“There is a restaurant in your neighborhood named “Between Spice and Thyme”. You are not sure what it is about this place that makes you quizzical, but you think it might be a front for time travelers.” -u/Silly_Psi-Beam, original post here.
This is where I go to do my writing.
Essays, short stories, articles—whatever I need to get done that day. It’s a real hole in the wall, and it’s great. There’s almost never anyone in, and the guy behind the counter doesn’t seem to mind if I sit there for a few hours with a bowl of soup and my laptop.
The place smells amazing. I mean, you’d sort of expect that, given the name, but it’s worth mentioning. There’s something about all the spices mixing in the air—it’s different from putting them in food, it makes the whole place heady and warm, like the kitchen back home when mom was baking bread. They roll their own noodles, too, and I’ve always loved the smell of flour. It’s nice.
I’ve tried to figure out what kind of accent the guy behind the counter has, but I can never place it. He smiles at me whenever I come in, and he knows what I usually get by now, which is good because his English is pretty broken. We got through it the first time, and now we don’t need to exchange more than a few words.
“Hey,” I say, smiling and nodding at him. He beams back reaching for a ladle.
“Good day, sir! You have usual, yes?”
I nod, and I force him to keep the change. He folds it away with a quick “Much thank, sir. Much thank.”
I sit down and start writing, getting well into the zone. The shop is small—they have two tables and four chairs. People come in from time to time, but they usually get things to go; I don’t have to share my space very often. I usually try to ignore everyone else, stay in the zone and whatnot, but it doesn’t always work out. When the door opens and the little bell jingles, you can’t help but look, you know?
A lot of the other customers speak to the guy at the counter in another language, which he seems to be much more fluent in. I’ve tried to pick it out, fruitlessly, and I’m way too embarrassed to ask about it by now. One thing that I have noticed is that whenever they’re speaking that language, they rarely get soup. More often the guy will bustle off to the back, and come back with a little package, all wrapped up in plastic. Sometimes he’ll take money for it, except that it wasn’t any kind of money I recognized. Oddly shaped coins, worn and wrinkled bills with strange text on them—nobody ever payed with a card. Sometimes the person ordering would give him… something else. Little packages of their own, or tiny drawstring bags. I swear I saw a ruby the size of my thumb once, before the guy tucked it away in his apron.
I don’t ask questions about it. The soup is good, and the guy likes me, and if there’s some kind of mafia thing going on, well, that’s none of my business. Or at least, it didn’t use to be.
About a week back, something changed. One of the other customers looked at me as they came in, and did a double take. I didn’t notice until the guy behind the counter cleared his throat, and when I looked up he was giving the customer one hell of an evil eye. The man was practically gawking at me. The guy snapped his fingers and said something in the other language, and that got him to pull away, but it was still weird. The guy seemed really apologetic about it after, wouldn’t let me pay him the next day.
“The man, he think you were someone else. Very sorry. Very sorry,” he’d said. I’d shaken it off as some sort of cultural thing that I didn’t know about, and that I was still way too embarrassed to admit I didn’t understand.
Except that it happened again. The same man from before came in, and this time he had a woman with him. They tried to hide it, but I could see both of them sneaking glances at me the entire time they were in. The guy at the counter was clearly upset, but he served them soup and they left. I looked over at him after, and he gave me a sad little apologetic smile, shrugging. What could he do? I guess I must have looked like a celebrity in their culture or something.
The rest of the week was filled with similar customers. It wasn’t just the same man anymore, either—I had all sorts of people coming in and staring at me. I wouldn’t care, except that it was seriously interfering with my writing. And it felt selfish, but I almost didn’t want the little shop to be getting so much business. It was my hole in the wall. I felt bad as soon as I thought it, but it was the truth; I’d grown accustomed to the quiet of the place, and that was disappearing.
The day came when there were three people in line for the counter. This was unprecedented. It was a small shop, and having just four customers made things feel crowded—I could tell that the guy behind the counter was a bit overwhelmed. And then, while he was bustling off to the back to get some kind of package, the last customer in line turned and spoke to me.
“Excuses me,” he said. He had an accent similar to the guy, although he sounded nasally where the guy’s voice was deep and booming. “You are the John, yes? John Werewood?”
I blinked at him, a spoonful of soup halfway to my mouth. “Sorry, do I know you?”
“I big fan, biggest!” he said, rummaging around in his bag. He glanced in the direction of the counter—the guy was still off in the back somewhere—before pulling out a book and opening to the first page, shoving it at me. “Please, a sign? Very quickly, I do not be mean to bother!”
I took the book, flipping back to see the cover.
Between Spice and Thyme, a novel by John Werewood.
I gaped at it for a second, my mind struggling to catch up. I had never written a book. I flipped halfway through, reading a page at random.
It was definitely my writing.
There was a loud, strangled cry from behind the counter as the guy came back out, dropping the package that he had been carrying. He charged forward, grabbing a soup ladle as he rounded the counter and swatting it at the customers in line. The man who had pushed the book at me snatched it back, tucking it under his arm as he fled the shop.
“Out! Out! All of you, out! No return!”
He waved the ladle at them as they left, red in the face. When he stepped back inside, he turned to me, and I was still dumbstruck.
“Very sorry. Very sorry. Free soup all this week, yes? No trouble, very sorry.” He gave me a deep nod, bordering on a bow, and hurried off back behind the counter.
I turned back to my laptop, trying to take in what had happened. I had resolved to writing a novel at some point, even if it took a while to get around to it. I’d committed to the idea maybe a week ago, and then put it off.
Maybe this place wasn’t a front for the mafia after all. Maybe there was something else at work in that back room.
I took a sip of my soup, and went back to writing. It was good soup. Best not to ask too many questions.
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