Toast & Jam

“I’m surprised you asked for this interview.” I say, and my lips can’t help but quiver. He’s not the type I’d assume to be a professional killer. He looks average, with short curly hair sans gel or forming agents with the style of a high school teacher.

“A dead man has no secrets to tell.” He says. 

He means he won’t have any to tell in a few months. He has cancer; specifically, testicular cancer that spread to the lymph nodes. Like urban sprawl, his body is just an old farm for new development. That was the most I could get out of him over the phone. He wanted to meet in person.

           “Can I ask why you want to divulge this information?” I don’t know what else to ask, it’s not every day someone comes to me with this kind of story. I write articles for the newspaper about food, not about crime or murder.

“Have you ever looked back at your life and realised that it amounts to nothing unless people know about it?” His eyes coddle the ceiling.

“No.” I reply. “But I’m sure it is a normal feeling people have.”

Everyone knows my life. I critique restaurants. My opinions are there for all see. If I don’t like a soufflé, people know I don’t like a soufflé. If cheese is rancid, people know that I think the cheese is rancid. And if I stub my toe on the subway, I call everyone I know to tell them I had a bad day. I make it through life by having my friends and family tell me I’m a good boy and everything is going to be alright.

“My life is a secret. One giant web of secrets and I’ve never been able to tell anyone.” He picks up the menu like his mouth never moved.

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Shoot.” His face is buried by the menu.

“I’m a food critic. Do you think I am the best person to pass this information too?”

“The reason I am passing it to you is because you are a food critic.”

His bony fingers flip through each glossy page. He runs his index over each line and his eyebrows jog through expressions. The hostess smiles from across the room. Lavender and sandalwood permeates the air. Out of all the restaurants I’ve been to in this city, this one is new.

“Why did you pick this restaurant?”

“There’s one last thing to do here before I’m gone.”

“…The interview?” I don’t understand. He ignores me.

The customers here are unfamiliar. I was beginning to feel like I knew everyone that eats away from home. Archibelle it said on the front window, barely even advertised. I see tailored suits and costly leather, polished shoes and white gold watches. The clientele here are nothing meek. This could just be an elaborate ruse. Why would anyone go to all the fuss? -A surprise party? It is a nice place to throw a party.

              I’m tempted to jump up on the chair and yell at everyone that’s hiding. Okay, come out guys, this was a great job but let’s start the festivities!

“June seventeenth, nineteen-eighty-three, that was my first job-”

I drop my menu in anticipation.

“-Fried mushrooms and beef steak.” He continues.

I’m dumbstruck. The message I received in my mailbox last week comes to mind.

                         

                         i want someone from the newspaper to write down my life

 i am hired gun

worked for just bout everybody and its time i tell the world

call me if you inderested…

The writing was barely legible. The story was barely plausible. And now he is talking about food. This is a farce, this, must be a farce.

“Steak and mushrooms?” I reiterate.

            “Yeah, wasn’t the best steak and mushrooms I ever had but it also wasn’t the worst. What was the fella’s name again? Garnett. Garnett Taylor cooked it. It was at Steely’s Diner off old road seventeen outside the city.”

He speaks better than he writes. After consideration and confusion subsiding, the absurdness of the situation takes over and I blurt out, “You are a hit-man aren’t you? Did you kill this guy or eat his food?”

“Why would I kill Garnett Taylor? He wasn’t a bad guy. No one had anything against him.”

“Sor-sorry.” I say. “I just thought you were here to tell me about the things you have done; to get them off your chest.”

“You don’t pay much attention to nothing do you?” His words are harsh; raspy, with a twitch of anger. He has a short fuse.

“Like I said I apologize.”

“Don’t apologize, do what you came here to do. I asked you here to tell you ‘bout my life and you aren’t even writing anything down.”

I fumble through my coat pocket; there is a pencil and pad in there. “What do you want me to write?”

“You don’t know what you should write? Steak and mushrooms, write down steak and mushrooms. And did I mention it was at Steely’s Diner?”

“Yes, you did.”

I pencil in the name of the diner and the food. What the hell am I doing?

“What’s next?” I ask.

“Pancakes, five flapjacks and three pieces of bacon with a side of brown beans.”

I pencil it in.

“That was at Clara’s Breakfast Hut. Month of July, nineteen eighty-four.”

He continues with three more meals in two different years. By the time we are at 1990, he has twenty meals under his belt; whatever this means, I have no idea. At first he made me edgy but, now all the food talk and now I’m starting to relax. I’m starting to think he isn’t a hit-man but a lonely failure ready to die, hoping someone will listen to him. He thinks because I’m a food critic I will give a damn. I offer him grace by jotting his pointless meals with their worthless dates attached to them. He reminisces about a meatloaf. I could be with my girlfriend. This is a waste of a day.

                 

He’s at 1995 now and I have to say something. This is just too taxing on my pen hand, least my brain.

                

                “Is there a point to all these meals and places?”

                “Of course there is a point. You might not understand it now, but you’ll get it soon. Real soon you’ll figure it out.”

All of a sudden a strange brashness re-emerges and it bothers me. The words he says come out like prophetic ramblings and it’s in this moment, I can picture him as a killer. He has this big love of crappy food and I think, could he is here because I gave his favourite restaurant a bad review? Is that it? I don’t know.

                He keeps going through the years, through the shitty cafés, diners and truck stops. I’ve got forty-five meals listed now and we’ve been from the East coast to the West. The hostess brings our order. I have an eight ounce steak with asparagus and he has the chicken parmesan.

                

            “I’ll have bourbon, neat.” I pause, “make that a double.”

Curly: the hit-man, the cancer patient, he asks for the same drink.

“What was your favourite meal… or job?” I ask.

“Toast and Jam.”

            “Toast and Jam?”

            

            “Yeah, toast and jam. It was the cleanest job I ever had. But never mind that, we have five years to go before we get to that day.”

What about the crumbs from the toast? I think to myself. Toast and Jam cannot be the cleanest meal someone has ever eaten.

                

                “I have to tell you about the brisket.”

                 

                “The brisket?”

                 

                “Worst day of my life. Have you ever put more food on your plate than you could handle?”

                

                “Sure. Everyone has.”

                 

                “The day I ate the brisket I had five times my tolerance. It nearly killed me. The point is, is that I’ll never eat brisket again.”

                

                “Is that the point?” I don’t mean to say this aloud. He just tilts his head; stares me down for a second and I pencil in some more notes.

                

                “Do you know why I do this?”

                

                “No.”

                “I do it because I’m hungry.”

                “Hungry?”

                “Everyone has to eat.”

                “That makes sense.”

                “I do it because there will always be someone to order food-”

You have completely lost me. What is it that you actually do?

                “-I do it because there are always people out there trying to eat the food of others. If you let those people consume, they will consume the entire world. And that is why I don’t feel bad about it.”

                 

He takes a big bite of the chicken parmesan and his chin is covered in red sauce.

                “That’s why you don’t feel bad about eating?”

                “Exactly.” His finger swings in the air.

                “I never thought about eating like that before. I can’t say that I’ve ever felt bad about eating.” Although, I have eaten some terrible food; speaking of which this asparagus is over cooked.

He lays out more histories of diners, restaurants and bars. I notice as the years advance in his chronicle, the places he frequents increase in stature. The last five he told me ring a bell. They are so familiar. I remember hearing the names on the news. The details escape me.

                “We are almost done.”

                “We are?”

                “There is only one left. This year in May, Marcello’s Restaurante, I had spaghetti and bruschetta.”

                “That’s it?”

                “Done.” He says with a big smile. And that’s it. This is the disappearance of my afternoon. A hired gun? Hired to do what? He won’t even admit that he was a cook. …A server maybe?

                He roughs his hand over the curly knots on his head, slides it inside his jacket and holds it there, “I almost forgot. One last note to make,” he says. I look up and see him in a strange pose.

                “One more?”

                “Write down today's date. Then put next to it, chicken parmesan and bourbon.”

As quick as the words are out of his mouth his right hand comes out of the jacket and firmly in his hand is a pistol. The gun has an extended barrel, making it seem lengthier than the table.

                I stop moving. I’m thinking death, and how the gun hanging midair moves in slow motion. My initial assumption is this was some kind of big joke to him. He’s a deranged fan that really wants to spit in my face before he dies. I said something bad about Steely Garnett’s beaf steak, didn’t I?

                The pistol jitters and a loud, ching-ching­ noise cracks the silence between us. The bullets rip out of the barrel and passed my head, beyond me and into the back of the gentleman sitting behind. I wasn’t the target. Two more ching-chings rattle the silence, like a loud cash register, multiplied.

There is a scream at the hostess desk. The restaurant subsides into quiet.

Curly: the cancer patient, the man I never really knew, stands up, tucks the pistol back into his jacket and walks calmly out the door. In front of me I notice blood spatter on the table. Eyes throughout the restaurant focus intently on my actions. My right hand grabs the pencil and I write… chicken parmesan and bourbon.