Smoke Break | Cat Casey
Having never been told no, table 404 asks for extra bread, pleading with the raise of their brows, with their fingers moving to the cash, singles in their back pockets, that I do not ring in, not charge them and instead, trudge down to the kitchen to ask the kitchen boys, who love me, to grill me up some extra bread – already chanting I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I love you, I’m sorry, before they can shout at me, like it’s my fault that four yuppie fucks from the city, but really from an hour out, want more more more – and wait there, at the line, as Tommy spreads butter, almost smacks it, onto the blacktop, not looking at me while throwing the bread, really smacking it now, onto the butter, which gives off a hiss like a snake, like the tattoo on Tommy’s left arm that holds his spatula and pulls at my hair, but only after work, that drowns out his first expletive but not his second, directed at me and table 404 and his boss and his mom and Jesus, before looking up from his hands, which I am also watching, with interest, to see my eyes, which I have purposefully widened to look totally innocent, like a girlchild, so that he’s nice to me, before his gaze darts down to my chest, which I have pushed out so my arms, which are framing the curve of both breasts, are pulled tight against my sides, cursing again when he realizes he burnt the bread, but only a little, not enough that I cannot still serve it, because of my chest and my eyes, but mostly my chest – which I know I will pay for later, in the backseat of his car, Weezer blaring from the stereo, because he is not a nice boy or one with good taste, with his left hand, the one with the snake, in my hair, and maybe I’ll cry, in the good way, the one I did not know existed before, that I had to bum thirty-two cigarettes off of Tommy to learn about, even though I don’t smoke, but for right now I just press my thighs together, pretending to be impatient – before I blow him a kiss on my way back upstairs with the bread, that I really could have charged for or maybe had someone else get for me – it really, I guess, would have been smarter – in my hands that are shaking from excitement, despite myself, for what will happen later because I ran my own bread, but mainly from nicotine hunger – the kind that I’ve felt all night, even when I was talking to 404, especially then – because I was supposed to have five minutes, before they asked for the bread, which they stole, to run out the back door, the one that leads to the dumpster, hit the vape I borrowed from Kendra, who wouldn’t have asked for it back for another twenty minutes, close my eyes, sink against the brick of the building, ignore how my sweat, seeping out from under my arms, smells, underneath my supposedly sexy vanilla perfume, a little bit like leftover bits of Tommy’s skin, still rubbed off on mine from last night in his car – Weezer, left hand, snake, hair – and focus instead on myself, how proud I am that I did not, for once, trudge downstairs and waltz into the kitchen, act like I owned the place because the kitchen boys love me, too much, not the right way, with hands in my hair, lean against the expo line, widen my eyes so that he’d be nice, push out my chest, and ask Tommy for a cigarette – because I am supposed to have quit both for my health.
More about the author:
Cat Casey is an MFA candidate in Fiction at the University of New Hampshire. She currently serves as the Arts editor for Barnstorm Literary Journal, and as the co-host of the Read Free or Die live reading series. Her work has been published previously in the Long River Review.