The Last Photo

I picked the counter seat on purpose. I'll admit that up front. There were open booths along the wall, whole empty ones, red vinyl and nobody in them, and I walked right past all of them and sat my thirty-four-year-old self down on a stool about six feet from the kitchen pass.

Why? Well. Leslie worked the flat-top, and Leslie was the reason I'd even come out tonight. Last night, I guess I should say. My transfer to Denver got approved Tuesday, my apartment was stacked with boxes, and my flight left Saturday morning at 8:40. So this was it. The farewell dinner. Me, a plate of brisket, and a man I'd maybe said forty words to in my whole life.

My sister had said on the phone that afternoon, why are you even going? You don't know him. And I'd told her that was the point, that I wanted to leave this town with one thing I did on pure nerve instead of a spreadsheet. She'd laughed at me. She'd laughed harder when I reminded her I used to be fun, back when I was twenty-nine and dating David, before he took the job in Singapore and I took the sensible route. She said, You were never fun, you were organized. Rude. But accurate, some days.

Smokestack was loud the way it always was on a Friday. Waitstaff weaving, kids whining somewhere behind me, that smell of smoke and grease that gets into your coat and stays there for a week. The kitchen door swung open every ten seconds and let out a slab of heat and clatter. Leslie stood at the flat-top in a black apron, spatula going, hair pushed back with a bandana, and every once in a while he looked up and scanned the counter like he was taking inventory. When he got to me he did that little chin-nod guys do, and I nodded back like an idiot, and then I looked at my plate and ate brisket for a while.

Here's what I knew about him, all of it secondhand. He was thirty-one. He'd been at Smokestack about three years. He'd had a thing with a pastry cook a while back, over before anybody noticed it started. That was it. That was the complete file.

I took a picture of my empty plate. That's normal, right? People do that. I sent it to him, because he'd told me earlier in the week, when I mentioned I was coming in Friday, that I'd better not leave without saying goodbye. I typed "last brisket" under it and hit send and then put my phone face down and concentrated very hard on my napkin.

The phone buzzed. I picked it up with ease, like I checked my phone every four seconds, which, fine, I do.

It said: nice. Now one of just your hand on the table. No face.

I read it three times. I looked up. He was at the flat-top with his back half to me, but his head was tilted a little, like he could feel me staring, and I could see the corner of his mouth doing something.

Who says that? I want to know. Who takes a stranger's brisket photo and responds with homework? And why did my hand go flat on the table before I even decided it would?

I took the shot. My hand, palm down on that scarred-up wood, my rings, the little candle stub they put on counter tables. I sent it and felt my face go hot, which was ridiculous, because it was a hand. I have two of them and they're not interesting.

The reply came fast: good. Keep the phone out. You'll want it out.

Okay, so that was when the game stopped being a joke to me. Not because it was a big deal, but because he was right. I did want it out. I sat there with my thumb on the screen like it was a door I'd left open on purpose.

My brisket was gone and I ordered a beer I didn't need, and the kitchen door kept swinging, and around ten the rush let up a little and Leslie drifted down the pass wiping things, and he stopped across the counter from me. Close enough I could smell the smoke on his apron. That was the only time all night he smelled like anything but the grill, and I never figured out what cologne it was, and now I never will.

"You're really leaving tomorrow," he said. Not a question, but he said it like one.

"Eight forty flight. Yes."

"Huh." He wiped the counter in a slow circle. "And you came here."

"You told me not to leave without saying goodbye."

"I did, didn't I." He grinned at me, and it was the grin of a man who knew exactly what he'd been doing with those texts. "One more before the kitchen closes. Bare wrist. Watch off. And the time has to be in the shot."

"My watch?"

"Off, yeah. Timestamp included, like the phone shows it."

I stared at him. "That's such a weirdly specific request."

"It is, isn't it," he said, and went back to the flat-top like he hadn't just handed me a homework assignment with a deadline.

But consider this about a watch. I'd worn a watch every working day for ten years. Realtor, remember. The watch is part of the outfit, part of the armor, along with the blazer and the handshake. Taking it off felt like more than taking it off, if that makes any sense at all. It felt like clocking out of my whole life with one hand.

I did it anyway. I unclasped it, set it next to the candle stub, and rolled my sleeve back. My wrist looked pale and strange without the band, like part of me had gone missing. I laid my arm on the table and took the shot with my other hand, and the time read 10:47 in the corner, plain as anything, and I sent it before I could think about it, because if I thought about it I'd have put the watch back on and gone home.

He replied with a single thumbs up, and then, a full minute later: see? still there. Arm's still yours.

I laughed out loud at that, right there at the counter, and the guy next to me looked over, and I didn't care. Because that was it, that was exactly the dare. He was daring me to prove to myself that I could take off one little piece of armor and not fall apart.

I'd been careful for three years. Careful after David, careful with the house I bought, the career ladder, the transfer I'd spent eight months arranging down to the week. All sensible. All organized, like my sister says. And here was a line cook I barely knew daring me to send him pictures of myself one piece at a time, and my hands were actually shaking a little, and not from the beer.

The kitchen door swung open and heat rolled out, and Leslie caught my eye across the pass and tilted his head toward the back hall. Restrooms back there. Then he mouthed something, and I had to read his lips twice to get it, and when I got it my ears went warm.

Collarbone, he'd mouthed. Restroom mirror. Blouse collar.

I sat there for a good thirty seconds with my thumb on the phone. Then I picked up my