Fast As You Can Wink An Eye
Michael Sedano
She ripped my heart
Into tiny quivering pieces
scattered everywhere.
A bloody mess.
The janitor complained
It’s not my job, man.
I gathered the shards
Myself
Thinking to put it back
The way it was, later.
Carolina haunted him with profound regret, and unrequited passion. Walking away straight-shouldered, she turns to smile over her bare freckled shoulder, hair wafting into a golden blur. The glint from her eye promises him everything he would ever want. But she is paper and gelatin and silver halides and a fifty-years old memory. He’d held the camera to his cheek watching her turn away. She had walked into the crowd and he’d never laid eyes upon Carolina again.
Until now. The novelty of being in Edison NJ wears off quickly. Yesterday, to conclude the day’s business routine, his local hosts insist on taking Mr. De las Costillas sightseeing. The blimp. Edison’s labs. The Raritan Canal. White Castle burgers stuns him as the epitome of everything evil about fast food, but Miguel keeps that to himself. The locals are delighted to introduce the big shot from the coast to sliders.
It is the final night of the annual three-week swing and Costillas finally gets to be on his own. Relieved at the absence of ritualized company dinners, Miguel walks in a bouncy quick time, excited at the prospect of dinner in a diner. A shiny aluminum railcar diner, just like in old movies or corny teevee situation comedies. Even better, it’s called Carolina’s Place.
De las Costillas mentally leaps in the air to click his heels to read “Blue Plate Special” on the chalkboard. The menu goes on for pages. Burgers, knishes, pirogi, cabbage soup, borscht, steak, fish, spaghetti. Miguel orders the blue plate special, meat loaf and all the trimmings. When he tops off the meal with a slice of custard pie, he tells Mary how delicious this custard pie tastes, like home.
Mary laughs and tells Miguel frankly she can’t stomach that slimy shit in her mouth, pardon my french. But the owner insists they keep custard pie on the menu. It doesn’t sell. Mary tells him I gotta tell boss lady about this. And with that Mary wheels around and pushes her way into the back.
The piecrust has a hard shell of granulated sugar along the rim. The side of Miguel’s fork cracks into the crispiness and glides through dense orange pudding. Perfumes of cardamom, nutmeg, and canela tantalize his nostrils and quivering tastebuds. Miguel’s fork trembles remembering another custard pie.
His mouth fills with flavor when he crushes the morsel with his tongue. The custard has baked just to the point of perfection; light, solid, creamy smoothness. He thinks of the smile over Carolina’s shoulder, the fine hairs of her cheek fuzz glowing in the afternoon light, her eyes at once distant and urgent. Miguel draws a long slow breath through parted lips across the flan still resting in his mouth. He closes his eyes to concentrate on sensing this aroma filling his sinus as he exhales. He remembers the moment he’d called, “Carolina, soma pa’ca! look over here!”
When Miguel de las Costillas opens his eyes he is looking into a woman’s eyes. He knows her and he slowly angles his head to look at her from a different perspective. She looks at him intently, then suspiciously. “How’d you find me?” Her voice still carries that sweet timbre that had rested unheard in his memory for fifty years. Fifty years of cigarettes—she reeks of tobacco—ravaged it, but the woman speaks with Carolina’s voice.
“Hi, Carolina” is all he says. Then he adds, “Happy birthday, 50 times over.” It has been that long. Carolina sits.
Miguel takes another bite of custard pie, savors it, and takes another bite. He remembers watching a 16-year old Carolina bustling in her mother’s kitchen, whipping up a custard pie. That girl had spirit. He played “Billy Boy” on the piano and made up a lyric about custard pie. She had laughed and danced and sang along, and baked a custard pie fast as young Miguel could blink an eye.
Carolina’s biography serves up a litany of woes and five husbands. Hard luck turns into elation. But that doesn’t work out, and more hard luck. Only three kids, thankfully, who have troubles of their own. Lou, the last husband before she gave up men, had beaten the shit out of her but when he died he left her this diner and the parking lot. She is not eking by, doing all right, getting there.
Does he want to, you know? Miguel holds her eyes with regret and she begins to sing “It’s Been a Long, Long Time.”
It was their song. He played the sheet music, she sang. Singing had been her tease. She would lean over him to read the words, squeezing him with both arms. Or she snuggled against him on the piano bench, an arm around his waist, leaning into him to turn the page with her right hand, occasionally sliding her nose into his neck. She drove him wild, a long, long time ago.
Costillas wishes he could photograph the empty darkened diner, shades half drawn, their corner booth in a pool of light. Two figures sit across from each other, their faces moving into and out of the overhead bulb like nighthawks turning in the gyre. The muted green walls scream out to be photographed.
She sings the entire song and by the final measure she has reached her hands across to him. He takes both hands and caresses them. She begins to lose the melody and energy, her voice fades until she whispers haltingly “… long, long, time.”
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