Night Kitchen

Rhonda Waterfall

a) on a street cor­ner
b) at work
c) under a bridge
d) in a forest

 

a) on a street corner

The phone rings at 11:30 at night and as soon as you hear your father’s voice you know some­thing bad has hap­pened. It’s your mom, he says. Over the next twenty-four hours you ride in buses, planes, fer­ries and taxis. You step into the hos­pi­tal room to see most of your fam­ily stand­ing around. And your mother in bed, look­ing older and smaller than you ever remem­ber her being. You pick up her hand and search for some­thing to say. You leave the room and go outside. 

The streets are busy and you are unfa­mil­iar with the city so just walk. You stop at a pub called the Stone Penny and order a jd and Coke. You feel in your pocket for change, pull out a hand­ful of quar­ters and buy some Pull Tabs. You peel back the tabs on the first one and win noth­ing, and noth­ing on the sec­ond or third, and on the fourth you win ten dol­lars and smile, cash it in and leave. You start to go back to the hos­pi­tal because you don’t know what else to do. You are stand­ing at an inter­sec­tion, wait­ing for the walk sign, when you hear some­one say, Do you know where there’s a pub or some­where to eat around here.

 

b) at work

The direc­tor hands you the script and you read over the scene. A fridge repair­man seduces a woman and her daugh­ter at the same time on the kitchen floor. You change clothes and wait near the boom holder for your scene to start. 

An hour later the direc­tor tells every­one to take a break and calls down to Tony’s Deli to have lunch deliv­ered. You put on a house­coat and sit on the couch. Someone knocks at the door and a crew mem­ber lets in the server from Tony’s Deli. You look at the selec­tion of sand­wiches and ask if any of them are veg­e­tar­ian. The Tony’s Deli server hands you a sand­wich and says, I’m a veg­e­tar­ian too, and smiles. You like the server’s black hair and blue University of Washington T-shirt and say, Did you go to U-Dub. The server looks sur­prised and says, How did you know. You point at the shirt and you both laugh. What did you take there, you say. Science. Did you go there too, the server says. No, art his­tory at ubc , you say, and unwrap the sand­wich. The server turns to help some­one else and you go back to the couch. The server walks up to you and hands you a nap­kin with the words “Coffee 5:30” writ­ten on it in blue ink. You say, Yes.

 

c) under a bridge

Jerry passes you the bot­tle and you take a drink and then pass it back and wipe your mouth with your sleeve and lean against a dump­ster. Rain bounces off the pave­ment and cars drive by. Jerry hits you on the shoul­der and you get up and fol­low him as he walks away. Jerry, you call out, Jerry where the fuck are you going. To Taco’s, Jerry says. He leads you past drunks and strip joints and shoot­ing gal­leries to the water and down a muddy embank­ment to Taco’s place, under a bridge. It is dry and there is a fire you warm your hands on. Freighters sit in the chan­nel. Jerry fixes a nee­dle of heroin and sticks it into your arm and then does the same for him­self. You open your hand and lie back on the dirt and close your eyes. You think you might float away. 

Something on your face and in your mouth wakes you and you try to scream and fight but can’t seem to move, and when you open your eyes peo­ple are kneel­ing over you and one of them says, Do you know your name. You notice how blue the person’s eyes are and then lose con­scious­ness. You wake up in a hos­pi­tal, you get sick and lose con­trol of your bow­els, you scream when peo­ple touch you and feel as if you never sleep, yet you have dreams about a blue-eyed paramedic. 

You are dis­charged and walk out the front door and catch a bus to Dean’s place. Dean is sur­prised to see you but relieved that you have cleaned your­self up and he agrees to let you stay on the couch. Dean makes a big din­ner and the food stays down and makes you feel good and you talk late into the night about when you were both in col­lege. You tell Dean you are in love and he smiles and squeezes your shoul­der and says, Congratulations. 

You leave early in the morn­ing and get your hair cut and then catch a bus back to the hos­pi­tal and ask at the front counter who the para­medics were that brought you in. The nurse tells you that they came from the Front Street detach­ment and that she is unau­tho­rized to give out their names. You catch a bus to Front Street and stand out­side of the detach­ment for a moment before you open the cus­tomer ser­vice door and walk in. 

 

d) in a forest

You have gone to visit your par­ents in the town where you grew up and decide to take a walk. You stop at a park and sit on the swings. Children play in a nearby yard. You try to remem­ber who used to live in the houses and what colour the trims used to be. You walk to the library and in the children’s book sec­tion you find a copy of In the Night Kitchen. You open the book and read out loud, “Milk in the bat­ter! Milk in the bat­ter! We bake cake and nothing’s the mat­ter!” Your face feels hot when you fin­ish read­ing. You put the book back on the shelf and leave. 

You reach Baker Street. The ocean is in one direc­tion, the high­way in the other. You walk toward the ocean and go into a book­store and select a mag­a­zine. How long has this been a book­store, you ask. The cashier, a sweet-faced red­head, shrugs her shoul­ders and says, Five years, I think. You say, This used to be a fur­ni­ture store and the owner had a mon­key that he let us feed. The cashier hands you the mag­a­zine and you leave the store. 

Down the street a new com­plex has been built. You try to remem­ber what used to be there and can’t. Half the store­fronts still have For Lease signs taped on the dusty win­dows, but at the far cor­ner a gro­cery store is open and you walk in. Someone calls your name. It is Morgan, who you haven’t seen since high school. Morgan shakes your hand and gives you a hug and says, It’s been a long time, and asks how things have been and are you mar­ried and do you have kids. You blush and touch your neck and pass the mag­a­zine from under one arm to under the other and say you’re doing great and there have been no mar­riages, no chil­dren. Morgan says, The town’s grown quite a bit, hasn’t it, since we were in school. Yes, it has, you say; I can’t remem­ber what was here before, before they built this build­ing. It was an empty lot, remem­ber, Morgan says. Actually it used to be a for­est, do you remem­ber, when we were in ele­men­tary school. Oh, ya, that’s right, you say, think­ing back to when there were trees and when you played amongst them, wait­ing for your father to come out of the feed store.