He frowns back, says through a thick accent, “Might as well be.”
After many hours of slicing (bending) and mincing (crushing) and preassembling salads (don’t ask), I take my break, fold my apron, and head to the front door. Chuck spots me on my way out and says, “Smoke break?”
I pause and smile. “Nah, I don’t smoke.” I leave off the piece from my true past: anymore.
“Where you heading?”
“Just walking down to TooJay’s to grab a quick bite.”
He turns and looks at the kitchen, then back at me. “But… you can eat here for free.”
I bite my cheek, say gently, “I know.” I turn and slip out the door.
Work has really helped. Instead of thinking about Melody all of the time, I am cutting onions and peppers and tomatoes and cutlets and thinking about Melody all of the time. Some days I wonder where she is, others are consumed with wondering if she’s settled her life, if she’s found a lover, if she’s finally happy.
As I live my existence here, away from my friends and family, away from everything I know, I rest—can fall into the deepest sleep—knowing she has finally been rescued. I hope and pray she is living the life meant for her.
A little over one month later, just after I finish cleaning up my station for the day, I walk past Chuck in his office, a fist to his mouth and staring off into the distance. He says, “’Night, Mike,” without any attempt at making eye contact.
“See ya, boss.”
I have one foot out the back door when he says, “What am I doing?” One more step and I would have made it out, could’ve reasonably pretended I never heard him. I sigh and turn around and walk back in, make my way to his office but do not respond. “What am I doing,” he says, then adds, “wrong?”
I bite my lip and scratch my chin as I shrug. He finally twists and looks my way, stares at me for a minute before he fakes a smile and says, “Well… never mind. Good night.”
As he spins around in his chair and looms over order sheets, I sigh and run my fingers through my hair, tip up my glasses so I can rub my eyes. I step out of his office and say, “Come here.”
He turns and looks at me, eventually gets up. When we get to the kitchen, I turn on the lights, open the chiller, and pull out a five-pound package of links.
“What is this?” I ask.
He looks at it, then me, then directs his answer to the meat. “It’s sausage.”
I hold it closer to his face. “It’s turkey sausage. With cherries and nuts.”
He half shrugs, offers a response that sounds like a question: “It’s gourmet.”
“It’s crap. This is Thanksgiving dinner in a synthetic casing. If sausage isn’t full of pig, I don’t understand what it is. The flavor everyone wants comes from the fat. Pig fat.”
I toss the sausage back in the chiller, pull out a plastic container of Caesar dressing purchased premade from a distant distributor and hold it up. “No.”
“Why?”
I point to the listing of ingredients. “This is mayonnaise flavored with chemicals. And really, Caesar without anchovies?”
“People hate anchovies. People always say no anchovies.”
“People don’t know what they’re talking about.”
“I hate anchovies.”
“No you don’t.”
“I don’t?”
“You like Worcestershire sauce?” Chuck blinks and nods. “Read what’s in it. That flavor you like so much? Anchovies. Trust me: Crush the anchovies and mix them into a fresh dressing and people will be talking about your salads all the way to Panama City. And please—you gotta explain to the guys who work in this kitchen the difference between Pecorino Romano and Parmigiano-Reggiano.” Blank stare. “Which is…” Nothing. “Pecora is Italian for sheep, hence Pecorino Romano is made from sheep’s milk; the Parmigian’ from a cow. Not even close to the same, and absolutely not interchangeable.”
I walk to the storage area, wave for him to follow. I flip on the light and hold up one of the twenty 128-ounce cans of that V 8-like fluid. “This,” I say. “I’m speechless.”
“Sauce?”
“Because the people in Bayonne who canned it tell you it is? Do me a favor: The distributor who sold you this can also sell you the same gallon-size cans of crushed tomatoes. Get those instead and we can cook the tomatoes down into a nice marinara. Or better yet, buy me a twenty-dollar tomato press and I’ll make fresh sauce