Had it not been been for the spillage of said-vegetable whilst we were in the midst of the process of preparing in for frying, I would never have found myself on my knee, delivering my age old proposition to her.
"Flame of my grill, core of my apple, my soap-smeared love, tell me that you'll marry me."
It had been a year since our eyes had met; or more correctly, a year since the irrevocable pull of her irises had finally wrenched my gaze from the lined surface of a chopping board.
All I saw in that second-long ecounter was two parallel, penetrating tunnels of blue, grey and gold boring outwards from a fragile porcelain face. She was surrounded by a halo of fluorescent-fog and steam, emitting from in dew-inducing clouds from the fast-filling sink.
Then the plates had been placed and the face and eyes had left, the transient phantasm spinning on an unseen heel and disappearing through the swingin mouth of the dining-room doors.
Though not a word had been spared, it seemed as if an entire conversation had been had- the main contention of which was one of automatic hostility, broken only by the mutual yawn of loneliness that gaped in the both of our abdomens.
It was a week until we met again; for I, the taker of late shifts, had minimal chances of meeting those who worked the diner during the day. Early morning when we first met; she at the start of her shift, I at the exhausted and filthy end of my own, having spent a tiresome few hours wrist deep in the plughole, sluicing accumulated crumbs from the pipe system.
By Wednesday I had determined that her name was Cindy- like that song by that band that my mother had deemed to be so blasphemous in my youth,
crack of dawn
Cindy's movin' on
talking Cindy to everyone
until she's had her fun
she has me
we twist the sun and sea
still she's talking to everyone
Cindy's had her fun
though I've heard it before
still I need you more and more
but I just can't get away
Cindy kills me every day
and I tried and I tried
but you looked right through me
knife to my head when she talks so sweetly
knife in my head when I think of Cindy
knife in my head is the taste of Cindy
and by Friday I was aching to see her again.
She found me in the freezer, my nose wrinkled against the metallic odour of raw meat (for even after all these years, I still cannot stand the sight and smell of animal blood). She skirted around me, stepping over the bulk of my limbs as if I were simply a cardboard box packed with condiments, retrieving from a shelf high above her head a bowl of shredded lettuce.
"Do I have anythink on my face? I swear customers keep looking at me funny."
Perhaps, I thought, it is due to your eyes; for they fillet my soul as if I am a fish, those circles that look like the shattered rings of Saturn. But instead I said- "Next to your nostril, there's a tad of ash."
She rubbed, and nodded in recognition, then the frail ghost was gone again, and all I had for my efforts was silence and the buzz of the refrigerator-fan.
Oh, my Cindy-rella, how hard it was for me to concentrate on that which was at hand with your elbow brushing up against my forearm- our stale jokes, our slowly growing kinship and our kitchen conversations in the hour-long twilight when yours shift and mine met, at dawn and at dusk. Our compromise one night that if I were to cease smoking, you would begin eating a little more than only the occasional finger-to-lip from the bucket of mayonaise- for your apron nearly fell off you once, and it was only funny the first time.
You yearned for fuel, for money, for a momentary release from the reality that you lived in. The men would stare, understandably so, and you gave in to their requests and offers of a ride home - but turning tricks in addition to taking orders left you hollow the very first time you tried it, and left you beaten and bruised another few times after, your drugstore-bought eyeliner running in speckled rivulets down your hollow cheeks.
That was a Thursday, the first time you let me really touch you. I let you lay your head on my chest whilst I tentatively patted your back- "Is there something on my face?" - and then fixed your make-up for you, rubbing with thumb and saliva and tears away the remnants of whatever it was that had happened to you.
You knew that I yearned for you; but you did not tease me, you simply kissed me, a week later, near the kitchen sink and took my hand, leading me in a daze out back to make love by the dumpsters. We buried our faces in each others necks against the stench- I am sorry it was hardly romantic but at least we could see the stars. I would not whisper dirty words like I knew all the other men had, only press my lips to her temples and hold her tightly to me.
You said, tracing the conch shell shape of my ears, that I must have been a handsome man in my hey-day; but that I was like a nice vintage cheese that only grew sharper and more appetising with age.
So you could hardly be surprised when I asked you such a question as to keep me company forever; but I never knew if you were crying out of emotion or simply from the acid from the onions.
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