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1700

I've been working for Jimmy Russo for the last eighteen months as a chef. Food has always been a passion of mine, even since I was just a little girl. I loved helping my mother to prepare dinner.  On Sundays we would bake. The entire day dedicated to perfecting the art of culinary excellence. Baking is a lot harder that it seems. There really is an art to it. I guess that's one of there reasons we revere talented chefs. Ins one way, we all know that cooking, and cooking well, is hard to achieve. When I finally decided to try and get my life back on track after the period I refer to as my dark time, Jimmy was the only employer who actually got back to me. Getting a job when you have a criminal record isn't easy. Once you've been scarred by the judicial branding iron your options become severely limited. The nature of your crime doesn't actually matter, all criminals are treated with an equal level of disdain. There's a stigma that comes with it, a stink that pervades, sour and rotten that very few have a stomach for. When I interviewed with Jimmy for the role of head chef at his restaurant I could tell right away that he saw it as an opportunity. An opportunity to exploit me. To exploit the unfortunate low I had allowed my life to reach. He listened poker faced as I sold myself, as I tried to convince him that my misgivings of past were resolutely sequestered there, in my past, and that moving forward I would be reliable, hard working, dedicated and a plethora of other hyperbolic self aggrandisement. He listened patiently until I'd finished my spiel, allowed an awkward moment of silence to settle between us then offered me the job with one caveat, the salary was to be half of that advertised. Right then I realised Jimmy is a businessman, he saw the world in dollar terms. He was willing to take a risk on me, a convicted felon, but for his trouble, his benevolence, he offered slave wages. At first I thought he was kidding, but I quickly realised he meant it, and that he wasn't open to negotiation. It was a take it or leave it deal. Lucy was the reason I took it. The sooner I had gainful employment, the soon I could show to a judge that I had my life under control. The sooner that happened, the sooner I could spend time with the only thing in life worth living for, my daughter.

'Hi Jimmy, how's my favourite boss going?' I say with as much feigned happiness as I can muster. 

'Favourite Boss? I'm your only boss, or are you moonlighting?' Jimmy says loudly down the phone. From what I can hear in the background it sounds like he's in the kitchen at his restaurant. 

'I cook seventy hours a week for you, where on earth would I find the time to moonlight? What does that even mean?'

'I think it means work by moonlight. Forget it, not why I called. Why aren't you here? Your shift started half an hour ago, you're late.' I hear the rising irritation in Jimmy's voice. Jimmy's good at running a restaurant from the back of house, but he's terrible when it comes to anything cooking related.

'I'm not late Jimmy, today's my day off.' I say, as double check the date on my cell just to make sure I haven't somehow got the date wrong, which fortunately I haven't. 

'The roster begs to differ.' Jimmy yells down the phone.

It suddenly dawns on me what's happened. 'I'm gonna kill him. I am literally going to flay him alive. I'll film it so you can see I wasn't kidding.' I seethe down the phone.

'Make sense or you're fired,' Jimmy spits back. 

'Your absence of chef is Julio's fault, not mine. We swapped shifts because my daughter is flying in tomorrow from Vegas and I wanted to have today free to prepare.'

'Fuck, what'd I say about you guys not swapping shifts? 

'Nothing. We've never done it before, this is the first time.'

'Well, I'm saying it now. Don't ever swap shifts. Ever. The roster is the roster for a fuckin' reason.' I can hear Jimmy's rising anger by the second. 

I try to placate him by saying, 'Sure, understood.'

'Get your arse here in thirty minutes or you're fired.' Jimmy threatens and the way he says it I'm sure he means it. 

'What about Julio, he's the one who hasn't shown up for his shift.' I really don't want to go into work today. I need the day off. I have so much to prepare before Lucy arrives. I need to clean my apartment properly, I need to prepare her bed, wrap all these presents, shop for food and a whole bunch more.

'Forget Julio, it's your shift, so it's your responsibility. Thirty minutes Susan, I'm not playing.' And with that threat Jimmy ends the call. 

Shit. I check the time. It's just gone 4:30 pm. There's no way in hell I can get from here to work in thirty minutes, not with home time traffic soon to be clogging the arterial roads. Even if it was the dead of night and there wasn't another car on the road I'd have to break the speed limit to make it to work in time to save my job. I know there's no point in calling Jimmy back to ask for more time, there's no way in hell he'd answer, he's too angry with me right now. I cut my toy shopping short, I'm sure twenty something toys will suffice for this Christmas for Lucy. I push my shopping cart down the isle at a break neck speed and almost run over a three year old girl who has wandered away from her parents. I push my cart around the little lady, who in a way reminds me of Lucy when she was that age. A time, I also recall, when I was the worst mother I have ever been. I try not to focus on this unsettling thought as I find an open cashier and load my toys onto the counter. 

The lady gives me a broad toothed smile, something I image she has practiced in the mirror, and greets me with, 'How are you today?'

'Good, thanks,' I fire back curtly and I don't reciprocate the smile, in the hope it will signal my need for haste. Alas, it doesn't. The lady scans the toys at such a leisurely pace that I wonder if maybe she's on something, some sort of medication that slows her movements to the realm of sloths. 

'Sorry, I don't mean to be rude, I just, I'm in a rush, so if you could...' I don't finish that sentence, hoping the obvious is conveyed.   

'Certainly, sure thing.' The lady says, and somehow manages to instantly triple the speed she scans the toys. 'It's that time of the year,' the lady continues, 'Everyone has a hundred things to do and only a handful of days to do them.' She flashes me another smile, less tooth this time, more genuine, and I actually warm to her. In a way, she's just like me. Working a monotonous job for the means of survival. 

'That comes to three hundred and twenty eight plus tax.' The lady says, pointing to the screen she read from. That's far more than I planned on spending, but I've not time to walk back some toys, I swipe my card, but unfortunately it comes back as declined. 

'Would you like to try it again? Or perhaps another card?' The lady offers.

I take out my credit card, the card I don't like to use and give her that, which goes through just fine. I always try to live within my means, and keep the credit card for backup, for rainy days. I guess you could call today a rainy day, it's drizzling right now with the potential for hail later if I don't get to work in time. The lady bags up the presents quickly and I'm soon out of the toy store hurrying through the mall to my car. I key open the door to my twenty year old Oldsmobile and heave all the presents onto the back seat. The second I do, the Centurion spaceship that I bought for Lucy startles me with an involuntary rendition of it's intergalactic space noises. The sounds are much louder than I imagined they'd be and it actually makes be jump. I get in, start the engine and pull out. I check the time and realise I have twenty minutes to make a thirty minute drive. I pull out of the shopping mall and to my surprise the roads that lead me to the freeway aren't as congested as I thought they'd be. Alas, the freeway is. I immediately regret choosing to take the freeway, as it seems every other human in the state had the same idea. I kick myself, knowing that I should have taken the side streets. I know the way, I could have probably made it in time. At the rate that this highway traffic is moving I guess I'll be about fifteen minutes later. I can only hope that Jimmy won't fire me. The prospect of losing my job only two days from Christmas sends a shiver of cold down my spine. As if to add insult to injury I suddenly recall that I have night school feels due in early January. If I'm fired, I won't be able to pay them. If I can't pay them, I'll never finish my degree in business and I'll be destined to work for tyrannical employers like Jimmy the rest of my life. My goal is to get a business degree and move into the world of finance. I thought about opening my own restaurant, but the margins are too small, and unless you can create a niche that can be franchised you severely limit your income potential. Whereas, the world of finance, as far as I can tell, the upside is unlimited, so long as you know what you're doing. As the traffic inches along I see a plane on the horizon coming in to land at Newark Liberty Airport. I remind myself that despite what happens with my employment at the restaurant, my daughter Lucy will be on a plane coming in to land at that very same airport in just over twelve hours. Five forty five a.m. American Airlines flight number 221, I remind myself. And just the thought alone of Lucy calms me. Unfortunately, this moment of comparative tranquility is short lived, when the shrill chime of my cell's ringtone cuts the air. My stomach turns the moment I see the caller ID. Shit, not now! Why the hell are you calling me now!  I answer quickly praying that my help is not needed right now.