Enjoy Your Eggs, Fat Man

 

Todd cleared the dishes, yet again.  These people, these locusts, they just came more and more.  Relentlessly.  Sitting down at his tables to inhale burgers, pizzas, cod fish.  Then, with maybe just a pause for a cigarette, they are off again leaving dirty napkins, half-scraped clean dishes, and filthy change on the table.  Todd kept a sanitizer for the change in his apartment.  There were germs everywhere these days.

“The germs,” Todd continued, “congregate at places where people put their hands most often.  Places like fuel pumps, with all those thousands of grimy hands grabbing that very same pump day in and day out, are a veritable Petri dish of germs!”  

Todd looked out triumphantly over the pigeons.  Not too many people think about the fuel pumps.  Most people focused on bathrooms.  Amateurs, really, as there were so many other places germs could be.  Take public stairway handlebars.  Revolving doors.  Escalator handrails.

Just the thought of it all snapped Todd out of his reverie.  He stopped to wash his hands yet again while Jose, the short order chef, slapped his bell one more time.

“These eggs are getting cold, damn it!”  He bellowed.

QRS, TUV, WX, Y and Z.  Once Todd had finished the entire alphabet, he rinsed his hands of the soap, dried them, and went to pick up the eggs.  They were headed for an unusually loathsome man, fat, bad hair, BCGs (Birth Control Glasses, a term his military uncle had once taught him).  The term BCGs made him laugh, then sneeze, directly into the eggs.  But Todd was halfway through the doors to the seating area and no one saw.  So he kept going.

Enjoy your eggs, fat man.

 

The Novel, Chapter One – Lucy

 

The day of my father’s funeral, was, in some sense, the beginning of my ending, the starting of my stopping.  A father’s funeral, I do realize, is something that many say marks a life, an event for which one prepares a whole lifetime, but something for which one is never prepared enough.  From the second a doctor cuts the baby’s umbilical cord, this parent-child separation begins and just grows more and more until one day you are standing at a graveside.  However, my father’s funeral started something that affected me more than your ordinary funeral, if a funeral can ever be ordinary, affects your ordinary family, if my family could ever be called ordinary.  

Or was that just my hubris?  

I stood next to my sister Saz on that cold foggy morning, watching people put a few final flowers on his grave.  The cool air, marking a Pacific ocean fog somewhere not too far behind us, chilled me as the fog crept closer still.  The graveyard, not too large, was surrounded on three sides by the tall pines of California, the fourth by the road.  Other than that, it was pretty much an ordinary graveyard with an ordinary funeral underway.

When the last person left, I turned with Saz to leave.    What else was I to do?

“That was a lovely ceremony,” Saz sighed as she attempted to pull her coat closed over her enormous belly.  At only five and a half months pregnant, she already pushed the outer limit of maternity clothes.   Regardless, she was beautiful, especially when she smiled.

  “Yeah.  I’m surprised that dad wanted such a traditional ceremony,” I said.  “I would’ve thought he would’ve done something more hippy.”

“Well,” Saz admitted, “I took somewhat of a liberal interpretation on some of dad’s instructions.”  I thought as much.  And that explained the orchids at the church.  Saz always did have exquisite, if not rather expensive, taste.

“Well, it turned out to be a beautiful ceremony, Saz.”  We started to walk, arm in arm, away from the grave.  This walking away strained me more than I would have thought.  I felt each step sever another link with dad.  With each step I hammered another nail into his coffin, sealing him off.  I was glad Saz was leaning on me.  It gave me a reason to be strong.

We made our way through the small crowd departing from the grave over to where Margie stood, staring off at the pine trees that rimmed the graveyard.  

“Hey guys – do you see that top branch of the tree over there?” Margie asked as we walked up.  “I think there was a condor sitting on it.  Do you know those things have wingspans of up to 10 feet across?  How fucking cool is that?  He flew off just a couple of seconds ago.  He went that way.  I’m trying to find him.”

“Margie, it’s time to head over to the lawyer’s office.”

“Can we go to Joe Juniors afterwards?” she asked.  

“Why do you like that disgusting dive diner?” Saz asked.  “The only marginally healthy thing on the menu is their cottage cheese and fruit platter, and even that swims in a bed of grease.”  I had to smile.  Some things never change, and one of them was Margie and her quest for the less fine things in life.

Margie turned around to give her pitch for a clotted artery but, in the process, managed to bump right into a middle aged woman who was walking back to the parking lot.

“Sorry,” Margie mumbled.

“No, the fault is mine,” the woman said with a slight Spanish accent.  “I was not at all watching where I was going.”  I wondered who these unknowns were at our father’s funeral.  There was a whole group of men in dark jackets at the funeral that I did not recognize and now this woman.  Did people just crash funerals?  

“I don’t think we’ve met before,” I said sticking out my hand.  “I’m Lucy Sullivan.  These are my sisters Saz and Margie.  Mac Sullivan was our father.”  

“Well, it’s very nice to meet you.  I am Señora Cortez.  It was most gracious of your family to have me here at the funeral.  I am here representing the Mendez family.  Unfortunately, they couldn’t make it today.”

“Who are they?” Margie asked.

The woman blanched, just for a second, but then regained her composure.  

“Well, this is a bit awkward now.  I thought the lawyers had told you.”

“No,” I said, “our meeting with the lawyers got postponed to this afternoon.”

“My fault,” Saz said, holding up her hands.  “Just call me the nervous first time mommy, but I hadn’t felt the baby move for a while so I got really nervous that something was just, well, wrong, and so had to see a doctor right then.  Everything was fine, thank goodness, but you can never be too careful.”

“Ahh, I see,” said this Mrs. Cortez as she tucked her gloves into the purse hanging from her elbow.  “Congratulations on your pregnancy.  You must be thrilled.  Well, perhaps we should leave this to the lawyers.  Here at the gravesite is not the most appropriate of places to discuss our family business,”

“OUR family business?” Margie said, a bit too loudly.

“Well, yes,” she said.

“How do you know anything about our family?” Margie continued, at least an octave higher.  So loud in fact that a couple, almost at the parking lot, turned around to watch.  I smiled politely at the couple, hating being the center of a little circus act like this, but I had learned a long time ago that shushing Margie would be of little use.  Back at the bank, I could handle a delegation of indignant investors, but my little sister was something else.

“Margie, let’s not create a scene here,” Saz said.  I didn’t think Saz would ever give up on trying to control Margie.   “Let’s give Mrs. Cortez a chance to explain what she meant.”

“I mean,” Margie continued, at least a decibel louder, “it’s like I’m a part of this family and I think I know my family and I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“Well,” Mrs. Cortez replied quite calmly.  “Why don’t you walk with me to my car and I will see what I can explain.”

Thankfully, Margie acquiesced and we fell in step besides this Mrs. Cortez as she walked back to the cars.  The gravel crunched under our feet as we walked.  For a while, I didn’t think she would say anything at all, just silently walk to her car in her tall dignified manner and drive off, leaving us there quite confused.

“So,” she finally said.  “Your father Mac was a wonderful man.  I met him years ago when he came down to Mexico on business.” She paused, as if waiting for us to agree that he was indeed a wonderful man.  So I nodded my head in the proper manner to indicate understanding.  

This, by the way, was progress.  The first time someone referred to dad in the past tense, tears just welled up in my eyes and I couldn’t speak for a bit too long.  Somewhat embarrassing, considering I was in Starbucks about to order a double mocha cappuccino.  But by the time of the funeral, I could control myself a bit better.  I guess I was learning to put those feelings for dad in its own little coffin and nail that door shut too.    

“You know how he spent much time down in Mexico for his business?” Mrs. Cortez continued.

“Yeah, dad’s main supplier Frank lived down there,” Margie said.

“Yes, I knew Franco well.  A pity that he died last year.  Another great man.”  She paused again, as if waiting for us to agree that Frank or Franco or whatever she wanted to call him was a wonderful man.  I had never met him but gave the same nod of the head as really, what else could I do given the circumstances?

“Well, Franco also had a sister, Maria Lucia Mendez.  Maria Lucia and your father were very close.  She now has two wonderful children.  Pablo and Angelina.  You would love them.  Angelina even kind of looks like you, Lucy.  She has the same eyes.  They still live in Mexico.”

“Well, Margaret,” she said.  “Let me try and put this another way.  I don’t think you understood what I meant.”  

But I think I did.  It felt as if my world was slipping away from me.   Or perhaps it was me who was slipping.

 

In The Bakery

 

It all started rather innocently, actually.  I mean, no one would expect that Ramone, the new pastry apprentice that had been hired off the ad placed in the Crockett Dailey Gazette, could have had such as impact.  I mean, he seemed like a nice enough fellow, but you never know what can happen once the door to the bakery slides shut and the convection ovens start throwing out their heat.  First, it was minor disputes over music with Victor's country western ballads slowly and inevitably being replaced with Ramon's gothic choir music.  And then there would be the occasional door sliding open and Victor, obviously at the boiling point, stepping out, slamming the door closed, and stalking off to smoke a cigarette before the bread had completed its second rise.  And then, things really started to get weird:  Victor, bellowing at the chef that his pansy-ass meatloaf could not support a dessert as rich and delicious as his rasberry creme brullee.  Victor, chasing the dishwasher around the kitchen with a meat cleaver screaming that his muffic tins still had a greasy residue - an obvious insult to Victor's artwork.  And all the while Ramon stood there silently watching, always watching, from the bakery sliding door.