When I entered the kitchen Jasmine was hurrying around so that she reminded me of the Tasmanian Devil in the Bugs Bunny cartoons. Clearly breakfast was rush time at Sal's diner. From the clamor I could hear in the other room, I imagined everyone in town was there for breakfast. As it turned out the whole town and then some came most every morning to support Jasmine. I grabbed an apron from the neat stack on the shelves by the door hoping I could ease her workload.
"Baby, what can I do to help?" I asked in the cheeriest voice I could muster at that hour of the morning.
"Can you fry eggs?" she shouted as she filled little pitchers with fresh cream.
Not waiting for my answer she told me to grab the big bowl of eggs from the refrigerator and fix twelve of them sunny-side up. I found the huge earthenware bowl overflowing with brown eggs. It was clear everyone here supported one another. Jasmine bought local farm products and cooked them to sell to the locals for breakfast. I guessed that most of the economy of the little town was just dollars passed around in a circle. When I turned back toward the stove, Jasmine was headed out the door. It had been a long time but I had earned my college spending money as a short order cook one summer. I figured it was like riding a bike and would come back quickly. Besides how bad could I screw up frying eggs?
I scooped a large blob of lard up and dropped it on the grill. It sizzled and crackled as it melted. As I began to crack the eggs into the hot grease, Jasmine returned to the kitchen and began to fill a row of toasters with slices of white bread. She told me that the home fries were keeping warm in the oven and asked me to set up plates with a mess of taters and two eggs while she checked on the customers. I was thankful to stay in the kitchen and not have to deal with Uncle Billy and the rest of the town's people. I was not sure how they were going to react to the city man who had spent the night with their Jasmine. By the time she came back I had the food set up on the plates and was buttering the hot toast. My days as a cook came back to me with each new burn I got on my fingers that morning.
When the last breakfast order had been served I began to wash the dishes that had been piling up. By my count at least 50 plates of breakfast had gone out of the kitchen. I didn't imagine there were more then 20 people in the town. These were good people who were doing what they could to help Jasmine without making her a charity case. I looked around for rubber gloves as the steaming water filled the big wash sink. Finding none I turned to scrapping the grill instead leaving the dishes to soak in the scalding water. Just as I was finishing with the grill, Jasmine came in the kitchen with another pan of dirty dishes.
"Come on honey, go out and sit down. I will bring you some breakfast. We can clean this up in a bit." She said in a tone that was at once sweet and commanding. "Oh, Uncle Billy needs to talk to you sweetie. Pancakes all right with you? I have a kind of a hankering for them myself." I told her anything she wanted was fine with me and turned for the door. For some reason she stopped me. I guess the look on my face conveyed my anxiety over talking to Billy. She wrapped her arms around me and held me as she softly kissed my cheek. Then she told me not to worry and that I was welcome to stay as long as I liked or go without any quilt. She also said that anything could be fixed. I smiled at her though my anxiety was not caused by the things she had assumed. I still had no idea how Billy would react to my having slept with his niece or the fact that I planned to keep right on sleeping with her.
I stepped into the dining room and found Billy sitting alone at a table by the door. The table was set for three and I assumed that meant Billy would be joining Jasmine and me for breakfast. He greeted me with a hearty good morning and a genuinely warm smile. My fears melted away as I sat down across from the friendliest man I had ever met. Billy began explaining to me what he thought was wrong with my car. He said that although his son was still working on it he didn't have much hope they could get it going without bringing in a lot of expensive parts. He said sadly he didn't think that the old girl was worth the cost and it would only be a temporary fix anyway. Then he did something that I would have found odd coming from any other man but somehow it seemed ok coming from him. He reached across the table and touched my hand as he told me how sorry he was about my car. It was like he was consoling me on the loss of a loved one. I told him that I couldn't afford to spend a lot of money anyway. He just nodded and looked sympathetic. I decided that pile of rust out back of Billy's place was more graveyard to him then junkyard.
"Well, bus only comes through once't a week and ya missed it yesterday. If ya cain't wait for the next one, I can run ya over to the highway later where you can catch a ride to someplace with better bus service," he said. "But, I know Jasmine would be mighty pleased if ya stuck round. Seems she has taken a shine to ya and well if she like ya everybody round here will like ya."
I told him that I was very fond of Jasmine as well and that I was sure I would enjoy sticking around. He seemed genuinely pleased. He also let me know how special Jasmine was. It wasn't really a warning. There was certainly no menace in it; just a friendly bit of information about how everyone around felt about Jasmine. Before we could explore the topic further Jasmine came into the room. She had a tray with three plates stacked high with buttermilk pancakes, a platter of bacon and sausage, a pitcher of orange juice and a fresh pot of coffee. She set out the meal and the three of us ate and talked until finally Billy announced that he had work to get to. Jasmine and I also had work to do. When we went in the kitchen I was surprised to find that she had done most of the clean up while fixing our breakfast. So with just a little help from me, Jasmine had the kitchen sparkling like new in less than thirty minutes. When she finished drying the last dish, she turned toward me with what could only be called a lecherous grin.