Page 1 of Taming a Menace

K eywan (Kee-won) Glover

As stressed out as I was about my upcoming sentencing, the show had to go on. My body desperately wanted to rest, but my mind refused to shut down. Instead of forcing myself to lay around waiting to find out my fate, I was doing the one thing I knew would keep me sane.

The last gig I would take before court Monday happened to be a couple’s anniversary dinner. I liked doing private dinners. Plus, it would do the trick of taking my mind off my own situation for the next few hours. The money wasn’t a bad incentive either.

The menu I’d put together was creative yet elegant. I loved the fact that they had left it up to my discretion to come up with the courses. The only notes were that she loved sweet sauces. Sauces were my specialty, so I couldn’t wait to wow them with my creations.

I rolled to a stop in front of a huge house in one of Abbeville’s newer subdivisions. I arrived thirty minutes early so I could get everything set up and have dinner on the table right on time.

After verifying that I was in fact at the right place, I pulled up next to the car in the driveway. I didn’t know if someone else was coming, but since I had to drag my kit in the house, I needed to be close to the door.

As I stepped out of my truck, I craned my neck to have a look at the house.

The shit was huge. I’d been on the market for a new place, but now everything was on pause.

My entire life was about to be on pause.

I unloaded my trunk of supplies and rolled my kit over to the door.

Georgia summers didn’t let up until the sun went down.

So although it was after six in the evening, it was sweltering hot.

I couldn’t wait to get inside to cool off.

I worked over a hot stove enough to not want to linger around outside in the dead of summer.

I didn’t waste time getting to the door with my supplies.

Once I made it to the door, I rang the doorbell and stepped back to wait for someone to let me in.

After a beat, I didn’t hear anything, so I rang it again.

I almost jumped out of my skin when a woman’s voice came out of nowhere.

“It’s open!” she shouted.

Well damn.

I don’t know if I would be yelling for someone to come in my house without verifying who they were. Then again, they were expecting me. It wasn’t my house, so instead of trying to figure out why I was being invited into a strangers’ home without a greeting, I let myself in.

A breeze welcomed me inside, cooling the thin layer of dampness that had formed on my forehead between my truck and the door. The house was nice, but I could tell that it hadn’t been lived in. Aside from the couple of boxes strewn about there was little furniture.

“The kitchen is straight through the living room. Everything you need should be right there,” the woman announced from wherever she was in the house.

I wouldn’t need anything other than a stove.

I liked to use my own supplies down to the pots and pans.

When I made it to the kitchen, I almost stopped in my tracks.

The double galley design and huge island were plucked right out of my dreams. The extra deep farmhouse sink with an inset strainer and cutting board almost made me clap my hands. Their kitchen was impressive.

I lost count of the nights I spent designing the perfect kitchen in my head. I couldn’t wait to get the pots and pans rattling in this one. I had yet to meet the couple, but that was fine. I was so enamored with the kitchen that I didn’t care if they showed up or not.

I busied my hands preparing the scallops that I planned to serve with a baby spinach salad and spiced pomegranate glaze. The duck breast for the main course had been marinating for the past few hours. They would be perfect as the star of the show next to oven roasted carrots.

I went to work getting the appetizer started and prepping for the other courses. I got lost in time as I cut, diced, and assembled the ingredients for an unforgettable anniversary dinner.

I wondered what kind of couple had a chef come to their house to cook an anniversary dinner.

I was always intrigued by the lives of the people I cooked for but at the same time I wasn’t much of a conversationalist. A lot of people had the instinct to talk to fill in the spaces left by silence, but silence didn’t bother me.

I liked to cook with music as background noise, but this wasn’t my house. Luckily, I brought along my headphones.

Popping them in my ears, I found one of my favorite rappers, Death Row, and hit play on his first album. His gritty flow over smooth R&B tracks set the tone as I assembled the spiced pomegranate glaze as well as the blackberry-orange sauce that I wanted to put on the duck.

Duck was one of my favorite proteins to use because it didn’t take a whole lot of seasoning and manipulation to make it delicious.

It was flavorful enough on its own. My mama used to say duck makes its own gravy.

As disgusting as that sounded to me as a child, once I started working with it myself, I understood exactly what she meant.

Once the sauces were just how I wanted them, I went back to the scallops. I put a pan with a thin layer of oil on one of the burners then moved back over to the sink where the scallops were resting in a simple brine of salt water and crushed garlic.

I had a crazy shellfish allergy, so after making sure my pan was hot enough, I washed my hands and put on a fresh pair of gloves. I was so wrapped up in prep work that I almost forgot I was in someone’s house. Almost.

The searing heat that crawled up my neck made me take my eyes off the task at hand and turn to see who had joined me in the room. I thought that I was captivated by the kitchen until she walked in. Everything in the room seemed to fall away when I locked eyes with her.

Warm eyes the color of roasted chestnuts detained me long enough to make me forget all about the kitchen.

She was gorgeous. I could see why the man in her life didn’t hesitate to shell out money for an extravagant dinner at home where she could be the center of attention. She damn sure was the center of mine.

My eyes gave her body a quick sweep knowing that once the man of the hour arrived it would be considered disrespect to ogle his woman, but I’d be damned if she wasn’t ogle worthy. Honey was bad as hell. Even walking around with bare feet and her heels dangling from her fingertips, she was tough.

Her soft brown skin was cloaked in a deep red dress that hugged her in all the places my fingers wanted to graze.

She had been put together piece by piece by a man of a higher power than I would ever possess.

Lord knows God was just showing out when he created woman.

This woman was no exception. She was the rule.

Those mesmerizing eyes held a hint of sadness and made me want to single handedly remove the source of her pain from the face of the earth. My eagerness to rescue another man’s woman from whatever plagued her terrified me.

“Hi,” she finally said, giving me a tight smile and bringing me back to some level of reality.

I opened my mouth for a second, but for the life of me I couldn’t think of what I was supposed to say. I had never been speechless. There were times when I didn’t want to talk but speechless was a new one. All I had to say to her was hey, but I couldn’t make my damn mouth work.

“I’m Iyla. I’m pretty sure you know this is my house by now.”

“I had a feeling,” I finally muttered. “I’m Key.”

“Nice to meet you, Key. It already smells great in here.”

“Thank you. The appetizer should be ready soon. Where do you two want to be served?”

“Here is fine, if you don’t mind,” she said, motioning across from where I worked.

“Perfectly fine. If I lived here, I would never leave this kitchen.”

“I love it. I got away from cooking a little bit over the years, but I plan to get back to it.”

“You been here long?” I asked just to make conversation.

“I’m actually renting this place while I find something. I was ready to get out of the place I was in. Now I’m house hunting. I’ve been renting a few months. If this house was for sale, I would buy it. They use it for vacation rentals or whatever. I got a discount for extended stay.”

“Cool.” I nodded.

“Let me get out of your way. I just didn’t want to be rude by hiding out in my bedroom until you were done.”

“Is he coming down soon?” I asked, mentioning her man just to remind myself that he existed.

The sorrow that flashed in her eyes made my heart squeeze.

Whatever made her look that way should be eliminated soon.

It wasn’t my place to think like that, but I couldn’t chase the desire to protect her out of my head for the life of me.

Her man needed to hurry downstairs before I lost all consideration for his existence.

“He’s not coming,” she revealed.

Wait a minute. Wasn’t this an anniversary dinner? Where the hell was her man, and why wasn’t he here keeping her company on their anniversary? He had to be a fool. Years of working on my tact made me hesitate long enough to stop myself from asking just that. Instead, I pivoted.

“Did I come on the wrong day?”

“Not at all. I just made plans with the wrong man. We broke up about a month ago.”

She looked away when she said that. I assumed averting her eyes was out of embarrassment. The man who let her get away should have been the one embarrassed.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I lied.

Her admission only made me aware that the man standing in the way of me getting to know her better was out of the way. As soon as our eyes met, I’d started plotting on ways to get rid of him anyway. Step one to my plan was already complete.