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“Oh, wow, already running cable,” Tony said.
“Yeah, the landlord said he had satellite running here already. Said he’d have it cut off when I got mine set up so I could have something to watch and internet while I waited. Apparently, they’re a bit slow out here?”
“Takes them at least two weeks,” Tony said. “They did you a solid, for sure.”
I laughed as we went back to pulling everything else out of the trailer, and when we were finally done, we crashed onto the couch and the easy chair to take a much-deserved break.
“So, you were telling me you’re a cook,” I said. “Where do you work?”
“Dina’s Diner,” he replied. “Not too far from here. Just go down the mountain road into town, and it’s right there. Straight shot, about seven minutes away. Just down the street from the Italian place, Sergio’s.”
“Italian, huh? They serve pizza?”
“The best pizza I’ve ever had, and that’s the truth. Ol’ Sergio is straight-up Italian. Dude was born in Italy and moved to New York when he was a teenager. Made pizza in Brooklyn until he moved to Tennessee. Best stuff I’ve ever tasted.”
“Damn. I might have to have some of that. You want some? I know it’s not much, but I’d like to pay you back a bit for helping me out.”
“I’d love to,” Tony said, “but I have a slow cooker going with my chili. I have to make it myself since they stopped doing the chili cook-off at the fair. This time of year, I always want chili.”
“Really? I used to do competitions for my chili,” I said. “Firemen, you know. We like hot stuff.”
Tony laughed.
“Oh, man, yeah, there used to be a hell of a cook-off every year. But then it kind of tapered off, and Sergio opened up a pizza stand, and that was it. He does those five-minute, fire-blasted pizzas at the fair.”
“Maybe I should make some chili and put up a stand or something. See if I can get the competition going again,” I joked.
Tony’s face went stone serious, and it almost made me laugh.
“No lie, you absolutely should,” he said. “Ah, shit.”
“What’s up?” I asked as he pulled his phone out of his pocket.
“Just got called in,” he said. “It’s all good. Chili’s always better the next day. For real, though, get on that. It’d be a blast.”
“I might. And I owe you beer at least.”
Tony stood up and shook my hand, grinning.
“I’ll take you up on that next time,” he said. “Adios.”
I bid him goodbye and opened up my own phone, looking for the number for Sergio’s. I had beer in the fridge, but I didn’t feel like going through the effort of making dinner. I did, however, feel like getting some fresh air and seeing a little bit of the city as the sun went down. I called into the restaurant, ordered a large pepperoni pizza, and grabbed my keys.
3
SOFIA
Another long day, another series of pizzas and lasagnas. It’s like the people of Ashford never heard of other food options at an Italian place. Just an endless series of lasagna and pizza. And the occasional order of chicken nuggets from the little kids. At least Papa refused to use the frozen ones and made them from scratch, meaning I got the job of breading chicken on a regular basis.
This time, I even refrained from adding a dash of chili powder to the breading to liven them up, meaning no angry parents. That had been a colossal mistake. Most children, it turned out, were not as adventurous an eater as I had been. My sisters certainly weren’t, which might explain why I was curvy and busty, and they all looked like stick figures with balloons attached to their chests.
The exhaustion from the busy day had snuck up on me and eventually had me making mistakes. I had brought orders to the wrong table three times, burned my palm on the stove, and slipped twice, once landing flat on my ass and breaking a plate fresh from the kitchen that was hot and landed directly on the already burned palm.
It was a crap day.
After the second fall, Papa moved me to the register and had Amara take over expediting and hostess duties. Leo ended up doing sous chef work, a step up from prep work, but it slowed the kitchen to a crawl, meaning I had to deal with angry patrons who waited forever for their food. But Papa was adamant that I wasn’t to move from that spot for any reason.
I almost just packed up and went home, and I probably would have if it wouldn’t have left everyone else in a terrible position. It had been such a bad day that for the first time in a long time, I wondered if there was just something else in town I could do that didn’t involve serving pizzas to half-drunk people in the bar partition or the same three dishes in the restaurant. Maybe I could be a receptionist? Or a cashier at the Walmart in the next county? Anything.
