All She Can Take

F I V E

Five Years Later

Iron dust fought its way into Sidney's lungs like smoke from a long drag on a steel blunt. She choked. Gagged. She knew what was coming.

The piercing scream.

The thud.

The crunching sound that made her grind her teeth and snap her shoulders up near her ears. Today was not going to be a good day. Sidney burrowed into the crowd behind her on the train platform.

"You could say excuse me." A woman with gray hair framings her cocoa skin spat out at her. But Sid couldn't say 'excuse me'. She couldn't say anything. Her voice was held prisoner in her throat because that hat - a brown fedora with a tiny peacocks feather fastened beneath a black band— was floating toward her again. The last time she saw it in a dream, it rode the air right over to her until it settled above her head, tripled in size, and swallowed her up whole.

Yeah.

She had to get the fuck off of this train platform.

As the train rattled closer in the distance, Sid shouldered her way through the crowd toward the exit, gathering cusses and wishes of ill will from her fellow Brooklynites as she did. When she reached the end of the concrete platform she did not stop moving her legs until she had covered all the stairs up to ground level and her black sensible flats rested on the pavement. She put her arms above her head like she'd been taught to do. Deep breaths in. Deep breaths out. An alarm sounded in the pocket of her denim jacket. Sid did not have to check it to know what it meant. If she looked at the screen the time would read 8:30 AM. The last possible time that she could get on that train and make it to work on time.

She cursed at herself as she fished the phone out of her pocket. The custom message screamed Get on the train NOW! Swiping away her message of self-deprecation from the screen, she checked her Uber app to see that she only had ten cents left on her account. Damn, this week must have been a bad one. She craned her neck back down the sweeping staircase at the sound of the train plowing into the station below. That train would have her to work in twenty-five minutes. It would be the fastest route but Sid knew better than anyone that the fastest route could easily become the slowest when there were land mines of childhood trauma between you and the finish line. The bus it was.

Forty-five minutes later she finally broke free from the slow-moving bus into open air. She didn't even dare to check her phone. Sure that the messages were piling up. She sprinted down the street, skating along the outer edge of the curb to avoid the masses of people. Two blocks later the awning of Grazie Cucina Italiana came into view but instead of going in the front Sid rounded the corner and entered through the side.

The kitchen of Grazie's was like Port Authority. All the hustle and chaos of Grand Central but no beautiful architecture to distract you from it. She heard shouting from the front of the kitchen and thought of ignoring it but the least she could do --being late and all-- was to jump right into work. Sid slid her light jacket and backpack off and stuffed them behind a rack of spices. After weaving through the kitchen she entered the dining area to see the Head Chef making wild gestures at an obviously overwhelmed delivery guy.

"Hey, hey, what's going on here?" She said smoothly stepping between the two of them.

"Focaccia, Sidney! All this goddamn Focaccia!" Raymond was riled and red in the face. He made the bread sound like a cuss word. His old Sicilian accent dripped off of every word. Even though he was forty-two years old, Puerto Rican, and born right in Staten Island.

"Yes, Focaccia. You said you wanted to switch the Ciabatta for Focaccia. I have it in my notes somewhere." She patted around her person trying to locate her little notepad while she watched Raymond's hand fly to his forehead in exasperation.