Théodora Armstrong - Clear Skies, No Wind, 100% Visibility

Once the fire starts glowing good and hot, Charlie turns on one of the burners and heats some butter in a pan for eggs. He throws back two aspirin, crunching the pills into bitter powder and letting them melt down his throat like an acidic regurgitation. He feels hollowed and equates that with hunger, a need to be filled. Two eggs over easy. The yolk breaks on the second one and ruins the egg, but Charlie will eat it anyway. James calls to say he’ll be late — things are a mess in Lions Bay. Charlie grabs a place setting from one of the empty tables and sits at the pass-bar, angling his plate and straightening his knife and fork. He takes a bite and the silence in the restaurant grows deeper.

Last night, when he arrived drenched and breathless at the hospital, a nurse helped him into a yellow gown and cap. In the delivery room he headed straight for the baby without realizing where he was going. There was a crowd of people working around the baby, grabbing tubes and vials, their hands on the tiny body, which was blue-skinned, not his, not of this world. He wanted to push past all of them so that he could stand above the baby, inert, and stare. All he could think was: People get things they don’t deserve all the time, so why can’t I have this?

“You look cheery in yellow,” Aisha said, as he brought his face close to hers. Her eyes were swollen from crying. “It’s a girl,” she said. “Go with her.” He followed the baby out of the room and waited on the outskirts of the neonatal unit. Doctors and nurses asked him questions, but he didn’t hear much. He and Aisha hadn’t talked about anything yet. The barnacle was here and she didn’t even have a name. Every time he tried to think of one, lists of food whirled in his head. You couldn’t call a child Dijon or Scallop or Frissé. Through the viewing window all he could see was one of her tiny hands, delicate as a sugary roll of tuile. The rest of her was obscured by tubes and tape and machines. “Every hour she remains stable is a good sign,” was all anyone could tell them. One of the nurses pulled Charlie into the room and encouraged him toward the little plastic portal of the incubator. “It’s good for them,” she said, patting his shoulder. “They want to know you right away, the second they enter the world.” He scrubbed his hands three times before putting on gloves and reaching into the incubator to run the tip of his finger over her forehead and along the ridge of her tiny nose. His hands still didn’t seem clean enough.

ROSE COMES IN LOOKING tired, like she had no sleep. She walks right by him and goes straight for the coffee machine. Her hair is pulled into a messy loop at the crown of her head and she’s wearing the same top from service last night, with a food stain on the sleeve. She stands at the back sink and tries to rub it out before sitting in front of him with her cup of coffee and taking out her scratch pad. She searches through her apron for a pen that works, squiggling invisible lines down the top page.

“You’re here early,” he says, measuring oil for a vinaigrette. Charlie’s not sure why, but he needs her to look at him, and she does, but blankly, and then she looks back down at her pen. She shakes it vigorously and sucks on the tip, trying to encourage the ink to the nib, her cheeks hollowing in a way that makes her look gaunt, but pretty. She tries the pen again and the ink flows freely.

“Where’s the fresh sheet?” she says, focusing on the little X’ s she’s drawing at the top of her pad. There’s a spot of ink in the middle of her lip.

“Hungry?” Charlie has a glob of egg stuck somewhere far down, where he feels dry and raw.

“This is my breakfast,” Rose says, holding up her cup of coffee and giving him a look hairy with suspicion.

Ever since he touched the baby last night, he can’t stop looking at his hands. For the first time he notices how ugly they are, covered in scars from burns and slips of the knife. He had tucked his index finger into the baby’s palm, which was pure and untouched by the world. A baby’s palm is as simple as it gets — it was the most delicate thing he’d ever felt in his life. Aisha was sleeping when he left the hospital. He left a note on top of a turkey sandwich wrapped in cellophane that he had bought from the vending machine: Be back after the brunch rush . He tries to dispel the image of Aisha sitting alone in her hospital room, eating the sandwich. She won’t be alone, her sister will be there fussing and clucking and making enough noise for a roomful of people.

Rose pushes away from the counter and picks up a dishrag. He knows he should tell her about the baby’s birth, but there’s something stopping him, as though the words are buried in the deep layers of fat in his gut. He’d need a shovel to dig them out.

“You might want to wake up Martin,” he says instead. “He’s passed out on the couch.”

Rose rolls her eyes, indifferent. “No one’s going to come in today anyway.”

ROSE IS WRONG. MORE than half the North Shore is without power from last night’s storm. People’s homes are cold. No one can turn on their ovens or coffee pots this morning. Trees came crashing through front living rooms last night, leaving sopping messes of the carpets. The lineup goes out the door of the restaurant, along the sidewalk, and into the alley. Susan has to put on an apron and relive her serving days. She keeps sloshing coffee all over her tray. She and Rose dance around the room in an elaborately choreographed ballet. The bills come into the kitchen in a continuous stream — chk, chk, chk — long floating ribbons Charlie flourishes in the air, singing eggs benny, French toast, florentine, side of sausage, side of bacon, hash browns, hold the hollandaise . Charlie slides plates onto the pass-bar one after the other, lining them up, and Tara starts throwing down melon wedges. The din in the dining room makes it impossible to hear and Charlie has to shout his call times. “How long on fourteen?” Charlie mops his forehead with his sleeve as sweat pours off his brow.

“Minute left over-easy,” Rich says, fondling a couple of eggs. Charlie can see him starting to panic.

“Rich, where’s my bacon benny?” Tara shouts across the kitchen. “My crab cakes are up. I need it now.”

Rich stands frozen in the middle of the chaos, rubbing his chin. It’s something Charlie has never seen him do before. “What that?”

“The benny, Rich.” Tara’s voice is getting shrill.

Rich grabs a couple of English muffins and fumbles, almost dropping them on the floor. He grabs a ladleful of hollandaise and just as the golden liquid hits the eggs, Tara shouts, “On the side. Hollandaise on the side, dammit.”

“Aw, fuck it,” Rich says, throwing the ladle down and storming out of the kitchen.

Charlie follows him and finds him sitting on an overturned bucket beside the refrigerator, crying. There are new knuckle indentations, four perfect circles, in the fridge’s door. Several matching impressions adorn the stainless steel surface.

“I buried so deep,” Rich says, hiding his face in the crook of his arm.

“Come on, Rich,” Charlie says. A separation occurs in his brain; the response he expects from himself — shouts, expletives, threats — doesn’t materialize. His blood bubbles through his veins normally, his heart rate remains steady, his breathing calm. He grabs Rich under the armpits and yanks him upright the way you would a child who refuses to leave the birthday party. “We need you out there now,” he says, but his voice is gentle.

“Deep, Chef,” Rich says, tears wetting his cheeks. “I deep in shit. No way out.”

“Come on,” Charlie says. “We’ll get you out. You’re good,” he says, patting him on the back as he shuffles him back toward the kitchen. “You’re good.”