New York City soup kitchen. He was a veritable giant of a priest and, T.S. admitted to himself, a good choice for coping with the sometimes physically dangerous demands of running a church in the inner city.
"Perhaps just a touch more chili?" the priest meekly suggested again, when no one bothered to answer him.
Auntie Lil shook her head firmly and raised one arm in an imperious command for silence. She rolled the stew about her tongue and lifted her eyes toward heaven as if seeking divine guidance.
"A touch of cumin?" the priest tried desperately. "Or a little curry, perhaps?"
"Are you insane?" Auntie Lil asked calmly. He was but a mere speck of humanity, her tone implied, attempting to interfere with the divine creation of great cuisine.
"Ah ha!" Auntie Lil smacked the enormous spoon on the stove's metal surface with a bang. Her assistants jumped back in surprise and everyone in the room turned to stare. "More onion!" she declared with celestial inspiration, one finger pointed at the ceiling.
The priest nodded his head in solemn agreement, but the grumpy matron cutting corn bread scowled furiously before banging her knife on the counter with great irritation and pulling several large onions out of a drawer. She plunked them angrily on a cutting surface and began to chop with the homicidal vigor of an ax murderer. T.S. knew at once that she had been the Queen Bee of the kitchen before Auntie Lil had arrived. No wonder she had hated him on sight.
The priest noticed the woman's distress. "Thank you, Fran. As always, you're such a help," he murmured, patting her shoulder with the kind of cautious enthusiasm you'd reserve for an unknown Doberman Pinscher. But the priest's automatic praise was more than enough for grumpy Fran. She turned her face up at the priest and beamed a radiant smile back at him, eyes filled with adoration. Her happy expression transformed her broad face into one that held hints of a former, perhaps even startling, beauty. The priest beamed back at her while the rest of the kitchen staff clanged past without taking any notice.
"Don't just stand there, Theodore," Auntie Lil suddenly commanded T.S. from across the room. "Help me with this chili."
"Nice to see you, too. Aunt Lil," he replied, giving her leathery cheek an affectionate peck. "Don't tell me that Father Whoever is foolish enough to have actually turned you loose in the kitchen? Haven't those poor people outside suffered enough?"
She handed him a potholder. "I'll have you know that this a secret chili recipe brought back to me by a genuine cowboy from Santa Fe in the thirties."
"That's good. All those cowboys waiting outside are going to really love it."
She ignored him. She was good at that. "Father Whoever is Father Stebbins. If you're not going to go to church on a regular basis, at least show it some respect. Perhaps he'll put in a good word for you upstairs."
T.S. tasted the chili and gasped for air. "He'd better make it quick. I think I'm going down." He grabbed his throat and staggered back against a sink already filled with an enormous pile of dirty dishes. Auntie Lil was incapable of entering a kitchen without leaving behind conditions that could qualify for federal disaster aid.
"I suppose you think you're amusing." She handed him a glass of water and stared intently at the pot. "Perhaps I should cut it with a few more kidney beans."
He shook his head vigorously. "Why bother? This could solve the mayor's homeless problem in a single afternoon."
"Really, Theodore, I asked you down here to help, not gloat." Auntie Lil handed him another potholder and directed him to move one of the enormous pots to a back burner. He paused in his task to allow the ever-suffering Fran to scrape in her load of massacred onions. Despite himself, his stomach started to rumble. It did smell good, in a kind of diabolic and dangerous way.
Auntie Lil then ordered him to retrieve a huge container of cooked rice that was stored in a large walk-in freezer at the rear of the kitchen. "Mr. Chang donated it," she explained. "He's got a small takeout joint on the corner."
That was Auntie Lil. Put her in a new neighborhood and she instantly picked up the local slang. T.S. expected her to start talking about a "fast score" at any moment.
For nearly thirty minutes, she dogged him, sending him here and there in search of loaves of bread, pots of beans, more