4: The ants and the grasshopper
Good evening and welcome back to Café Blablabla. I'm your host, Adrienne Anderson. Let's see if we can remember where our story left off...
PINESCONES. The chef pressed hard on the chalk and little bits of the word fell away along the edges, floating to the floor.
The morning chill had burned off. Otto’s hearth fire crackled, which meant Otto’s work for the moment was done. Otto snoozed on the countertop. Until it was time for the shellfish purveyor to drop off the raw bar order, there was nothing Otto needed to do. The glow of flames bounced off the farthest mirrors and swirled back around Otto’s arms like seaweed in a tidepool.
Words. They came from underwater at first. Exterminator. Exterminator. I pushed aside my earmuffs and turned towards the figure with hose and gas mask standing in the open doorway. The swish of passing broadcasters on the street sliced the still air, punctuated by the plink-plonk of the machines’ airborne seeds catching the spokes of the early cyclists heading east through the drizzle.
Did we schedule this? I asked my own furrowed brow.
“City emergency,” came the reply. “An ant problem. It’s all over the neighborhood. Leafcutters, we think. They’re looking for power, chewing whatever lines they can find. Seems they’ve gotten a taste for electricity. Mind if I take a look around —" he gestured broadly at the kitchen in progress — "this?"
“Come in, come in,” I waved with my free arm. He stepped over piles of books from Martine. Little slips of paper, bookmarks, scribbled notes, receipts stuffed between pages — they all stuck their tongues out at the blankness of the space, the unfinished everything.
The chef didn’t lift her head as he entered. I’m not sure she even noticed he was there. She stood at her makeshift pastry station, a cairn of bins, dragging her fingertips back and forth though a bowl of flour. Strains of chirping violins wafted from the orchestra of birds in the backyard, amplified by the gentle rain.
I eyed my laser level and gave a final twist to the oven leg. It would have to do for now. We’re losing minutes. At least we don’t have to deal with the nightmare of gas. Those were the days. I guided the oven’s outsize plug into its cavern of an outlet.
As it often goes in kitchens, the smell of the catastrophe came before the sound. Top notes of scorched black pepper and vitriol, a heart of ozone and toast, base notes of paper and wet glue: it surged through every portal at once. The 110s, the 220s, the light fixtures, the speakers, the router, the seams and switches of the breaker box itself. Moments later, the sizzle of a white-hot skillet hitting water, then the submarine pop of metal dividing. Fan blades coasted to a stop.
“I have good news and I have bad news,” said the city. “The good news is we’ve found the problem — ”
My hands had already gone numb. In place of thoughts, a cotton ball sat lodged in my mouth, ajar. Over at the bar, Otto slept, unbothered. The chef had been folding a little origami grasshopper out of printer tape but now she walked to the hearth. Not too fast, not too slow. She gathered black ash with the back of a butter knife and tamped it into letters.
"Pinescones," she said.
She stared outside.
Beyond our door and through the cloud, always the vast mass of cloud, a thin beam of light broke across the sundials of the gutter gardens. We’re minutes away from opening. We have no power. We have nothing to serve but a word.
Yes, bent the ferns and flowers and trees toward the light. Yes, yes.
