First Avenue by Lowen Clausen Read Free Book Online Page B

if it would not be easier to dispense with the hat altogether, but Silve thought the hat gave him the professional appearance he should have as the owner.
    After opening the door, Silve returned to his place behind the stove. He picked up his knife from the cutting board and resumed trimming and slicing beefsteak for the adobo. His hands were like those of a blind person. From touch alone, he could expertly trim the fat and gristle.
Sam
stood at the side of the stove close to Silve.
    “I think you must have a day off because I don’t see you yesterday,” Silve said.
    “I couldn’t make it.”
    “Must have been something bad not to come all day.”
    “My business is always bad. Better for us if I don’t have any business.”
    “You have business and you don’t want it. I don’t have business and I want it. It’s crazy.”
    “Yes,”
Sam
agreed. “How come your business is slow?”
    “I don’t know. Too many restaurants, maybe. But not so long now until Thanksgiving. Then it will get better again. My new girl comes an hour late yesterday. Not even a phone call. I kick her ass right out. She wonders why I fire her. Her second day of work and an hour late.”
    Silve’s knife worked faster as he thought of the new girl who lasted one day. He gestured with it as though it were part of his hand.
Sam
shook his head in disbelief but believing as always when he stood in Silve’s kitchen.
    “Maybe I should take her job.”
    “That would be something to see,” Silve said. “You could shoot anybody who complained.”
    “I’m afraid you would fire me, too.”
    “Yes,” Silve agreed, “but I would like to see that. You shoot them if they bitch about the food.” He laughed at the ceiling in his high-pitched cackle with the idea of
Sam
serving the food and then shooting the complainers.
Sam
laughed along with him and again with renewed vigor as Silve raised his knife and said, “Pow.”
    “I don’t see that
George
girl for a while either,” Silve said, lowering his head so that he looked at
Sam
over his glasses.
    “She’s been in San Francisco .”
    “Good-looking woman. Why does she go to San Francisco ?”
    “Meetings, I guess. She’s my neighbor, you know.”
    “I know. That’s what you tell me.” Silve repeated the look that made his glasses slide down over his nose.
    Sam stayed in the kitchen longer than usual to make up for the previous day. He was glad there was no one to interfere, just the two of them, together in the warmth around Silve’s stove. He should not have brought
Georgia
to Silve’s restaurant. Sometimes it was better to keep quiet about things, to hold them just the way they were and not risk adding more weight than they could stand.
    Sam turned to look out the windows behind Silve’s stove. It was the best view in the city. It was no different from the dining room, four steps down, but it was still better in the kitchen. Elliott Bay lay below in darkness like ink spilled between the hills. Two ferries, each lit like a carnival, were about to pass each other farther out in Puget Sound . Lights traced the shorelines, near and far, in this hour before dawn. On the city side, the lights were bright, denying darkness altogether, but across the Sound there were fewer lights and not so bright, with wide stretches of darkness between them. It was still too dark to see the Olympic Mountains , but they would appear at first light, catching the sun before
Seattle
and reflecting it eastward toward them. This time of year the highest peaks might have new snow as a distant signal of the oncoming season.
    “It’s chilly this morning,”
Sam
said.
    “Yes sir,” Silve replied, turning his back on the stove and joining
Sam
in looking out the window. “It won’t be long now.”
    Sam agreed, but he was not sure what Silve meant. Did the change in the air have anything to do with them? Many times he had waited here with Silve for the morning, standing beside him with just the right degree of