by Katharine Bost
Whenever we close the restaurant on the same nights, I take any opportunity to watch you work in the back of the house. The way your muscles flex as you lift cutting boards and equipment to their rightful place. Your legs peeking from beneath your apron, muscles solid from biking to the restaurant every morning.
You don’t wear makeup, which makes your lips the same color as the rest of your skin. I spend too much time wondering whether they taste like the blue Powerade you get from the soda fountain during shifts.
You’re older than me. Early thirties. I’m not yet twenty. I think you’re dangerous, and you… do you think about me?
“Hey, Katharine. You almost done?” you ask, poking your head into the main dining room.
I’ve found girls attractive before—struggled with it in my Catholic school youth—but you are something else entirely. I adore the way your black hipster glasses frame your face, and the soft-spoken way you say my name. You don’t talk much, but when you do, I stop to listen. Your voice is deeper than mine. Soft. A little raspy.
“Yeah, on the last task,” I say, lifting the mop out of its bucket. I wonder why you ask. Will we sit outside and smoke cigarettes again tonight?
“Cool, I didn’t want to mess you up,” you say. “I’m finishing up now.”
It’s thoughtful of you. I scrub the rest of the dining room floor, eager to be done with the night so I can go home and shower. Otherwise I’ll smell like tacos and sour cream for the next day.
I have to open tomorrow, and you do, too. Our time spent smoking—if we spend any time together at all—will likely be short.
We finish closing about the same time, and I amble outside to wait for you. While waiting, I light up an American Spirit and take a seat in one of the outside chairs. The chair is painted black, but the paint has faded over time so it’s now gray with some white chips. It’s metal, hollow, and cold against the back of my legs. The chill is welcome in the hot Florida humidity.
You lock the doors and join me at the table, poking your fingers through the holes in the surface. You smoke Marlboro Reds, and I swallow when you slide the cigarette in your mouth. Lighting it, you give me a wry smile, but say nothing.
“How was today for you?” I puff at my cigarette, holding the smoke in my lungs as long as possible before exhaling.
“Rough. Troy prepped this morning, but he didn’t make enough chips so I had to make some in the middle of the lunch rush.”
“That’s weird of him to not make enough,” I say. Troy’s a sensitive topic for me. I kissed him once at a club a couple of weeks ago, and now he thinks we’re together. But I don’t know why I kissed him. Maybe because it’s easier than kissing you, or trying to.
Your hair is up, and you smooth it back with your free hand. “Maybe he’s distracted.”
I don’t like the implications of your words. “Maybe,” I say, because it’s easier to agree than to argue about something that might not matter.
“Did your day get better after the kid dumped cheese sauce on the floor?”
I groan. “That was a bitch to clean up,” I say on an exhale. “And to make it worse, he smashed up a bunch of chips, so I had to sweep those up, too.”
“I don’t know how you do it.”
“Honestly, not very well,” I say, smiling. “But they keep scheduling me, so I guess I’m doing okay.”
“More than okay, I would say.”
My cheeks heat, and I look away from your steady gaze. It’s late, and we should go home to rest, but I don’t want to leave. I want to remain in the humidity with you, smoking filtered cigarettes and talking about our days. Surrounded by the plumes of smoke, basking in the attention you give me.
“Are you biking back?” I ask.
You reach over your shoulders to stretch, your dark shirt riding up and revealing your creamy midsection. “Yeah.”
“I can give you a ride,” I say. “Your bike fits in the back of my car. It’s no problem.”
“I’m out of your way,” you say.
“But you’re such great company that I won’t even notice.”
You scratch your nose, the hint of a smile on your face. “Is that so?”
“Yeah.” I think of how I took my break after the kid dumping queso on the ground, and how you took yours at the same time so you could smoke with me. How when we got back inside, you made me chicken flautas to distract me from the messes I had to clean up in the dining room.
I’m about to tell you how much I appreciated that when I see a woman in the distance, approaching us. I nod my head toward her so you can see, and you look back at me with confused, wide eyes.
“What could she want?” you ask, though I’m worried it’s money, and I don’t have any. We don’t get paid until next week, and I don’t get my tips until tomorrow.
“Beats me,” I say as she inches closer. She’s hobbling, favoring her right side. A possible knee injury, or maybe a weak ankle. Or maybe, the irrational side of my brain whispers, she’s not injured but wants us to believe she is.
Her coat is in tatters, slung over her body haphazardly, like she was in a hurry to leave somewhere. She steadily closes the distance to us.
Up close, I can see she’s not that old. Maybe my mom’s age. But her face is wrinkled and she has stringy gray and white hair. Her eyes are unfocused, but she’s looking right at me. I wish I felt as confident as you look. I wish she would look away. Her gaze is hawklike—predatory— and I shrink in my seat. Puff at my cigarette and blow smoke to conceal me.
“Can we help you?” you ask. Your tone is deep, as if you’re daring her to cause a problem.
“Just want to bum a smoke,” she says. She hasn’t taken her eyes off me.
“Here,” you say, reaching into your cigarette box. “Take one of mine.”
“Oh, but,” she says, “American Spirits… they have such a special place in my heart. I’d love one of those.”
I look at my yellow box on the table. They’re special, but they’re also more expensive. Organic. I smoke them because they’re “better” for you, as if any cigarette isn’t a one-way street to cancer.
“Sure,” I say, not wanting to rock the boat. I slide one from the box and hand it to her.
“A light, too,” she says, and you hand her your lighter. Your hand is tense, curled into a fist on the table.
The woman seems harmless, but she erects the hairs on my arms. Over her hunched shoulder, she has a bag. What is it filled with?
“There was a fire,” she says, though she doesn’t reek of smoke or ash. “I took what I had and left.”
“A fire?” you ask, leaning forward. Your eyebrows are furrowed, the same look you get whenever too many orders come in at once.
“Well, not a real fire,” she says.
“A pretend fire?”
She eyes you warily. “I had to leave my home, and I need money to get to the shelter for the night. Are you happy?”
“No,” you answer.
It’s awful to hear she’s homeless, though I believe it. Her clothes are dirty, her face has a smudge of ash spanning from her forehead to her cheek, and beneath her nails are caked with dirt and grime. It appears as though she hasn’t showered in over a week, and the half-moons beneath her eyes are swollen with lack of sleep.
“I can drive you to the downtown shelter,” I find myself saying. As soon as I say it, I wish I could take it back. But to do that might make me look weak in your eyes, and I want to impress you. I square my shoulders and pretend like this is the only thing I want to do.
She looks at me again, her face void of emotions. “No, I just need money for the bus. I can take a bus there.”
You stub out your cigarette on the ground, rubbing the toe of your shoe over the black ash so it doesn’t leave a stain in the concrete. “No buses run this late.”
“I’ll find a cab,” she says, extending her hand toward me.
“I don’t have money,” I tell her. I can’t back out now. “But I can drive you.”
Her lip curls into a frown, and she divides her attention between us.
You stand up. “It’s either we give you a ride or you walk there,” you say.
I like the use of “we.” I had expected you to ride your bike home, leave me alone with this woman, but I like that you’re coming with me. It makes me feel bolder.
“You don’t have to come,” I say, but it’s just because I want to hear you say—
“I want to.”
The woman watches our exchange but says nothing. Her face has hardened, but you and I have worked her into a corner. She’ll have a place to stay tonight, and tomorrow will be up to her.
I stand up, tugging my shorts down so they cover my legs more, and feel a tinge of embarrassment for the pattern the chair likely left on the back of my legs. I’m not sure why. You light up another cigarette and check your watch.
“It’s almost midnight,” you say. “Do you know how to get to the shelter?”
“I’ll just look it up on my phone,” I say, and then we take off toward my car, the woman in tow.
She drags her feet, almost quite literally. When we reach the small SUV, you reach your hand out and brush mine before going to the passenger seat. I watch you walk around the car.
“Put your bike in my car,” I say as the woman hops into the back seat. “I can drive you home after we drop her off.”
You do as you’re told with the cigarette between your lips, muscles working frantically as we try to fit your bike in my trunk. It slides in easily, but we have to maneuver the handlebars so they don’t hang out when we try to close the trunk door.
The drive downtown is quiet. The woman doesn’t make conversation, and neither do you. An old CD plays softly in the background, but I’m not listening to it. I’m focused on the empty roads, ensuring I get this woman to the shelter. Everyone deserves to have a place to sleep at night.
I wonder what I’ll dream of, when it’s finally time for me to lay down my head. You, perhaps? Maybe this drive. Maybe I’ll fantasize about this going wrong, about the lady being dangerous—as dangerous as I want her to be.
She’s a stranger. A stranger in my car. Though she seems harmless, so do most predators. Most predators pretend to be a friend, then when they get close, that’s when they strike. Is she close enough for that?
The Main Street bridge is lit up, bright blue in the night sky, and my tires crunch over the grates at the top of it. My phone says to keep going on this road and then turn right, so I do.
“Do you ever go downtown?” I ask you. The woman has fallen asleep in the back seat. We’ll have to wake her when we reach the shelter. Though she’s asleep, I continue to watch her in the rear-view mirror, the rational part of my mind reminding me she could have a knife. She could use it on you. She could slide it from her filthy coat and run it along the smooth, delicate skin of your neck.
“Not really,” you say. “I moved here only a few months ago. Haven’t had time to explore the city.”
“Where did you move from?”
“It’s a left here,” the woman says suddenly, and I flinch at the sound of her greasy voice. I had thought she was asleep, but she is awake. Was she pretending to be asleep?
“My phone says it’s down a couple of blocks,” I tell her.
“It’s a left—you missed it,” she says. What could have been to the left?
Suddenly, it feels too warm in the car. Too suffocating. I can smell the woman, old dirt mixed with sweat baked under the sun. I flip the air on, wondering what could have been to the left. An abandoned factory? Would she show us her knife?
This was a bad idea. You chew on your thumbnail and sneak a peek at me.
“You can make a u-turn up here,” she says.
I ignore her and follow my phone, which chirps directions to the shelter the next block over. It crests into view over a miniature hill, and I suppress the smug smile I feel for not being wrong. For trusting my gut and not following what the lady wanted.
Maybe she was just mistaken, and genuinely thought it was a left. But there’s a sour sensation in my gut, reminding me to not let my guard down.
“Home sweet home,” you say, glancing back at the woman.
I pull into the drive and turn back to face her. “Do you need anything else? Do you want us to go in with you?”
I hope she says no. I hope we can leave and forget about this experience. Glancing at you in my peripherals, I want to see if you’re impressed by me. If you maybe think better of me, think of me as braver.
“No,” she says, sounding bitter. “I’ve got it from here.”
You get out of the car anyway so you can open her door. You don’t trust her, and I don’t blame you. There are not many trustworthy people in this world.
We watch the woman hobble up the walkway to the shelter. Hopefully there is a bed for her.
You get back into the car and rest your elbow on the door, your hand gripping the handle on the ceiling. I lock the doors. We exchange a look, both exhaling the tension.
“Want a cigarette, or do you only smoke American Spirits?” you ask.
About the Author
Katharine Bost holds an MFA in creative writing from Miami University, and her work has appeared in F(r)iction Literary Magazine, The Doctor T. J. Eckleburg Review, Tangled Locks Journal, and Mikrokosmos, among others. She has also been nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Glassworks Magazine.