Kitchens of the Great Midwest (11 page)

“President from 1853 to 1857?” Eva asked.

“Franklin Pierce, Democrat.”

“Who did he defeat in the election of 1852?”

“Winfield Scott, Whig Party.”

“Vice president?”

“William Rufus DeVane King.”

“Are they really going to ask you that tomorrow?”

“It’s a final on the whole century, I have to be prepared for everything.”

“I think you’re gonna do OK on this final.”

“Ask me another one.”

“What’s this line of people for?”

A ribbon of people, mostly husky white dudes, lined one side of Clark Street. Braque looked up ahead. The line wound into the doorway of The Truth Kitchen & Barbecue Pit.

Braque looked at a guy standing near the front. He had dirty leather clothes and beady eyes and looked as if he stress-tested motorcycle helmets for a living.

“This the line for The Truth?” Braque asked.

“The hell you say?” the beady-eyed man said.

Behind him, an eager-eyed frat-boy type in an American Eagle polo was more of a help. “Yep, sure is,” he said. “Been here two hours already. Sign up in there and get in line.”

Someone behind him said, “The line goes all the way to Grace Street!”

Braque turned to Eva and was about to say, “Looks like we’re screwed,” but Eva was already bolting into the restaurant, past the maître d’s station, and into the crowded, sticky mayhem of The Truth on Hell Night.

8:10
P
.
M
.

Even on a regular night, The Truth was intolerable. The floor was coated in sawdust, music that could only be described as cock-metal blasted on the sound system, Christmas lights flashed out of sync at a headache-inducing pace, and the walls were covered with faux-homey wooden signs that said shit like:

Y
OU ARE NEVER

2 O
LD

2 D
RINK

2 M
ANY

6 P
ACKS

And:

F
REE
B
EER
: T
OMORROW

And:

L
ADIES
18–30:

N
O
S
HIRT
, N
O
S
HOES
, N
O
P
ROBLEM
!

And now the place was at, or quite possibly in excess of, the fire marshal’s maximum capacity, the majority of whom were men—loud, beefy, tattooed, openly leering men—choking down their first bites of The Truth XXX ghost pepper chili, pummeling their open mouths with full steins of pissy lager, screaming, bellowing, swearing, gasping, crying.

Eva was calm, surveying the room like a walk-on first-year outfielder looking for her parents in the stands. Braque grabbed her cousin’s arm.

“We’re gonna get thrown out of here,” she said.

“The line is for a table,” Eva said. “We don’t need a table for what we’re doing. Oh, look, I recognize those people. From your wall calendar.”

Braque looked where Eva was pointing. Patricia, Tangela, Maya, Ann Richards, Ann’s gay friend Nate, and starting junior catcher Rachael “Thunder” Rhodes—a wide-hipped Nebraskan with a left arm that nailed 46 percent of attempted base stealers—sat around five mostly untouched Styrofoam bowls of chili, cramming bread into their mouths and drinking milk and water.

“
You made it!
” Patricia said, running across the room to hug Braque. “Is this your cousin? Come join us!” And so Braque had to. She introduced Eva to everybody, and, once they had jammed into the booth, withstood a volley of questions about why she had changed her mind and joined them, and wasn’t she supposed to be studying, and all of that shit.

“I didn’t know your cousin was finally visiting. What have you been doing?” Patricia asked.

“How much will you give us to watch her eat some of that chili?” Braque asked.

“This chili?” Maya asked. “I can hardly eat a bite of this chili.”

“Yeah, how much would you bet that Eva can’t eat two spoonfuls of it?”

“Two spoonfuls?” Maya said. “Better have some milk ready.”

“How much?”

Maya looked at the chili. “I’d pay ten bucks to see her try, but I don’t think anyone that size can handle that.”

“I don’t know,” Tangela said. “I’m out.”

“Twenty bucks,” said Rachael Rhodes. “To eat, chew, and swallow.”

“I’ll do five,” Patricia said.

“I think she can do it,” Ann Richards said. “I’m not betting against her.”

“I don’t gamble,” said Nate.

“Money on the table?” Eva said, putting thirty-five of her own dollars down.

Maya passed a white Styrofoam bowl over, and Patricia grabbed a clean spoon from the cylinder in the middle of the table. Eva took it and immediately scooped up a spoonful of chili.

“Oh my God, I can’t believe she’s actually going to do this,” Patricia said.

“How old is she?” Tangela asked.

“Eleven,” Eva said.

“Get a big, heaping pile on your spoon,” Rachael said. Christ, Rachael could be a bitch.

To Eva’s credit, she plunged the spoon back in without protest, presented a mound of steaming red and brown chunks, and thrust it into her mouth.

For the first time all night, Braque saw that Eva was in evident pain. Eva pulled the spoon from her lips as color ran to her face, and she slowly moved the chunky chili around in her mouth. She closed her eyes
and the lumps disappeared from her cheeks and crawled down her throat. Her tongue poked from her mouth and did a full, slow circuit around her lips. She opened her mouth and her eyes, exhaled, and immediately ate another heaping bite.

“Fuckin’ A,” Rachael said.

“I told you! I told you bitches!” Ann Richards said, leaning forward to give Tangela Bass a high five, and both women who hadn’t bet against Eva high-fived her in turn. Other than that forced show of solidarity, Eva gathered the money without a word or change in expression.

“How was it?” Braque asked.

“Whoa,” Eva said.

“Could you eat more?”

Eva nodded enthusiastically. “But gimme a minute.”

Then came the barrage of questions about where Eva developed her tolerance for hot spices, where else they’d been that night (everyone was somehow equally amazed that she ate the Circle of Hell Wings at Jack Cermak’s), and how much more she could eat, because the team totally wanted to soak this room of gross, cocky men for everything they had.

“Before we start,” Braque asked, “where’s the crapper in this hellhole?”

“Through the gift shop,” Maya said.

Of course it’s through the fucking gift shop.

8:31
P
.
M
.

The Truth’s gift shop was worse than Braque had imagined. First of all, there wasn’t a straight path through it; it zigzagged like a duty-free store in an international terminal, forcing you to reckon with the words
THE
TRUTH
on every conceivable piece of Made-in-China crap known to humanity—shirts, caps, mugs, steins, keychains, license-plate frames, trucker hats, vests, and belt buckles. They also had a full line of Truth Sauce, Truth Rub, Truth Spice, and something else that caught Braque’s attention.

Braque walked to the register. “How is this sweet pepper jelly?”

The young tattooed woman behind the counter nodded. “All of the food products here are actually pretty decent. They’re made locally in Batavia.”

“Have you had this?”

“I’ve only tried the green. The green is awesome.”

“OK, I’ll go back and get the green.”

 • • • 

By the time she returned to the register, there was a line. The guy right in front of her was the American Eagle polo guy from the line outside. His face was flushed and sweaty, his eyes looked bloodshot, and he was holding a golden ticket in his hand. Braque wasn’t going to say jack shit to this weirdo, but he turned and looked at her.

“Oh, hey, Miss Cut-in-Front-of-Everybody,” he said, not unfriendly.

“I was meeting a group of people here,” Braque said.

“Oh. Well, why didn’t ya say so? I thought you were gonna start a riot out there after you bolted in here like that.”

“I don’t fuckin’ care,” Braque said.

“I like your attitude,” the dude said. He stepped forward to the now-empty space in front of the register and handed his ticket to the woman behind it.

“How quick did you finish it, Benny?” the woman asked, taking the ticket.

“Three minutes, four seconds,” Benny said.

“What’s your size?”

“Men’s large,” Benny said, and when the woman handed him a black T-shirt, he put it on over his polo. The shirt read
I
CAN
HANDLE
THE
TRUTH
’
S
H
ELL
CHILI
on the front in a garish font, and
HELL
NIGHT
,
THE
TRUTH
,
CHICAGO
I
LLINOIS
on the back.

“You just got here,” Braque said. “You’ve already finished a whole bowl of that chili?”

“Ah, it’s way weaker this year. What are you getting? Aw, that stuff is the bomb.”

“Glad you approve,” Braque said, handing the green sweet pepper jelly to the woman. It was then that it occurred to her that she should’ve just stolen this shit; why was she buying it and supporting this awful establishment?

“Do you know who makes the best sweet pepper jelly in the world?”

Braque hated it when people, guys especially, asked the kinds of questions that only they evidently knew the answers to. “I don’t care,” she said.

“It’s this woman down in New Mexico. But you gotta go there in person. She won’t let you order it online.”

“I’ll be sure and ask you all about it,” Braque said.

“That’ll be $5.10,” the woman behind the counter said.

“Have you handed out a lot of those T-shirts tonight?” Braque asked.

“No, that’s the first,” the woman said.

Braque was actually going to turn and congratulate Benny, sort of, but he was gone.

8:37
P
.
M
.

Braque sat in a Pepto-Bismol pink toilet stall in the otherwise empty women’s bathroom and opened the jar of green sweet pepper jelly. Even with the sound of AC/DC playing and the smell of cheap bleach rising to her face, the scent of the jelly overwhelmed her senses. She realized that she had forgotten to bring a spoon or fork with her, but then she realized that she hadn’t forgotten at all; this was an impulse buy. Why wasn’t she offered one at the register? Probably because the woman didn’t assume that she was darting off to eat it in the bathroom. So, OK, fine. She plunged her fingers in and drew a handful of warm green goop to her mouth.

 • • • 

Oh, wow. It was the best thing she had ever tasted. This was the best thing she’d ever done in her life, maybe. She smeared another handful
across her tongue. It was incredible. What had she been waiting for? What
had
she been waiting for?

Her phone buzzed. She wiped her hands on the single-ply toilet paper and pulled the phone out of her bag. It read
TOLD YOU
.

She had to sit and think about this for a second.

Braque was still pretty damn sure that what she’d been seeing around all day—the ephemeral
SWE
T
PEPER
JELY
on a protein bar, on the campus Rock, on her new phone—was some kind of madly subjective fever dream. She didn’t even bother to tell Patricia about it, and she told Patricia everything. She might have been making it all up.

So, that confirmed, she didn’t see the harm in writing back.

YOU WEREN’T FUCKING KIDDING
, she typed.
THIS SHIT IS AMAZING. WHY DO I LIKE IT SO MUCH?

BECAUSE I LIKE IT
, it wrote back.

Braque typed,
WHY CAN’T YOU LIKE SOMETHING NON-PROCESSED AND LOW-CALORIE?

ARE WE GOING TO NEW MEXICO RIGHT NOW
, it wrote.

NO, WE’RE NOT GOING AT ALL
, Braque typed.
TOUGH TITTY
.

BUT THE BEST SWET PEPER JELY IS IN NEW MEXICO THE GUY SAID
.

SCREW THAT GUY
, Braque typed.

NO WERE GOING
, it typed back.

Bile rose in Braque’s throat, and she vomited up her side salad and the recent green pepper jelly all over the tile in front of the toilet.

DID YOU JUST MAKE ME DO THAT?
she typed.

YEP
, it wrote.

WELL FUCK YOU
, Braque wrote. If this wasn’t happening, and she was hallucinating or dreaming this, she might as well take a hard line.

WERE GOING TO NEW MEXICO
, it wrote.
IT WIL CHANGE YOUR LIFE
.

Braque threw her phone in her bag. She left the stall, and even though two excessively perfumed chicks were staring at her from over
by the sinks, she stood there and shoved the last fistfuls of amazing, beautiful jelly into her mouth.

When she was done, she cleaned out the last flecks in the jar with her tongue as they watched, and threw the empty thing in the bathroom trash.

8:48
P
.
M
.

There was an immense noise coming from the main part of the restaurant, like what happens in sports bars during the Stanley Cup or World Series or Super Bowl or that kind of thing. Cheering and thumping and then a huge applause. The woman who was supposed to be behind the register wasn’t there; she was standing on the border between the gift shop and the restaurant, watching whatever was happening in the dining room. Everyone that Braque could see had their backs turned to the gift shop.

Braque made her move. She grabbed all of the jars of green sweet pepper jelly and a few reds and crammed them into her shoulder bag. As she shoved two more into her pockets, she thought maybe she’d have one now. Why the hell not?

 • • • 

The roar of the crowd noise got closer, and Braque rose, fist and mouth full of delicious green sweet pepper jelly. She peeked over the top of the aisle just in time to see her cousin being carried aloft by her softball team and set down on the counter by the register. Benny took off his own
HELL NIGHT
T-shirt and slid it over Eva. Ann and Tangela raised Eva up again, and the crowd roared.