Valley Fever by Katherine Taylor

Author:Katherine Taylor
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780374713812
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

14.

Bootsie bit into an apricot. It was so perfectly ripe, she had to slurp. A dollop of pink nectar slopped down her chin. “Such a mess,” she said, leaning over the bar sink, running water, wiping off her face. “Eat one,” she said. A bowl of them had been set out on the bar.

“I’ve been eating them hot off the tree,” I said.

In the kitchen, a very short sous chef sliced apricots carefully in half and layered them into ramekins. He worked with his face close to what he was doing. He wore a red bandana, and I worried slightly if this might be a bad idea for a cook with an open kitchen in a small town nationally famous for its gang activity.

There were peppers roasting and a tray of garlic baking. It was early, 5:00 p.m., before Bootsie had unlocked the front door and two hours before the first reservation. She slurped the second half of the apricot and threw the pit in the sink. Bootsie said, “I don’t know how the apricots survived whatever killed all the peaches.”

“Good news for the almonds, though,” I said.

“Thank God. The almond guys are thanking God.”

“And olives, too, I guess.”

This is the restaurant-bar chitchat of central California.

I’d come right from Dad’s office, where I’d spent the day with Phillip’s papers, trying to work out what money we’d made from the machines, if we’d made any money at all, and sorting chemical and fertilizer records from the business with the rentals. Phillip’s papers were so exhausting, it was impossible to look at them for longer than eight hours. I took an apricot so ripe it had to be held very gently.

“I guess,” she said. She rinsed her hands and wiped her mouth with a new bar towel. “Olive is a nice name for a girl.”

“My back is strong,” I sang. “My name is Peeaaches!” In New York, Bootsie and I had listened almost exclusively to Nina Simone’s greatest hits, over and over on repeat for months.

“If I have a little girl, I’m going to call her Peaches. For you,” she said.

“If I have a little girl, I’m going to call her Bootsie Calhoun,” I said.

“Funny.” She filled a wineglass with club soda and poured several dashes of bitters on top. “You want a drink?”

I watched her punch the bitters down into the soda with a straw, and the whole drink dissolved into brown-red. “Oh my,” I said, realizing.

She looked at me, sipping from the cocktail straw, and then she took the straw out to chew it. “I know,” she said, chewing the straw with her front teeth, shaking her head. “I know. You’re the first, but everyone’s going to figure it out if I stop drinking completely.”

“I can’t believe that.”

“What’s not to believe?”

“Is it Elliot?”

“Of course. Don’t be an asshole.” There was the clank of trays in the kitchen, the scrape of a spatula. The small chef had finished with apricots and begun to peel roasted garlic.

“This is the best thing that could have happened,” I said.

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