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Chapter Two

Aline

H aving your own restaurant wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. It often meant working abnormally long hours, pitching in when someone didn’t show up and dealing with assholes who thought they could get one over on you because you didn’t want negative reviews.

I worked hard over the last three years to make sure my restaurant had a bright future. Word of mouth had been amazing, and we were getting there. The problem was that I was at the point where we had growing pains. We were busy enough that I never had to worry about being in the red, but not enough that I could hire a general manager and chef without worrying about an emergency popping up that I couldn’t afford. One day, I would get there, and I would be able to focus on being the owner and enjoying a day off. Until then, I was doing the job of three people, and after three years, I was starting to feel the burn-out.

These past two months had been a bitch. Everything was going wrong, and I was exhausted.

So, fuck reviews. It felt good to get everything off my chest tonight, and if that somehow ended up online, I was confident people would take my side.

I sighed as I finally made it home at almost two thirty in the morning. I needed to shower and collapse because I needed to be back at the restaurant at nine in the morning, to start prepping for the day. My two sous chefs were home with COVID, and I had no luck finding a temporary replacement. Why did my best two employees have to fall in love and marry? Now, they both got sick at the same time.

And of course, while they were sick, one of the fridges had taken a dump, and the new one wouldn’t arrive for another week. I was having the fresh ingredients delivered the day I needed them, instead of the night before. They didn’t deliver before nine, which meant I had to prep in a hurry every day until the new fridge arrived.

To top it off, yesterday we’d been cash-only for at least half of the day because the bank software went down. I ended up setting up a Venmo account on the fly, so I wouldn’t lose so much business, and the account funds were under review until I could prove we weren’t scamming people.

What was worse, I’d had an itchy sensation under my skin for the last two months. I felt like I was constantly being watched, but I could never see anyone around. I had to be going crazy, because I even felt it while inside my house, and I knew I was alone.

Except tonight. Right now, I felt safe. That or I was so fucking exhausted it was hard to feel anything else.

I removed my clothes on the way to the shower, desperate to feel clean and for my hair to stop smelling like food. I walked into the bathroom and turned on the water to the hottest setting.

When I was looking for a new place to live, after I finished my Master’s, it was this bathroom that convinced me to rent this house. The shower was spacious, and there was a freestanding bathtub in the corner. When I first rented it, I imagined spending many nights in there, reading a book and drinking a glass of wine.

I hadn’t set foot in it in almost two years. I was always exhausted by the time I got home, and I would shower and drop dead in bed after.

“One day. One day, we’ll be reunited,” I promised it before I stepped into the shower.

I groaned as I felt the hot water slide down my body, providing relief to my overused muscles. I grabbed the passion fruit body wash and cleaned my body. As I did, my mind flashed back to that woman from the restaurant. She was petite and gorgeous, her amber eyes captivated me from the moment I met them, and I felt something inside me call out for her. Even my orixa, my guiding spirit, had seemed intrigued, and he only ever prodded me to approach people who were going to be important to our life.

But despite the hour of the night, the restaurant was full, so I snapped out of ogling the beautiful woman and got back to work. I could have sworn I saw the same interest in her, though, and a trick of the light made me almost believe her eyes had changed color for a moment.

I tried to go back outside before closing, but there were several last-minute to-go orders, and by the time I walked back into the bar area, the woman was gone. I was surprised at the level of disappointment I felt to know I’d miss a chance to see her again. I had a lot of regulars, and I knew she wasn’t one of them, so the chances were high that our paths wouldn’t cross again.

My thoughts were suddenly interrupted as my shower head made a really weird gurgling noise, and the hot water instantly turned cold. Sighing with disappointment, I finished my shower, pulled on a robe, and walked to the kitchen. I took some melatonin to help me fall asleep quickly, grabbed my phone, plugged it into my night table, then collapsed on my bed and closed my eyes, hoping for a restful sleep.

My orixa had a different plan, though, and he took over my dreams to show me the same woman over and over again. I woke up tired, annoyed, and aroused. I didn’t understand why he was so intent on this woman. It wasn’t the first time we’d missed a connection he thought could be important. That was a part of life, and he’d never bothered me so much.

Orixas are not supposed to be this active in a person’s day-to-day life. They control our destiny and act as a spiritual protector, but from a distance. Our character and personality are supposed to be strongly linked to them, helping us make the right choices.

From the moment I was born, my avó (grandmother) knew something was different about me. My orixa wasn’t just my distant protector; he was attached to my soul. He was a presence that never left, so close to breaking into the physical realm that he could nudge me whenever he thought something important needed my attention.

Avó wasn’t the only one who noticed, and one night, when I was four, people broke into our house in Brazil and tried to murdered my parents in an attempt to take me and use me to their advantage. My parents managed to get me to my grandmother’s safely, but lost their lives in the process.

That same night, Avó packed up quickly and brought us to the States, and I’d been living here ever since. We didn’t practice Candomble, like she and my parents did in Brazil, anymore. It was not a solo practicing religion, and she didn’t want to risk exposing me to people who might be able to recognize my unique situation. She did teach me everything she knew, so I could understand what made me different from my classmates, and I learned not to react when my orixa made its presence known to me.

After I turned eighteen and graduated from high school, I left home and chose to live in the dorms. I knew she missed her people and her community, so I convinced her to go back to Brazil. She had visited a couple of times a year so far. I missed her, but I knew it was the right thing to do. She had already sacrificed too much for me.

I didn’t have a lot of friends here. My upbringing made it hard to trust people and make lasting connections. People in my life were usually transitory. They were colleagues, fellow students, love interests who faded back to strangers as soon as our common interest was over.

Maybe someday that would change. For the time being, I was focusing on my restaurant.

With that thought in mind, I got out of bed, brewed some coffee and toasted some bread. I ate quickly at the counter, then I changed, grabbed my bag and rushed out of the house. I passed a blue Nissan Kick on my way out, and felt my orixa nudging me towards it. I slowed a little but didn’t stop when I saw it was empty, despite his constant nudging.

“Nem vem que n?o tem!” (Don’t you come, you won’t have it!) I told my orixa as I continued to drive away.

He needed to calm down. There was no one in that car. My orixa nudged me one last time, making his protests known before he quieted down.

My day went downhill quickly. I got stuck in traffic on the way to the restaurant. A car accident had blocked almost all of the lanes of a busy street, and police were trying to manage traffic in the, now, one lane street as best as they could.

I arrived at the restaurant in time to see the produce truck pulling out of the parking lot. I had to speed to catch up to it and flag it down, or I’d have nothing to serve today. It was safe to say the farmer wasn’t impressed, and I received a lecture about schedules and favors while I helped him unload as quickly as possible so he could make his other deliveries.

He texted me an hour later, letting me know we forgot to unload two boxes of potatoes. I couldn’t leave the restaurant at that point, so I ended up calling in a favor from one of my waiters, and having them pick it up for me. By the time they arrived with the boxes, I was behind, in a bad mood and ready to throw hands with the first person who fucked with me. When one of the industrial fryers refused to turn on, my mood turned into a dark cloud hanging over the kitchen.

I felt bad for my employees. I wasn’t usually this miserable, but it felt like I was cursed. I think they understood, and they were trying to give me a wide berth as the orders began coming in, and I was still trying to catch up.

I was going to have to think about doing a ritual to renew my axe, or spiritual energy. It was off kilter lately and that should help, even if I had to figure out how to do it myself.

I calmed down a little when one of my waitresses split her tables up among the rest, hurried to the back and started peeling and preparing the potatoes. It allowed me to start catching up with the starters.

“You’re a life-saver, Cassidy,” I told her as I began impaling the meat into the skewers for rodizios.

The different types of rodizios were the most popular item on the menu, and I had the marinades, timers and temperatures of the meat down to a science. I generally had a good amount of meat marinating in the fridges overnight, and then prepped more in the morning for the afternoon. Everything was made fresh to order, which is part of what made my days so tiring, but it showed how much my patrons appreciated my effort in the reviews they left and the repeat business.

“Anything I can do to help, boss.” She smiled as she set a big pot to boil and dumped a bunch of quartered potatoes for traditional potato salad and coxinhas. Then, she diced potatoes into bigger chunks and set them aside in the marinade for espetinho skewers. Once that was done, she took the few potatoes and carrots I’d bothered to cook so I could have at least some ready at hand and mixed it with the dressing for the potato salad.

Once she was done, she left and went back to her tables, and I made a mental note to give her a bonus and perhaps a raise. Since the day I hired her, she was always pitching in without being asked. She never complained, and if I needed her to come in for someone else, she was always accommodating as long as she didn’t have classes. She was the best employee I had by far.

Things settled down a little once I caught up on the prep, in between cooking the orders coming in. The front of the house appeared to be running well, and I got lost in the rhythm of cooking the food my avó taught me.

I should have known things were going too well. I should have braced for something to go wrong, But I let my guard down, so I wasn’t prepared to hear my patissier screaming bloody murder. The scream came as I dunked an order of coxinhas into the hot oil, startling me into letting go of the basket and sending the hot oil splashing everywhere, including my hands and arms.

“FUCK!” I screamed in pain and immediately moved to the sink to run a hand under the cool water. I used the other one to remove my chef’s jacket before the hot oil could penetrate through the cloth and burn me, leaving me in just my camisole. Once I was free of the garment, I put both arms under the cool tap water, and was going to ask what happened when the doors burst open, and the woman from last night ran through the door, breathing erratically.

She looked around as her chest heaved, and I could have sworn relief filled her face when she noticed me by the sink.

“Ma’am, you’re not allowed back here.” My station chef walked over to her, but she ignored him, walking straight to me.

My heart sped up the closer she got, and I felt my orixa nudging at me excitedly.

“Are you okay?” she asked, and the sound of her voice wrapped around me like a safety blanket.