I go, can I ask you something?”
“What?”
“What happened to you that day anyway? Why were you so upset?”
Carmen’s dark eyes narrow at me. “Before I answer, can I ask you something?”
“You can ask me anything.”
“I know who you are,” she says. “But do you know who I am?”
“Besides your name?” I pause and study her face. She gives me nothing. “Uh, should I know who you are?”
“Yes. You should.” She sighs. “The bakery. By the house where you grew up. My family runs it. Slim Centeno—he’s my dad.”
Now I understand why her name sounded familiar to me. The Centenos are one of the oldest families in the neighborhood. They’ve owned the corner bakery for three, maybe four generations. My family has been in the hood that long too, but our business is slinging and banging, not bread.
“I grew up in that bakery,” Carmen continues. “I worked weekends and every day after school. You and your brothers used to come in all the time.”
We did. Begging Slim for free stuff, shoplifting chicle, counting out our coins for day-old conchas and fresh sandwich rolls for our mom.
“You never noticed me,” Carmen says.
“What?”
“You never noticed me,” she says again. “Behind the counter, working at the register or baking in the kitchen.” She sighs. “I had a crush on you.”
I can’t help myself. I laugh. It comes out like the bark of a dog. “You what?”
“Don’t laugh at me. It’s embarrassing.” She shakes her head. “I had the biggest crush on you. But you were such a little shit. You never saw me. Never said hi.”
This whole conversation has surprised me, beginning to end. I try hard to remember a little-girl version of Carmen on the other side of the bakery counter, but she’s right. I guess I never noticed her. Too distracted by pan dulce, or by shoplifting, or by my own big head.
“So really, you weren’t a stranger to me that morning in the garden,” she says. “I knew who you were. And all of us in the neighborhood knew you’d just gotten out of prison.” She fidgets in her chair. “I figured that would be my chance.”
“Your chance?”
“To get with you. To finally make an impression on you. At last.”
“What?” I say. “‘An impression’?”
She doesn’t say anything. She looks so embarrassed, I tell her the truth. “Carmen, I haven’t been able to get you out of my head.”
We look at each other then, a little shy. Which is weird, considering the insane sex we’ve had and the fact that we grew up together. Kind of.
“We got caught up in the moment,” she says. “I was just your first after a long time. A piece of bread to a starving man. Nothing special.”
“There’s getting caught up in the moment,” I say, “and then there’s…I don’t know. Chemistry. We had chemistry. Lots of it.”
At last, I get a small smile from her. The corner of her mouth tips upward at the memory. She recognizes I’m telling the truth. We did have chemistry.
Cautiously, I step forward again.
As if to torture me, the memory of her taste suddenly appears in my mouth, in my throat, and my inner dog begins to bark. I imagine grabbing her and bending her over the desk. I have a flashback of sinking myself balls-deep into her, feeling that pussy crush me in its perfect grip. I imagine losing myself in her.
This is the effect she has on me. Wild. Powerful.
“Are you seeing anyone?” I whisper.
She looks me in the eye. After a second, she gives her head the tiniest shake.
I lean down and breathe her in. I touch my lips to her throat, just a brush, and I feel the delicate muscles in her neck tighten as she swallows.
“It was good between us, wasn’t it?” I say softly. “Tell the truth.”
She gasps, and her soft breath strokes my cheek. “Eddie—”
Out of the corner of my eye, I see it. Movement in one of the security monitors. Dino has disappeared from the hostess stand in the front of the restaurant. He reappears in the hallway monitor just outside the office. Panicking, I jump back a split second before he appears in the doorway.
“Chef?” His eyes dart between us. No doubt all of this looks wrong to him—the dishwasher in the office with the chef, both of them breathing hard. “I’m about ready to leave for the night. Is everything…okay…back here?”
Carmen is blushing bright red, but her voice is steady. “Everything’s fine,” she says so calmly even I believe her. “Eddie was telling me that the other dishwasher is interested in a position as a prep cook.”
�
��Oh.” Dino relaxes a little. “Boner, is it?”
“Yes,” I say. “That’s him.”
Dino examines my face. “That’s good of you to say so. We’ll consider him when we have a position—that is, if Chef Centeno thinks it’s a good idea.”
“Uh, thanks,” I say. I turn slightly so that Dino can’t see my raging hard-on. “It would mean a lot to him.”
Carmen switches off her computer and stands up. “How about we all head out together?” she says, too loudly, taking off her chef’s jacket and replacing it with the black jacket hanging behind the door. “I’m exhausted. I can barely keep my eyes open.” It’s a lie. She’s wired. So am I.
“Good idea,” Dino says as reaches for the top drawer of the desk and takes out his phone and wallet.
Trying to calm down, I tune out their kitchen chitchat as the three of us take the service elevator to the underground parking garage. Dino drives a vintage Alfa Romeo Giulia, devil red. The thief in me whispers a reminder I could lift that car in my sleep. Carmen drives a twenty-year-old beat-up Toyota Camry, which seems weird to me considering the authority and skill she has at work. I pictured her riding around in a tinted Lincoln Town Car with a driver in a black suit who could karate chop me in half.
On the other side of the parking lot, Dino gets in his car and waits for Carmen to get into hers before he starts his engine. He’s being protective of her. I don’t blame him.
Carmen unlocks her door.
“Can I call you?” I ask under my breath.
She looks at me and sighs. “I don’t know. It’s not a good idea, with work and all.”
I know she’s right. But I can’t ignore the spark between us, or the bonfire we started together once, not too long ago.
“Okay,” I say. “What if you call me?” Quickly, I add, “Like, if you needed me to come in on my day off. Or something like that.”
For a second, she looks me in the eye before giving Dino a sideways glance.
Hidden by her car door, she holds out her hand. Heart beating hard, I pass her my shitty phone. She quickly taps in a number, calls herself, and gives the phone back without saying a word.