Kira really liked her space. It was chaotic, but in a way that didn’t overwhelm anyone. Like walking in to your rich tita’s house in a fancy subdivision for the first time.
Her floor was a checkerboard tile of emerald green and white diamonds, an original from the building. She’d painted her walls a cool teal blue, warm enough to be appetizing, but cool enough to be easy on the eye. The menu board hung on the wall across from the door and was the first thing a customer saw when they walked in, the chocolate selection changing as often as Kira’s moods dictated. Today, it was milk chocolate bars with banana chip crisps, one of the earliest chocolates she’d developed, and a customer favorite.
Right now, a surge of customers were in the shop, tasting the different chocolates and exclaiming over the tableya, recently announced as a favorite at some year-end list by Gentleman’s Guide, and was now flying off the shelves faster than Kira could make it. And now with her aircon fixed, it shouldn’t be a problem.
She frowned at the space, at her staff serving customers, at customers trying samples, exclaiming about the chocolate. There was something missing in this scenario, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. What was off?
We’ll talk.The memory of Santi murmuring into her ear suddenly sprang up, in a way that memories tended to.Thank you for the chocolate.
Kira shook her head vehemently. Santi was definitelynotthe thing that was missing. If anything, he wasn’t really here. They were friends again, sure, but the last three years, they hadn’t really talked, and bickered more often than not because they didn’t talk. Andanyway, that wasn’t what she was missing, it was something else, it was...
“Fuck!” she exclaimed, making more than a couple of heads turn to her in shock as she made a run for the kitchen.
It had been the quiet that had surprised her. Making chocolate was very, very noisy business. From cracking to winnowing, roasting to melanging, chocolate demanded attention and made its presence felt in terms of smell and sound (or lack thereof). Cacao nibs, sugar, cocoa butter—all the good things that made chocolate—needed to be left in melangers for at least 24 hours to break down and turn into chocolate, constantly mixing and grinding and whirring all the while. And as far as her timings went, it definitely had not been 24 hours since she added the ingredients, and yet she hadn’t heard anything.
“Astroboy, how could you,” she sighed at her finicky melanger, which she called Astroboy in an attempt to get it to love her a little more. But sure enough, it had stopped, and the chocolate was still grainy. And seeing as Kira didn’t personally know anyone who used melangers on a daily basis, and the service center was in the US and couldn’t answer her call right now, Kira was going to have to figure this out on her own.
Yay.
Kira took a deep breath, willing herself to calm down. Her yoga teacher always said that breathing would help her calm down and center herself, gain the mental fortitude to do the thing she just needed to do.Breathe.Then recite an intention to help.I can handle fixing the melanger. I can handle fixing the melanger.
And no, Kira wasn’t stalling, she just really needed a second to...
“Kimberly,” Ate Nessie’s voice cut through her centering.
“Thank god,” Kira said, turning to see her former nanny, current superintendent of the Laneways, Nessie Soriano, walked into the kitchen. Kira had a lot of mother figures in her life, and Ate Nessie was one of them. It was understood among the Laneways that while Kira was the one that signed documents and sent billings and answered concerns, Ate Nessie was the one in charge. Kira loved her immensely, especially when it meant she could delay doing something she really didn’t want to do yet.
“Sus, hija. Please do not take the Lord’s name in vain,” she said, making a quick sign of the cross and looking up at her ceiling as if to tell God, “do you see what this child is making me do?” before she moved toward Kira’s toaster oven.
“Ate Ness, the word ‘sus’ was taken from ‘susmaryosep,’ which is a shortened version of ‘Hesus, Maria, Joseph,’ so do you really want to scold me about taking God’s name in vain?” Kira asked.
“Itong batang irè.” Ate Nessie shook her head, again at the ceiling. “By the way, that candle shop, Eternal Flame, pulled out their letter of intent for that spot next to yours.”
“Ah,” Kira said, nodding. “Notsoeternal, then.”
“Boo,” Ate Nessie argued, making Kira laugh. “And doesn’t it mean that the spot next door is cursed? This is the third tenant that pulled out.”
“Not cursed, just waiting for the right lessor,” Kira pointed out. “InLab came close, but Nero decided he was perfectly happy where he was. And that duwende everyone keeps telling me that lives there is a good one, I can feel it.”
“Feel feel naman.” Ate Nessie chuckled before she waved around a brown paper bag. “I need to borrow your toaster oven.”
“Okay,” Kira said, looking over her shoulder because she already knew what was in the bag. “The fee is two pieces of bonete.”
“Hay, nako.” Ate Nessie sighed, unloading the bread bounty onto the oven tray. “First Gabriel eats more than his share, and now I have to give some of my share to you. Your generation, ha.”
“Yes, my generation of needy children who will never experience bonete as good as you make it, Ate Ness!” Kira exclaimed, walking over to her and giving her a quick hug.
“Shouldn’t you be making chocolate or something?” Ate Nessie asked, her brow rising in suspicion. “I thought you said you were ‘so busy you don’t even have time for a boyfriend,’ or are you a liar, hija?”
“No, I’m just...delaying a problem,” Kira admitted, glancing surreptitiously at the melanger that she really was supposed to be trying to figure out. But what if she broke the machine? What if she lost a part, and couldn’t put the thing back together?
She smiled innocently at Ate Nessie, who smiled back before she reached up and squeezed Kira’s cheek. Hard.
“Lusot ka pa,” she said, as Kira complained. Yes, she was aware that Ate Nessie still thought she was adorable when she pinched her cheek like this, but twenty-nine years later it stillhurt. “Trabaho na!”
“Fine, fine, I’ll work na,” Kira groaned, rubbing her aching cheek and marching to her errant melanger. The machine was made up of two large, stone grinders shaped into wheels that spun. But it did have a tendency to stop when a bit of cocoa nib got stuck in a particular part of the wheel. She glared at it, sighed and finally got to work.
And as she worked, up to her elbows in chocolate as Ate Nessie poured herself her third a cup of coffee for the day and waited for the bonete to cool just right. Kira’s brain couldn’t help but start wandering all the way back to Manila. To that night, and that kiss on the lounge chair. That moment where she felt like Rose fromTitanic, except of course she wasn’t naked, he wasn’t an artist and they weren’t careening toward a ship crash.
