Fry Me a Liver Page 3

  “Wash,” I said, happy to be back on the matter at hand. “And don’t call me chief.”

  “Yes, boss.”

  Except for Newt’s extra little edge, this kind of banter was the norm. It made work go faster for the crew; it made me meshuga because it was an endless cycle of thrust and parry with no one ever really winning. To wit:

  “Yeah, Luke, the washing might give you Newt’s manly biceps and make you more of a rock star,” A.J. muttered with just a soupçon of sarcasm.

  “You had to start again,” I muttered.

  “Does a possum eat garbage?” She winked.

  “You want to watch, A.J.?” Luke flirted.

  “Only if I can laugh,” A.J. retorted.

  I shot her an exasperated look and Luke made a smug little face as he continued at the double sinks behind us. They were located right beside the basement stairs, which were beside the back door. On the other side of the door was the walk-in cooler where Sandy was just finishing up with the delivery: wrapped slabs of tongue, corned beef, and pastrami, all waiting to be seasoned à la Murray’s recipe book. She put the meat beside plastic tubs of cole slaw on the bottom shelf which we had prepared the night before. The butcher’s daughter swung around the refrigerator and out the back door to put the dolly back in the van. I noticed a man in a ragged sports jacket was outside at the Dumpster, his back to me. I wasn’t surprised to see him and I didn’t mind. Unlike New York, where the problem of the homeless seemed overwhelming, there was something I could do about it here. I left Styrofoam containers of food out back. Anything that wasn’t going to last another day went to feed those who needed it, stacked in a big steel-mesh shelf that hung from the fence. A.J. had described it as a bird feeder for the poor, and while that had a demeaning sound, that’s pretty much what it was. As long as there wasn’t a breadline each day, I would continue to do what I could.

  It would be another half hour before I could start grating the fresh livers into a bowl. I scooped up the last slices of what we had left, cut it into a Tupperware container, and mixed in some of my ingredients. A.J. plopped it on her platter.

  “I’m so glad I don’t have a son,” A.J. said.

  “What, a college girl is easier?”

  “By a mile,” she said. “I’ve been where my daughter is. I know where she’s going. I know what’s in her brainpan. So, yeah. I don’t know if I could deal with Newt’s kind of testosterone. It’s like those guys at the counter.”

  A.J. nodded in that direction. I looked under the heat lamps at a row of intense young faces.

  “Who are they?”

  “The local political bloggers,” A.J. said as she used an ice cream scoop to fill a second plate with chopped liver.

  “Ah. I thought I didn’t recognize them,” I said.

  “They’re all playing for alpha dog status,” she said. “They’re like the other bloggers who come in after morning rush, when you’re in the office. They like to have stuff up by lunchtime for their readers, they tell me. They tippy-type away at the counter between sniping at each other and shooting what looks like spitballs.”

  “Look what I miss when I order potatoes.”

  “Oh yeah,” A.J. said. “They actually fight on the counter for elbow room, like babies. Jab, poke, jab. Thank God we don’t have those kinds of wing nuts here except for an hour or so every day.”

  “No, thank God I have you to deal with them,” I pointed out.

  A.J. gave one of her short “damn right” nods. She was the one who happened to mention that as the number of laptop and tablet users grew, we needed to establish a no-refill policy at the counter. Otherwise, people would have stayed there like it was Starbucks. Dani was the only one who didn’t mind; she was happy to have fewer tips and less work. That gave her more time to hang with Luke in the kitchen. Young love. I never had it like that. The time between graduating high school and getting my MBA was a wall of study, like scholars bent over the Torah. I dated, but that was more a biological function than a social one. I emerged from the process a fully rounded grown-up. When I finally looked around at men, I settled for someone I liked well enough and figured everyone else would approve of. Looked good on a spreadsheet, like everything in my life, before it suddenly didn’t.

  Sandy came over with the meat receipt for me to sign. I didn’t bother checking the delivery; her father always got it right.

  “You got anything special planned for Bonnie’s homecoming?” I asked.

  “Just a hug,” Sandy said. “All I’ve got time for.”

  “Let me know if there’s anything I can do.”

  She smiled appreciatively as she looked away from the diner and down at the order form. “What’re you gonna do when candidate Post wants to make the hand-shaking rounds with his horse?”

  “I’ll call your dad.”

  “My dad?”

  “Tell him we’ve got cat food on the hoof.”

  “You’re cold,” Sandy said, but she smiled.

  “I’m from New York,” I reminded her. “That’s not exactly horse country. Dogs and pigeons, yes—”

  “Oh, shoot,” Sandy said, looking up from the order form.

  “What?”

  “I just noticed a line item, the kosher dogs you ordered. They’re in the truck.”

  “How could you forget that?” I laughed. “No one else buys ’em by the tub.”

  “That’s why I forgot,” she said. “They’re in the back. I came to you first instead of last, like usual.”

  “Because I needed the liver worst—”

  My own bad joke was the last thing I heard before a big, ugly noise pounded the left side of my head.

  Chapter 3

  I can tell you just a little of what happened next, but only in fragments. It’s like seeing everything in the shards of a broken mirror. I remember the pieces because they were merciless and vivid. The rest got lost in a fog. Even now that connective tissue is missing, except what was filled in by others. I wasn’t hit on the head; I probably just blocked it all out or maybe the bigger moments just over wrote the smaller ones. Not to be glib about it, I wish I could remember this and block out other parts of my life.

  The first thing I remember was how I felt. It was as though I’d stepped behind the turbine of a jet aircraft. A wall of hot wind punched me and did several things at once. It blasted the left side of my head so hard that my hair felt like it was yanked roughly toward the right; the roots were tugged so hard each one felt like a needle digging little circles into my scalp. The skin of my left cheek fluttered from chin to ear so hard I actually felt as though it might rip away. My eardrum shrieked with pain from a powerful, simultaneous bang. And there was a Creamsicle-colored orange-white light on that side, bright enough to blind my eye for a moment. I saw that light and then I saw blackness, as if my rods and cones couldn’t process any more brightness and simply shut down.

  All of that started and ended in the length of a single breath, though it seemed so much longer. After that I dimly recall things hitting me, buffeting me, stabbing me, not just on one side but all over. That seemed to go on a long time but was probably also just a second or two. I do know that I was in motion the entire time because one moment the floor was under me and suddenly, amidst the pummeling and pricking, it wasn’t. But I didn’t drop; not exactly. I think I slid, since there was a sensation of disorientation but not a Geronimoooo! moment. I know I was briefly in motion and then I wasn’t. In fact, I was very, very still. It wasn’t exactly quiet since I could hear my breath, my heart, blood rushing through my ears, and the occasional muted scratch and crunch of things moving or settling around me. And voices. I heard muffled cries and moans.

  My once proud and useful brain was no help. It was having a rapid-fire, rather pointless discussion with itself about earthquakes, plane crashes, and boiler explosions, sifting through possibilities as if it were a sweet but faulty computer in a Pixar movie. Then some godlike part of my mind took charge, shut the lesser voices up, and accepted
the only thing that mattered: something bad had happened, something that made things get very dark and now suddenly unnaturally quiet, something that had apparently dumped me downward into our bomb shelter–like basement. I reasoned that based on the fact that I didn’t see much light, which ruled out the kitchen, the dining room, the Dumpster area, or the street. Obviously the sun hadn’t exploded or I wouldn’t be thinking anything.

  The first order of business, according to my super-brain, was to try to move. I realized that my body wasn’t hurting but I wasn’t sure it could do anything. I was lying facedown with my arms bent so that my palms were flat on the ground on either side of my head. I started with my fingers. They flexed and felt jagged earth beneath them. I must have fallen on top of what used to be a floor. I shifted my shoulders. My arms moved and I heard the muffled sound of rocks hitting rocks. No, concrete hitting concrete with that distinctive chink. I hadn’t caused that but I had to make sure I didn’t cause something else. I arched my back up slightly, heard more little things falling. I raised my tuchas, did little snow-angel movements with my legs, and rotated my feet slightly at the ankles. Next, I extended my arms like a tightrope walker, my fingers making little spidery movements. They crawled over debris of all kind, dust and stone, glass and metal, most of it small. I was intact, at least as far as my skeleton and musculature went. Nothing was numb or hurt, so nothing was broken.

  My nose tickled and I realized the air must be full of particulate matter. My nostrils were becoming more clogged with each breath. I snorted out inelegantly and breathed through my mouth. The air had a pasty quality. If I lived so long, that could cause problems one day. Who knew what kinds of materials were used to build this place?

  Time for step two: the advanced audio test. I could hear dusty things dropping. What else?

  “Hello!” I said in a voice that was surprisingly hoarse and soft. Whether it really was on the quiet side or whether I just couldn’t hear myself, I didn’t know. I also couldn’t tell whether it was hollow sounding because I was in a confined space or because my ears were ringing like wind chimes. Whatever hole I and anyone else had fallen through had been covered by whatever got knocked down around it.

  No one answered. I tried again.

  “Hello? Anybody hear me?”

  “I hear you.”

  The voice to my left was raw, choked, but definitely Thomasina. It sounded close, but then with ears that felt crammed with matzo brei everything sounded near—like the way you hear things underwater.

  “Thom, are you all right?”

  “I—I—maybe . . .”

  Her voice trailed off. That didn’t sound encouraging. Thom was a big woman and despite standing most of the day, she didn’t have the strongest heart in Tennessee. She put her trust in God, not in lower cholesterol, to make things right.

  “Stay calm and stay put,” I told her.

  There was another voice, this one to the right.

  “I hear you too,” said Luke. His voice was stronger than Thom’s. It sounded like he was closer, maybe two or three yards away.

  “You okay?”

  “Seem to be,” Luke said.

  “I’m here too, Gwen.” That was Sandy. Her voice was coming from somewhere below my feet. Her throaty exclamation was accompanied by a tumble of rubble. Whether it came from her moving body or of its own accord from above, I couldn’t be sure. “Listen—your manager is partly under me. She’s breathing but I think she just went unconscious.”

  “Restin’,” Thom said faintly.

  As I suspected, Thom was not okay. “All right, everyone, stay put. I’m going to try to get up,” I said.

  “Do it slowly,” Luke said. “I’ve got things all around me—don’t want to dislodge anything.”

  “Fine, stay put.”

  I sniffed. I didn’t smell the gas that fed the oven, which was good news. Sandy was a smoker. She might have matches on her, in case we needed them.

  I struggled to push myself from the ground. Until I did that I didn’t realize how much debris was on my back, but it was small pieces. It slid thickly off to the sides like seawater from a breaching whale. I made it to my knees, ouching when they came to rest on sharp objects and adjusting accordingly. I pulled out the cloth napkin I kept in my apron to wipe spills. I shook it out and tied it around the lower part of my face; the air was full of dust, possibly from my rising, and I didn’t want to inhale it. I did a 360, turning carefully on my aching knees, my arms extended to make sure there was nothing on any side of me.

  “Anybody know what happened?” Luke asked.

  “I was looking at my truck,” Sandy hacked. “Something in that vicinity got bright and loud.”

  There was an ominous creaking sound from somewhere beyond and above Thom. I knew the layout of my deli better than I knew my teeth, and I flossed twice every day. That was where the walk-in refrigerator was, the area where Sandy said she saw a flash. As my ears began to clear slightly, I heard something else in that direction: voices. They were faint, like a TV in a hotel room down the hall.

  “You got any enemies, Sandy?” I asked as I felt above my head, like I was doing the wave.

  “Only pigs, cows, and chickens,” she said.

  “Better than moose and squirrel,” I remarked, not sure anyone would get my Rocky and Bullwinkle reference or would be in a frame of mind to laugh even if they did. I was just trying to amuse myself; it was either that or be really, really terrified.

  There was nothing above my head and, with my hands still above me, I started to get to my feet. That was when my fingers touched exposed iron. I stopped. It was slanted down, toward where Thom was lying. I touched it gingerly, felt around it. Powdery shmutz came flying off and I turned my eyes away. Not that I could see anything in the pitch dark; I just didn’t want to get anything in them. I resumed my search and felt something that made me very, very unhappy. It was rubber. With treads.

  A vehicle was sitting above us. That answered the question about what had plugged the rabbit hole into which we’d tumbled. Strangely calm, I moved my fingers along the tire toward one side until I reached a bent exhaust pipe. Simultaneously, I listened for some kind of dripping sound, trying to determine whether the gas tank had been punctured. I didn’t hear anything, didn’t smell anything, was hopeful that it wasn’t quietly running down the chassis. It occurred to me then to step back, out from under it. I did so by feeling behind me with my feet. Inside my head, I heard Thom’s voice saying, “Lawsy.” I wondered if she’d somehow sent the thought, that there were other people. I was going to have to circle around quickly and make certain that everyone else was out from under it, including anyone who might be unconscious. As I began walking sideways, feeling my way with the side of my right foot, I heard another sound I wasn’t happy to hear: a groaning from the direction I knew the walk-in refrigerator to be. I took some comfort in the distant voices, not just because it meant that there were people up there but because whatever happened had apparently been localized in and around the kitchen.

  I reached Thom first. Or rather, my foot did. I knocked into what felt like the top of her head. I heard heavy breathing and said her name.

  “I’m here,” she told me in gasps.

  “Okay—just relax as best you can.”

  She wheezed in response.

  I felt above her. There was a fender. “Thom, is there anything on top of you?”

  “The kitchen table, I think,” she replied.

  “I’m going to try and move you before God gets around to throwing the kitchen sink,” I said.

  “Don’t—don’t blaspheme,” she said with a wince in her voice.

  “Sorry.”

  “Gwen? Is that you?”

  I stopped moving. “Candy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you have your phone?” I asked.

  “No,” she said. “I was coming back to ask you about something.”


  “You left your phone somewhere?” I said. Whenever I saw her, on the air or off, that thing was glued to her palm.

  “I did,” she said defensively.

  And then I understood. “You left it recording, hoping to catch Ms. Pearl saying something damaging.”

  She was silent. That was uncommon so I was obviously correct.

  Ah, Candy, I thought. Even without the tricks, and entirely by chance, the newshound finally had her big right-place, right-time story.

  “Are you in any pain, danger?” I asked.

  “I’m pinned, but I seem to be intact.”

  “All right—sit tight.”

  “I had my phone but it seems to have fallen from my pocket,” Sandy said. “I’m trying to find it. Tough to do that by feel.”

  I didn’t bother to ask Luke for his phone. By mandate from the boss, he kept it in his jacket on the coatrack. I did that so he wouldn’t be tempted to text Dani while he worked.

  Suddenly, a white light winked on behind me. I took in the scene displayed in harshly shadowed illumination before turning. I saw Thom covered with white dust, the table sprawled top-down across her waist. I didn’t see any blood but she was breathing very, very heavily. Her head was under the fender. I saw Sandy with her feet about four feet beneath the passenger’s side wheel of her delivery van, which is what the vehicle sitting above us was. It was lying at an angle, the higher side being the one I’d touched first. Luke was safely off to the side. I looked back to where the cell phone light originated. I couldn’t see who was behind it.

  “Who’s there?” I asked.

  The speaker turned the light on himself. It showed a lean, smooth face with high cheekbones and deep-set eyes capped by a spray of curly brown hair. He looked to be about thirty.

  “Name’s Benjamin,” he said. “I’m here on vacation. I was in the restroom, just drying my hands on your quaint pull-towel and about to head out. I heard a bang and fell backward when the floor did.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Seem to be. Toes and fingers work.”