Minotaur Takes A Cigarette Break , livre ebook

Steven Sherrill is the author of five novels and a collection of poetry, and is an Associate Professor of English and Integrative Arts at Penn State Altoona. He earned an MFA in Poetry from Iowa Writers' Workshop and was the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship for Fiction. His work has appeared in Best American Poetry , the Kenyon Review and the Georgia Review . He lives in Pennsylvania. stevensherrill.com

Also by Steven Sherrill Fiction The Minotaur Takes His Own Sweet Time Joy, PA The Locktender’s House Visits from the Drowned Girl Poetry Ersatz Anatomy

The Canons edition published in Great Britain in 2019 by Canongate Books
This digital edition first published in 2009by Canongate Books
First published in Great Britain in 2003 by Canongate Books Ltd, 14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE
Originally published in 2000 by Blair Publishing, North Carolina
canongate.co.uk
Copyright © Steven Sherrill, 2000
The right of Steven Sherrill to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 78689 614 8 eISBN 978 1 84767 699 3
Frontispiece illustration by Alan McGowan
To Maude, who daily teaches me what is important in life
Contents
Prologue Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Chapter Eighteen Chapter Nineteen Chapter Twenty Chapter Twenty-One Chapter Twenty-Two Chapter Twenty-Three Chapter Twenty-Four Chapter Twenty-Five Chapter Twenty-Six Chapter Twenty-Seven Chapter Twenty-Eight Epilogue
PROLOGUE
The Minotaur dreams of bargains struck, dreams— Brave young Theseus, golden boy, butcher extraordinaire. Theseus deep in the Labyrinth comes face to face— Umbilicated hero, bound by fate, bound by love, bound by the filament of mislaid want. Comes face to face in the chambered pit—hewn out of darkness, the chisel and rasp, tools of deceit. Crafted from the planks and bones of mendacity. Theseus comes face to face with the asthmatic huff and the pernicious snort of desire, rendered pure. The by-product, hobbled from shame and hidden away—until Theseus—Theseus comes face to face with the Minotaur. Theseus barters for his life. In the Labyrinth all deals are shady. Skullduggery holds sway. From the front door ashen Theseus puts on a good face, touts his victory—the Monster to market—while from the back the Minotaur skulks into a tepid eternity; high, the costs of living.
C HAPTER 1
The Minotaur sits on an empty pickle bucket blowing smoke through bullish nostrils. He sits near the dumpster on the dock of the kitchen at Grub’s Rib smoking and watching JoeJoe, the dishwasher, dance on the thin strip of crumbling asphalt that begins three steps down at the base of the dock, runs the length of the building’s backside and stops abruptly at the overgrown bank, thick with jimson weed, honeysuckle and scraggly pine, leading down to the interstate. It’s hot, and through the haze and the treetops the Minotaur can just make out a piece of the billboard advertising the restaurant: Next Exit . The Minotaur doesn’t like to smoke but smokes anyway, smokes menthols because he likes them even less, while JoeJoe dances to the static-y music thumping out of the boombox at his feet, the music fighting with the sounds of the exhaust fan over their heads and the incessant traffic on the highway below. It’s hot. As hot outside as in the kitchen. JoeJoe’s black face and arms jut from the stained white uniform, jerking and twisting in furious rhythms; his chocolate skin has a sheen of sweat. The steps, the loading dock, the dumpster gaping open like a dumb metal mouth, the pavement itself, even the weeds and bushes have a permanent layer of grease, of animal fat spilled or blown through the exhaust year after year. Everything stinks. Everything is slick and hard to hold. But it’s like the heat—people get used to it.
“Order up,” the Minotaur hears from the tinny little speaker hanging just inside the kitchen door.
It’s Adrienne; she’s the only one who whines like that. The Minotaur picks at a dried gravy stain on his apron, thinks for a minute about Adrienne. Titties , he thinks. He thinks it because everyone else says it. Big titties bouncing inside the ruffled tuxedo shirt that is her uniform, and a big nose, both of which stir his soup. But these kinds of thoughts never lead anywhere and are ultimately painful to him, so he doesn’t linger on them. Besides, she always seems mad at him.
The Minotaur is a line cook; he works the dinner shift, in at three and out at midnight after cleanup, later on the weekends. He works the hot line: the steam table, the FryDaddy and the convection ovens. Most of the appetizers and a few of the entrees come from his station. When it’s slow he helps with salads and desserts as well. On busy nights there are two others on the line: Cecie on salads and a lean quiet man named Hernando who works the sauté station and cuts the prime rib on Friday and Saturday nights.
“Order up!”
She is impatient. Grub has those damn speakers wired all over the back of the house, even in the cramped airless bathroom designated for the kitchen workers, so Adrienne knows the Minotaur can hear her. As much as he is unable to fathom the span of his earthly existence, time, in its smaller and more manageable increments, is important to the Minotaur. Normally he’s very prompt, even with the waiters and waitresses he doesn’t like, but this hasn’t been a good day. Half an hour earlier he had been making crepes, two at a time. It was a methodical task, one that he enjoyed. Oil the shallow pans with a little clarified butter. When it’s hot ladle in just enough batter to cover the bottom. Over a medium flame the thin pancakes turn a beautiful golden brown in less than a minute. Crepes imperial, two rolled crepes filled with a thick seafood-and-mushroom mix, doused with hollandaise sauce. It’s one of the most popular items on the menu.
The Minotaur’s vision is troublesome. Clarity is not the issue; even after all these years what he sees, what lies within his field of vision, he sees sharply. The problem is the bridge of his nose, a black bony expanse lying between wide-set eyes. It creates a blind spot for which the Minotaur compensates by cocking his head a little to one side or the other, depending on what he is looking at. Up close a thing, a person, right before his eyes becomes all but invisible. Half an hour ago he was ladling crepe batter into a pan, turning the pan with his wrist to coat the polished surface, when one of the waiters asked him for a match. As he turned to speak to the waiter, he misjudged. The crepe pan banged against the container of drawn butter, knocking it over. The golden liquid spread quickly over the worktable. Some fell in a threadlike stream first down the thigh of the Minotaur’s salt-and-pepper work pants, then across the scuffed tops of his steel-toed shoes, before finally pooling on the floor beneath a thick honeycomb rubber mat. Most of the spilled butter, however, took a more dangerous turn, washing across the stainless-steel tabletop and into the crusted burning eye of the stove, where it ignited. Fires are not uncommon in the kitchen. In fact, controlled fires are often necessary to burn away the alcohol in a pan, leaving behind only the sweet essence of a brandy or a Marsala. In the dining room, fires are an expected part of the pageantry of some entrees and desserts. But the Minotaur’s fire was neither planned nor controlled. The flames leapt instantly, wildly toward the exhaust vents overhead. The hot orange tongues danced in the wide black eyes of the Minotaur, who stood paralyzed, clutching the crepe pan in his fist.
The Minotaur’s vision is troublesome. He watched from the periphery as Cecie, quick-thinking Cecie, came from behind the reach-in coolers, where the bins are stored under a low worktable, with a heavy scoop full of salt. Cecie doused the flame in one pass.
“What a fuckup,” somebody said.
“Go have a smoke,” Hernando said, starting to clean up the mess. They look out for each other; it’s one of the things the Minotaur likes about the kitchen.
The Minotaur sits on the back dock and smokes. Filter pinched between black lips, he draws deeply on the cigarette, pulling the orange tip nearly into his mouth. Then he flicks the butt away. He can almost hear it sizzle in the oily air.
“Come on, M! It’s getting busy.” It’s Adrienne; she’s standing just behind the screen door. The Minotaur can see her breasts, parted by the fabric ruffle, pressed against the screen door. Her face, farther back, less clear, seen through the metal mesh, looks mechanical—hard and bloodless.
“Unnnhh,” the Minotaur says to no one.
“I know what you mean,” JoeJoe answers, sitting on the steps as the Minotaur stands, knots his stained apron around too-thin almost womanly hips, straightens the altered collar of his chef’s coat, then goes inside.
Cecie is just inside the back door cutting radishes at a high stainless-steel table. At barely five feet she has to stand on an upturned case of powdered Au Jus to see over the mountain of cut broccoli, cherry tomatoes, yellow squash, peppers, cheeses, cans of sardines and everything else. Looking close it’s not hard to see all the little scars on her fingers and hands, like tiny shooting stars burning white in the black night of her skin. The Minotaur stands close behind her, his hot bull breath spilling over her shoulder. Cecie knows what he wants. Without looking she plucks one silvery sardine from an open can and