God In The Kitchen (7 page)

            “Not a problem,” I said, raising my hand to tip my non-existent hat as Chloe quickly caught the door and held it open. “Guess I better get to it,” I said.

            I side stepped around Jim and went through the open door, back out to the ambulance. Though I was putting one foot in front of the other with every intention of getting the equipment from the ambulance into the diner, my mind was elsewhere.

            What had Chloe meant when she said she had been thinking about me? When I said the same to her, I had not intended for it to sound romantic. It wasn’t so much Chloe that haunted me, but more so her son.

            I hadn’t even gotten a chance to speak with him, but I could tell he was a sweet kid. And to find out that he had a horrible condition at such a young age, it was simply more than I could fathom.

            I couldn’t imagine going through heart surgery as an adult, being someone who understood what was happening, much less a small child. At least the first time around he was too young to know what was going on. Now, he would definitely know and he would be scared out of his mind.

            But Chloe had said he wasn’t going to have another surgery. Why was that? I just didn’t understand.

            As I hefted the promotional box off the ambulance floor I realized that it wasn’t my place to understand. At the same time, I wasn’t going to let it go. Not until I knew the whole story.

            I just had to figure out how I was going to ask those difficult questions.

            I walked slowly back to the front door, which Chloe had propped open with a brick. Jim elbowed his way past just as I reached the opening.

            “Excuse me, sir,” he said with dripping sarcasm, “someone around here has to get the work done.”

            I looked down at the promotions box I was carrying and opened my mouth to protest that I was, in fact, working. Instead, I just shook my head.

            I slid the promotions box under the counter and headed straight for the front door to carry in another load. Chloe was no longer in sight.

            “Top of the morning to ya!” I heard a booming voice say from behind the counter.

            “Cal! How’s it going, man?” I said as I approached the robust diner owner and slapped my hand against his.

            “Couldn’t be better, now that you’re here,” he said. “I’ve called in some extra help for today. You make sure I need it, you hear?”

            “You got it,” I promised. It was likely going to be one of Cal’s busiest days that year.

            Cal hunched down and placed his elbows on his side of the counter. “You guys can set the equipment up right there,” he said, pointing to a location near the front window. “Let’s go over the plan,” Cal said anxiously.

            I was more than happy to give Cal a play by play of what I had planned. But as he and I hashed the morning’s events out, I could hear Jim grumbling behind me as he took one trip after another to the ambulance.

            By the time Cal was done with me, Jim had all of the equipment in and half set up. “What can I do to help?” I asked as I approached.

            “Humph,” Jim stated as he muttered something I couldn’t hear under his breath. “Just do your table.”

            I smiled. “Happy to!” I knew my comment would only make Jim more cranky, but I couldn’t help myself.

            I dragged the promotions box over to the front corner of the diner.

            I got the tablecloth out and smoothed it over the long table Cal had set up for us before our arrival. I then took my time arranging the window stickers in an appealing pattern across half of the table.

            “All set?” Cal called from behind the counter.

            I gave him a thumbs up sign after completing a test on the equipment Jim had efficiently set up.

            Cal swiftly moved around the counter and turned on the “open” sign. He moved fast for a man his size and he surprised me by suddenly appearing at my side.

            “You need anything today, you just tell Chloe,” he said, throwing his beefy thumb to his right where I spotted Chloe in the distance, filling saltshakers. “She’s new, but she’s the best.”

            Cal scurried back around the counter to the kitchen to prepare the kitchen staff for the first customers, who were bound to be there as soon as the diner opened.

            I saw my chance and approached Chloe. Her concentration was so fierce and intent that she jumped when I said her name.

            “Chloe,” I said quietly.

            Chloe spilled a little salt on the table and then picked up a few grains and threw it over her shoulder. “For good luck,” she said.

            “You spill salt a lot just so you can do that?” I asked.

            “Sometimes,” she admitted with a smile.

            “I bet the guy that cleans the floors loves that.”

            “I clean the floors.”

            “Oh, well then, I guess you have every right.”

            “Can I get you anything?” Chloe asked, screwing the top back on the saltshaker.

            “I’d love some coffee. Maybe a cinnamon roll. Jim will eat and drink anything you put in front of him,” I said.

            “Humph,” Jim said as he tore at an electrical wire. Things were working perfectly and he still wasn’t satisfied.

            I raised my eyebrows as I turned back to Chloe and we both laughed.

            “Coming right up,” she said, moving towards the counter.

            “One more thing,” I said and she stopped in her tracks, waiting to hear what more I wanted. “Do you have some time? To talk? You know…later?”

I could be wrong, but I thought I saw a sense of relief on Chloe’s face as she nodded. “Yeah, I can try to get a break when you’re done with your broadcast,” she said.

            I smiled. “Great.”

            With the conversation set up for later, I headed back to my table to listen to Jim grumble about how I had socialized all morning while he worked. He softened a little when Chloe set a large, gooey cinnamon roll in front of each of us.

            The broadcast began when the doors opened and I broke into the normal programming on the radio station with an excited voice. “Jared Jones broadcasting live from Cal’s Diner on the corner of 84
^th
and Fremont.” I went on for a full minute about what listeners could expect from the remote broadcast that morning and urged everyone to stop in for a warm cooked meal. “And to top it all off,” I continued, “the first person through the front door this morning will win four tickets to tonight’s concert.”

            I watched out of the corner of my eye as I wrapped things up on the air. The door flew open shortly after I finished my sentence and I wasn’t surprised by who stood in the entrance of the diner.

            Any time there was a giveaway, Kathy was there.

            Kathy was an older woman probably nearing retirement. Her short gray-brown hair fell to her chin and looked as if it had seen too much sun over the years. Kathy herself was on the short side with thin legs and round hips. Her watery blue eyes sat behind her plastic glasses, which made them look too large for her face.

            “Morning Jared!” she said as she approached the table.

            Kathy and I were on a first name basis since she often called the studio, stopped by remote broadcasts, and showed up at other station functions. She was what we fondly called a station groupie.

            “Kathy!” I said, faking a surprised look on my face. “Has it been thirty days already?”

            The station had a policy that the same person couldn’t win a prize twice within thirty days. It wasn’t strictly enforced but when it came to Kathy, it was necessary. Kathy would win things every time they were given away if she could. And she was just a lucky enough person that she probably would.

            “Thirty days yesterday,” Kathy said, digging through her enormous brown purse until she found her wallet sized calendar.

            I smiled. I shouldn’t have asked.

            “Humph,” Jim said by my side as he placed headphones on his ears and started messing with some wires.

            “See?” Kathy said, pointing a semi-purple finger to today’s date and then flipping back to the previous month where she had marked the last day she had won. She knew her rules. “I almost called in yesterday for the CD they were giving away in the afternoon but I stopped myself.” She closed her calendar and shoved it back into her purse, a look of pride on her face. “I said, ‘Kathy, no, you’re going to see Jared tomorrow, you just wait.’”

            “And so you did,” I said, knowing it was what she was about to say.

            “And so I did,” she said.

            I bent over the table and started filling out the contest form with her name, address and phone number. Kathy won so often that everyone in the studios knew where she lived and how to get in touch with her.

            “What a blessing!” Kathy said, clutching the tickets in her hand as I handed them over.

            “You’re the blessing,” I said, stepping out of my professional character and trying to be more sincere.

            I could tell by the way Kathy stopped moving from foot to foot that her attitude had suddenly changed from excitement to something else.

            “Why, Jared,” she said, her eyes more watery than normal. “That’s just about the sweetest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

            I reached across the table, grabbing one of the window stickers from my perfect array and holding it out to her. “Here,” I said, “Take this too. You’re bound to need a new one by now.”

            Kathy took a window sticker at every event. Sometimes, back at the studio, we would go back and forth as to what she did with them all.

            “Haven’t you seen the Volkswagen bug driving around town completely covered in them?” the afternoon guy joked.

            “No way,” the Midday girl said, “she has them plastered above her bed so she can see them first thing in the morning when she wakes up and last thing at night too.”

            I didn’t care what Kathy did with the stickers. At that point, I just wanted to make her feel like part of something. I could tell by the way she clutched the window sticker to her chest and took a seat at a table halfway across the diner that it was exactly what she was feeling.

            Instead of commiserating with Jim, who was still ignoring me and concentrating on his wires, I glanced around the diner, wondering how fast it would fill up.

            I caught Chloe’s eye from across the room. She looked away quickly when she saw me looking at her, but before she did, I saw a sad smile on her face.

            The rest of the morning went more quickly than I anticipated. We did a number of goofy giveaways and were able to get listeners to appear on roller skates, with feather boas, and even in full clown costumes to get concert tickets. It was all part of the publicity.

            At each remote broadcast, I tried to figure out what the establishment needed most. This time around, it was all about getting the name of Cal’s Diner out to the other part of the city so he could expand successfully. The best way to do that was not only to work up quite a frenzy on the air, but also to give people something to talk about.