“You remember how to peel potatoes? We’re getting low on fries and I’d love to get ahead before the lunch rush,” my mom chirped as she sped by me, turning me toward a mountain of potato sacks.
“I know how to peel potatoes, for goodness’ sake,” I mumbled testily, realizing there wasn’t any way I was getting out of this. My mother was already heading back to the front counter, shouting over her shoulder to “Burn one, run it through the garden, and pin a rose on it.”
“It’s faster just to say burger with lettuce and tomato,” I told the potatoes, which looked back at me blandly. Because they had eyes, you see.
I grabbed a clean apron off the wall, grabbed the least dull and least likely to cut me knife from the block, and started filling a hotel pan with water to soak the cut potatoes. We served steak fries at the diner, thick cut and big enough to fill a hot dog bun, should someone choose. But that didn’t mean they couldn’t be perfect steak fries. So I settled in with my paring knife, peeling and slicing and lining them up with perfect uniformity. I dug out eyes, trimmed away green, and lost myself in the details.
As shouts of black cows, Eve with a lid on, and burn it echoed around me, I concentrated on the slippery right angles, making sure they were perfectly edged before going into the water bath.
My mother buzzed over to grab the first pan of ready-to-go spuds, and she looked on curiously as I concentrated on removing a stubborn peel. “They’re gonna get covered in gravy or dipped in ketchup—they don’t need to be a work of art, Rox.”
“You told me to peel potatoes. This is how I peel potatoes,” I replied, tossing it into the pan as she turned to go.
“Light a fire, or we’ll never get ahead of this,” she instructed, and I rolled my eyes. “I saw that!” she called out.
“I meant you to!” I pulled another pan down and filled it full of water. “Light a fire,” I mumbled.
Now I had a quest: to make a perfect steak fry, fast. I shut out the noise and the clatter and bent my head to the task. Hands flew, pruney fingers danced, and the pan filled with starchy, pointy art. Time flew by as I filled pan after pan, the sacks dwindling.
When one of the other waitresses patted my shoulder in greeting it startled me, and my knife slipped from my hand, landing in the back of the water pan. Leaning across the pan to retrieve it, I overbalanced and managed to submerge my front in cold potato water. “Bleagh,” I said, feeling the cold water running down the inside of my shirt and across my belly. Paused from my fry frenzy, I looked around. There were pans of fries on every work surface in my corner. Huh. Might have gone a little overboard.
“Land’s sake, Roxie, how many fries did you think we need?” my mother asked as she came around the corner.
“They’ll keep until tomorrow—the next day, even,” I replied, a little sheepish.
“It’s fine, I’ll make some room in the walk-in. How about cleaning some sugar snap peas?” she asked, thunking down a big pan of pea pods. “Cut off the end, strip out the stringy part.”
“I know how to clean a sugar snap,” I grumbled. “Cut off the end . . .” I filled the pan with water, huffing, “Strip out the stringy part. No shit, strip out the stringy part.”
“You start talking to yourself out there in Hollywood?” my mother teased, sticking her head around the corner and very nearly getting hit in the face with the snap pea I threw at her. She laughed and disappeared back into the kitchen.
I sighed, stretched, and went to work again. After this, I was taking a nap.
After a while I became aware of a tingling on the back of my neck, and I looked over my shoulder to find the source. Then several things happened within mere seconds, though I saw them in super slo-mo:
1. A man was standing right behind me.
2. He was holding a basket.
3. The basket contained some lovely walnuts.
4. I shrieked, because he was standing right behind me.
5. I dropped my pan.
6. Snap peas shot out in all directions.
7. Some of the peas landed on his work boots.