Cuts Like A Knife

It is cold. Again. Not cold like the 40-inches-on-the-ground-cold in D.C. Not cold like the 4 to 8 inches about to fall in Atlanta tonight. But Keys cold: 40s at night, 60s during the day. Cold enough to make the tourists happy not to be anywhere north, but disappointed enough that it’s not warm enough to be hot.

As I mix up drinks I have never made before and brand them my own concoctions because I make up the ingredients, I tell the tourists where to go, and they go there. I know this because I see them later when I am off and out. After a first day on a job with no training, I am pleased that my drinks and advice have garnered smiles from a few. Hell, vodka’s vodka. Rum is rum. Add pink or green, and voila–that’s how we make it in the Keys.

It’s cold. Again. I am tired of it, but how can you complain given all that is going on in the much, much colder north? You don’t. You wear a sweatshirt over two other layers and tell the tourists it won’t last long. Even though it will. Me bad. I lie.

I am broke. Totally. Done. I have been a month without one dollar coming in, compared to so much being paid out. I am three months without anything close to what I used to make because my two Key West employers were so full of shit. I am waiting for back pay from my second Key West job, hoping it includes retroactive back pay for the difference in what I was told I’d be paid and what actually appeared in my paycheck during the one month I held my second job. I am not holding my breath. But I still hope, even as I marvel that at my age I had two jobs back-to-back that never paid me a promised wage.

My great guy is cooking a great meal, as he always does. Rouletta is hovering about, hoping for a treat, which my great guy always gives her. We bought a zillion pounds of meat at Winn Dixie last week, because it was buy-one-get-one-free. Our freezer is full. So are our stomachs each night. I may be broke, but I am well fed. My great guy makes sure that I am, even though some days I’d rather nibble rice crackers and cheese slices, but I never tell him this. Even though he already knows this.

My great guy’s current job pays him the correct amount, as it always did before we ventured south to Key West. His tips are good, except when the weather is cold, as it is now, and the tourists reconsider eating at his outdoor place.

In our cold apartment, which is huge and beautiful compared to the Key West hovel, we enjoy two-for-one rib eyes and stupid-cheap baked potatoes. “I made a salad, if you want one,” my great guy offers. I just smile and shake my head.

It is cold. We are so broke after the Key West disaster. Since I’ve been back, I have tended bar one day at an outdoor place with a view to die for. I have three days off before I go back to that view. I have another job waiting in the wings. Seven days of work a week will be just fine. Gotta bank it during season in order to live when it’s off. Hell, just to catch up, although I am not sure I ever will.

I think I might even have fun at work again, even though that is very far down the list of must-haves–second, third, and twentieth after money, money, money.

In the two weeks since we moved back to an area we love, I have had no work whatsoever until yesterday, I have transformed this little apartment that seems quite large into a very tiny bit of a home. I have designated shelves to various photos of those we love. My kids. My friends. Our grandmothers, including mine who now plays with the angels and my great guy’s grandma who still makes a mean buttermilk biscuit. Such photos on a shelf make a place feel like home. Touching each framed face every morning reminds me that I am home. For now.

“How was the steak?” my great guys asks.

“Wonderful, as always,” I tell him. I am not lying.

He cooks. I wash the dishes, taking extra care with the mother-of-pearl-handled, vintage-1958 steak knives I never used until I found myself in South Florida two-and-a-half years ago and a million miles from anything resembling my former life.

“Never put these in the dishwasher,” admonished my grandmother when she set the table with them for so many years.

“She wanted you to have these,” my aunt told me when she was breaking up my grandmother’s house after her death three years ago.

“You know about these knives, right?” I ask my great guy as we savor every last bite of his perfectly cooked steaks.

“Yeah, sure,” he smiles.

“I mean, you know they were my grandmother’s, right?” I ask, wanting to be maudlin and cry and tell him how much I miss her, but I don’t because it is cold and we are broke and it’s just not the right time to have a 750th meltdown.

“I know,” he says, caressing my hand. “And they never go in the dishwasher.”

It is cold. We are broke. But Rouletta is content to bundle up in her hideous sweater, as are we in our multiple sweatshirt layers. We have jobs. We are happy. We will make it work as we work through season.

It is cold. I am broke. If I were to allow it, the reality would cut neatly and cleanly, like any and every knife. Instead, I gently hand-wash the pearl-handled blades we used tonight. I look to the ceiling and will my grandmother to touch my shoulder one more time, to tell me it will all be okay because I have a great guy, a cute dog, wonderful kids, and a job that overlooks a sandy beach.

I wipe a tear my great guy doesn’t see. I snap a funny photo of Rouletta in her hideous sweater. I carefully dry the pearl-handled steak knives.

It is cold. I am broke. Some days it all just cuts like a knife.

It’ll be okay.