"You have to get the cucumbers from the fridge. Go ask Palio to help you. We need the whole box."
You may read that as a single sentence, but Big Berto punctuated each period with breaths. Big fat breaths pushed out of his chubby, lovable fat face while his huge broad belly worked to get the breath out. He loved food and his girth reflected it.
The typical, fat happy Italian chef.
The restaurant that I worked in the middle of the city was a tiny, 10 table bistro in an enclave of secrets. There was no crime here. No police. No one who could be considered a stranger. A neighborhood restaurant where money never exchanged hands and to as Berto described it "We open when we open - and we close... when they say okay?" And that was my interview, that's how I became a waitress here.
My family found this apartment with oddly cheap rent on my first day of college. They found it by eating here. Berto doted over my mother, kissing her hands and describing in the most meticulous detail each and every plate her personally brought over to her. She chided him and rebuffed him playfully, all the while blushing in the glow of his affection. It was embarrassing.
When I was in college, I worked here whenever they needed me. I would get a call to come in and I would just go. It seemed the kind of place that you wouldn't say 'no' to - but you'd never regret. Sometimes I'd get a call at 5:30 pm, other times at 11 pm, more than once it was at 2 am.
But these obligations always had a wonderful unexpected enjoyment about them. Of course, I'd grumble and complain a little to myself but by the time the first course was served, the dining area took on a romantic, sensual, and lovely sort of glow. I would literally see couples fall in love again here. Unlikely ones, men with polyester collars with old, moldy wives would become soft and loving, the middle-aged dining dead would awaken, see their spouses as if it was the first time once more and drink a little too much and laugh their way out the door. I once saw a young couple, perhaps on their sixth date, suddenly realize they would live their lives together, I was there, I saw the moment when it happened. Those are just the kind of things that happened there.
But it could also make a girl feel a little left out.
I started college wanting to be every girl's dream - a doctor. The cadavers had other plans. I swung broadly to end of the spectrum and decided to become a nutrionist; helping without needing to cut someone open. Food would be my medicine. But I ended college not in some graceful leap of certainty into the future but more skidding into the boards in a messy, bloody heap - I graduated with the unique degree of Culinary Science. It was pointed out to me by my graduate counselor that with my degree I could cook placenta, safely identify (not cut mind you) a poisonous blowfish, or determine the sex of a chic. I was going places.
The restaurant was always there and strangely, I always seem to have enough money. I wasn't swimming in it but I wasn't drowning either. I was content in my city life, lonely but happy to see such love happen over candlelight. Big Berto breathlessly called it "a happy life." I grudgingly agreed.
But Palio... oh Palio. Yes, It was a strange name. I think it meant horse. But he was no horse. He was beautiful. Brooding. Secretive. If the restaurant was a dish he would be that unknown spiced that you savored and craved months after. That flavor that would sit on your mouth and lips and would awaken you on hot nights wondering when you could go back to that secret place, have that dish, and savor that moment all over again. Yes, that was Palio.
Plenty of workers came through the kitchen. Some would work for a few days, a few weeks, a few months and then they would disappear without a goodbye. There would be another that would take their place. Berto would address them by role, "go ask the line cook" or "go ask the guy that cleans the plates." Palio was the only one that he addressed by name, making him more of an enigma, more exotic - more of a temptation.
But Palio wanted nothing to do with me. His long muscular body would float past me on the way to the far side of the kitchen. Wild, gypsy black hair covering his face but his broad pouty lips. His face would be gaunt and tired, I did not know what he did before or after his time in the kitchen, he neither spoke nor acknowledged a single person but Berto. This somber, tortured man. I burned for him.
"Hello Palio, I need help with a box of cucumbers." I said from the far side of the kitchen.
He turned to acknowledge me and I felt immediately exposed. I was tempting a wild feral animal. I tensed and waited for his sinewy body to lunge upon a piece of raw bloody meat. I forgot my breath. I had treated this all so lightly, now I realized I had not thought it through.
"Which box of cucumbers?" he raked his hair back from his tense, tired eyes.
"I don't know."
"Come here."
I watched myself from far away as I walked obediently towards him as his muscular arms rippled and tensed opening the heavy walk-in refrigerator door.
He had stood aside as the smell of frosty of cold vegetables washed over me. Herbs. Peppers. Tomatoes. Meat. Brought in every day to be packed into the silver box and readied for that night's plates.
I fought an inhibition to swing an arm over my nipples that were hardening from the cold.
Palio acknowledged none of it.
"Look. There are two."
I walked in and did see two boxes, one on the top shelf and one on the bottom.
"Is one better than another."
"They are both good. Let me show you."
We went in together and squatted next to the bottom box.
I was closer to him than I ever had been. It was intoxicating. His movements were slow and precise. Nothing wasted or hesitating.
"These are Armenian Cucumbers. They are good for insalata and for eating raw. With raw things like tomatoes or peppers." His long, workman fingers gripped around the shaft of the thing. His hards were wiry and thin with a brush of black hair. I noticed his cologne. A chain on his neck. The Madonna. There was more of the instruction but I did not hear it.
He stood. His body coming to rest with his cock near my face. More of the cologne.
"Stand up? Can I show you?"
"Yes," I said quickly. "Let me just take the box down."
I reached up to grab it hastily and began struggling to pull the heavy box down.
