Only Uni (18 page)

She wasn’t really looking, not when he was the one being all weird with her. She did have to work with him. She could almost think he had forgiven her for dissing him.

She could almost think he was actually interested in her.

FOURTEEN

T
he church kitchen had twenty women and two children in it. One child was getting water from the faucet into a cup. The other child was stuffing Goldfish crackers into a drain pipe in the floor.

The twenty women bustled to and fro, oblivious to the potential havoc caused by Goldfish boy, so Trish nabbed him. He loosed a samurai war screech that brought the smoothly running kitchen to a halt.

Women stared. Trish could read their minds — the tow-headed boy she struggled with was obviously not her own.

She pointed to his hands full of crackers. “He was stuffing these down the drainpipe.”

A blonde mother rushed into the kitchen. “Danny, there you are.” She snatched him away from Trish as if she were a kidnapper.

Trish did the whole cracker and drain pointing thing. The woman laughed. “Oh, you must be mistaken. He was probably trying to get the crackers out of the drain. Now sweetie, how many times have I told you not to put your hand in small dark places? Let’s wash you up.” She exited the kitchen, cooing to her four-year-old.

Trish found herself the center of the entire kitchen’s attention, from the teenagers washing pots in the sink to the grandmothers fighting with each other over the space in front of the stove.

“I’m here to help. Spenser said to show up — ?”

“Yes, yes.” A portly Asian woman stepped forward from where she’d been rooting in a massive set of cupboards. “Spenser told me. You’re Trish?”

She nodded and smiled, but the pale-skinned bulldog face didn’t smile back. “He said you can’t cook.”

Hoo-boy, it was going to be a long Saturday afternoon.

The woman — Kameko, so maybe her faint accent was Japanese? — shooed Trish to the triple sinks next to two perky teenagers, Molly and Mary. “Wash pots.”

Well, she could do that. She attacked the burned bottom of a stock pot with vigor.

She turned to smile at — Molly? Mary? But the girl quickly averted her eyes and resumed chatting with her sink mate. “Did you see Ryan today?”

“Oh, he’s so hot in his server’s uniform.”

“I wish we could have been assigned to serving tables.” She pouted and swished her sponge over a glass bowl.

Her friend scowled at her. “We might have if you hadn’t been flirting so much last year that you dropped the spaghetti on Mr. Romano’s head.”

“I wasn’t flirting! Take that back.”

“Will not.” She thrust out her neck and dropped the frying pan she’d been scouring.

Maybe Trish needed to police them. “What grade are you guys in?”

Two sets of nostrils flared at Trish. “Tenth.” Then the closer girl turned back to her friend. “I’m not going to take it back.”

“What school?” Trish finished the stock pot and took up the girl’s discarded frying pan.

“Belfrey. Who says I even want you to take it back?”

“Do you guys drive yet?”

“No. Are you saying you don’t want to be friends anymore?”

“Got any boyfriends?” Trish started on the pile of cups and tableware in a dishpan.

One girl turned to her. “Like it’s any of your business.” Her head wagged back and forth like a bobblehead doll.

Immature little twit. Trish shrugged a shoulder. “I’m just curious.”

“Well stay out of it.” The girl tossed her long dark hair in a spoiled gesture.

“Guess you don’t want to know about the girl I saw Ryan talking to.” Trish finished the pan of utensils and tackled a stack of plates.

Two wide eyes fastened onto her. “What?” “Who?”

Trish assumed Ryan was the tall, lounging teen she’d spotted in the foyer in a waiter’s black and white. The only one not working. “A cute blonde girl. Gorgeous curls.” Never mind she was only about ten, with an obvious crush he was gently watering with his attention, while she tried to ditch the grandmother she’d walked in with.

“Who is that?”

“I don’t know any girls with curly blonde hair.”

“Unless maybe Shana got a perm and didn’t tell anybody.”

“I bet she would, she’s so sly. She’s always been in love with Ryan.”

“Well, I’m done.” Trish rinsed her last plate and stared at the two girls, still stroking their sponges over their dishes.

One of them scowled as she realized how bad they both looked with their unfinished dishes. “Here.” She shoved her glass bowl in Trish’s direction.

Trish reached out for it without thinking, but then the girl deliberately dropped the bowl onto the floor. The crash echoed off the large stainless steel air vents over the nearby stove.

Kameko bustled up and gave a long, drawn-out sigh. “So clumsy. Good thing the girls were almost done.”

The two teenaged cats smirked.

Kameko didn’t notice. She grabbed Trish’s arm. “Come, I have something else for you to do.”

The two girls facetiously waggled their fingers at Trish as Kameko turned away. Trish bared her teeth at them. They jumped.

Kameko tossed a command to the teens over her shoulder. “One of you clean up the glass.”

Ha!

Kameko set Trish to chopping onions. This was going to ruin her manicure. She’d even splurged and gotten three little crystals on each thumbnail this time.

The onion skins were terribly slippery under the dull kitchen knife. She went slowly.

A woman came and swiped Trish’s chopped onions into a bowl, then whisked back to the stove and threw them in a frying pan with a hiss. The peppery odor of fajitas filled the kitchen.

“Faster!” Kameko roared in her ear. She chopped faster. The knife slipped. Red blossomed onto the cutting board.

“Aaaiyeeeeee!” Trish dropped the knife with a clatter. She whirled as she jerked her hand toward her chest, splattering blood all around. A few drops melted into the chopped carrots on the cutting board of the woman next to her.

The woman turned to Trish. “Are you okay? It doesn’t look too bad, but boy is that a gusher. I’ll get the first-aid kit.”

Trish dealt with reagents all day, but not blood. Certainly never
her
blood. The room started to spin around her. Her forefinger throbbed, and a headache slammed into her forehead, pulsing with the rapid beat of her heart. She was going to bleed to death . . .

“Let me see.” Kameko grabbed her hand, enveloping her finger in a huge dishcloth.

She squeezed so tight, Trish expected her finger to pop off her knuckle. “Owowowow!”

Kameko gave her a disgusted look from her dark eyes. “Hold still.” She smoothed her other hand over her straight dark hair, pulled painfully back from her temples into a colorful be-ribboned clip.

“Um . . . Kameko?” One of the other women called out while peering into one of the nearby stand mixers. “This cookie dough looks strange.”

Kameko bustled over, unfortunately still holding onto Trish’s finger so she had to stagger after her. “What’s wrong?”

“Is it supposed to be this pink color?” The woman held up a glob of sugar cookie dough the color of a blush rose petal.

Kameko frowned. “No.” Then she looked down at Trish’s captured finger.

Trish peeked back at her onion chopping station and noted the blood splatter around the board. Including the stand mixer in its circumferential area.

Kameko’s glare was fierce enough to bake the cookies without an oven. “Toss the batch.” She spoke to the woman but kept eye contact with Trish.

The woman’s eyebrows wrinkled. “Why? What’s in it?”

“Biohazard.” Trish piped up.

Kameko growled.

Trish shut up. She was only trying to help. “Biohazard” sounded much better than “blood.”

“Oh, and the carrots probably got some, too.” She pointed with her free hand.

Kameko rolled her eyes to the ceiling and said something in Japanese that Trish couldn’t quite catch. Then she yanked on Trish’s arm. “You are a menace to my kitchen.” She propelled her across the busy space, bouncing her off a few women working, and shoved her toward the door. “I will get you a Band-Aid, and then you will go home.”

“But I came to help.” Trish almost swallowed her words as the woman pushed her toward the church office down the hall. “Are you sure this isn’t too serious? I might need stitches — ”

“I’ll drive you to the ER myself if you will stop ruining the food.” Kameko fumbled with a set of keys to the office door.

The background din from the social hall had always been a soft roar — probably due to all the elderly parishioners without hearing aids — but it suddenly rose to a football game-worthy ruckus. Kame-ko’s unibrow wrinkled as she turned toward the open social hall double doors. “What’s going on?”

A teen serving girl came running out. “Mr. Carter was complaining.”

“What?”

“He’s okay. He bit down on this.” The girl held out her palm, where something tiny sparkled.

Oh, a crystal. Kind of like the ones on her manicure —

Correction — the ones
missing
from her manicure. From the scrape marks on her thumbnail polish, the onions and the knife probably had something to do with it.

How — ? Oh. The onions the woman had dropped into the fajita pan.

She cleared her throat. “Kameko?”

“What?” Really, the woman didn’t have to snap at her.

“You might want to check the fajitas . . .”

FIFTEEN

O
n Friday evening, Trish drove home, preparing herself for battle. Somehow the “helmet of salvation” described in the Bible seemed inappropriate to deal with a chain-smoking slob and her flea-infested, highly-allergenic furball.

Aside from their tense phone conversations, face-to-face discussion with Marnie resulted in a limpid look and a dispassionate shrug, even when her cat had eaten Trish’s goldfish. She couldn’t understand where the cat kept all the hair it deposited; there was enough fur on the living room couch to clothe three cats and weave a rug.

As a last straw, the entire apartment reeked of cigarettes. The next time the landlord came for his rent check or to deliver a package or to fix the garbage disposal (which still didn’t work), he would discover their secret and they’d be out on the street. Minus the move-in deposit.

Where had her quiet, only slightly messy roommate gone? Where had this stranger come from? She’d been hesitant to lay down any ultimatums because Marnie had been such a good roommate in months past, but lately . . .

Her stomach had been upset all week because of this. She couldn’t take it anymore, although she had to be honest with herself that she appreciated the fact she was eating less because the stress had affected her appetite.

Trish rattled the doorknob as she unlocked it and flicked open the door. A round grey puff on the couch jerked in surprise, then dropped down onto a pizza box, hopped over a dirty plate, slithered through a stack of magazines, leaped over a pile of laundry, and whizzed into Marnie’s open bedroom.

“Marnie, we need to talk!” Trish’s voice cracked, spoiling her dramatic Xena: Warrior Princess pose.

Marnie sauntered out of the bedroom. A cigarette stuck to her bottom lip and rained ashes on the carpet. “About what?”

At the sight of her flaunting her ciggy, Trish shot a hand out to slap the door closed behind her. “Will you put that out?”

She responded to Trish’s tirade with rolled eyes, pursed lips, and a snort of smoke from her nostrils. She turned back into her bedroom and returned sans cigarette.

Trish took a deep breath, but inhaled a combination of acrid smoke and cat hair, and started coughing. At the kitchen sink, she fired water into a glass. “Marnie, that’s it.”

After a fortifying gulp, Trish squared off in the living room. “Anyone who comes up here can smell the cigarette smoke. You have to stop it or find somewhere else to live.”

She let loose a long-suffering sigh. “All right, I’ll smoke outside.”

“You said that last time.”

She gave her a narrowed
What more do you want?
look. “I promise this time, okay?”

“And the cat has to go.” She’d been intending to threaten to give it away herself, but Marnie’s eyes shrank to little black beads, making Trish hesitate.

Even her rounded cheeks looked sulky. “I’ve been keeping him in my room.”

“No you haven’t. He’s been shedding on the couch.”

“It’s not bothering your allergies anymore.”

Trish clenched her teeth and counted to ten.
Don’t get into it. Just lay down the law.
She enunciated each word as if she were crunching glass. “The — cat — has — to — go — tomorrow.”

Then quiet, insolent Marnie exploded into a barrage of Spanish. The peppery words flew at Trish’s face like a flock of birds, startling and flustering her. Thanks to Hispanic friends and her high school Spanish classes, Trish understood some of it. Something about stupid rules, and being chained by a — something she didn’t catch — demanding to know why she couldn’t do what she wanted since she was an adult and independent and — something else.

Then Marnie reverted back to English. “And you. Why can’t you keep quiet about my cat? Why should I abandon my baby? You should be helping me keep him. That would be the
Christian
thing to do.”