Dine and Dash

The Secretary ordered a third margarita much to The Waitress’ delight. Drunk women on their own often tipped more. It was a Friday afternoon, that quiet zone between the lunch rush and Happy Hour. The Secretary had arrived at 2:00 p.m., having just been laid off due to “company cutbacks”. She couldn’t bear the thought of going home to an empty apartment, empty fridge, and empty days ahead. The cheap Mexican restaurant located in the parking lot of a strip mall always had its heavy red curtains shut to the world so its patrons might forget what awaited them as they downed strong drinks and complimentary chips and salsa.

As The Waitress set the drink in front of this woman who seemed to be about her age, she felt suddenly envious of her carefree Friday afternoon. The Waitress had been working several extra shifts in order to save money for her son’s birthday at the end of the month. He was turning six and she wanted to give him his first real party at Chuck E. Cheese, complete with a big ticket gift—his first bike. She was only halfway towards her goal and had less than two weeks to get there. So she wanted to make sure her customer was happy and cared for. Especially this one with her manicured nails and tailored business suit.

The Secretary looked at her drink and tried to rationalise its cost. She decided she was celebrating the end of one chapter of her life and the anticipation of a new beginning. Never mind that she hadn’t bothered saving for a rainy day, that all her salary went to clothes, beauty salons, and drinks. Never mind that she hadn’t seen the axe coming or even noticed her head was on the block. All that stuff about poor performance was bullshit. She’d find a better job and at least she wasn’t a waitress. She took a long drink and reached for the laminated menu sitting at the edge of the table.

The Waitress was in a dark corner near the bar, rolling silverware into paper napkins and chatting with the cook. She saw The Secretary grab the menu and felt relieved. There was a sadness lurking around The Secretary and The Waitress didn’t want to deal with the emotional aftermath of a woman drinking on an empty stomach.  

The Secretary ordered a bowl of chilli con carne and a side of flour tortillas. And another margarita. The Waitress told the cook the order and he groaned, saying the stuff they had was three days old and “getting nasty”. He said he’d liven it up with some extra meat and freshly grated cheese.

The Waitress put down the brightly decorated ceramic bowl of steaming food and the margarita and asked if The Secretary wanted anything else. Luckily she didn’t, as a couple walked in and sat at the opposite end of the restaurant. The Waitress looked at her watch and realised she would be getting the Friday Happy Hour crowd soon with their khaki pants, back slapping, and loud laughter.

The Secretary unfolded the foil and took out a soft steaming tortilla and tore off a bit. She dipped it into the pot of gooey brown and orange and took a bite. At first it scalded her tongue but as she smelled the food, it occurred to her she’d smelled something like it many times growing up. Cat food. To be sure it wasn’t just the sharp contrast with the margarita, she blew on another bit of dunked tortilla and took a bite. Unmistakable. Pungent, slightly fishy, and strangely gelatinous. She took a big drink of the margarita and contemplated what to do.

She’d been wronged. Laid off for no good reason and now served cat food. There was no way she was going to pay $7.95 for a bowl of slop. In fact, she wasn’t going to pay for any of it. What right do they have to charge her double the price in the afternoon while the Happy Hour crowd paid less? Why was she being punished for not having a job during the day? It was totally unfair. She finished her drink.

A couple more tables had wandered in and The Secretary knew The Waitress was in the kitchen filling plastic baskets with free chips to bring them. She made her move. She took out a $1 bill and put it under her glass as though she were settling her bill and quickly left the booth. Outside, she started running despite the heat, her heels, and feeling nauseous.  

When The Waitress saw the meagre bill sitting on the table, she felt her body go hot. She silently walked into the kitchen and in the calmest tone asked the cook to take out the drinks to her tables. She had calculated that The Secretary’s tip would be half a pizza or some tokens for the kids. Now, she was looking at using half her day’s wages to pay the tab the privileged white bitch left behind. Getting into her car, she knew the woman would be headed to the bus stop to get a bus to the trendier part of town where she likely lived.

When The Waitress screeched to a halt beside her, The Secretary stumbled to the car and got in. She didn’t look at The Waitress or apologise. She sat with her hands folded and quietly said she needed to go to the ATM. She withdrew two $100 bills and gave one to The Waitress. She took it, knowing it was twice what was needed and not caring. Rich people always threw money at problems.

When The Waitress later got in her car and saw the withdrawal slip and its balance of $5.16, she felt neither pity nor regret. For the first time in a long time, she felt grown up. Smiling, she drove home imagining the feeling of stuffing the bills into the coffee can and kissing her son goodnight.

 

The Elephant in the Room

Chad had no idea why he had chosen to break up with Ashley as they bounced and swayed on an elephant in a southeast Asian jungle. It didn’t occur to him that once the break had been made, they’d have to bounce and sway back to the minivan, where they’d bounce and sway back to the hotel and then sit rigidly cramped together for the 14-hour flight back home. Had he thought of those obvious consequences, he might have waited until they were safely re-embedded in their natural habitat in 17A Driscoll Lane.

Maybe it was the way she had laid her body on the elephant, hugging it and telling it what an “amazing and good boy” it was. Or how her face seemed to be stuck in a permanent grin since they’d climbed the bamboo bench perched atop the creature, how she nearly bent in half giving a “wai” to the confused young boy who sat shirtless and shoeless on the elephant’s neck with a small whip.

They’d been in Thailand for 3 days and Chad thought if she didn’t stop smiling and saying the word, “amazing”, he was going to have to kill her.

Ashley had been dreaming of this trip for a year and when they finally booked all the flights and hotels, she talked about it as if it were the last thing she would ever do. Given Chad’s feelings about her on the trip, perhaps It would be. There was a map on the fridge with places they were going highlighted in a coding system far too complicated for Chad to feign interest in. Guidebooks towered on her bedside table with post-it notes protruding from all directions and he’d been forced to watch at least 20 clips of other people’s badly shot vacation footage on youtube.

On the front door of their apartment hung a huge brightly coloured poster of “Ashley & Chad’s Bucket List”, so that he was able to see it when he left in the morning and the first thing when he returned and hung up his jacket. Ride an elephant; snorkel over a reef; eat an insect; feed a monkey; ride a train; pray in a temple; eat one new dish a day; ride in a tuk-tuk.

It wasn’t that Chad felt no excitement for the trip. He’d suffered like everyone else through the grey and oppressively wet winter and quite longed for a cold beer on a hot white sand beach. He’d been to Australia and Spain but never any place “exotic” and the thought of eyeing a few Asian beauties surreptitiously from behind his sunglasses filled him with a bit of boyish glee.

As the day drew nearer, Ashley’s squeals, gasps, and gushings became more pronounced, her eyes and smile widened into a permanent state of awe. Chad dreaded getting on the plane and when it did finally lift off into the night sky, he drank a series of rum and cokes and almost became as excited as his companion.

When Ashley finally drifted off while watching a film, Chad closed his eyes and tried to “get inside himself”, a phrase he had always used when he needed to figure out the source of a feeling that lingered like an itch. More specifically, why did the sight of Ashley’s slumped head make him want to stab himself in the eye with a fork?

They had met as most suburban people of their generation did, in a bar. He was struck by her immediately and even impressed himself when he used the rather bloated word, “vivacious” to describe her to his pals. His father, when asking after Ashley, always followed the question with, “That girl lights up a room like a 100-watter!”

She smiled at everyone and everything and had such a natural positive attitude that she didn’t post motivational and inspirational memes like most secretly depressed people do. He liked that. And he needed her energy to shed some light on his flat, grey, miserable soul. But sitting on the plane feeling the rum course through his inactive limbs, he realised he was suffering sunstroke from being with this woman. Where was her darkness or depth of character? Why instead of existential angst on a Sunday afternoon, she was happily folding laundry and making lists of dinners for the week? Why instead of feeling the relentless grind of suburban 9-5 life, she just planned a holiday? Was she the one who had it right and he had his internal perspective all wrong? Had she just been born with the natural gift of mindfulness and the ability to be happy? He realised he hated her.

Tired and overfed on plane food, they stepped into the roaring mugginess of Bangkok. Ashley charmed her way into overpaying 1000 baht on the taxi fare as she chatted with the driver who only understood, “American” and “first time”. 

For the first two days, Chad lived a double life. He let himself be dragged to temples and markets and can be seen smiling in every photo that hasn’t been destroyed from that trip. He fawned over cheap souvenirs and heartily ate every dish placed before him. But inside he was plotting an escape and imagining his new life in a Spartan apartment with a grumpy but loyal Boxer dog. He imagined the pleasure in not having to speak, smile, or muster enthusiasm. He could taste the tanginess of unstructured and unlimited time.

What he didn’t imagine was that Ashley had been having her own fantasies. She had been certain Chad would propose on this romantic, exotic adventure. Every place on her itinerary was a perfect and memorable spot to start the course of a marriage.

So when Chad turned, whispering her name and grasping her hands tightly as they swayed atop the gentle pachyderm, she didn’t catch the wince in his voice. Instead, she giggled and blurted out “Yes of course I’ll marry you!”

And that was the last time he ever saw her smile.

Binaries

I see the familiar café and push the button on my stopwatch. It’s called MishMash even though it’s just a typical café with cakes, tea, and coffee. Though it does serve Guinness carrot cake, and that’s a mishmash of sorts. As I turn the corner where my building is, I hear a loud noise that’s somewhere between a canon and very close thunder.

For a second, I can’t take it in. I can’t make out what I’m seeing like when you’re driving and you’re sure the blob ahead is a dog and then a rock and then a dog. There’s smoke on the side of the building that faces the street. The side where I can watch people enter and exit the antique shop empty-handed and watch a cat in an above apartment watching mine. It’s different. Pockets are empty like a gnawed-on hunk of cheese. There’s people’s stuff on the sidewalk. It looks like a yardsale after a tornado.

I always wondered what I’d do in this type of situation. Turns out, I’d do nothing. I can’t move. I can’t hear. I can’t scream.

I wonder how my flowers are that I put out on the tiny balcony, a balcony that you can’t even stand on, that you can’t even access because only the top part of the window opens. The tiny balconies are a slap in the face, they'll remind you that you’re too poor for a real one. Unless you hang some pots with flowers on its rusting bars. That’ll shut it up and block out the view of the crazies below.

I’m thinking about my flowers and my laptop and the pot of Bolognese (yes, I know it’s “ragu”) I spent seven hours cooking. Patience, low heat, and a bit of sugar are the keys, anyone will tell you.

But of course, what I’m really thinking about in a separate part of my brain is my husband. He’s either in the apartment or he’s running in the park. It’s Saturday morning and these are the only two options. This is the essence of the binary code, how everything works nowadays, a series of 1s and 0s. Inside the apartment. Inside the park.

Saturday mornings are a ritual designed to ensure we can soak up the juices of freedom. We wake early, do all our chores before noon. We have 36 hours of unstructured, unclaimed time. For us.

I open the door. He says, “Have a good run.” I say, “You too.”. He hoovers. He likes the repetitive motion. He especially likes it if there’s some powder to put down first. He likes seeing the powder disappear, each clean rectangular patch is something accomplished. I hate hoovering. The noise knocks around in my head like a frantic fly. It hurts my back and I secretly know it can’t suck up everything.

So he hoovers, I run. Then he runs, and I take a bath. Sometimes our paths cross, he at the beginning of his run, me at the end. We smile and wordlessly high-five, laughing inside at the people who must think it’s a secret runners’ code. Or that we’re crazy.

I didn’t see him today. We didn’t high-five. Our sweaty palms didn’t meet. But again, we don’t always. Sometimes our paths don’t cross. And sometimes he doesn’t feel like running. Sometimes he goes to the gym. And sometimes he just stays inside and reads the internet.

A girl is pulling on my arm. She’s Chinese. Her parents always speak to her in English. Some people think parents should only talk to their children in the language of the country they’re living in, but I feel sad for the mom who probably can’t express herself perfectly.

This girl is yelling in English for me to help her. I know what happened. Her parents went on the lift with the baby and she went down the stairs, delighted with herself that she could beat them. I’ve seen her do it a hundred times before. We all live on the first floor, or second, as I would call it if I were in my own country.

We and the Indian family, the Brazilian students, the Polish bodybuilder, and a family with two children who have the biggest brown eyes I’ve ever seen. Their mother wears a hijab but I couldn’t tell you which country they come from. Not by looking.

My watch is beeping at me “Do you want to continue?”. I haven’t turned it off. After 90 seconds of inactivity, it threatens to do so if I don’t start moving.

There’s a group of people below the right side of the building. I can’t see my apartment because of the way the street curves. But they’re looking in unison, like at a rock concert, except their arms are stiffly at their sides and not in the air. The people who live on the left side are in a separate group to my left, looking back and forth between their pristine side of the building and the right side, which is bellowing smoke and screams.

People are running in and out of the building. The girl tells me her mommy and daddy are in the elevator and I tell her it’s ok. I walk her to the left-side group. I don’t know what we might see if we go the other way. Body parts? People jumping from the 5^th floor? My flowers blown to smithereens?

Two minutes. He’s either in the apartment or he’s running in the park. Apartment. Park. Apartment. Park. I’m talking out loud. The girl looks at me strangely but holds my hand tighter.

I hear other binary conversations. Gas explosion. Terrorism. Right side. Left side. We’re ok. They’re not. I hear sirens and I hear wailing. They are not the same, but it isn’t the first time figures of speech got it wrong.

He’s usually back 30 minutes after me. He’ll find me with the Chinese girl. We’ll live better. A new binary. Before this. And after.

 

Advanced English

Ellen stared at the list until the letters began to blur and swirl. She was faintly aware of the others around her giggling excitedly and those who cursed under their breath. But no one, save her, was frozen in place, on the verge of collapsing into sobs. Her last year of high school and she had been relegated to study Shakespeare and Steinbeck alongside future mechanics and dishwashers. But it wasn’t the thought of hearing Atticus Finch’s courtroom speech read aloud in a faltering monotone that made her want to rip her heart out and stamp it out of its misery. It was that he hadn’t chosen her. Despite her impressive grades and impassioned essay on how Lady Chatterley and Elizabeth Bennett were the worst anti-feminists.

Mr. Shipley, or as the entire female student body referred to him--Mr. Shapely--was the senior Advanced English and Journalism teacher. After school, he traded his khakis and blazer for tight shorts and a polo to coach girls’ tennis. He had the intellect of a Greek philosopher and the body of a Greek god. Girls swooned during his mythology unit, each imagining themselves as Mnemosyne as their teacher narrated the role of Zeus.

Mr. Shipley chose 15 students based on grades and feedback from previous teachers, a writing sample, and an interview. He was known to be strict but fair and only gave two A’s per semester. Students who graduated often said they learned more in his class than any English course at a university. Though Ellen knew how students were chosen, she couldn’t help but feel there was other criteria when she saw the names of the girls who were chosen. Cindy and Sarah were varsity cheerleaders and National Honor Society members and probably had 27 other undiscovered talents. Eva and Marcy were artists and looked like fashion models rather than the grunged-out druggies the other artists were. Cora was a cellist and though she rarely spoke, her pale white skin and white blonde hair gave her an angelic and mysterious quality. And then there were Jenna and Gemma, the inseparable twins who managed to get away with still dressing alike because their clothes highlighted their spectacular bosoms.

Ellen had no athletic, musical, or artistic accolades and would most likely be described as pleasant, but mousy. Whenever she complained about not being pretty to her mother, her mother replied, “Better to be a Plain Jane than an Igit Bridgette. Or Icky Vicky or Spotty Dotty. And my lovely girl, you’ve got your words. You’re the best writer I know!”

As Ellen continued to stare at the paper on the wall, she wondered why God had given those girls beauty as well as talent and gave her nothing. Why did some people get double and triple helpings and others none? She knew this truth existed in the real world where homeless slept on pavement blocks away from mansions and great kids got cancer while bullies got free rides into college. But at that moment the fact that Mr. Shipley would choose girls based on their looks seemed like the gravest injustice in history. Ellen realised that the only way to not let this kill her was to get revenge.

Since it was 1990 before mobile phones and social media, she had to be creative. The anonymous letter she sent to the principal, superintendent, and PTA contained a detailed account of a series of lurid acts between a teacher and his star students. The accusation was simple: to be granted entrance into Mr. Shipley’s class, a girl had to be willing to grant something in return. The letter was concise, with just the right balance of diplomacy and outrage. It seemed to be drafted by a lawyer of a parent. Ellen thought it her best piece to date.

What Ellen didn’t know and couldn’t have known was that Mr. Shipley did indeed have an inappropriate relationship. But with only one student—a feisty girl in her last semester who’d already been accepted into a journalism program on the west coast. When Mr. Shipley was confronted quietly in a room full of the school district’s VIPs and lawyers, he assumed, “the inappropriate behaviour” he was being questioned about referred to Tonya and he quickly confessed to everything. The committee, now believing he was seducing the pupils in multiple classes, asked incredulously, “How can you live with yourself knowing you’ve sullied so many young girls’ lives?”

Mr. Shipley, thoroughly confused and exhausted from the unburdening, stammered, “What do you mean? There’s only Tonya.” And adding as the reality of her impending departure surfaced yet again, “There will ever only be Tonya.”

As he became more aware of the actual accusations being brought against him, he became both terrified and indignant. The more he protested, the guiltier he sounded and he was put on unpaid leave until a full investigation could be carried out.

The girls, of course, denied everything. A buzz spread throughout the school as to why Mr. Shipley was suddenly absent. At first, theories ranged from suicide, to murder, and some even believed he was having an affair with the principal himself.

The girls on the list and those in his current journalism class created an unauthorized “special edition” of the school newspaper. Included were poems and essays detailing the merits of Mr. Shipley’s teaching and the injustice of the accusations. The best articles were from the seven females who were profoundly insulted that the school officials would so quickly believe that the only way they would be eligible for an advanced class was by getting on their knees in front of a man.

Ellen quietly watched the event blossom into chaos, marvelling at how she could set something so big into motion. Yet, as she sat on her bed one night reading a copy of the newspaper, she realised something that would colour every decision and moment for the rest of her life.

“I really wasn’t good enough to be in that class.”

The Purge

Lisa sat on a dust covered wicker chair and examined the boxes around her, printer paper box shaped tree rings. The topmost was easily sorted through—bowls, knife and utensil sets, and the odd garlic press or grater—mostly the domestic aftermath of the dissolution of a one-year marriage. They’d waited patiently in these boxes while Lisa searched for and lost herself in exotic locales. Now that she’d returned, their fate was to wait for a new home on the shelves of Goodwill.

She’d wanted so much to want the life she willed into existence that year. The mortgage, stable jobs with 401K plans, her own car and car space in a garage. But the life came with an actual person included, and out of kindness to him, she ended the charade as painlessly as she could.

The next layer of boxes acquired in her college years contained essays written in the lifting fog of drug-fuelled parties, ticket stubs and brochures of random tourist places that were always seen as a lark rather than what they really were—a way to put off the future, if only for a few hours. Bottle caps and scrawled upon napkins that were talisman of moments she had felt she was fitting into her skin just right. The papers, the detritus of short-lived romances, and bug-ridden obsolete textbooks were dumped into a growing black garbage bag.

She had four days to remove her belongings from her mother’s attic before a new family moved in and crowded the spaces with their own memories and rubbish. Since she had moved half way around the world, she had repeatedly told her mother to throw out, donate, or sell all of it, mostly out of a desire to not face the boxes or the visit. Now that her mother had finally down-sized to a tiny apartment, she herself was forced to get rid of 30 years of accumulated treasure and begged Lisa for help.

Lisa put one box to the side, simply marked “Dad”, knowing that if she opened that one, she’d never finish. She then tackled the most battered boxes, some covered in stickers which still sparkled and if smelled closely, emanated a faint scent of grape and strawberry. These items had been handled hundreds of times when she was in her teens but rarely looked at in the last several years. There was the plastic tub of folded triangles, containing declarations of never-ending friendship and recycled gossip. There were brown stubs of corsages, rocks, shells, single earrings, and a mother of pearl handled knife found on a day she and four other girls skipped Chemistry and walked the four miles to the river. There were diaries with broken locks which contained poems that were much too sad for the purple and pink heart-filled pages. These bits and bobs went without protest to the bottom of the plastic bag where they instantly seemed to lose their magic.

She surveyed the small dusty room, noting that the bags of rubbish far outweighed the Goodwill piles. She tried not to take it as a sign that there was little worth to her life up to this point. Sighing, she drew the lone small box near her feet. She had never opened the box since filling it the day after the funeral. She’d been told to take whatever she wanted but it was obvious most of the treasures had been chosen long before her plane had arrived. It felt somewhat barbaric, like they were all a bunch of scavengers pecking at the remains of his personality.

At the top were coasters from pubs he’d frequented when he lived in London. Seeing them always made her think of cosy wooden booths, old Victorian carpets, the clanking of heavy glass mugs and his infectious laugh. When he was gone, she’d watch “Only Fools and Horses” on PBS and imagine that he was there, just off camera, maybe telling a funny story.

Nestled in a silver stein were small, greying plastic bags filled with coins, each bag from a different country he’d visited or worked in. Whenever he returned from a trip and added new coins to the stein, he sang David Bowie’s “Changes”, leaving off the -s. He showed her each coin, making up stories about what he’d bought---a sandwich for a tiger in China, a two-pound bratwurst in Munich, a newspaper for the Queen in London, taxi fare on the Amazon in Brazil. She’d beg for details and laugh and squeal until the sadness of him having been gone faded away.

Stories of faraway places became less frequent as she grew older and he travelled less. Conversations focused on algebra and college entrance exams. She wanted to spend a year travelling while he insisted she get a degree first, preferably in some field that had actual job prospects.

Pulling out the baggies of coins, the regret seeped in. The way she’d ploughed through her four years of schooling, ignoring his calls and emails out of resentment and spite. And the worst—leaving him on his own in the campus town so she could celebrate her graduation by getting high with people she barely knew. Though she didn’t have much, she’d give everything just to sit and chat with him again. Even if for ten minutes.

At the bottom of the stein was a folded piece of paper she’d never seen before. Opening it, she immediately recognized the imperfect scrawl.

“Your world is a big place. See it. But know that you are MY world and always will be.”

She’d placed the stein and its coins in the donation pile, hoping that some kid might be inspired to see where they’d come from. As she and her mother looked around the rooms and locked the doors for the last time, they both smiled, feeling the lightness of new beginnings. On the plane, Lisa folded and unfolded the note, marvelling at how something so small could be too big to throw away.

The Slice

When Mikey died the other ex-pats were surprised to realise that out of all the lies, the fact that he wasn’t really a New Yorker most disappointed them. Everyone had loved Mikey. He was a huge guy with even huger hands and when they hit you on the back with a “how yous doin’?”, you were “in”--even the curmudgeonly Chester whom nobody wanted to pat on the back let alone embrace in a long held bear hug. Mikey had a permanent growth of stubble and deep blue eyes with lashes so long the Thai girls swooned with love and jealousy. Though he was a big guy whose former muscles had turned a bit soft, he never seemed to sweat in the heat. A scent of aftershave and soap trailed him, even after a long session of drinking.

Mikey had arrived with a Harley and one suitcase three years prior and soon had set up The Slice, a small pizzeria with an actual wood burning stove imported from China and beers from Belgium. He sold slices, which the Thais ruined with lashes of mayonnaise and fake crab reluctantly offered for free. The ex-pats filled up a long table and ate an entire pizza as they went through the night, a new slice with each new beer. And all the while, Mikey and his infectious laugh and banter kept the night going. When people left the table at The Slice either to fall into a long blissful sleep or to frequent the shadier locales, it was with a sense of camaraderie and brotherhood. Mikey and his loveable New York accent and Italian-American hospitality made him the heart of the mostly unhappy and depraved bunch.

Everyone who found themselves in the tiny gulf-side town had a story and it was a rite of passage to eventually give the narrative, often in the hours before dawn long after beer had been replaced by whiskey. Mikey’s story involved vague references to the war in Iraq and a book that had sold well. Though the story was generally accepted, more than a few people thought it strange that Mikey seemed uninterested in any topics beyond sport, motorcycles, and comedy. They figured he had mob ties and had escaped with someone else’s money or was even perhaps in a witness protection program.

Many people asked to read the book. After all, there wasn’t much more to do than drink. Mikey just laughed and said he didn’t own a copy and that it would probably put them all in a coma if they found one, which they wouldn’t “on account of I used a fake name.” On the contents of the book, he was even more close-lipped. “No way I’m going down that memory lane. Life is the here and now.” And then he’d ring a bell which meant that everyone would get a beer on the house.

Mikey’s big heart, which organised charity rides for the region’s orphans and made even the most cynical of the ex-pats smile, failed him on a particularly hot day when the lads were playing basketball against a group of nimbler Thai teens. He wasn’t on social media and only used email to order products for The Slice, so the consulate in Bangkok had a bit of work in tracking down his next of kin, who showed up three days later in the form of a travel-weary fidgety man named John.

John had managed to contact someone in the group and met them in the hotel bar. After the requisite questions about the flight and the accommodation, they began lobbing questions at the wiry man.

“Why did you call Mikey ‘Martin’ in your email?”

“Mikey? Is that the name he used this time? I always preferred Vinnie. More ethnic sounding. Mikey sounds like an adult retard.”

“What are you on about?”

“Which story did he tell you? Ex-baseball player who lost his career after an injury? Former pilot for a drug cartel? Or was it that he donated a kidney to an oil tycoon? That was my favourite.”

At this point, John was twirling his empty glass between his hands and his leg seemed to be shaking uncontrollably. He didn’t look at any of the men as he spoke.

“Martin is my younger brother. We’re from Iowa. He was a welder like the old man. I escaped to New York. Parents were killed by a drunk semi-truck driver. They didn’t even see it coming. We got a huge settlement. More than two guys in their 20s would know what to do with.”

“Are you taking the piss? Mikey’s from fucking Iowa? But the accent? And what about Iraq?”

At the mention of Iraq, John became very still and looked at the man with two empty eyes.

“He said he was in Iraq? That surprises me.”

“Why did he lie to us?”

“Why do any of us do what we do?”

John had agreed to let Martin/Mikey be cremated in the local temple. After the long service in which more than a few Thai women cried and huddled near the body, the ex-pats sat at plastic tables in the courtyard in their finest clothes drinking their finest whiskey. They cried at the double loss of their friend and their trust. John was nowhere to be seen.

The ex-pats eventually got on with their lives, finding a new table to gather round at the end of each workday and trying to create the bonhomie they’d once had. One day, Nigel came in, carrying a book and looking paler than usual.

“The book was real. And it wasn’t about Mikey. It was about John”

There he was on the back cover, huge arms folded and serious expression that fit the synopsis about a man from New York whose older brother went to Iraq, came back mentally ill, and destroyed the family.

“I knew he was bonkers! But why did we believe that stuff about Mikey?”

“Why do any of us do what we do?”

Cooking the World

It was unusual in the 1980s for a father to have sole custody of a child, especially a girl of 8. But there they were, two abandoned strays navigating the strange new space between them.

Marty started with TV gameshows. Figuring “Wheel of Fortune” was age appropriate and somewhat educational, he tried to bribe her with treats if she could guess the words. Ellen sat stiffly on the sofa, tight-lipped, even when the answers were painfully obvious.

He brought home two Barbies, not knowing if she’d prefer one with blonde hair like her mom’s or dark hair like her own.

“Dad!  Barbies minus the ‘r’ spells Babies! I’m not a baby!!”

“Aha! I knew you could spell!” Marty said, grinning at his scowling daughter.

They played checkers but she expressed no joy when winning and after three games, asked quietly if she could go to her room. He bought coloured paper and art supplies; he tried nail polish and My Little Ponies. He presented her with stickers and Smurfs and a Lightbright, but with each mumbled “thanks,” she seemed more haunted.

He took her to the re-release of Bambi and had to carry her out as her sobs, “I want my mommy!” were clearly disturbing the other people in the audience. Their looks confirmed his failure as a parent. At night after she went to bed, politely declining a story, he sat in his armchair, head in his hands, fighting the urge to both cry and punch the wall.

One Saturday afternoon, she came to him, holding a dusty rolled-up map.

“What’s this?” Feeling encouraged by the slight sound of enthusiasm in her voice, he exclaimed,

“This, my little Chickpea, is the map I had when I was a great explorer!”

Marty had been travelling in Europe when he’d called home and discovered he needed to make an honest woman out of Ellen’s mother, who years later turned out to be incapable of honesty. He used the money he’d saved for Asia and Africa to pay for a simple wedding and shortly before Ellen was born, got a job on the production line of the big valve factory.

He showed Ellen his route from Istanbul to Italy.

“I was here,” he pointed to the Naples dot, “when I found out about you. I was so excited to meet you that I got on the first plane and flew here.” For the first time in months, Ellen focused her eyes on his and smiled. He noticed that her dimples were becoming deeper like all the girls in his family.  He forgave himself the lie.

“What was it like to go to all those places?”

He dug out a box and showed her the stack of photos he’d taken during those two months. The Blue Mosque, the ancient Greek ruins, the narrow streets of Napoli, and all that blue sea. And the food! He felt like an idiot at the time, but seeing the pictures brought back all the flavours of herbs, fresh ripe tomatoes, peppery olive oil.

She looked at each picture a dozen times, asking questions that showed an intelligence and curiosity he didn’t know she had.

“I wish I could go to all these places.”

He then got an idea that would change everything for this tiny adrift family.

“Here throw this at the map.”

Holding her small hand in his, he aimed a dart at the map he’d hung on the wall of the kitchen. It stuck in Brazil.

“Ok, now we’re going to the library and we’re going to learn about this country and cook something special to make us feel like we’re there. What do you say?” Ellen smiled and ran to grab her shoes.

That night they sat together over steaming bowls of feijoada and Marty hid the stinging behind his eyes as his daughter animatedly recounted every fact she’d learned about the country.

Ellen had no fear of strange ingredients. She gnawed on raw lemongrass as they made curry for “Thailand night”; she peeled the heads and shells off of king prawns to make the rougaille when she’d hit Mauritius. She’d struck Milan and was amazed at the transformation of the risotto as she patiently stirred for 25 minutes as Marty carefully ladled in the stock. One of her favourite nights was when Marty spoke like the Swedish chef from The Muppets as they made their meatballs. “Cook the world night” became sacred.

By the time Ellen was in high school, she knew she wanted to travel the world and become a chef. But she worried about Marty’s health as his body seemed to be failing him despite his young age. His shoulders stooped and his joints were permanently stiff from the daily repetitive action at the factory. Everything took him more time—breaking an egg, flipping a crepe, mincing garlic. He had a chronic cough and often fell asleep before 9:00.

She couldn’t shake the thought that something was going to happen to him while she was in some jungle in Asia. Secretly vowing to care for him forever, she registered for the culinary program at the community college. The world would be waiting there for short trips after she got a job in a local restaurant.

For Ellen’s high school graduation, they made a Turkish feast of grilled koftes, hummus, eggplant puree, rice pilaf, and stuffed vegetables, hoping it was enough like an American barbecue to not put off the relatives, whose idea of ethnic cuisine was sweet and sour pork from Panda Express or Taco Tuesday.

When it came time to open the gifts, envelopes of money, Chicken Soup for the Soul, and a few cookbooks, she opened her father’s gift last. Inside was a crisp, white apron and in the pockets, something Ellen both yearned for and dreaded.

“No, I can’t.”

Clutching the plane ticket to her chest, she sobbed in her father’s arms as he whispered into her ear, “It’s time to really cook the world, my little Chickpea.”