The Sauce
"When can we fucking eat?" shouted Rolan from across the kitchen, his war-torn face providing me with the slightest of smiles, so I knew he wasn't serious.
"You wanna come up here and make your famous family sauce? Oh, that's right, you're an orphan". The smile faded from his face. For a second he looked genuinely angry, then we both burst into laughter.
"Fuck you," he said.
"Fuck you too."
"But really, when are we eating? We don't have much longer."
"You don't have to tell me that shit," I said turning back to the pan. "This is the last time I'm making this. It's got to be perfect".
Through the window I could see the electric clouds starting to form on the horizon, just beyond where the Santa Monica mountains met the pacific ocean. That would give us about an hour.
The tomatoes were starting to break down. This is when people usually start to squash them down into the sauce, my Mum used to tell me, but the secret, apparently, is to wait. "We want all those nice sugars to caramelize before we start blending," she would tell me. Every Sunday she'd make her sauce over the tiny burner. We'd change up what we'd have it with, sometimes spaghetti if we were lucky, other times just some stale bread, but most of the time we had nothing else, so we had it as a soup. But always Mum's sauce on Sundays. Towards the end, before she completely disappeared, it was the only thing she did that made her seem like Mum. The rest of the time she was lost, the dementia fogging everything for her.
"She'd be proud of you Alma." Rolan knew me well enough to know what I was thinking about. "She always wanted you to get out. Look at you now, making her very own secret sauce inside this... what? Fucking palace? We did well. You did well."
"You waited until now to finally be nice to me?" I said, not wanting to join him in his unbearable earnestness. But I had to admit, it was nice to hear. I smiled at Rolan, and went back to the sauce. "Time to squish."
The sauce was finally ready. The clouds were much closer too. Blue lightning flashed across the dark sky, briefly illuminating the destruction across the LA basin far below us. The favelas, once stacked tens of stories high, had all crumbled into the deep cracks that now split the city into countless islands. The shattered glass and mangled steel twinkled as it reflected back the now incessant lighting. Like starlight amid an ocean of destruction.
Rolan was now standing beside me as I looked out across the city. He took my hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. The soft breeze brought warm ocean air in through the open window. There was a calmness to it.
"Let's eat," I said.
We'd really taken advantage of this house. We'd used all their best dinnerware. Solid gold cutlery. Bone china plates stolen from the Eastern Republic. Bright white linens. We dined like royalty that night.
We sat down across from each other at our white cloth table. "How is it?" I asked, knowing full well I'd nailed it.
"You weren't lying," he said. "It really was worth the wait."
The clouds were now at the base of the hill, slowly but inevitably climbing their way up. "Tell me a story," I asked, trying to ignore the flashes of blue that lit up the room.
Rolan took a moment and then put down his fork, grabbing the glass of '33 Le Tare we'd found in the cellar. "Okay", he said sitting up a little straighter. "You remember that time we climbed up to The Mezzanine on 12th street?"
"Yeah, and I remember how we would have made it into the ballroom if you hadn't insisted on wearing that stupid thing you always used to wear... what was it? A robe?"
"A trench coat, actually."
"A what?"
"A trench coat. They were used in some war a few centuries back, supposedly." Rolan paused, and then gulped down the rest of his wine, his eyes closed. "It was my fathers. I found it buried under the rubble back when we took down the Division's Del Ray outpost."
"Wait, what? Your father's? He died before you were born, didn't he?"
"No, he didn't. I lied," he said. His eyes heavy. "I couldn't bear the idea of you knowing who he really was. Who I really am."
It dawned on me. "Oh shit".
"Yeah..."
"Your Dad was Alco Paran wasn't he?".
Rolan nodded.
"Wow, I guess I should have known. You do look like him." I took an equally large gulp. "So you knew he was your father when we took the job? You knew when you hit the detonator?"
He nodded again, his eyes staring out the window, flashing from the light of the storm.
"Jesus. Rolan. I can't believe you never told me. But, why tell me now?"
He turned back to look at me. "Well," he cleared his throat, "that night up on The Mezzanine, when the guards chased us out, you remember we ended up finding that fancy park looking out over the edge of the river?"
I nodded, unsure of where he was going. The storm was right below us now, the house bathed in bright flashing light.
"As we sat there, I realized something. I'd worn that coat for years. Everywhere I went. But I couldn't decide if I took it with me because I hated my father and never wanted to forget that or..." he paused, "...maybe because I missed him. But honestly I knew the truth, I just wanted a family."
I moved my chair to sit right beside him. I took his hand.
"As we sat there watching the sun going down, I realised I didn't need to keep looking for a family. I had it all along. In you. I didn't need him or anyone else. Just us. So I threw the coat over the edge and never thought about him again."
A tear rolled down his face. I'd never seen him cry before.
"I love you Alma. I just thought you should know before the end."
The storm was on us now. The house shook as the lightning tore open the ground outside.
I got up and hugged him as hard as I could. "I love you too. I wouldn't have changed a thing."