Squid’s Kitchen & The Hudson Pier

A little fiction, not more memoir

I was contemplating a setting for a novel I’m still working on. What might be going on behind my scenes there? I imagined a kitchen worker, someone there but not in the novel, and I started sketching. My newest imaginary friend walked off with the narrative. I was having fun following him, and then Stewie showed up. Stewie actually is a character in the novel. It’s not his fault, showing up that way—it’s in his character.

---

Mom died today. Geed called to tell me while I was washing dishes. It kinda sucked that it had to be Geed, but he’s the one who was with her. I instantly wished it could have been Dad calling, but that’s just the random thought that came when Geed told me she’d passed. Dad couldn’t call, of course—Mom had called me when he died. They did everything for each other, but that.

I’d just sprayed down another rack of plates and pushed them into the big stainless washer in Squid’s kitchen when my phone vibrated. We’re not supposed to be on our phones while we’re on the clock, but Mom hasn’t been well. I’ve been checking when it vibrates. I only unsilenced calls and texts, so it’s not very often I have to check. When I saw it was Geed calling I had to answer and just hope he wasn’t going to try again to get me to turn my life over to Jesus ‘cause I was working and I could get in trouble. He wasn’t calling to tell me about the Good News, again.

Geed told me, and I was quiet.

“You there?” Geed asked.

“Sorry.”

Geed nodded. (I knew he’d be nodding.) “Me too,” he said.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know what I’m supposed to say.”

“It’s okay,” Geed said. “I needed to tell you.”

I nodded.

Geed knew. “It was during my shift,” he said. “She went in her sleep.”

I nodded again. “That’s what she wanted.”

I walked from Squid’s to the river. I told my manager, on my way out. “Mom died.”

“I’m so—”

“I’m gonna have a break.” I’d walked through the restaurant area even though we’re supposed to only use the back entry when we’re working.

He nodded and put his hand on my shoulder while I brushed past. He’s not terrible.

In Hudson there’s a pier across most of the St. Croix. I guess it used to be the road to the old bridge that used to cross the river and before that I think it was a trolley or something. Now it’s just an old pier but not really a pier because it’s not wood and it’s not above the river, it’s in the river—it’s a lot of earth and sand and rock and cement that got dozed into the river and built on like a hundred years ago. But after they built other bridges for trains and cars and stopped using this thing they couldn’t just get rid of it because it had become part of the river. So they made it a park. There’s a beach at the end of it and some benches and satellite toilets. I sat on the furthest bench and watched the boats at anchor between the freeway bridge and the beach where the high school kids hang out—like I used to. I wanted to walk out on the beach and find some friends to hang out with like before and get stoned. But none of my friends would be there—maybe a few of their kids, I suppose, but I haven’t talked with any of them much since high school, so their kids wouldn’t know me and it would be awkward even if.

After a while watching the boats and the beach from my bench at the end of the pier, I realized I might have been lying when I told my manager I was having a break. I didn’t think I was going back to wash dishes.

I walked back up to Squid’s, to the back. In the alley, I looked at the bike rack. I hadn’t brought my helmet inside. I’d just run my cable lock through the chin strap, locked it up with my bike. So I unlocked them both and walked away. I didn’t feel like riding. I didn’t feel like washing dishes, either. I got on the bike but didn’t ride, just kind of coaster-scootered down the hill and out to my bench at the end of the pier.

There was a guy on the bench. He was older than me but fit. He wore a nice full-zip jersey and matching shorts from Psycle Snobs up in Stillwater. I’d seen those guys around and I kind of recognized some of them—maybe from high school or maybe at Squid’s—but I didn’t really know any of them. I leaned my bike behind the bench, sat down. He was looking across the beach to the water like he might go swim. He looked at me kinda sideways when I sat. It’s not the only bench, but it’s my usual bench and I’d just been there so I felt like I was there first, though I knew he felt the same way.

The guy turned his head, I guess to be extra obvious, and said, “So what are we to do with the remains of a day such as this?”

Weird, I thought. And then, “Fine question,” I said. I was thinking about my just-dead mother, of course, but also about exactly what I was going to do. Was I going to just reflect peacefully for a few minutes before returning to wash dishes? I guess I knew already I wasn’t going to do that. What remained, had changed.

“You sat on my bench,” the guy said, smiling. “You must have a plan.”

“I always sit here. No plan. I’m just done washing Squid’s dishes.”

The guy stood up, turned to look directly at me. A beat. He glanced at his sport watch. “Ever?”

I smiled, looked at the river, the beach, the boats. I folded my arms behind my head.

“I like your bike!”

“Thanks,” I said. “My dad’s.”

The guy nodded. “Masi.”

I nodded.

“An Italian classic.”

“Gran Criterium.” I only knew because I’d heard Dad say the same thing when other riders had asked him, when we’d been riding.

“Mine’s newer,” the guy said. “I’ll show you.” He made newer sound like an apology. He waddled in his riding shoes to the bike rack, lifted his bicycle carefully above the sand. He sat again, balanced the old road bike in front of us so that I could read the down-tube decal: Guerciotti.  He’d always wanted a classic lugged-steel Italian road bike, he said. “None of this carbon-fiber stormtrooper racer-boy nonsense.”

“How do you keep up on Psycle Snob club rides with an old steel bike?”

“By not riding with those fu—” he pretended at coughing. “Snobs. I was in their shop one morning for coffee and scones. The scones were very good, and I liked their riding kit design.”

I nodded. I had to agree, the design was cool.

While we were admiring his bike jersey, a commotion on the pier caught my eye. This barrel-chested balding guy with a walrus mustache in a tan-brown sweater, swim shorts, and wearing aviator sunglasses was swerving fast down the pier on a kick scooter. Who wears swim shorts and a sweater on a hot afternoon in July—or ever? He scooted on past and I realized he wasn’t wearing a sweater. He was just very hairy. He scooted straight to the satellites and jumped off. The scooter wobbled onto the sand and tipped over while he hopped like a kid doing a pee-pee dance into a satellite toilet.