Free How to Fall by Edith Pearlman Page B

again.”
    She held her beath.
    â€œWhat’s okroshka?”
    She exhaled. “It’s a Russian soup. The recipe calls for cooked chicken, mustard, fresh dill, fresh or dried thyme, and Kvass. Did I mention cucumbers? I usually substitute sour cream and white wine and a little stock for the Kvass. The recipe also calls for pickles, but I only put them in when it’s just we three eating. Guests tend to pucker.”
    â€œHow old are you?”
    â€œSeventeen. Do you want to see my birth certificate?”
    â€œNo. Where do you get your eels?”
    She told him about the eel ranch in Rhode Island. He was interested also in her apricot chicken and her okra with figs. “Mostly, though,” he warned, “you will serve and wash up, just as you offered. Okroshka—a witty name whatever it means.”
    â€œIt means hodgepodge.”
    He smiled. “And your own name?”
    â€œPinkerton Kelly. I’m called Pinky.”
    They shook hands. “Marvin Fiore. I’m called Marvin. And this”—he extended his hand toward the sidewalk—“is Inez.”

    Inez entered with assumed shyness—for who knew, she said to Pinky later; Pinky might have been a representative of the Health Department in schoolgirl drag. In that case Inez would have managed to sidle into the kitchen and, once there, raise the trap door and clamber down the metal stairs into the basement and sweep away the mouse droppings. “Of course we have mice,” she laughed. “Our beloved comensils.” Her laugh erased the scar on her chin. When she wasn’t laughing the scar looked like a curve drawn deliberately to emphasize the chin’s perfection. Pinky looked and looked away; she’d been taught not to goggle at people’s unconcealable flaws or at their unconcealable loveliness.
    Inez carried a basket of leeks. Her eyes were pennies. Dark curls were silvered here and there. Only the scar interfered with her careless beauty; the scar and also the crooked upper teeth, too many of them, forced to slant backwards into the mouth. The large straight canines looked like fence posts. But her smile was warm despite the unruliness within, or maybe because of it.
    â€œThis is Pinky,” said Marvin. “Our new associate.”
    Â 
    The trifle didn’t require the oven. It did require the whole of the supplemental refrigerator, a box the height of a bedside table, the kind of thing that college kids used for beer. This refrigerator had been bought especially for the trifle, though it was home also to Kazuki’s insulin and the breast milk for Fogg’s infant child. Fogg had to bring the baby to work whenever his wife, a hospital chaplain, was on call. Sometimes this happened on a Thursday night. The child had a name, but everybody followed Marvin’s example and called him Blessed Event. Blessed Event usually slept placidly in a wicker basket underneath the bar, but sometimes
he did wake up; then someone would plunge the bottle into a cup of very hot water, and then whoever was least in demand would feed the little fellow—Fogg himself, or Marvin, or Inez, or Pinky, or Kazuki; occasionally a trusted guest took on the job.
    The trifle was made in two stainless twenty-portion pans. Now Pinky put them side by side on the wooden trestle table. She pressed cake into the bottom of the pans. She poured on rum. She opened the glass preserving jar. The purple jam shivered.
    Trout—forty of them currently occupied a wooden ice chest—patiently awaited Kazuki’s attention. Tomatoes, now in a basket, would soon offer their smooth cheeks to Inez’s knife... “Know what I think?” Pinky said to Marvin, who had put on his quilted vest and taken chopping board and onions onto the back porch to avoid scenting the trifle.
    â€œWhat do you think?” he amiably asked.
    â€œI think God created potatoes on behalf of our Patate in Tegame.” She spread