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My call for help isn’t answered fast enough. I swallow down the fear and gather every ounce of courage, rushing toward the burning stove. I grab hold of the skillet and toss it toward the huge farmer’s sink, where I fumble with the extendable hose and blast it with water.
The kitchen door flaps open and in tumbles Freddie, out of breath from his heavy-footed gallop across the diner. The most he’s run in decades.
“What’ve you done now, Syd?”
He swats at the air and wipes sweat off his brow with the same rag he uses to clean tables.
“Can’t leave you alone for nothing. How’d you fuck this up?”
“I told you not to put me on the line!”
“My ten-year-old niece can fry a pork chop.”
“Then maybe you should hire her instead!” I dog his footsteps around the kitchen as he fans the smoky air and twists off the knobs on the stove.
“You ain’t never cooked before?”
“We’ve been over this. My idea of cooking is warming up a pot pie in the microwave, Freddie. You hired me as a waitress. Not a fry cook.”
He shakes his head and continues grumbling about how hard it is to find good help these days.
I’m let off work early. But I know what it means.
Don’t come back. Thanks. But no thanks.
Ms. Baxter spots me on my way out. She’s come by to pick up her niece Teysha, my coworker and fellow waitress, from her shift. Being widowed and in her sixties, Ms. Baxter comes by often for more reasons than giving her niece rides. She’s become a regular at the Sunny Side Up for her daily dose of town gossip and a serving of the blueberry cobbler.
“Rough shift, girls?” she asks us on our walk out.
Teysha gives me a sympathetic smile before looking to her aunt. “Sydney might’ve had a problem or two.”
“It’s alright, honey,” Mrs. Baxter says, patting me on the shoulder. “You’ll find your calling. Just pray it comes sooner than later.”
I give her a polite nod and refrain from mentioningshe’sprobably the reason Freddie was so distracted. The two sixty-somethings have taken to flirting whenever she comes in. Freddie insists she’s more than Teysha’s aunt—she mustalsobe the aunt of Houston native, Megan Thee Stallion, with how tall, thick, and statuesque she is.
We part ways in the parking lot. Ms. Baxter and Teysha in her 1978 boat-sized Oldsmobile. Me by way of the city bus, like always.
In a town as small as Boulder, an hour outside of Houston, it doesn’t take me long to make it home.
I use the time to clear my head.
Jot down my thoughts in what I refer to as my Bible.
The small thick book serves as both my therapist and memory bank. Its pages are full of any and everything you’d want to know about me, but also the things I don’t know. The things I wish I knew myself…
You’d think in the technological age we live in, I’d use my phone or start a blog like most people. Maybe even a Youtube.
But I stick with my little purple book.
Today’s entry is about the kitchen fire. I doodle flames and Freddie’s angry face with devil horns, releasing a petty cackle as I do.
The bus rolls to a stop where I’m supposed to get off. If not for the reminder from Wade, the bus driver on this route, I wouldn’t have even noticed.
Dust flits around me as the bus drives off and I stand at the front gate. Our mailbox leans off to the side, the little red flag pointed skyward.
I almost don’t check it. What’s the point when I already know what’s been delivered?
Junk mail. Utility bills. Mortgage. More junk mail. Credit card offers and letters from credit collectors. Evenmorejunk mail.
