From Over Easy: A Breakfast Novel
Chapter 1
Emily was amazed at the quantity and variety of hands that reached down to pull her to the safety of the subway platform: Slim fingered, square, manicured, callused, grotesquely jeweled, plump, and arthritically knuckled. She was momentarily confused by the undulating reef of Brooklyn generosity and used this as an opportunity to stumble several paces to the left. Uncoincidentally, this turned out to be directly underneath a pair that looked as if they might be attached to the gentleman at whom she’d been surreptitiously gawking before she’d tumbled down onto the train tracks. Her instincts did not disappoint.
While the rest of the late morning commuters busied themselves inquiring as to her well being and shooting hostile glances toward the huddle of puffy coated truants who’d been joking near her just pre-plunge, she stared blankly at the chin cleft of the man brushing what subway soot he could from her shoulders.
“You’re fine, I take it,” said the mouth above.
“Yes…thank you…I just tripped…I’m…”
“You need a snack. I can tell. C’mon.” He grabbed her hand, which was just beginning to tremble now that approaching train rumbles were starting to fill the politely hushed station.
“Yeah…how’d you…” She stopped and opted instead be towed closed mouthed through the solicitous crowd. The man's movements were efficient, and his broad wool coat-clad shoulders blocked out a barrage of curiosity.
“Miss, are you… Girl, you trippin’… I saw the whole thing if you need a wit… Those animals should be locked…” Up the steps in seconds and she could not at that moment recall ever being quite so glad to see asphalt.
“Here okay?” he asked, cocking his head toward a dilapidated coffee shop half a block outside her usual subway path. Each time her gaze strayed in that direction during the several second procrastination she inevitably had before descending the M/N/R train steps, Emily made a mental tick mark to just this once skip her habitual order at the comfy lunch counter across the street from her apartment and explore the neighborhood's breakfast options. Each time, she failed utterly, opting instead for the silent, kind-eyed morning exchange that she was afforded as a regular at Nick’s Do-nut Coffee Shop. At the moment, however, she was in no position to say no and nodded bleary assent to the Adam’s apple of her benefactor, still a bit too mortified to meet his gaze. Even more so when he instructed her to stand still for a moment while he extricated a muddy shred of coffee cup from a disheveled curl.
He shepherded her into the slender space, installed the two of them at the end of the counter, and upon noticing Emily’s discreet cranes to catch her reflection in a dented napkin holder indicated the location of the restroom with a discreet head tilt. Emily blushed her thanks and wobbled past the backs and knapsacks of the customers who were clinking utensils and chatting at the counter.
She shut the door, groped for the light switch, and after catching a glimpse of the grease smear on her forehead and the lurid bruise beginning to peek through the rip in the knee of her new tights, collapsed, hyperventilating on the closed lid of the toilet. Emily allowed herself a few seconds of muffled, hysterical sobbing before digging her dirtied nails into upper arm flesh just hard enough to jolt her out of panic. “Breathe, Em, breathe…just like you practiced…”
A few repetitions proved sufficient to stop the major tremors, and she busied herself plucking the most visible bits of debris from her hair, wiping specks of grime from her flushed face and scrubbing hands nearly raw with the reassuringly medicinal soap dripping from the globe bolted to the wall. Satisfied with the hygiene portion of her restoration, she dug into the tattered lining of her leopard swing coat for the lipstick that had been swimming around since its escape through a pocket seam at some point the previous autumn. A few strokes and a kiss-printed tissue square deposited in the wastebasket, and Emily drew in one last steadying breath before walking the work-shirted gauntlet back to her stool.
There was pitch-black coffee steaming for her upon her arrival, and for this she was grateful enough to dare a direct smile at her companion--already halfway through the depths of his own cup.
“A little better now?”
“Yes. Thank you so much…I’m not usually quite such a spaz. I just…”
“You haven’t been hypoglycemic for very long, have you?”
“No, only a year or so. How did you…?”
“See, if you were a veteran, you would never have ventured anything like a two-inch heel if you were getting on the train before a morning snack. Trust me--I lived with one of your kind for rather a while, and she’d never even dream of putting on anything more ambitious than a sneaker if she hadn’t downed at least a handful of peanuts before leaving the house. Seeing as we just met, I’m not in any position to lecture you, but Sweetie, you really should be more careful.”
Emily re-reddened at the casual endearment and promptly masked her fluster by scalding her tongue on the coffee.
“Aaaggghh! Okay, do you make a habit of swooping in to save the klutzy, low-blood-sugared women of Brooklyn, or was I just particularly fortunate today?”
“Yes, it is I,” he intoned, puffing up his chest dramatically, “champion of the cute and wobbly, moving deftly under cover of, uh, morning, saving hypoglycemic girls from their own high-heeled impracticality! Aw hell, how often does a shy, suburban-born boy get a chance to be someone’s knight in shining…” he paused for a second to look down and pinch the fabric of his charcoal trousers, “…twill. Your knight in shining twill--that really doesn’t sound all that manly, does it?”
Momentarily emboldened by his second casual compliment (Cute? Cute! He thinks I’m cute!), Emily was on the brink of blurting out a favorable appraisal of his masculinity when the arrival of the counterman spared her from a potentially cringe-worthy gush.
“Heeeey Sam! How’s it goin’, man? What can I get for you? Usual?”
“How’d you guess? Shame about the Mets last night, huh?”
“Aw, don’t bring that up! I’d just made up my mind to have a nice day and there you have to go reminding me. If your bacon isn’t cooked quite crispy enough today, we both know whose fault it is, right? And aren’t you going to introduce me to your lovely lady friend here?”
She stuck out her freshly scrubbed hand. “I’m Emily. Lovely to meet you--you’ve got a very nice place here. I’ve been meaning to pop in for a while now.”
“Chris. Pleased to make your acquaintance, young lady. I hope we see you back here again. Now what can I get you?”
She hadn’t spoken her order out loud for many months now--only when one of Nick’s multitudes of cousins would fill in for him on the grill on the rare occasions he succumbed to his wife’s pleas for him to take a day away from the shop.
“Two scrambled eggs and cheese on a roll and a dash of skim for the coffee when you get a chance would be divine.”
“You’ve got it, Emily. Hey, did you two hear about that girl who got pushed onto the subway tracks this morning? Freakin’ nutbags--there oughta be a law…”
His voice trailed off as he headed off grillward, and Emily shared a sheepish grin with her companion. “So I take it you’d be ‘Sam’, then?”
It was his turn to flush a deep and fetching shade of crimson. “Well, uh…this is a little…it’s going to sound a little strange, but no. No it’s not. The first time I ever came in here--about two years ago, I guess, Chris asked me my name like he just asked you, and I somehow thought I was never going to come back in, and for reasons I don’t fully comprehend, I told him my name was Sam. That might have been weird, I now freely admit.
But the next week I was in deep need of coffee before getting on the train and I stopped in here. Figured he’d never remember me out of the dozens of people he sloshes coffee for every day of the week, but there it was--‘Hey Sam, black, no sugar, right? Catch the game last night, Sam?’ And I knew I was ‘Sam” from there on out if I wanted to keep on eating his miraculous bacon sandwiches.”
“So, uh…what happens when you come in here with friends who call you by your real name or your, uh, girlfriend?”
“My ex couldn’t stand the smell of breakfast meat (a tragic flaw, I might add), and I never ever bring people here. Yeah, of course it would be sort of awkward to explain, but it’s also something I can’t quite put my finger on. How often do you get a chance to escape your own life, have somewhere that’s just yours, maybe not be who everyone needs you to be all the time? I know it doesn’t make that much sense, but well, there you go. Now you know something about me that no one else in the world does.”
Emily mulled this, buying a minute by swirling in a small stream of the skim milk that had materialized on the counter. “If it makes you feel any better, in college my best friend and I would sometimes spend an evening speaking with fake French accents and telling people we were Lulu and Simone. (I was Lulu, by the way.) But I don’t think anyone ever really bought it, seeing as the only complete sentences we knew were “Give me the fish, please.” and “My aunt’s pencil is on my uncle’s desk.”
“That’s very kind of you to share with me, Lulu, but I hardly think that a night of girlish frivolity is comparable to the daily deceit of the man who makes my bacon. It’s my cross to bear…one big, meaty cross…” he trailed as he caught a glimpse of Chris edging toward them, arms laden with oval plates bearing their breakfast.
“You two need anything else right now or should I just leave you to it?” He raised an eyebrow entirely conspicuously in Emily’s direction, twisted a mouth corner grin of approval at Sam’s and slunk off toward the spinning gyro log, which suddenly seemed to require his full attention.
“Like I said--he’s never seen me in here with anyone before. Maybe this will stop him from trying to set me up with one of his eight million daughters. They’re all quite cute, actually, but if I liked one of them enough to keep dating her, I’d have to go and legally change my name, and I have far too much paperwork as it is. But then again…here, tell me if this isn’t worth all the trouble I’ve made for myself.”
He held out a shard of bacon he’d broken from the edge of a strip poking from the poppy seed roll on his plate. As his sturdy fingers drew closer to her lips, Emily unconsciously drew back a small bit.
“Oh now don’t go telling me that you’re one of those darned vegematarians! And here I thought we were getting along so well. It’s a shame I’ll never be speaking to you again.”
She smiled at that, taking the opportunity to lean forward and nip the morsel from his fingertips. “Hardly, and by the way, YUM. Bacon like that is worth flaunting at least six out of the seven deadly sins. Goodness knows I’ve got gluttony covered. It’s just that my mama taught me to never to take bacon from strangers.”
Emily paused for a second, and drew in a slow breath. Relaxed by the banter, arrival of food and (now that she dared a more direct peek) her companion’s playful eyes behind rectangular glasses she ventured a small step further. “And I’ll also admit that it’s been rather a while since anyone’s, well, fed me.” She blushed, but forced herself not to lower her glance to the butter drips rapidly congealing on her plate.
He furrowed his brow with exaggerated incredulity. “Aw c’mon. I’ve a hard time believing that you don’t have half the male population of Brooklyn eating out of your hand! But yes, I know what you mean, and I apologize for being so forward--thrusting unsolicited meat upon you and all. I wouldn’t usually be quite so, oh, what’s the word? Presumptuous, perhaps. I suppose that it just seemed right under the circumstances--what with you nearly plunging to your death and the grand revelation of my deeply intriguing double life. I guess I just felt a little at ease with you. Is that strange?”
She jumped in quickly to soothe his embarrassment. “Oh nonono don’t worry a bit about that. Everything has taken a slight turn toward the surreal today and I’m just trying to process it in as graceful a fashion as I can currently muster. You done did just fine, sir. Merit badge in the Gentlemanly Arts. Now eat your sandwich before it gets cold and yucky.”
They munched along in companionable silence for a few minutes, sharing shy smiles in approval of their breakfasts.
“So, Lulu, if I may be so bold as to ask, just where were you running off to in such a hurry that you chose to neglect the basic, human need for sustenance?”
Oh crap.
She peered around frantically for a clock and failing to find one, began fumbling through her cluttered bag.
“Bad question, I take it. Late for your parole officer?”
“Worse. Going to meet the friend who’s always needling me about my needing to buy a watch. I left the house entirely smug with myself for having enough time to get there possibly even first and then everything happened and I lost track and…oh how much do I owe you for breakfast?”
He reached out and again stilled her fluttering hands, clapping them together between his. “Hey, what kind of a Twill Knight would I be if I didn’t go through with the whole hero bit? Eggs are on me. If you feel the need to do the damsel-in-distress ‘oh how can I ever thank you’ thing, you may feel free to buy me a bacon sandwich on another occasion. And I fully understand late-friend-complex. See this very manly timepiece I’m sporting?”
She nodded in approval at the gunmetal, heavy-linked watch he was pointing to.
“It was a gang-up gift from a group of friends who collectively decided they were sick of missing the previews whenever we went to the movies. Now scoot. I’ll finish on my lonesome.”
Emily bustled and patted for a moment, gathering together shoulder bag and coat and once all were collected, turned to face “Sam” one more time. “You’re right--I don’t know how to thank you for what you did for me, and I’d really like to, but how will I…”
“Oh c’mon. You’re a clever girl, and I’m a creature of habit. Just click your heels three times and follow the scent of bacon.”
Laughing, she turned and headed for the door, chancing one shy look back over her shoulder. He was still smiling at her. She tripped only a little over the doorstep, and after a brief hesitation at the subway entrance, stuck out her hand. “Taxi!”
© 2004 Cherry Tart LLC