WINGS & THINGS

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I remember flying from O’Hare to Denver the first time and thinking this must be what it’s like to be on the lam from people who want to hurt you.

I blame Henry for everything: for what he did to me and for what he made me do to him even though I had done nothing wrong. Did I really break the law? I flicked him on the ear at Ditka’s because he was so coked out, and coked-up Henry replied by speed-dialing his cop buddy to have me arrested when I walked out the door in a huff. That’s Chicago for you: a set-up all the way. I got probation for doing nothing, for flicking his ear, and Henry got everything he wanted from me from a judge he played basketball with on weekends.

I was bitter but I was better now, really and truly. I owed it to Sally Noggin, my first PT client ever in Denver, the kind of friend you mate with for life. She came in with a shoulder she could barely move—frozen shoulder, we call it—and once I started to manipulate her we fell right into it, talking about my ex Henry and her fiancée-to-be Chuck, about all the things we’d do differently, knowing what we know now, if we had half a chance.

Chuck was a chef and after their divorce he would make it big, but when I met Sally Noggin her Chuck was only halfway into his very first Mountain Wings & Things in Denver, a concept restaurant he wanted to be the next Uno’s or Outback, only with wings this time. Things were looking good so far: the place was always packed after work and worse on weekends. The best Sally and I could do that first Friday night was to cram onto stools in a corner table by the bar in front of the six-foot long picture of Independence Pass in winter. There were six-foot long shots of mountains and big old beams everywhere you looked in Mountain Wings & Things in keeping with the concept.

Chuck brought out our order by himself. His face was a little puffy, the way chefs get, and he had maybe 20 pounds of baby fat from too many wings, but Chuck was one goddamn handsome man, with spiked blond hair, ice-blue eyes like a baby’s, and a smile you could see for miles. Chuck was way too good-looking for Sally, though Sally was not half-bad in that skinny sort of way if the light were just right. She would be the first to tell you.

“I love your wings,” I said.

“We put a little mesquite in these here,” Chuck said.

“This is Ro,” Sally said. “She’s making my shoulder all better.”

“Rochelle,” I said.

I picked up a wing with barbecue sauce on the plate: cutting right to the chase, it was excellent.

“They’re not actually wings,” Chuck said. “The breasts have gotten so cheap we slice them up small and sell them as boneless wings. Nobody seems to know the difference. It’s kind of become our thing.”
“They’re delicious, sweetheart,” Sally said.

“Don’t tell anybody our secret,” Chuck said to me.

“I love them any way you slice it,” I said. “I could eat them every day.”

And starting that day I did.

***

Because Mountain Wings & Things was the first to come up with the formula, Chuck’s company took off: there were three and then six and then nine Mountain Wings & Things on the Front Range alone, with talk of many, many more to come across the country. They started to sell his wings at Coors Field and the Pepsi Center and even at Folsom Field in Boulder, and people everywhere gobbled up the wingless wings they never knew were made from chicken breasts. Word was starting to get out all over the country.

Sally could not have been happier. After their honeymoon she was coming to me twice a week for treatment and she had close to full range of motion. I know my manipulation hurt like hell at times but Sally never complained once. She was willing to work through the pain to get her arm back: the perfect patient.

We talked while I worked her over. I told her a little bit more about Henry—I skipped the time I flicked his ear and got arrested by his cop friend—and she told me everything about how perfect Chuck was, how he never brought work home, how he made sure she was feeling good about things. I learned more than I wanted to know about Chuck, Chuck, Chuck—that he was hung like a buffalo, that he was happy to keep her happy all night long and then again in the morning.

“Come again?” I said.

I’m not sure when the whole thing started—I can’t give you a date or get you the GPS—but one Friday afternoon, just before we were going to see Chuck at the restaurant, I took Sally’s arm and bent it behind her back just a few degrees more than I should have. I know my business and I knew what I was doing, and I knew it was going to hurt her like a bitch.

I just could not stand to hear another word about Chuck.

Sally, of course, said nothing because she never did, but I had to help her on with her shirt and her coat, and then help her off with her coat at Mountain Wings & Things that night. Her arm hurt so bad she started to pound down margaritas at the bar, which was not Sally at all—not even close. I offered her some Advil which I am never without but she said no, she wanted to work through it, like natural childbirth or a war wound. After Chuck came and went with the latest wings—crusty picante, I think he said—she started to cry like a baby.

“Oh my God, Ro. It hurts like a mother.”

“It will feel better tomorrow,” I said—all the while knowing it would feel worse. “You should ice it when you get home. Let’s ice it now.”

I raised my hand for the waiter but she pulled it down with her good arm and even that hurt like hell.

“Ro? No! I’m not making a scene here in front of Chuck. He doesn’t need that. Not now when everything’s so perfect.”

“It’s not a scene. It’s just ice.”

“Not here,” Sally said. “Not now.”

***

It was not as if Sally had something I could not have, because I knew I could have exactly what I wanted: a handsome man about my age who was going places. I had no master plan—Chuck was just something that happened bit by bit after I got to Denver. Could I help it if I deserved a better life than what I had so far? There was nothing wrong with me catching a break or two for once. I was due after the flicking incident.

“Is Sally okay?” Chuck said to me.

Chuck started to talk to me about Sally when I would go by myself to the newest Mountain Wings & Things on the 16^th Street Mall to see him in action. I was becoming his test kitchen because I was there every night. This time he brought out Asian with a sesame kick.

“Behavior modification,” I said. “It’s what happens in the first year of every marriage.”

There was no way they were going to have sex with Sally’s shoulder gone to hell and with Chuck flying all over the country to open new Mountain Wings & Things in places where the closest mountain was in a magazine. I was not going to make the mistake of sleeping with a married man—no thank you—but I was going to make him want me so bad it hurt. All I had to do was to keep wearing as few clothes as possible, the kind he would gladly rip off if I gave him the chance.

“I’ve never seen her like this,” Chuck said. “And she won’t talk about it when I ask her. She cries all the time. And she’s drinking—every night.”

“Maybe something at work,” I said. “Or a woman thing.”

“A woman thing?”

“We go through these things men will never understand. We get married and we’re sure everything’s going to be picture-perfect, and then when it’s not—”

“Ouch!” Chuck said.

***

I know men and I know their kind. They want what they want when they want it, and they want what they can’t have even more.

All I had to do for the next few months was to keep working on Sally’s shoulder until it hurt so bad she could barely breathe. When Sally and I went to Mountain Wings & Things now she got drunk every time while I was all prim and proper, with no thigh or cleavage showing—but when I went alone my skirts were cut up to here, my makeup made my eyes look big, and my tops were low enough for Chuck to see everything this side of a nipple and then some.

I smelled good, too—too good.

Don’t blame Chuck. He’s only human and this one was on me. I knew what I was doing. I knew how to touch him and where to lead him on, even where to let him smell me.

“Sally and I,” he started.

“I know it’s hard.”

“She’s—it’s different than I thought it would be.”

“People grow apart.”

“She won’t let me touch her. She’s talking pills all the time now. And she’s drinking like a fish.”

“Pills?”

“Codeine. Oxycontin on bad nights. She says her arm hurts all the time. She just got a shot of cortisone.”

“She used to come in twice a week. Now it’s once if that. I can only do so much. I’m not a witch doctor.”

“You’ve been a good friend.” Chuck put his hand over mine and left it there. “To both of us.”

He was looking at me with those baby blues and he was not letting go.

“Maybe you need a break,” I said.

Chuck’s eyes got big as saucers about to spill over. He had lost the ability to speak.

“It’s not the end of the world,” I said.

***

I suppose you think I’m a terrible person but I’m not—And who are you to pass judgment?

Chuck and Sally would have had their problems eventually—the weakness in their relationship was probably there from the start—and maybe I saved them three kids and ten years good years with the wrong person. We’ll never know.

Unless you’re God who are you to say?

I saw Sally on the street that summer and she was much better. Her arm was finally healing, and she was getting back to being her normal self without the pills and the drinking, as I knew she would. She was looking better than good.

“I hope Chuck’s happy, Ro.”

Sally waved goodbye, raising her bad shoulder all the way up.

“I know he is,” I said.

***

I never saw Sally Noggin again after she moved to Chicago to start a new life.

Mountain Wings & Things would be followed by Chuck Novo’s Pizza & Things and Chuck Novo’s Burgers & Things. When Chuck Novo’s Things Incorporated went public we were richer than sin. Our plans for the upscale RoNoVo brand aimed at urban sophisticates, were well in the works.

All the same I made sure Chuck gave a big chunk of Chuck Novo’s Things stock to Sally for what she went through. And why not? It’s not like I’m some monster.