Day Laborer
Janice Hitchens looked at her Chanel diamond watch and was surprised by the lateness of the hour. Leaving the watch and her rings on the dresser—she did not dare wear them where she was headed—she ran to her garage and got inside the old, rusty and dented Chevy pick-up truck she used for running business errands. The gleaming new Mercedes, parked to the immediate right of the truck, was reserved for her personal use.
I hope I'm not too late, she thought as she backed down her driveway.
It was a forty-minute drive from her upscale suburban neighborhood to the south side of the city, a place where most women she knew feared to journey. She slowed down as she approached the corner of a busy intersection, known as a prime location to find day laborers willing to work for low wages, more often than not paid under the table.
"Shit!" she swore, seeing no Mexicans standing on the corner. "This place is usually teeming with illegals. Now what am I going to do?"
As Janice was about to drive away, she glanced at her rearview mirror and saw a man, looking like he stepped out of the pages of Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, walking toward the intersection. Hoping he was looking for work, she drove around the block, pulled the Chevy to the curb and rolled down her window to speak to him.
"¿Habla inglés?" she called.
"Si, señora," the man respectfully replied.
"I need some work done. The pay is ten dollars an hour. Are you interested?"
"Si."
"Great. Get in."
Despite the age and poor condition of the pickup and the inexpensive jeans and sweatshirt the woman wore, the Mexican accurately sized her up. She was a wealthy woman looking for cut-rate labor, one not too concerned with his immigration status.
When he climbed up into the truck beside her, Janice furtively sniffed the air. Thankfully, there was no scent of body odor, alcohol or marijuana.
They drove for twenty minutes in silence before she inquired as to his name.
"Javier," he answered.
"Well, Javier, you have yet to ask me what work needs to be done."
"I am willing to do whatever you want, señora," he said in heavily accented English. "I can mow your lawn, wash dishes, load or unload trucks. I am no stranger to hard work."
Janice smiled. This was exactly how she liked them: docile and obedient. It made her job so much easier.
"I'm a caterer," she explained. "I've been hired to cater a party for a very exclusive client in Beverly Hills. I need help setting things up."
The laborer nodded his head, but said nothing. As he had already told her, it did not matter to him what the work entailed.
Janice drove to a commercial area in the "better" part of the city. The road was lined with clothing boutiques, day spas, coffee shops, art galleries and trendy restaurants. It was no surprise to Javier that the vast majority of the people going into and out of these establishments were white.
As they continued to head west, the number of service-oriented and retail businesses decreased, giving way to office buildings and warehouses—all clean, modern buildings with professionally landscaped lawns. Janice turned down a driveway that led to a fenced-in property and stopped at the gate to input her five-digit security code at the keypad.
"Here we are," she announced, driving around to the rear of the building.
The sign above the back door, next to a small loading dock, read HITCHINS CATERING. Directly below that was another sign: KEEP OUT—PRIVATE PROPERTY; TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED TO THE FULL EXTENT OF THE LAW.
Beside the door was a second keypad. It seemed to the Mexican like an inordinate amount of security for a food service business.
"I suppose the main entrance is in the front of the building," he said.
"No. Except for an emergency fire exit, this is the only door."
"Are you afraid someone will steal your silverware?"
The caterer frowned. His interest her building's security seemed in stark contrast to his previous servile manner. Was he attempting to "case" the place in hope of returning at a later time to burglarize her business?
Guess again, José!
"No. I'm not afraid of being robbed. I just don't want people coming into my kitchen while I'm working—strictly for health reasons, mind you."
"What about your customers? How do they get inside?"
"I don't transact business here. All orders are placed either by phone or online."
Annoyed by the laborer's questions, Janice frowned, unlocked the door and stepped inside; Javier followed a few steps behind her. He was impressed by what he saw. The stainless steel countertops and white-tiled work areas were immaculate. It was so clean that one could literally eat off the floor.
"You must do a good business," he commented, correctly assuming the kitchen's appliances were of the highest quality.
"I can't complain," Janice replied, putting on a freshly laundered and pressed chef's jacket and hat.
"What's your secret—if you don't mind my asking?"
"I have a simple business philosophy: give the customer what he wants."
She walked to a table where there were a number of bushels containing vegetables from a local farm.
"One of the reasons I do so well is that I always start with the freshest possible ingredients. For instance, this produce was picked at dawn and delivered here by eight o'clock this morning."
Janice removed a high-carbon steel Japanese-style chef's knife from a wooden block and began chopping the carrots and onions.
"What do you want me to do?" Javier asked.
"Nothing yet. I have to get the vegetables ready first. Then I'll need you."
"There must be something I can do in the meantime."
"Just be patient."
The Mexican watched closely as the caterer plied her knife with the skill of a performing hibachi chef. He was amazed that given the speed with which she pared, chopped and sliced, she did not cut herself.
"Must you stare at me?" she asked, suddenly feeling uncomfortable with his steady gaze.
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to offend you, but there's nothing else for me to do."
Janice had never felt so uneasy in the presence of a day laborer before. She had always regarded them as beings of no consequence, but this one was different. Quite frankly, he was starting to give her the creeps.
I'm being ridiculous, she chastised herself. He can't hurt me, especially when I've got a knife in my hand.
"Why don't you get yourself a bottle of Corona out of the fridge?" the chef suggested, anxious to distract him.
"I don't drink beer."
"There might be a Coke or Spite in there."
As Javier searched the shelves of the industrial-sized refrigerator for a can of soda, he was surprised that there was no meat or fish in sight, only eggs, cheeses and diverse other dairy products.
"Your clients must be vegans," he said.
There was a sharp intake of breath. He turned around and saw that Janice had sliced her finger with the knife. She quickly grabbed a dish towel and wrapped it around her bleeding wound.
"Will you get me the large bandages from the medicine cabinet?" she asked, nodding her head in the direction of the bathroom.
"Si."
Javier opened the mirrored door and scanned the items: aspirin, antacid tablets, cough medicine, isopropyl alcohol, Epsom salts. As he reached for the box of Band-Aids, he spotted a small prescription bottle behind a container of aloe vera gel. He glanced at the label: succinylcholine, a muscle relaxant and paralytic that was primarily used during surgery but was sometimes used illegally to paralyze and render victims helpless.
"What's taking you so long? Can't you hurry up?" Janice called to him. "I don't want to bleed all over my kitchen. As it is, I'll have to disinfect the countertop."
"Here they are," he said, putting the unopened box of bandages in front of her.
"Don't just stand there," she said angrily. "Open one up for me. I can't let go of the towel."
"It might be better if we do this over the sink."
As Janice put her injured finger under the tap, letting the warm water wash away the blood, Javier stood next to her with the opened bandage. He was standing so close to her that his arm brushed hers. Without her knife for protection, the chef felt vulnerable to attack.
"Give me your hand," Javier gently instructed.
When his fingers touched hers, Janice felt a wave of revulsion, causing her to pull her hand away.
"I can do it."
"Do you have any sanitizer? I'll clean the countertop for you."
"Look in the cabinet under the sink. There's a sponge in there, too."
The Mexican did a thorough job of cleaning up the blood, which brought not a word of gratitude from his temporary employer. But then, the day laborer had not expected one from Janice Hitchins. To people like her, people like him did not merit common courtesy.
"There," he said when he was done. "Good as new."
"I'm just going to the medicine cabinet to get some aspirin, and then I'll start on the entrée. That's where you come in."
"I'm ready. Just tell me what to do."
Janice disappeared into the bathroom, returning a few minutes later.
"What is it you're making?" Javier asked.
"My signature dish, a special recipe of my own creation. In certain circles, I'm very well known. I don't want to brag, but I've catered affairs for royalty, Fortune 100 CEOs and Hollywood celebrities."
"Are there going to be any movie stars at today's event?"
"Probably."
Janice opened a drawer next to the sink and took out a stainless steel box. Inside was a set of tungsten carbide knives used for butchering wild game.
"Are you planning on serving deer meat?"
The sneering smile on the chef's face might have offended another man, but not Javier. He was impervious to her rudeness.
"Come here. I need your help."
"I've got to warn you. I'm not good around knives."
The chef's dexterity with the kitchen knife was matched by the deftness with which she removed the hypodermic needle from her apron pocket and plunged it into Javier's arm. The Mexican felt the pinch and moments later fell to the floor.
"To answer your question, no, I'm not serving venison. You, Javier, are going to be the main course for a group of extremely wealthy men and women whose epicurean tastes lean toward cannibalism. I don't much care for human flesh myself, but like I told you before, my business philosophy is to give the customer what he wants."
As she had anticipated, there was no response from the Mexican on the floor.
"I know you can hear me," she said, her voice lacking the most rudimentary compassion. "But I'm afraid you can't move."
Exhibiting a bizarre blend of complete concentration and heartless professionalism, she grabbed a butcher knife from the stainless steel case and a meat cleaver from the knife block.
"I'm no sadistic killer. I'll do my best to make it a clean kill. After all, I don't get off by inflicting pain."
Janice's movements were quick, but Javier's were quicker. When the finely honed knife came down toward his chest, he reached up and seized her arm. The look of surprised horror on her face was almost amusing.
"This is impossible! You shouldn't be able to move yet."
"I only pretended to be paralyzed. You see, I found your bottle of succinylcholine in the medicine cabinet and had a pretty good idea what you were going to do with it. So, I poured the drug down the bathroom sink and filled the bottle with water."
The chef struggled valiantly, but she was no match for the day laborer's strength.
"Let go of me, you filthy ...."
"Hush now, Mrs. Hitchens. Is that any way to speak to a god?"
"A god? I think you've been smoking too much peyote!"
"Javier is not my real name. I was known as Quetzalcoatl to the Aztecs and Kukulkan, Q'uqumatz or Tohil to the Mayans."
"Sure you were," Janice said, her voice dripping with sarcasm despite her fear. "And I'm Mary Magdalene."
"I am the feathered serpent, the primordial god of creation, the giver of life."
"Help!" the chef screamed at the top of her lungs.
Again and again she called out, praying that someone nearby would hear her and phone the police.
"Save your breath," the Mexican advised. "It'll do you no good to scream. Don't you remember? Before you moved in, you had the place soundproofed."
"How do you know that?"
"I've had my eye on you for quite a while. Are you surprised? Now it's time to answer for all those poor illegal immigrants that wound up in your kitchen. Innocent men and women who were willing to work for peanuts, unaware of what you had in store for them. Fresh meat is what you called them, isn't it?"
"You better let me go. I'll be missed."
When her words had no effect on Javier, she tried stronger threats.
"I have some very important friends. When they find you, they won't waste time with a trial. They'll torture you mercilessly before they kill you. And you'll wind up buried in the desert or floating in the Pacific Ocean."
"No one can kill me. I'm immortal."
In the process of transforming from a man into Quetzalcoatl, an immense feathered serpent, his grip on the chef loosened.
Now is my chance to get away! she thought, bolting toward the door.
Before she reached it, however, the serpent god wrapped itself around her leg, bringing her crashing down to the floor.
Like most snakes, Quetzalcoatl devoured his prey whole, starting with the feet, working his way up the legs and torso and ending with the head. It was a slow process and one in which Janice Hitchens experienced agonizing pain as every bone in her body was crushed. Eventually, the immense pressure cut off the flow of her blood, and she died soon thereafter. When the plumed serpent finished feeding, all that remained to be seen was her chef's hat lying on the floor.
His appetite for justice sated, Quetzalcoatl returned to his human form. The innocuous-looking day laborer then walked into the bathroom, opened the medicine cabinet, and shook two Tums antacids into his palm. Despite her many culinary talents, the racist, murdering caterer had given Javier a bad case of indigestion.
Salem once opened his own catering business, but all the food was shaped like cats, even the pepperoni pizza.
