Petrified Almonds
Petrified Almonds
As I walked into the place, the smell of bacon and coffee swaddled me like a grandmother’s hug, drawing me in, enticing me with aromas, making me feel safe and welcome. I found a booth and Patti caressed my chin and cheek as she swept by, soon to return with napkin-wrapped utensils and two mugs of coffee.
“I chipped my tooth today.” She said it without any emotion as she sat down across from me. Just a fact. Fact o’ the day. Her name tag read “Patty” but she spells it with an “i.” Like Patti Smith, she told me once, a while ago.
“Yeah? How’d you do that?” I was having breakfast, even though it was one thirty. In the PM, as my dad used to say. In the PM. Doesn’t make sense, does it? Nothing makes sense anymore.
“Bit an almond. It was hard as a rock.” The breakfast here is good. Patti’s a server. She takes her coffee break when I come in so we can be together some more. “Franklin said it was petrified.” Franklin’s the cook. Makes damn good breakfast. “I bit on it and a piece of my tooth just fell out of my mouth. Didn’t hurt or anything. See?” She showed me her damaged tooth. The fact o’ the day was barely noticeable.
“Shit. You’re lucky it didn’t crack the whole thing.” She had her finger in her mouth, pulling her upper lip away at an odd angle, exposing her misfortune. It wasn’t one of the front teeth, or the pointy one, I don’t know what it’s called. It was the one between those. On the left. Her left.
I had no idea what I was talking about. Do teeth crack? Like a windshield? I don’t work in the fine art of dentistry, I repair small aviation engines. I got a job out of high school at a small airport outside of town doing odds and ends, took classes for eighteen months, now I’m a mechanic. The work’s not great, pretty boring actually, but it pays very well. So now I’m stuck.
Patti wasn’t allowed to eat the almonds after she got caught with her fingers in the almond jar. But she still does it because no one else likes raw, unsalted almonds and there aren’t many recipes that call for them and they would go rancid otherwise. That was Patti’s reasoning.
“Have you ever heard of a petrified almond before?” Her finger was no longer pulling her lip back like a dental retractor, thankfully. She poured more sugar in her black coffee, stuck a pinky in it and sucked it. Franklin outdid himself today, I thought. The western omelet was fantastic. “Kit?”
“What’s that?”
“I said, have you ever heard of a petrified almond?”
“Never have. Hey, aren’t you supposed to put that thing in milk and take it to the dentist so he can reattach it?” Again, I had no idea. I fix engines. I think I told you that already.
“I’m pretty sure that’s for the whole tooth, Kit.” She calls me “Kit.” It’s short for my last name, Kitteridge. We met a couple of years ago. She was serving at another place. Right smack dab in the middle of Covid. She was wearing a mask. I liked her eyes. Still do.
“Oh, okay. Hey, tell Franklin another excellent breakfast.” Franklin, whose actual name is Benjamin Franklin Washington, was damn good at his chosen profession. He was a young guy, late twenties I think, who was always wiping the condensation off of his glasses. Apparently, there was a lot of steam back in the kitchen. Sometimes I go back there just to shoot the shit with him.
“Okay. Are you leaving?” Her fake pout was enticing. Which didn’t help with what I had intended to do. Break up with her. Maybe tonight. In the future, I’ll need to come in here on Patti’s day off if I ever want more of Franklin’s cooking.
“Yeah, got some errands to do.” There were no other customers populating the diner. Just me, Patti, Franklin, and three other servers, who were all manipulating their sleek phones with their buttery fingers. It was a Thursday afternoon and the place was dead. I have Thursdays and Sundays off. They want me at the airport on Saturdays, for some reason, as if engines fail more on the weekend.
“Okay. See you later?”
“Uh, yeah, sure. Sorry about your tooth.” I paid at the register and left Patti a twenty.
I was out of cigarettes so I walked down several blocks to Bananas. It’s like a small general store, but they have a kitchen and you can get a sandwich or a salad or a smoothie and they always have a crate of bananas out front. I went in and bought a couple of packs from Lola at the register and went outside to smoke at one of the metal tables they have on their “patio.” It’s a sidewalk.
A few minutes later, I saw another customer leave and Lola came out and sat with me. Without a word, she slid a cigarette out of my opened pack, placed it between her lips, and waited for me to light it.
“Slow day?” I fired up her purloined cigarette and sat back to watch the show. She took a long drag and inhaled deeply. Unlike most girls who blew the smoke out immediately, Lola let it escape naturally. It seeped out of her nose and mouth slowly in lazy, gray ribbons, dancing across her face, obscuring her eyes like a ghostly veil. There was something very sensual about it.
“Not bad, not good.” She gave a slight tilt of her head and shrugged. Lola was from El Salvador and her family came to this shithole twenty years ago when her brother was murdered for a lousy six bucks. Or pesos. Or whatever dinero they use down there. She still had a mild accent that made an appearance not too infrequently which I found sensual as well.
I know what you’re thinking - I’m going to break up with the humdrum Patti and hook up with the exotic Lola. Sorry, I’m way ahead of you. We already had a brief thing - a few reckless weeks - but Lola was married and I was with Patti so I stopped it out of guilt. This was a couple of months ago, but I like Lola and can’t seem to keep away. I didn’t say I was a nice guy, did I?
Lola took another drag and put her chin in her hand, her elbow propped on the table. She stared at me with an analytical squint as smoke gathered around her, slowly revealing her face again.
“What’s wrong? You’re quiet today.” She’s very observant. She once told me that one must learn to study people, their speech and mannerisms, if they wanted to avoid danger in her home country. “Tell me. What do you want?”
“I want you to stop kicking my leg.” She was sitting cross-legged and her elevated foot kept swinging and knocked into my shin every few seconds.
“Sorry, I thought that was the table leg.” She’s not a very good liar.
“Then why are you still doing it?”
She shrugged again. “I don’t know. Maybe I want to punish you, Teddy Bear.” Yes, she calls me Teddy Bear sometimes. When she first learned my name, it was Ted. When we first started drinking together, it became Teddy. That soon devolved into the current handle. I found it cute at first. Now, I’m not so sure.
“For what?”
“You’re a bad, bad boy. You know that? You don’t see me too much no more.” She adjusted her chair and straightened her legs, which were painted in black skin-tight leggings. She put her feet up on my thigh, crossed at the ankles, and clasped her hands on her flat belly, her cigarette left unattended between her tropical lips. “How’s that, hmm? You like this better?”
“Your shoes are dirty.”
“Your mind is dirtier.” That was true. I can’t look at Lola without my thoughts retreating into the muck.
“Yeah.”
“What’s wrong with you, huh? Something’s wrong.”
“I’m thinking of breaking up with Patti.”
“Ah, see I told you you were bad. I don’t know why she didn’t break up with you a long time ago.” She was smiling. That’s just the way we talk. For some reason she thinks it’s fun or funny for us to throw verbal daggers at each other. I stopped long ago. I don’t think she noticed.
“How’s your husband?” I wanted to make sure she knew that I remembered that she was still married. Lola is older than me by five years and her husband is older than her by eight. Still, she could pass as my younger sister, if I wasn’t so pale.
“He’s fine. He broke his tooth.”
“What? ” The image of Patti exposing her chipped chopper flashed in my mind. I pushed Lola’s feet off of my lap, as if Patti had just turned the corner and spotted us.
“Hey. That’s not nice.” Lola readjusted her sitting position and slapped at my hand.
“How did Cesar break his tooth?” I felt uneasy about the synchrony - two broken teeth on the same, exact day. I didn’t like anything that Lola and Cesar had in common with me and Patti.
“I don’t know, he was eating some nuts and he broke it on a hard one. Okay?” She rubbed the heel of her foot and displayed a genuine pout.
“What kind of nuts?”
“I don’t know. I think almonds. Yeah, an almond broke his tooth. He said it was pet-ri-fied.” I studied her face for signs of her fucking with me but I saw nothing but unequivocal, Central American beauty.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m very sure, Teddy. I didn’t know what that word was so he explained to me. Like a rock. Do you know that word?
“Yeah, I know.”
I made it back to my apartment before the rain started. I was halfway through my first beer and about to put some Elliott Smith on the phono when Patti called.
“What’s wrong? You were quiet today.” (Why do women expect men to run their squawkboxes 24/7?)
“Nothing. What's wrong with you?”
“I got a chipped tooth. Remember?”
“Hey. What brand of almonds did you bite into?” I wanted to steer the conversation away from me and explore a nagging foreboding about the damaged teeth.
“I dunno. They come in a big bag at the diner. There’s no name on it. Franklin puts them in this glass jar near the stockroom. Why?”
“No reason, I was just curious.”
We talked for a bit before she needed to get back to work. I could tell she wanted me to invite her over that night but I kept thinking about Lola and how she casually put her feet on my lap as if we were young newlyweds, or about to be. She had been dressed all in black except for her dirty, white Vans and a ruby-red, beaded choker.
I ended the call with Patti with no plans to meet and no plans to break up. This weekend, I promised myself. Patti was a good girl. She had done well enough in school but had some tough times with ill parents, one right after the other. Working mornings and early afternoons at the diner was a good option for her. At the time.
I sat back with my beer listening to Needle in the Hay and I thought about the time when I was a kid and I had found a rock that looked like a potato. I brought it home, washed it, and put it on the kitchen counter. I told my mother we should put it on my father’s plate for dinner and see what happens when he tries to cut into it. She laughed and laughed at that. She laughed so hard, she had tears on her face. She laughed so hard she slipped and fell and hit her head on the edge of the kitchen table. I found out later that it had been “Mommy’s Juice” that had caused her fall. But she had laughed. I had made her laugh hard that day.
I remember now.
I guess the idea came to me when I went to Revolution Discs. It’s a music store that carries a lot of vinyl stuff. I know the guy who owns it, Doobie Hayes. Obviously a satirical nickname, but I never learned his real name. Doobie and I have similar tastes in music. Sometimes he holds some new arrivals for me to peruse before putting them on the sales floor. I show my appreciation by providing some recreational smokes.
Anyway, the place has a small stage in the back with some seating for weekend live shows. Doobie puts up a blackboard outside the store advertising the local talent that’s scheduled to play. Mostly indie rock bands, but there’s the occasional comedian or torch singer.
I saw that week’s listing as I left with my new stash of records. Written in blue and yellow chalk were the upcoming weekend’s bands: The Fuzzy Mosquitoes, La Reina Guitarra, and Petrified Almonds.
Yeah, I remember it now.
I had a hornet’s nest under construction on my balcony. I couldn’t sit out there and smoke and watch the sunset without some ornery insects dive-bombing me as if I gave a shit about their stupid paper house. The easier thing to do would have been to call the super and have him take care of it, but I headed down to the hardware store to get a can of Raid.
As I walked through the garden section, I spotted the stones. A bag of decorative pebbles, actually. Something made me stop and peer at those landscaping stones. They were small so I assumed a lot of people used them in their aquariums or terrariums. The plastic bag was clear so I could see that most of the stones were roundish, but a few were almond shaped. The right size. The right color.
I bought the Raid and the bag of rocks.
It took a couple of weeks. Enough for me to forget about the entire thing. And when the two broken teeth occurred on the same day, seemingly out of the blue, I was shocked at the coincidence. Deep down I knew, I suppose. Deep down, I knew everything.
I lost my job at the airport, not surprisingly.
Patti didn’t want to press charges but she made it clear she never wanted to see me again. Lola was right - Patti should have broken up with me a long time ago. Not exactly the way I wanted to end things with her.
Cesar, on the other hand, lawyered up, as they say. He decided he required top-notch, professional dental work done on his damaged molar. In San Francisco, no less. It’s a shame because I really like Cesar. Well, liked. He gave me my initial break at the airport and encouraged me to take mechanic classes. Even paid for my first semester. He was a damn good boss.
My lawyer said I could get up to three years or pay some hefty damages. That’s not something I like to think about. I prefer to think about Lola. She had given me her ruby-red, beaded choker when I went in for my arraignment. Lucky charm, she called it. I was fingering it in my pocket as I declared, “Not guilty.”
I remember it all now.
I cleaned four of the almond-shaped rocks and touched them up a bit with a brown permanent marker. The diner was easy. I just slipped two of them into the jar when Franklin wasn’t looking. No one thought it strange for me to be in the kitchen talking with him. I used to go back there frequently, even helping him out once during an unusually heavy lunch rush. I made the bacon and sausage.
Cesar took a bit more effort. He buys those single-serve bags of mixed nuts, one of which I borrowed. I made a small incision in it near the seam, slid an almond-shaped rock in, and carefully glued it shut. The next time I was over at Lola’s place, I pushed it down deep in the huge box that he purchased at Costco. Heart Healthy Snack Mix.
Yeah, things look a little grim at the moment. The trial, looming jail time, unemployment. However, Cesar’s out of town and Lola invited me over for dinner.
And… I do have one more petrified almond.
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