Ember & Ash

The last job I lost was at a bistro in the city. I'd been there two years. The owner blamed the economy. I blamed myself, mostly, because I'd yelled at a server during a rush and she'd quit on the spot. Word travels fast in kitchens. Faster than you'd think.

So that was that. Twenty-seven years old, line cook, unemployed, with a bit of savings and a lot of pride. Not a great combination.

I packed what I owned into my Corolla and drove three hours back to Maple Falls. My hometown. Population small, options smaller.

My mom asked the obvious question at dinner.

"So what's the plan, Leo?"

"Find work," I said, shoveling rice into my mouth.

"Here?"

"Here."

She nodded slowly, the way she does when she thinks something is a bad idea but has decided not to fight me on it. My bedroom was exactly how I'd left it at eighteen. Band posters, a mattress that sagged in the middle, one window that stuck. I slept badly for a week.

I checked every listing in town. The diner wanted a fry cook at minimum wage. The grocery store wanted a deli slicer. There was a bakery, but the baker had no intention of retiring, and I wasn't going to be the guy who pushed a man out of his own ovens.

Then my mom mentioned the theater.

"Community theater," she said. "They lost their kitchen person. The one who did concessions. You should ask."

"Concessions," I repeated.

"You need a job."

I did need a job. The savings weren't savings anymore. They were a countdown.

* * *

The theater sat on Hollis Street, between a hardware store that had closed and a laundromat that hadn't. Red brick, faded paint, a marquee with half the letters missing. It said EM ER AND ASH, which I later learned was the current show. Some regional drama nobody had heard of.

I went in the side door, the one the volunteers used. Inside smelled like old coffee and paint. Not in a bad way. Just in a way that said people cared about this place once and maybe still did, sort of.

The director's office was a converted coat closet. Delia sat behind a desk that didn't fit the room, so she'd shoved it against the wall at an angle. She was fifty, silver hair cut short, reading glasses pushed up on her head.

"You the cook," she said. Not a question.

"Leo Vance."

"I know your mother. Sit down, there's no second chair, stand then." She waved a hand at the doorframe. "The concession stand needs running. Menu, prep, service. Three nights a week plus weekends when there's a show. Pay is bad. You've clearly figured that out already, or you wouldn't be here."

"That's honest," I said.

"I'm a director. I don't have time to lie." She pulled a form out of a drawer. "Can you start Thursday?"

"Can I start tomorrow?"

That got the first hint of a smile. "Ambition. Good. The man who did it before you made popcorn from a bag and called it a menu. You're an improvement on principle."

"What kind of menu do you want?"

"Whatever you can do in a room the size of a bathroom with one counter and no ventilation. Elias will show you."

"Elias?"

"He volunteers. Sets, lights, whatever breaks. He's also your assistant, because the board decided the food thing is a two-person job and I'm not doing it." She pointed at a hallway. "He's in the annex. The annex is the room that used to be the annex."

* * *

The annex turned out to be a storage room with a folding table, two hot plates, a small fridge, and a sink that worked if you jiggled the handle. Standing in the middle of it was a man about my age, tall, dark hair tied back, holding a clipboard.

He looked up. "You're the cook."

"Evidently."

"Leo, right? Delia said." He stuck out his hand. "Elias. I've been running this disaster room alone for two months. You have no idea how happy I am to see another adult in here."

I shook his hand. Firm grip. Clipboard in the other hand, and every pen on the clipboard lined up in a row.

"You keep inventory," I said.

"Of course I keep inventory. If I didn't, we'd have ordered a third case of pretzel mix this week." He flipped a page. "Also, we're out of napkins. Also, the popcorn machine has a loose belt I've been meaning to fix. Also, hi."

"Hi," I said. "How old are you, if you don't mind me asking?"

"Twenty-nine. Finishing my degree at night, hence the schedule that lets me volunteer at a dying theater." He said it flat, no shame in it. "You?"

"Twenty-seven. Unemployed chef."

"Formerly employed chef."

"Sure. Formerly."

He tilted his head. "You've done actual kitchen work. Like, real kitchens."

"Line cook for six years. Two of them in the city."

"Then what are you doing in a room with two hot plates?"

I looked at the sink. The one that needed jiggling. "Trying to eat," I said.

Elias nodded like that was a real answer, because it was. "Fine. Then let's talk about what we can actually make in here. The budget is whatever the ticket sales were last week. So, not much."

We spent an hour going through the shelves. He had everything written down, quantities, dates, even which brand of pretzel mix the regulars liked. I hadn't met anyone that organized since culinary school.

"You were in culinary school?" he asked, catching me staring at his clipboard.

"One year. Dropped out. Long story."

"Delia mentioned a rivalry with another student."

"Delia knows about that?" I frowned. My mom had a big mouth.

"Small town," he said. "She probably knows what you had for breakfast."

I hadn't had breakfast. Not that I'd tell her that.

"Anyway," Elias went on, tapping the clipboard, "the show runs four weekends. Delia wants the concession stand to stop losing money. I told her a decent menu would do it. She didn't believe me. Now she believes you, which is weird, but okay."

"She believes me because I can start tomorrow."

"Because you're ambitious," he said, and his tone carried a certain weight. Not mockery. Curiosity, maybe.

I looked around the annex again. Two hot plates. One counter. A fridge older than me.

"Okay," I said. "Real menu. Cheap ingredients, high effort. Soup, a sandwich thing, something baked. Popcorn stays, because Delia will fight me on it."

"She will. She likes the machine's sound. Says it's part of the show."

"The machine sounds like a dying lawnmower."

"Part. Of. The. Show." He wrote it down anyway, like I'd given him a real instruction, which I guess I had.

We shook on it. Then he showed me where the breaker was, and the trick with the sink handle, and the drawer where the good knives lived, all three of them.

I drove home that night with the windows down. The Corolla's radio only got static, so I drove in silence, thinking about soups I could make from nothing. It wasn't the city. It wasn't the bistro. It was a coat closet of a kitchen run by a woman who didn't lie and a guy with a clipboard who counted napkins.

It was a job, though. First one in months.

Thursday, I told myself. Thursday I'd find out if I still knew how to cook, or if I'd just known how to cook somewhere else, once, for people who never learned my name.

The heatwave showed up on a Tuesday. By Thursday the theater felt like a pizza oven with seats.

The air conditioning, which everyone agreed was older than the building itself, quit with a clunk during intermission. Delia stood under the vent, arms crossed, listening to it do nothing.

"Kill it," she said. "It's dead. Someone open the doors before the audience melts."

Nobody melted. But the second weekend, nobody came either. Eighteen tickets on a Friday. Delia sat in the lobby fanning herself with a flyer and doing math out loud.

Then, that Sunday, a man named Councilman Grayson Price showed up in linen pants and a shirt that had never touched work. He'd been to the theater exactly once, back when his wife was alive, and now he wanted to help.

"My lake house," he said, waving a hand like the thing was a napkin. "Empty all summer. Sitting there. It's got a terrace, shade trees, a breeze off the water. You people need somewhere the audience won't die of heat. Use it."

He said "you people" like we were a bake sale. Delia took the keys anyway.

"One night," she told us at rehearsal. "Charity fundraiser performance, out at his place, proceeds split with the theater. Leo, Elias, you two can build a real kitchen for a night. Real prep space. Real burners."

"I've never cooked for eighty people," Elias said.

"You will now!"

* * *

We started Wednesday. The lake house had a kitchen bigger than my mom's whole first floor, and Elias and I took it apart like two people defusing the same bomb from opposite ends. Delia had also lent us Raf, a stage-crew guy who'd been in and out of the annex for two years stealing pretzels, and he chopped onions in the corner and narrated everything.

The menu was soup, a braised chicken thing, and hand pies I'd make in the annex and finish at the lake house. It was hot even in that kitchen. Elias rolled his sleeves up to the elbow. I noticed his forearms, which was a thing I did now, apparently. I'd been noticing forearms and hands and the way he tucked his pen behind his ear. For about three weeks. I'd told nobody, including myself, mostly.

We got through Thursday fine. Friday was the accident.

He was going into the goat costume.

I should back up. Delia's charity show had a skit, some local joke bit, and the goat costume lived in the annex, in a bag, and it had a broken zipper. Elias was the only one who'd fit it.

"Zip me up," he said, already halfway in, holding the costume closed at his back.

The zipper jammed halfway. Of course it did. The fabric had bunched, and his shirt had bunched with it, and I was standing there with two fingers hooked in the teeth of a zipper trying to work it free while he held still.

"Just pull it straight up," he said.

"I'm trying."

"You're pulling sideways."

"I'm pulling where the jam is, which is sideways, because the fabric is eating the slider."

He laughed, and the laugh moved his whole back, and my hand was flat against his spine now to hold the fabric flat, and I could feel him breathing. The annex was maybe ninety degrees. It felt like more.

"There," I said, and the zipper gave. All the way up. My hand was still on his back. "Done."

He didn't move. Neither did I. The fridge hummed at us.