Iron and Chocolate

I snorted with glee as the colossal red barn crushed my ex’s car.

I moved to Hibbing, Minnesota from Cambridge, Massachusetts, following my boyfriend to the middle of the country, albeit the slightly less miserable northern middle. As much as everyone tells me how much I’ll hate the cold, I was actually looking forward to winter and long days and nights indoors, snuggling with my boyfriend and reading half a moving truck full of books we brought with us.

That was before SHE came along. Do you need me to describe her?

Simply put, Jessica Biel’s clone, only shorter.

All it took was one glance from her and my boyfriend went wobbly. Within a week they were shacking up and I was stuck having to find a job in this far side of Hicksville.

Yes, I’ll admit I was a little slow finding gainful employment here, but I figured a Harvard law degree is worth something anywhere, isn’t it?

Not until I take the Minnesota Bar Exam, which won’t be for another two weeks.

So until then, provided I have any further inclination to stay, I’m stuck here in Hibbing, Minnesota, home of the world’s largest open pit iron ore mine and my ex’s employer.

I’m a huge fan of Tom Robbins’ books, so I figured I’d try out being a waitress for those two weeks, on my own terms. As soon as I got a waitressing job at Lucy’s All-Night Diner, home of the world’s greatest chocolate cake, wearing normal clothing and make-up, I figured I’d put my knowledge of Tom Robbins’ protagonists to the test.

I dyed my hair day-glow green and bought hot pink, thigh-high, high-healed boots that would have allowed me to completely dwarf my ex. I was a natural blonde, and the day-glow green hair was only temporary. I explained the situation to Lucy, the owner, and while she didn’t frown at the idea openly, she allowed me to try out the thigh-highs for my next shift.

Most of the employees just wore a t-shirt with Lucy’s logo on it and jeans. I chose to go with an extra-long black t-shirt which I wore as a dress with a hot pink belt to match my boots. It wasn’t that I didn’t like jeans. It was just that this may be one of the only times I figured I could wear those boots to work.

I showed up for my first shift dressed exactly how I described I’d be dressed, albeit with lipstick and eye-shadow that matched my hair. Lucy raised an eyebrow at me, and I gave her one right back. I’d been practicing raising one eyebrow into a mirror and I got mine to form a sharp apex, not unlike the Matterhorn.

She wilted away into a corner at that and cowered. She may still be.

The first hour went great. Everyone was super friendly and I received huge tips from all my tables just for being nice to them. Super easy, and everyone was so polite even if I messed up an order so long as I apologized for it. I found if I talked to the customers, spewing what I interpreted as what they wanted to order based on my Boston sensibilities interpreting the mindset of a drab upper Midwest town, I got much better tips.

Then my ex showed up with Jessica Jr.

What made the night all the more uncomfortable was she recognized me before he did, and I wasn’t remotely prepared at all for the incessant pawing she did on him. She dabbed at his face with a napkin, for God’s sake. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she even wet the napkin down with her saliva before she did it.

Then the barn fell on his car, with the whole diner’s faces against the windows, including mine.

Right before that happened, we heard five screeches out in the parking lot as we watched what looked like thirty foot tall chicken legs kicking five out of six cars out of the way, as the thirty foot tall chicken legs were supporting what looked to be an even bigger barn.

The sixth car, that got smashed, belonged to my ex. His precious all-wheel drive Volvo, purchased specifically so he could blend in with the Scandinavian-descended locals.

Most of the locals drove Subarus, but whatever.

I watched my ex dash out of the restaurant to scream at the inhabitants of the barn, when I saw a flash of lightning, and my ex was…gone. I think I saw a rodent scamper from where he had been, but I figured it was just a member of his fan club.

Jessica Jr. would not stop screaming, or, at least, not until I slapped her.

And oh wow did that feel good.

Then this jaw-droppingly gorgeous woman came into the restaurant dragging a handsome dad-type gentleman behind her. She dismissed the “Please wait to be seated” sign and plopped herself down in my section.

She looked like she was in her late 20s, but her eyes had definitely seen things. She gave me a curt look that should have made me realize my place immediately, had I not been feeling empowered by having slapped the seductress out of my ex’s girlfriend.

Jessica Jr. slithered back to her booth and hid behind menus. I ignored her and asked if the couple wanted to see any menus.

She spoke for both of them and said, “Just tea for me.”

“And your friend?” I smiled at him.

His attention didn’t waver from rapturous adoration of her features. I thought about waving my hand in front of his face, but then I noticed the woman glaring at me, so I left and got the tea.

When I brought the tea to her though, she sniffed it and started laying into the tea and me in a hyperspastic hissy fit. She had the gall to lecture me about what constitutes quality tea and how the swill we were serving would have made Peter the Great chop off my head, empty it, and use it as a cup to add some semblance of actual flavor.

At that point, I unleashed the Matterhorn apex eyebrow on her. Her countenance contorted into a convergence of confusion that suddenly snapped the guy out of his stupor.

Feeling proud of myself, I suggested the coffee to him, which I knew was awful and hadn’t yet been changed that day.

As I made the suggestion, just to help the guy out, I gave him a sly wink, which made him blink, almost audibly.

“I’d like some coffee, and a slice of the world’s greatest chocolate cake, please,” he said, straightening up in the booth as he said it, just like a little boy.

The woman glared at me and then assessed my outfit, scowling disapproval but then turning her attention back to the guy. Watching the guy look at her, it was like he was seeing her for the first time, but in a bad way.

The cook made the slice look absolutely tantalizing, with a generous slathering of chocolate mousse frosting and then drizzles of white, dark, and even ruby chocolate over all that. I grabbed two forks, because the cake really looked like something a person had to share.

As I brought the coffee and cake to them, the guy suddenly snapped out of the daze he had been fading into again. The woman took a contemplative sniff out of her coffee cup and, that’s when things got weird.

She recoiled into spastic shudders, spilling the coffee onto her person and then, it was like her appearance blinked from a dazzling maiden to a hideous, withered crone back to a maiden again.

Before she had started screaming I was already running to the kitchen to grab some wet towels. The iron in the water, I had regretfully learned, stained everything a light shade of rust and these towels were no exception. As I brought them back to the table, the guy looked at the towels curiously and I simply said, “Iron. You know, like rust water?”

The instant the wet towels made contact with her skin, a sizzling noise came from her, overpowered entirely by her shrieking gasps and howls of terror. Her hands and forearms dissolved away as she tried to remove the towels from her person. The towels then spilled over onto her midsection and thighs, and those began to disintegrate.

He grabbed one of the soaked towels from the table and threw it at her head, and another two ended up on her shoulders. The head towel began to bubble and pop as the smell of hot metal scorched the air. The space that was her head collapsed into her chest, which further collapsed into the booth where she was sitting.

Her calves and feet, free from her legs, started hopping around the diner, with one foot heading for the kitchen while the other made a beeline for the bathroom. The cook smashed the kitchen bound foot with a wet mop while Jessica Jr. screamed and ran to the bathroom, slamming the door shut as the foot chased after her.

The foot was frantically kicking the bathroom door when it was immobilized by three more wet towels from me, within seconds becoming nothing but those three towels.

It was all over in less than 30 seconds.

I gathered up the wet towels from the booth and from the entrances to the kitchen and bathroom, wiping a bit at areas that were still smoking. I then took all the wet towels to the hamper in the kitchen and dumped them.

All eyes in the diner shifted back to the dad, watching him as he pulled the cake over to himself and started digging into it with the fork.

The cake was amazingly moist, and clung to his fork even more than the light layers of chocolate-mousse frosting that enveloped the outside of the cake. He dipped the bottom of his fork in the chocolate drizzle, causing the three varieties of chocolate to swirl and intermix on his fork with a section of the cake above.

I had to ask him, “Do you mind if I join you?”

He was startled enough he almost dropped his fork.

I slid into the booth across from him, took up the other fork, plunged it into the deepest part of the cake and popped a huge wad into my mouth before he said anything. The cake set off chocolatey supernovas in my mouth. I looked from him to the end of his dangling fork and back to him again, adding a smile.

I cleared my throat and stole a sip from his coffee cup, then I started gagging.

After five minutes I was still coughing a bit, adding, “This is where coffee goes to die.”

He looked like he was in bliss from his one bite of cake. I dug into more of the cake as the other diners continued on with their conversations.

“So, I gather you’ve had an interesting day,” I chewed, catching a little bit of the chocolate mousse frosting just beyond my lower lip.

“Yeah,” he replied, tucking his fork in a deeper part of the cake. “But this…almost makes up for it.”

“Almost?” I smiled.

“It’s been quite a day,” he shrugged.

I pointed outside with the fork, “Is that your barn?”

“I’m not sure,” he said, contemplating the question as he pointed to a chunk of metal underneath the barn. “Was that your Volvo?”

“It was my ex’s,” I smiled.

My fork clinked as I snagged a too big chunk of cake for my mouth. I shoved it all in and gently closed my eyes as I sank into chocolate jubilation.

“This cake…,” he said, taking the second to last bite off the plate. “…is amazing.”

“There is that,” I agreed, taking the last bite.

“Is it safe now?” Jessica Jr. screeched from the bathroom.