#nearly 5k words on this one btw literally 41 words off :')

[taxevasiontactics]

The Godmother's Godchild [5] - ...Make for Such Great Falls

Synopsis: You just knew the good times wouldn't last, but you didn't think they would come this quickly. Getting hit with multiple problems in a row, you find yourself starting to thrive. It is, after all, your job to deal with major problems on incredibly short deadlines.

Warning: (Graphic?) Depiction of a major injury

For the better part of your month allowance, you work.

You don’t make any more visits out of the cottage save for necessities. Even when you need materials for some concoction, you go out, you get what you need, and you come back. The inspiration for “improvements” strikes as often as it had before, but you cannot bring yourself to care beyond “good enough”. You hate the idea of leaving behind the quick friendships and bonds you’ve made here. Still, the month wears on and your time runs thin.

You dread it. You fear it. You languish in it.

You wake up with a dry throat and a stuffy nose. The world outside is a dusky grey, even if your phone tells you it’s your habitual 6 AM. Beside you, your lazy, feline housemate continues to snooze away on the opposite pillow. Your tired eyes slide to the date, recognizing it as the end of summer. Your judgement day is drawing ever closer. Still, you have many projects to do; so, you drag yourself out, have your breakfast of quick cereal, dig out another can of tuna for the cat to have when he wakes up, and head out into the gloom. Time is of the essence, you tell yourself. Let people know that you’ll be leaving soon.

You decide that the pizzeria will be the easiest to knock out first (see: the bandaid that will probably hurt the most, thus pertinent to rip it off the fastest) and work on until the fog burns away from the warm noon sun’s rays. The phone is ringing off the hook when you come in, smelling like the forest and dirt between your fingers.

Nobody is manning the front where its shrill bell calls, not until you hear Gustavo shout from the back that he’s “COMING!” like the caller can hear him through an unanswered receiver. The place is a mess of soda boxes, napkin boxes, pizza box boxes, and a multitude of other little things you don’t have the brains to pick through mentally. A whisper of a smile runs across your mouth. You’re going to miss this place when you go, wall stains and all.

“Hey! Welcome back!” Gustavo shouts as he comes out of the kitchen. “Haven’t seen you in forever!”

He’s quick to pick up the phone, waving at you to sit down between writing down lines of the order. You look around at all the boxes and shift your bag against yourself. You feel bad, just standing around when there’s all of this work lying around. You hear Gustavo click his pen again, sigh, and stretch. He almost asks you if it’s “the usual, again?” before you interject.

“Do you want some help with putting all of this away?”

His eyebrows go up. “Are you sure? There’s a whole lot, and they’re heavy. But I don’t think Peppino or I will say no!”

“Hell, sure, better than sitting on my rear while you run around and make me sweat just watching.”

He gets a kick out of that. It doesn’t take very long for Gustavo to get through the delivery orders in the oven. You’re put to work, following him back through the kitchen door with a moderately heavy box. Peppino is there with his back to you both, still preparing toppings with a multitude of knives.

“Afternoon, Peppino!” You call across the kitchen.

“Mmhm,” he mumbles back. “Salve, salve.”

You frown. You were expecting some sort of ribbing on the way through. Gustavo leads you to a storage room half packed with disorganized junk. The other half is free for you to attempt stacking your boxes neatly. For the most part, it works, though you feel your Tetris skills protesting the rust. You finish up in no time, going for more boxes.

“What’s up with him?” You ask on the way back.

The shorter man shrugs. “Just tired, I guess. I told him to sit down for a bit, but… you know how he is by now, huh?”

“Yeah.”

You both continue to haul inventory, stack, and go back for more until the available storage space is all filled up. This, unfortunately, leaves no room for the soda fountain’s refill boxes. You and Gustavo pick them up anyways, taking them to the kitchen.

Your senses prickle from a new smell when you next pass through. It’s not the sauce. It’s not the toppings. It’s a warm, metallic scent that sets your mind on edge even when it’s masked by spices. Gustavo clicks his tongue to get the larger man’s attention.

“Hey, Peppino?” “Huh?”

He’s still chopping away, cleaver sharp and gleaming as he brings it down on the counter with a hard thump!

“Where do you want these?”

“What, where do I want what? What are they?”

“The soda refills.” “What? Oh. Over there, why not.”

Peppino turns, waving his stump of a left arm through the air towards another door. Blood splatters across the countertop from the meat around his radial-ulnar and it keeps running red rivulets down the limb. A steady stream drips onto the floor from where the rest of his wrist and hand lie in perfectly sliced sections on the cutting board, oozing a pool of the iron-rich sanguine. You drop your box on the nearest surface and rush between metal tables to get to Peppino.

“Oh.” He finally catches on when he looks at what was once his hand, face blanched. “My arm. My arm-!?”

Gustavo shouts in alarm behind you. You grab what you hope is a clean rag, snatching Peppino’s limb and pressing the fabric tightly against it. You jerk your head towards the lobby.

“Gustavo. My bag is in the front, go grab it and bring it here.”

He’s out the door in a moment. Your mind is coasting on tight rails as you coax Peppino into dropping the cleaver to hold the rag for you. Stop the bleeding. Stabilize, then repair. Within moments, your bag gets tossed onto a nearby counter. You rip it open, racing in measured, confident digs to find what you need and get suitable substitutes for what you can’t. He’s a breath away from fully panicking, muttering faster and faster under his breath an incoherent spew of words. You spare a moment, leaning into his view.

“Hey, Peppino, look at me. Look at me?”

He’s still staring at his stump, watching the rag slowly becoming more and more soaked.

“I need you to look at me. Alright? Just for a sec.”

You get what you need and set to work. He listens to you now that you’re moving more, attention drawn from the source of stress. Ok, you can work with that – you keep talking, your mash slowly becoming the green paste you need.

“You’re doing great. You’re doing great, just keep holding that on your arm. Positive pressure, ok?”

“I really did it this time,” he rambles, “this time I-“

“No, no, you’re doing good! Keep holding it, you’re doing great.”

You finish in record time. You’re thankful that Peppino cut himself in such even sections; you hurriedly paste his hand back together on the cutting board, piece by piece, with thick, creamy salve and white wrapping. You keep talking. He’s doing great. Just a little longer.

You feel the skin starting to mend when you pick the severed palm up and line it up with Peppino’s raw limb. You wrap it back on as securely as you can, all while the meat and bone and flesh zip right back up like interlocking puzzle pieces coming into place. The contact you have with every cut as they mend is not unlike feeling a bubble bath’s bubbles pop and reform into plain water, or sectioned slime closing back around the divisions. You finish up and step back with a deep, rib creaking breath.

Peppino is left with a fully bandaged hand, while yours are as bloodied as can be. He stares blithely at the once-was stump currently in the process of reconstructing dermal layers, tendons, marrow, and muscle. You’ve never been on the receiving end, but you imagine the sensation is confusing.

“There!” You laugh, breathless. Your hands are still, even if you are rife with adrenaline. “You, uh, shouldn’t use that very much for the rest of the week. It’ll hurt like hell if you move everything around while it’s still doing its thing. Just so you know. Doctor’s recommendation.”

You go to wash the tacky, drying red from your palms as Gustavo steps in, presumably to chew the man out. It’s not the first time you’ve been put on the spot like that, but it is the first time you’ve done it for someone you know. Your mind tentatively steps back into normality as the atmosphere relaxes from shock to relieved frustration. You scrub out where it’s caked between your nails.

Gustavo finishes his rant behind you as the oven timer dings. You move out of the way as he pulls the delivery order out, boxes them up, and heads out to the vespa. He leaves you with Peppino, who has been silent ever since you finished. He mulls over something in the back of his mind, mouth working over itself until he chooses to drop a single, penny-quiet word.

“Thanks.” “You’re welcome.” You toss the paper towels. “It’s my job.”

You go back for the box you had thrown on the counter in your rush, putting it in the corner Peppino had pointed out beforehand. He cleans up the spilled blood and tosses out what he had been chopping beforehand. You don’t want to know how much product had been wasted during that fiasco, but you lost out on a couple key ingredients yourself.  You’ll have to go back into the forest later and hope that they’ve regrown since harvest. In the meantime, you grab the second box; the one Gustavo had abandoned.

“I wanted you guys to be the first to hear it.” You shove it in a proper looking place. “Work called. I’ll be leaving to go back home sometime in the future.”

Peppino scoffs, though it’s more to fill the air than disbelief. “Well, I didn’t know we mattered so much. When?” “Probably towards the end of the year, or the beginning of the next. I still have to call back and set a date.” “Well, when you leave, I wish you the best of luck, and good riddance.”

“Come on, don’t act like I’m already going!” You protest. “I’m not gone yet!”

You wished you spent more time here instead of hiding in the cottage this whole time. However, you see an opportunity present itself yet again. You turn, leaning so very casually against a wall. “And, you know, I better make good on the time I have left.”

“Oh, no no no.” Peppino wipes his hands on a towel, thumping it on a counter and rounding the worktables with a accusing finger. He comes into your space, doubt and suspicion written plain on his face. “I’ve seen that face too many times, you’re up to something. What? What crazy thing are you going to suggest this time?”

“What, I fix your hand and you still don’t trust me?”

“You fix my hand and I trust you less! I can never tell what you want out of something, so what do you want?”

“The same thing I’ve always wanted,” you answer, pushing back against his presence with your own. He takes a step back. You eat the distance up and fill the space with another. “A little bit of food in exchange for my help. You’re suffering from success, I have idle hands and want to enjoy this place a little longer. I think it works out, don’t you?”

Peppino’s mustache scrunches up into his nose as he thinks it over. He doesn’t have to pay you, but you would have unrestricted time to bother him as much as you please. He needs the help, but you’re you.

You waggle your eyebrows at him and break the argument in his mind, forcing a loud “bah!” straight from his gut as both of his arms are flung into the air from exasperation. He winces, cradling his injured hand after the whipcrack motion.

“Fine!” he shouts. “But only when we absolutely need you, then I will call you in.”

“Sure.”

“And only one meal every time you come in!”

“Fine by me.”

“Then I owe nothing to you afterwards, capeesh?”

“Unless I save your life.”

“Yes, unless you save my-“ Peppino scowls. “Enough of that. You didn’t just come here to tell us you were leaving, were you?”

You make vague hand gestures to the entire kitchen. He sighs, fixes his hat with the good hand, and opens the fridge doors.

“You tell me to rest my hand, you’re working here soon, so you learn how by making your own pizza. Start with the dough in that bowl and I’ll guide you from there.”

---

You would dub the next six days as “hell week” if you didn’t enjoy the people working by your side. Peppino, true to his word, only calls for you when he absolutely needs you; unfortunately, with his hand still out of commission during the healing process, he needs you every day. Every lesson you get from him is a trial by fire. Overcoming the obstacle of sucking at something new is a process you’re abundantly used to by now. You make plenty of mistakes. You learn plenty more.

You relish the rush of getting it right.

“’Stavo need a large-“

“Coming through, here’s your box!”

“You two, another order!”

In the kitchen, you quickly adapt to the controlled chaos. Dough flies back and forth. Sauce splatters with wild yet deadly accuracy. Toppings and cheese are portioned, scattered, and slammed into the oven all while you weave between, under, and sometimes over Gustavo and Peppino. Even the telephone’s constant ringing becomes a welcome sound, signaling a new challenge for you to undo.

Similarly, for the next six nights Peppino sees to it that your dinner is covered. Mostly by leftover pizzas that were defects, but on Saturday night Gustavo makes something from scratch. It’s a bit of a tradition, you figure as you watch the man walk to the back and start up a new pot of something without any further elaboration. Your temporary boss comes to you with his bandaged hand and shakes it in front of you.

“What do you think, eh?” He does it again, showing off his range of mobility. “I think it’s good enough now to go to work.”

You tilt your head and hum. “I’d have to take a look to be sure.”

“I can move it just fine!”

“Sure, but I still want to take a look.”

Peppino grumbles yet obliges you all the same. You guide him to the counter, gingerly unwrapping the work you’d done at the top of the week and have monitored closely since. With each layer unwrapped, you congratulate yourself on a job well done. The salve has done its job and fixed him up, leaving behind clean, faded lines of scars where it had knit together muscle and bone.

“Yeah, actually,” you mutter, “I’d call that pretty good. Flex your hand for me?”

He does so, twisting and turning it with a pleased smirk.

“Wiggle your fingers too?”

He does that too, thick phalanges rasping against each other. You note that the hair on the back of his knuckles hasn’t quite grown back where he’d chopped them up, but that’s a given.

“Looks good to me. Does it feel weird or uncomfortable anywhere?” You slip from the seat to grab a cup of something to drink. Peppino makes a noise in the back of his throat behind you. You can hear his meaty hand slapping against itself as he flexes the palm a few more times in quick succession, testing it.

“Numb,” he answers. “A little.”

“That’s to be expected, but if it stays numb for a few more days, you should tell me.”

“What, so you can poke and prod at me more?”

“So I can give your nerves an extra boost to heal,” you crack back, sarcasm deflected. “Drink?”

“Cola.”

Gustavo comes out with a nice one-pot of pasta in meat sauce seconds later, happily announcing his arrival before you can all dig in.

The busy times are not to last, however. Sunday is a day of rest and cottage work. Your phone doesn’t display the affectionately named “Hookup” contact you’d set for the pizzeria on Monday, nor do you find hell on earth when you visit on Tuesday. As quickly as interest came, it dries up and dies; this is good for Peppino’s rest, terrible for Peppino’s wallet, as he complains to you over the counter. You put your heads together while you eat, but neither of you can come up with anything.

“Guess we can wait until tomorrow,” you mumble.

“So we will.” He slumps on the counter, pulling out a book on woodworking, of all things. “A domani.”

---

You barely have to search to find the source of your sudden lack of work. The very next morning, you find posters plastered in town, pasted on with old fashioned glue-and-roller glee en masse. Walls upon walls of posted paper greet you at every turn in town. Everywhere they can legally be placed you see advertisements for an instant, fuss-free, cheaper pizza delivery service. Automated perfection. Whoever put these up even tagged the grocery store, something that Pamela shrugs at when you ask her.

“They paid Mrs. Bradbury some very good money,” she answers. The register’s bell rings and you see a flash of fresh printed paper in the till. “For advertising space! Out here!”

You can only assume that the other store owners were given the same treatment, money for advertising. Still, the posters can’t reach more than a hundred people a day – tops – and it won’t do better than your word of mouth. Not to mention, Peppino’s place is the only competitor. It doesn’t add up, in your head.

“Do you have any idea who it was?” You take your groceries off the counter, one bag over either arm. “Any name, face…?”

“Not a clue! Some guy in a trench coat and hat, which I thought was super suspicious, you know. But you know, when money comes along for something easy…”

You nod in understanding, bid her farewell, and get on with going home. Whoever put those up is either in for major disappointment or is just extremely petty when it comes to rival businesses.

You call your “Hookup” the moment you get into the truck, setting your phone on the dash and driving away. Your favorite Italian answers – just as you’d hoped.

“Peppino’s Pizza, how can I-“

“Peppino!” You hear him sputter on the other line, script interrupted. “I found out why we’re getting zero business! Some schmuck is undercutting us. And they have instant delivery! The most irresponsible use of teleportation I’ve ever seen-“

His voice takes on an incredulous, accusing tone. You can practically hear him wave his hand in the air, pacing behind the front counter.

“What? What?! How do you know this? Did you see them?”

“No, but there were posters plastered all over town, you just could not miss them. Pamela told me someone, didn’t see who, came in and paid Mrs. Bradbury for the wall space.”

“Maledizione, non riesco mai ad avere una pausa…”

“No idea what you said, but that’s what we’re dealing with. I don’t have any bright ideas yet, so…”

You squint at the front of the cottage, trailing off. There’s a strange structure just off the road in front of it.

“Actually, hang on a second.”

“What is it? Is there something wrong?”

“Just- just one moment. Hang on.”

The truck rolls to a stop, you throw it into park, and you marvel at the sight.Piled up outside of the fence is bushel upon bushel of tomatoes. So many tomatoes, you can barely see the red fruits peeking out of the top box. So, so many tomatoes, you can smell the summer ripeness captured in their slightly firm, juicy skins. So, so, so many tomatoes, you nearly miss the note tacked onto one of the boxes right at your eye level. It’s written in a child’s hand, jagged yet on the cusp of neatness.

Dear Doctor,

You still can’t tell if the kids in this town have forgotten your last name again or they’ve all mutually agreed to just call you by that.

Thank you for all your help with the fields. We are sorry that the tomatoes came late. We think that giving you the best tomatoes instead of just the first ones is a good thank you. We hope you like them lots and lots. They grew very well because you helped us.

Love,

The Anderson Family

And Marnie and Agatha

You sigh, folding the note up and sticking it in your pocket. You love those kids. You really do. What are you supposed to do with all of these tomatoes, though? You can’t use it. You couldn’t possibly cook down and can all of these tomatoes by yourself.

“Hello?” Peppino reminds you of his presence through your phone’s speaker. “What is it?”

“Well-“ You grunt as you attempt to move the precariously stacked boxes to the ground, tucking your phone between face and shoulder. “I don’t have an idea, but I have recently come into possession of many, many tomatoes. You wouldn’t know how to get rid of, say…” You pause, huffing. “Three hundred pounds, give or take?”

Peppino goes quiet on the other end for a moment, thinking. You hear him drumming his fingers on the countertop, murmuring in Italian, and moving some papers around. Whatever he finds, though, it has him sounding hopeful once he speaks up again.

“If you haul it all to the restaurant, I can do something about it.”

You grin. “Great, time to work some magic!”

“Don’t bring your crazy magic things in here! I have pots already! Plenty of pots! And regular stoves!”

“Too late!”

You cackle and hang up. Of course, you won’t actually bring anything but the usual bag and yourself. You gird your loins (and your back), preparing to lug everything into your truck.

---

Offloading everything was a cinch between the three of you. Getting to work was harder, though now you’ve all gathered in the back for an unofficial-official meeting over coring, cutting, and dumping a third of the tomatoes into a big pot to cook down for sauce. It’s the most immediate way to use up a big portion of them without waste. This was also the extent of the head chef’s creativity when it came to getting rid of the red fruits.

With so much time left to do menial tasks, brainstorming is a natural consequence of conversation.

“Ok, how about specials?” You take a gulp of water, fanning yourself in the hot kitchen. “We can run specials, every time I get a new batch of produce.”

Peppino frowns. “Specials, as in special dishes?”

“Right. The posters only extended to pizzas, very plain pizzas. Pepperoni. Cheese. One or two popular toppings. That’s it.” You dump another handful of tomatoes into the communal pot, bumping elbows with Gustavo. “Sorry.”

He shrugs. “That’s alright, keep telling your idea.”

“Anyways, if we stand out, we have a chance to get some customers back. I could put up posters-“

“We don’t have money for advertising space,” Peppino counters.

“Ok, then I’ll try and spread the word again! We do specials, we make the pizzeria stand out, and people come order them with a pizza or two to go. How’s that sound?”

He goes through another three tomatoes in lightning quick cuts before he stops and sighs. You reach out for another fruit and core it, as does he. “Whatever I come up with will not be so creative,” the man grumbles. “It won’t even be edible.”

Gustavo clicks his tongue and swats Peppino’s arm. “Don’t say that! You’re a great chef! People wouldn’t have been calling for a month if you weren’t, and we like your food!”

“Yup,” you agree. “It’s what kept me coming back, I will attest. You don’t give yourself enough credit.”

“Then why would they stop? It cannot all be just about the money, or the delivery time, or the- the- the-“

His hand waves through the air, searching for a word but finding none to pull. He sighs, goes for another tomato, and cuts it just as clean as the others.

“They stopped for one reason or another, and some special food will not bring them all back.”

“Doesn’t have to bring them all back,” you answer. “Just enough to keep things going.”

The next hour is dead air, filled only by kitchen fans humming, knives rasping against tomato skin, and the dull thump, thump, thump of quarters (or thirds, Gustavo and Peppino bickered about it in the beginning) falling into the pot. You help them lift the giant pot onto the stove and snag the lighter as Gustavo turns the gas on. He gets a step stool, you wash your hands, and Peppino scowls at the remaining bushels of tomatoes. With one large hand rubbing his chin, you practically hear the rusty gears turning in his head.

“Alright,” he mutters, “I’ll try.”

You don’t get any explanation of what’s going on as he experiments with a few of the thicker, fatter heirlooms. It’s not what you usually use in the restaurant, that honor is reserved for the humble roma, but the big fruits he picks from the bunch get sliced, tasted, and graded by some scale in his head. The phone rings for another order. Gustavo leaves to answer. You step in to stir the pot in his stead.

Out of the corner of your eye, you watch the chef go for one of the many blocks of mozzarella in the fridges - as well as flour, egg, and breadcrumbs - before he slips a shallow pan of oil onto an adjacent burner to yours. You have a faint memory of watching diner cooks work back in the city. Mozzarella sticks were one of your favorite treats after a shift. Cheap, filling, and plentiful when you were a regular. He starts to cut them into roughly equal slices to the tomatoes from earlier.

“What’s going on in that head, Pino?” you call over your shoulder. “Looks like mozz discs, to me.”

He scoffs. “Pino?”

“It gets tiring saying your full name all the time. Work with me, here.”

“You have to say the full name of the cheese, at least. Fried mozzarella is what it looks like, but this is not the only part of the dish.” He finishes, starting to bread them. “Have you heard of a Caprese salad?”

“Sure have.”

“If they want something special, they will get something special. I am doing it differently!”

Your brow shoot up. Wow. Frying the cheese, stack between refreshing tomatoes and basil leaves, serve drizzled in olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Crunchy. Juicy. Snappy. It’s a hit combo. Gustavo comes back with an order ticket; just in time to leave the sauce to simmer. You abandon the pot to help and time passes in a blur. By the time you’ve sent him off with all boxes strapped to the vespa, Peppino is busy with the last touches to his creation.

Good gods and every other higher power listening, watching him plate it up with as much care as possible does something for you. It’s not just the careful way he arranges the slices of deep fried mozzarella and tomatoes, nor is it the way he tears apart the basil so delicately. It’s not even the loose, easy way he shakes out the dark and light dressings in generous swirls. It’s the small glimpse of a confident man doing exactly what he’s always wanted to.

A fond warmth blooms in you. He has a real passion for the art. When he’s focused like this, all the anxiety melts away into a pervasive desire to get the job done right. He presents the dish by sliding it your way, grabbing two forks as he follows it over. He hands one to you, and you both dig in with a delicious **crunch** of tearing a fried piece apart.

“Holy shit,” you mumble around a mouthful. “Holy shit.”

It’s good. It’s really good. It’s better than what you thought.

“Peppino, I’m not joking, this is genius.”

He frowns, rocking his hand back and forth. “Salt. I could have salted it after frying.”

“Yes! Ok, salt after frying-“ You go back for another bite. “-and box it up. We could put the dressing in little cups for delivery?”

“That’s easy, like the sliced peppers.”

“Yeah!”

He’s excited as you talk over the little details. The delivery method. The plating in the box. How to keep the fried things crispy and hot. The minutia are more or less accounted for and the tester plate emptied by the time Gustavo gets back. He laments at not getting to try any, so Peppino goes to make another round of it just for him.

The anxiety creeps back now that he is no longer occupied by the testing phase. You see him stiffen up and slouch back into his usual frown. You lean in on his space, lifting your brows. What's got him down this time? He sighs, flipping the breaded cheese over.

“I only hope that the customers like it.”

You huff. “They will. I’m sure of it. You’re a good chef.”

-----------------------

turns out switching to full time when you're used to part time makes you very, very tired. yayyyy more free labor. at least he seems to trust you, now.