Breadcrumb #653
NICK PERILLI
A frame of a person carrying a tray of small, lit tealight candles emerged from the kitchen. The restaurant pattered with conversation. Outside, the midwinter afternoon approached evening. The flames danced on their wicks in excitement.
The chef’s hand shoved the frame into the busy lanes between the tables, where servers sped, and drunken patrons staggered. But the frame did this every night, so it slipped darkly around every full body, its long arms and spindly legs laying the dancing tea lights between the people and their food.
One at the table with the couple breaking up. Trying not to make a scene. The fire shined on both their wet eyes, perhaps enough that the two of them remembered why they got together in the first place. The flames were interested, of course, but it wasn’t the frame’s concern.
The frame had candles to place. One at a time. Between the conversations and problems of families, friends and partners.
A new server bounding down the lane with a tray full of wet glasses crashed hard into the frame, but it kept its perfect balance. The new server fell with his tray of glasses, into shards of cutting glass slick with beer and soda. He screamed. Not the frame’s concern. Even the fire in the frame’s tray didn’t care. They stood tall—unwavering as they peered at the fallen and bleeding server.
“Even the fire in the frame’s tray didn’t care.”
One candle with the lonely widower sitting surrounded by the pictures of her family, all of them lost to her in one way or another. Three between the banquet of businesspeople, the flames falling immediately to their gesticulating arms.
One final tealight at the empty table by the large glass window, where the evening poured in from the street. The frame placed the candle between two empty place settings. Another frame seated in front of one grabbed the frame’s arm, slipping between it like a puzzle piece.
“I didn’t see you there,” our frame said, trying to pull away once.
“What are you doing putting candles on tables?” the other frame asked, slipping further into our frame.
“It’s what I’ve always done.”
The other frame shook its head. “You’re supposed to be right between all this.” It eased into our frame’s veins. “Neither here nor there.”
Our frame dropped its tray, dotted with dry white wax. It clanged on the floor. A server barreling by picked it right up. It hummed in her blistered fingers. Our frame shuddered.
“Is that right?” it asked, its arm dripping sweat into the black seams between the floor tiles.
The other frame’s hand ended where our frame’s arm began. The other frame reared back, pulling our frame with it over the lip of the window and through the restaurant’s twilight glass. The mass of customers, mouths wet with unwiped food aglow in the tealights, didn’t hear or notice as the two of them slipped between any of this—all of this. Bored, the flames stood tall on the candles, reaching to tease the rats in the ceiling. Then, they snuffed into rising smoke.
During the next evening’s rush, the chef reached out from the kitchen and shoved through empty air. An absence crossed through her, but only briefly. She picked up a tray of tealights waiting for her by the server station, their flames dancing in somber excitement, and slipped into the busy lanes between the tables.