Page 20 of August
“That, and it also means that I’m never really off work. It bothered my ex, I think. I didn’t know that until the end, but I guess she wasn’t a fan of me working all the time.”
“Is it something you love, though?” Elisa asked as she put the bread in the oven.
“Yeah, it is. I mean, there are some days when I wish I had the day off and other times when I think about taking a vacation where I actually leave New Orleans for a week or two and just relax, but I never do.”
“Why not?”
“No one to go with me,” she replied and turned toward Elisa, who was standing a few feet away, watching her work.
“No special someone?”
Myra laughed and said, “Not since my divorce.”
“What about a friend vacation?”
“I lost a lot of the ones I’ve known the longest in the divorce, but I’ve got new ones in the past year or so.”
“There you go. Ask one of them.”
“That might be odd. All of them are paired off now.”
“Oh,” Elisa said.
“Yeah… I’m the only single one in the bunch. It would be weird to ask one of them to go with me without their girlfriend or fiancée, and I don’t want to be a third wheel, either.”
“I can relate,” Elisa replied. “I lost my friends in the divorce, too.” Elisa’s phone, which was on the table, buzzed. “Sorry. I told the kids to message me when they got to their dad’s place.” She picked it up.
“It’s okay. I need to focus here anyway. I’m going to be hammering and cutting things, so I need to watch my hands,” she said, holding them up.
Was she crazy, or was Elisa staring at her fingers? She wiggled them a bit, and Elisa’s eyes followed the movement. Myra hadn’t ever liked her own hands. They were a little bigger than she would have liked and were also rough from her work. Her ex had requested that she put on lotion twice a day to help smooth them out, and Myra had done so for years, but she hadn’t bothered in a while since she no longer had anyone to make them smooth for. She wondered if Elisa liked rough hands. She doubted it. Her ex-husband was a doctor, after all, with probably perfect baby-soft hands. That was likely what Elisa preferred.
“I should change anyway. I’ll be right back,” Elisa told her.
“Okay,” she replied.
When Elisa left the kitchen, Myra took a deep breath. She had hardly done anything since arriving, and if she didn’t at least make some progress, Elisa would probably fire her, and she would lose this chance to get to know her. She turned around and finally got to work, but seconds later, she heard something and turned back around to find the water in the pot on the stove boiling over. Elisa had put the pasta in there without her noticing, and now, the bubbles were rolling over the pot. Myra wasn’t sure what to do, but she didn’t think she should just let it keep making a mess, so she put her stuff down and walked over to turn the stove down and look for a cup. Finding one in the drying rack, she filled it with cold water and dumped just a little into the pot to calm the water down.
“Oh, shit,” Elisa said.
Myra turned to see her moving toward her, wearing a pairof black sweatpants and a white T-shirt that said, ‘St. Peter’s Preparatory School.’
“I left it on high. Is it ruined?”
“No. It just started boiling over, so I turned it down.”
“I can’t even make pasta right.” Elisa shook her head.
“There’s nothing wrong with the pasta, Elisa,” she said and smiled over at her. “It’s pretty hard to mess it up.”
“I married an Italian, so I constantly heard how I messed up the pasta in the house. I didn’t salt the water. I didn’t cook it long enough. I cooked it too long.”
“Well, I’m not Italian, so I don’t know the difference anyway.”
“Right. Gumbo and jambalaya, huh?” Elisa smiled over at her.
“I can show you how to make it one night, if you want.”
“Which one?” Elisa asked as she moved behind Myra, and her hand moved over Myra’s lower back as she did.
