Over Easy
Three years had gone by like nothing, and walking along the sunny street, his fiancé’s arm hooked in his, Roderich almost felt as if nothing had changed. But they had. Elizaveta and him, once making the perfect pair now felt like a sloppily carved jigsaw puzzle. Seemingly still fitting, but oh so wrong for each other. Elizaveta poured all her time into her work, and likewise did Roderich. Sometimes he caught himself wondering who had begun building this wall of invisible bricks between them, but cut the thoughts off when he realized it was probably him. Despite how perfect they had seemed to be from the start, there was always something a little… off about them. He wasn’t sure what this was. On the surface they should’ve been perfect for each other - the composer and the playwright. Young and ambitious, obviously upper-shelf social standing, both possessing more than average looks which surely would make for good procreation - the inevitable side-product of marriage. However, despite all this, it always felt more like they both performed as a couple than actually were one. So, he devoted more time to his composing, and the more time he spent behind the piano the less time they spent with each other. In turn, she was almost always at the theatre when her eyes weren’t fixed at her laptop, fingers tapping away at a new story.
But here they were, heading down a familiar street in New York City. The sun warmed their faces, but the cool winds creeping up the streets from the river promised that August was nearing its end. Roderich’s eyes fell briefly upon the shiny ring on Eliza’s finger and he had to stop himself from sighing out loud. They’d been engaged for so long now that it was no longer sensational, or worthy of awe. It was beginning to get pathetic. They’d been looking at houses outside the city to move to once they got married, but something was always wrong with them. Equally picky, they’d been in the market for over a year now, and it was getting exhausting.
“Hey, wanna go in here?”
Elizaveta pulled Roderich out of his thoughts and he nodded absentmindedly. She pulled him into the moderately populated Waffle House near their apartment block, where they were seated by a waiter somewhere in the middle of the room, with menus placed in front of them. He picked it up and scanned it lazily as a different waitress approached them. She was blonde with shoulder length wavy hair, the strands around her face pulled back with clips. The tag on her shirt said “Laura”. She turned to Elizaveta first with a big welcoming smile, tucking a loose strand behind her left ear as she spoke.
“What can I get for you today?”
“Chocolate chip waffles, please,” Elizaveta replied tenderly, adding; “And coffee, please. Black.”
“And for you, sir?” the waitress turned to Roderich, somewhat reluctantly it seemed, but he dismissed it quickly in his mind. He was just overworked. The world wasn’t actually against him.
“Grilled chicken and eggs, please. And tea.”
“Coming right up,” the waitress, Laura, chirped and grabbed the menus before she skipped off in the direction of what could only be the kitchen.
“Oh, excuse me!” Roderich called after her. “Could you ask the chef to make the yolks runny, please?” he added, catching the attention of Laura as she was only two or three tables away. She turned and nodded, giving him a thumbs-up before continuing on toward the kitchen.
“So,” Elizaveta began, leaning forward slightly in her chair. “I found another house I think we should look at.”
“Where is it?” he replied absentmindedly, his eyes drawn to the moderately populated street outside.
She told him the address, and he instantly shook his head, not breaking his gaze which was fixed at some inaudible argument going on between an old man with a dog and a lady clutching a cat to her chest. “No,” he reaffirmed. “That would take hours to commute from. We have to keep looking.”
“You know,” she started slowly, deliberately. “If we keep finding flaws in every house we look at, we’ll never get married.”
It sounded less like a plea, and more like an ultimatum. Stated so matter-of-fact-ly that she might as well have read him a newspaper headline. And indeed, she wasn’t exactly falling head over heels for every house they looked at either. Neither of them seemed in a rush to commit to their dream house, or their dreams. Not sure how to respond, he decided to go with instilling a false sense of calmness, avoiding to look into her blazing green eyes.
“We’ll find something, don’t worry.”
“Oh, I am sure we will.”
Before the conversation could evolve into a more developed argument, they were interrupted by Laura who set the plates down on the table before them, immediately turning her attention to Elizaveta again.
“Here you go, let me know if you need anything else.”
“Oh, sure, thanks,” Elizaveta replied, not quite focusing as hard on her waffles as she was on the waitress. Roderich shook his head to bring him back into reality, and turned his own attention to his plate, picking up the utensils to dig in, only for his brief excitement over his brunch to fall straight to the floor. Even Elizaveta couldn’t help but notice his dejected expression as he put down his utensils and opted for a sip of his tea instead.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, mouth full of waffle.
“The eggs,” he stated simply, exasperatedly, gesturing at his plate as he rubbed his temple with his other hand.
Elizaveta was quiet for a little while before replying, looking curiously as she swallowed her bite of waffle. “...what about them?”
“The yolks are hard.”
She was still eyeing him curiously, a small wrinkle forming in-between her furrowed eyebrows. “So…?”
“ So , I specifically asked for them to be runny! This must be a mistake, I have to get this cleared up,” he mumbled, more to himself by now as Elizaveta was clearly not as understanding of his failure of a brunch as he was. He gestured for the waitress called Laura with a little wave, who came over with a questioning look on her face.
“Is something wrong?” she asked kindly.
“Yes. My eggs,” he started, and seeing how her face didn’t convey any immediate understanding for his situation, he continued. “The yolk is hard, there must’ve been some miscommunication to the chef. Would you mind taking them back, explaining the situation?”
“Sure..” Laura replied, dragging the word out as she picked up the plate. Her eyes narrowed slightly, but her kind voice conveyed no detectable malice. “I’ll deal with your situation .”
“Thank you very much.”
Roderich took a sip from his tea. It seemed to be the only thing that he had going well for him this morning, and he savoured every drop. Elizaveta, meanwhile, seemed to have no issues with her food, and they didn’t share many words between them before the plate went out again. Laura placed it on the table swiftly before moving on to serve more tables as she was carrying many plates onto her tray. The restaurant had begun to fill up as the clock was nearing lunchtime, and the waiting staff was rushing back and forth through the room at the speed of lightning.
Finally. Roderich picked up his utensils once again, delighted to finally dig into his brunch. His relief was gone in an instant however when he looked down at his plate for the second time that morning, only to be utterly disappointed a second time. They’d got to be kidding.
“Ehm, excuse me?” he cleared his throat as he waived Laura over again from across the restaurant. She waved back to make sure he knew she’d seen him - she still had plenty more plates to distribute before she could make her way over to him.
“What now?” Elizaveta hissed, somewhat annoyed, looking at him with a raised eyebrow. “I’m sure she has more important things to do.”
“Are you not seeing this?!” his voice got annoyingly high-pitched as he exclaimed his frustration, pointing an accusing finger at his plate, and then over to the window into the kitchen at the far end of the restaurant. “They gave me scrambled eggs. Scrambled , Eliza.”
“Can you not just eat the damn eggs?”
“Not when it’s not what I ordered! It’s a matter of principle.”
“You and your principles,” she rolled her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. “Jesus Christ, Roderich, don’t make a scene over eggs .”
“ Scrambled eggs,” he corrected her, straightening up in his chair as Laura approached, clearing his throat slightly.
“Yes?” she said, her eyebrows raised at him, her arms at her side. He ignored her domineering posture and gestured at his plate. He would not be intimidated into eating the wrong eggs.
“These are scrambled eggs,” he stated, matter-of-fact-ly, gesturing at his plate.
“Yes, I can see that,” she replied, eyebrows still raised in scepticism. “And?”
“I ordered fried eggs. With a runny yolk. This is nowhere near that!”
“Look, I don’t cook the food around here, I just serve it,” Laura shrugged, biting her lip to supposedly hide laughter. Roderich turned possibly even more sour. Well then . If this was all some sort of joke, he was having none of it. He would not surrender to some practical joke. Across the table he saw how Eliza looked more and more like she wanted to sink through the ground, but he persisted. The customer was always right, after all.
“No, I know that of course,” his mouth twisted into what he assumed was a warm smile. If there was anything he knew, it was diplomacy. “But would you be so kind as to ask the chef once more to get it right? I really want to get the breakfast I’m paying for. Get my money’s worth, as I’m sure you understand.”
“Sure thing,” Laura shrugged, and he thought himself to see her roll her eyes as she walked off, mouthing something to a colleague across the room. He chose to ignore it.
“Your money’s worth?” Elizaveta hissed at him, half hiding her face behind her hand. “Roderich, we’re at a goddamn Waffle House and you have a trust fund.”
He protested, “It’s just a matter of-”
“Principle, yes, alright. Whatever. Let’s just hope they get it right this time.”
They sat in mostly silence for the next five minutes or so, sipping on their respective drinks as they waited. Finally, the door to the kitchen swung open, and Roderich glanced over restlessly. This time, the plate wasn’t being carried by the waitress, but by a man dressed in white with a long apron across his hips lightly dusted by flour. A black cap held back the man’s hair, which was so lightly blonde that it came off as white in the crisp midday- light. The man, who Roderich presumed was the chef, took his sweet time sauntering across the room, a bowl held high in the air by his hand as if it was some sort of delicacy. As he came closer, Roderich noticed his bronze eyes gleaming red at him with mirth, and a wide grin plastered across his pale face. The man had an enigmatic air to him that Roderich probably would’ve found quite attractive, had he not been too angry to notice. He was fuming as he kept eye contact with the grinning chef, and though he could’ve guessed that the contents of the bowl would not be the eggs he’d asked for, he hadn’t prepared himself for the surge of rage that went through him as the man set down a bowl with two hardboiled eggs in it on his table.
“Your eggs, mister,” the chef said, mock-bowing lightly as he set the plate down, clearly working hard to contain his laughter. Roderich’s blood was boiling.
He thought for a hot second that he was going to flip the table, but managed just barely to restrain himself. “Excuse me?” he hissed through his teeth, slowly turning his head to face the chef, his eyes narrowed in rage. “Is this a joke to you?”
“No, I take my cooking very seriously,” the chef replied, biting his lip as he grinned at him.
Roderich saw red as he jerked up his wallet out of his pocket and threw enough bills on the table to cover Elizaveta’s meal and their beverages, without breaking vicious eye contact with the chef that now had swapped his wide grin for an infuriating smirk. “Well, if you can’t serve me what I want, I won’t pay you for it. Come Elizaveta, let’s go.”
He stood, briefly facing the chef as he still stood next to their table holding back laughter, and in fury he stepped back from him and grabbed his jacket off of his chair, marching towards the door after giving the chef one last angry stare. He heard Elizaveta shuffle behind him to catch up, and he also heard the wild laughter that had erupted within the restaurant as the door opened and closed for Elizaveta to exit. She caught up with him in the street as he marched off, his hands shoved deep into his pockets. The nerve of that damn chef! How dare he, what kind of decent person would even -
“Well, that was quite something,” Elizaveta giggled as she caught up with him, punching him playfully on the arm.
“ Something ?! You could say that again, can you believe the nerve of that guy?”
“Come on Roderich, it was just a harmless prank.”
“A prank? I oughta have them sued.”
“Please . Even you aren’t that petty.” She rolled her eyes at him and he sighed in frustration, staying silent most of the short walk back to their apartment. His mind whirled in anger that had yet to dissipate, and he couldn’t shake the sight of that damn chef and the sound of his guffaw from his mind. No, he might not be that petty. But he damn well held onto his principles. It was all he had some days. He was far from done here.