Stephen Randel - The Chupacabra

Kip laughed to himself as he thought about the old days with Jackie as his long stride carried him away from the bingo parlor and through the streets of downtown Austin to meet her. Kip had known Jackie since kindergarten. By the time they were in high school, everyone thought the two were dating, including their parents, but they were just great friends.

The two enjoyed going to movies, usually obscure, subtitled foreign films in rickety, old, out-of-the-way theaters, the kind that still had velvet curtains lining the walls and a separate upstairs balcony. The two would sit in the back of the upper balcony, away from the other patrons, and take turns making up their own ridiculous dialogue for the foreign actors.

“My succulent lotus flower,” Kip said in a silly Japanese voice while they watched the black and white Kurosawa film on the screen. “You must take my sack of eels and protect them from the ninjas while I travel to Kyoto to cash this winning scratch-off lottery ticket.”

“No, my powerful love gorilla,” Jackie replied in an equally awful Asian accent, as the female character projected on the screen knelt at the feet of the stoic samurai. “Without your eels, how will you protect yourself from the Emperor’s flaming pigs?” she said while they both tried in vain to keep from giggling loud enough to draw attention from the usher. They had been kicked out of another theater the previous week for using cartoon character voices to create dialogue for the 1920s silent film Metropolis. Jackie’s Olive Oyl impersonation had gotten way out of hand.

At the end of their senior year, they went to the prom together. Kip never really asked her; they just both knew they would. It felt a little awkward as they slow danced with the band, but not as awkward as when he dropped her off following the after-parties and stole a timid kiss as they said goodnight on her parent’s front steps. Things could have been different between them, but they both knew they were going off in separate directions for college. They stayed in touch while in school and saw each other over the holiday breaks. Unfortunately, each time they got together, she was dating someone and he wasn’t, or vice versa.

After graduating from college, Kip accepted a job as a runner in a New York bond house that the father of one of his fraternity brothers helped him land. It didn’t take long before he climbed the ranks and became a full-time fixed-income trader. He loved the frantic pace and excitement of the trading floor, and the streets of New York were so different from the town he grew up in.

Once Jackie graduated, she didn’t really know what she wanted to do. Eventually, she decided to move to Colorado to try her hand at being a ski bum. Ultimately, she landed in Vail. Of course, the only problem with being a twenty-two-year-old ski bum in Vail with no practical work experience save waiting a few tables in high school was actually making a living so you could afford rent and lift tickets.

For almost three weeks, she went door to door looking for work. She was willing to do any job, but so was just about every other twenty-something looking to put off the real world for a few years who filled the village. Finally, she found work in one of the large hotels in Beaver Creek. She started in the kitchen, delivering room service. Pretty soon she suspected the kitchen was only giving her orders requested by gross old men just out of the shower. She remembered how embarrassing it was to sit and wait for lecherous-looking old men in half-closed bathrobes struggle to fill out a room service bill because they were too busy trying to check her out without her noticing and without completely exposing themselves. Seriously, Father Time, slap fifteen percent on it and sign the damn thing, she would think. I need to go vomit.

One day, one of the kitchen prep cooks badly cut his hand and left for the day. The head chef told her to grab a knife and an apron, and he showed her what to do. The next day he offered her a permanent job in the kitchen. Jackie jumped at the chance.

The head chef liked her. She was smart and enthusiastic, and didn’t put up with any crap from the guys in the kitchen. He started her in food prep, but over time began to move her up the line. He knew she had talent, and when an opening became available at the best Italian restaurant in Vail, he called his friend who owned the place and enthusiastically recommended her for the job. Jackie was ecstatic.

The executive chef at the restaurant took her under his wing and taught her amazing techniques. She loved it. One day, Jackie approached him with the idea of attending culinary school. He was a native of Italy and told her that if she really wanted to learn to cook, she needed to work in kitchens instead of classrooms. He was from the Italian town of Trieste and spent a few weeks finding a restaurant that would take her in as an apprentice. Initially, she was hesitant. She had never been to Europe and certainly didn’t speak Italian.

“Don’t worry about talking,” he assured her. “Learn with your eyes, your nose, and your hands. Any school can teach you the correct measurement of ingredients for making fresh pasta, but until you’ve stood at the hip of someone who has made it every day for thirty years, you’ll never really know what real pasta is.”

Ultimately, she agreed, and off to far northeastern Italy she went. She spent six months in Trieste, then a year in a Michelin-starred restaurant in Venice. After that, she spent a year in Florence and another in Palermo. She could have continued her culinary odyssey in a kitchen in Turin, but she was homesick. So she packed up her knives and moved back home.

After two weeks of kicking around town and gorging herself on the cheese enchiladas and the chile rellenos she so desperately missed overseas, she bravely scraped up all her savings, wrote a detailed business plan, and found a small restaurant space and a banker crazy enough to loan her the money to open her own place.

Austin was a barbecue and fried chicken town served with a side of fajitas and margaritas. Her traditional Italian restaurant serving authentic cuisine struggled at first. It made her cringe, but she finally got used to customers asking for spaghetti and meatballs, so she put them on the menu. It made her furious and slightly disappointed in herself, but it was the best damn Spaghetti e Polpette di Carne in Austin. Once a local food critic found her place and proclaimed her a “feisty, blonde-headed culinary genius,” business exploded. Soon she moved to a bigger location downtown, and “Ristorante di Jacqueline” became an Austin institution.

Kip had been walking through the streets of downtown Austin for about six blocks. Turning the corner on a street bustling with nighttime revelers, he spotted the quaint sign that announced he had arrived at his destination. Entering the packed restaurant, he approached the hostess, who was juggling a stack of menus and a reservation pad with a phone tucked under her ear. Waiting his turn in line, he finally reached the front of the stand a few minutes later.

“Welcome to Jacqueline’s.” The hostess smiled at Kip. “Did you have a reservation with us tonight?”

“Well, yes and no. I spoke with Jackie this afternoon, and she said to tell you that I’m Kip.”

“Oh, sure,” the hostess replied. “She has a spot at the kitchen counter saved for you. Mark,” she said to a young man wearing an apron who had just arrived at the reservation stand. “Will you take this gentleman to the chair reserved at the end of the chef’s counter and let Jackie know that Kip is here?”

“Certainly,” the young man replied. “Please follow me, sir.” The young man led Kip through the maze of tables draped with white tablecloths and boisterous diners seated in their red leather chairs. Reaching the end of a long counter that faced the busy open kitchen, he pulled back a chair for Kip. “Right here, sir. I’ll let Jackie know you’ve arrived.”