Cocina Criolla

“Poford-Rodriguez,” Amy corrected. Then, a little more seriously, “but we’re not really there yet, Carmen.” Carmen was joking, but Amy still felt obligated to manage her expectations. Or… wait, was she joking? Is that where Carmen saw this relationship heading? Did Carmen see a significant and unique change in Army's behavior? Or, maybe, had Army said something to Carmen? If he had, how did Amy feel about it? and what... Amy shook her head, derailing her train of thought. Now wasn’t the time.

Instead, she laughed. “Yes, please. That’s all good and well for Army, but I won’t like it if it isn’t good, so let’s make it good.” Then she squinted. “Wait. Sofrito?” Amy approached the box. “I think there was…” She reached in and pulled out a narrow glass jar full of a fiery red sauce. “Yeah, I knew it sounded familiar. Do you mean this?”

Carmen just nodded at Amy's update on their relationship. She didn't have any context, she'd neve met any of the other women Army had dated, so there was no way she could no how different it was. But Carmen could see it. If there was anyone he was ever going to settle down with at all, ever, it was the pretty little blonde lady she was about to teach cooking to. She was optimistic about it working out, and to be honest, the idea of having a niece or a nephew greatly appealed.

"Yes, ma'am, that is it. We can make a nice...well, you'd call it 'stir-fry'. Simple and tasty." She took the sofrito and set it on the counter alongside a few other ingredients. "So, Amy, let's talk a bit while we work." She reached into the cabinet and handed her an apron. A little big for her, but it would do. "Army says you're San Fran. You came out here just to wrestle, or was there more to it?"

Stir-fry; that sounded easy enough. Amy slipped the proffered apron over her head and worked at the strings behind her back.

“You could say that there little more to it than that, yeah. In fact, I barely knew about the league until a month or so before I got here.” The apron came down a little lower than she would have liked, terminating annoyingly below the knee; everyone in the Rodriguez family was giant. She pulled her hair free from underneath the strap and started to tie it up.

“Actually, becoming a pro-athlete was never in the plans. I was - I am, I guess- in the middle of traveling around the world, and pro-wrestling is just the job that I happened to pick up for spending money while I was here in Japan.” She was almost a part-time data entry clerk. Thank god she’d done the extra research.

“Also, I was just born in San Francisco. When people ask where I’m from, I usually tell them I’m from LA.” Amy finished tying her hair and watched with growing concern as the number of ingredients kept growing. She picked up Carmen’s spatula and wielded it uncertainly from her left hand. But she was ready.

Carmen stopped a moment to look at Amy, standing there with the oversized apron and the spatula in her hand. She had to, you see, because it was officially the cutest thing she'd ever seen in her entire life. "Don't take this the wrong way, but you seriously look adorable, right now."

She couldn't resist a little snicker as she turned around, then quickly tuned back into cooking mode. "There's some chicken in the refrigerator, second shelf. Take that out and start cutting it into thin strips. Say, about...six."

Carmen brought out the skillet and laid it on the stove, then started pouring in the oil. "Traveling is good. Best thing about my career, I got to see a lot of places I'd only ever read about before. The world's a big place, people see too little of it before they go." She waved her hand over the pot as it began to sizzle and shook it up a bit. "I'm curious where you learned to fight like you do, though. I've seen a lot of styles, but placing yours is pretty hard. Self-taught?"

Adorable? Amy peered down at the apron. Had she tied it wrong? No, it was fine. But the longer she looked, the clearer it became: with the apron as long as it was, from Carmen’s perspective, Amy must have looked like a small child. Amy laughed at the compliment, a little embarrassed. “Thanks,” she said, sincere but sheepish.

Obediently, Amy pulled open the refrigerator door. Just as Carmen said, there was chicken there on the second shelf. Only… there were two breasts in there. Was she supposed to use both? Six strips from two breasts would make for some pretty fat pieces of meat. Then again, Amy had seen Army eat; the man was a famine-stricken garbage disposal, and she could easily believe that, to him, a third of a chicken breast was bite-sized.

Whatever. Amy extracted a single breast from the fridge and shut the door. She wasn’t cooking for Army today.

As Carmen started heating the oil, Amy had to laugh again. A ‘fighting style?’ ”More or less. I’ve taken a bunch of lessons from a lot of different disciplines, so I know how to throw a proper kick or whatever. But I think ‘style’ is a pretty generous term for what I do. Most of the time, I’m just trying to punch the other guy in the face.” She opened a cabinet door, then closed it again. Where… oh, wait, she was pretty sure she saw one under the sink. “Boxing, though. It’s not the first martial art that comes to mind when I think, ‘24/7 match.'” Amy knelt down and opened the door to the cupboard under the sink, and, yup, there they were. She reached in. “Wanna tell me about it? I like weird stories.”

A clean plastic cutting board came up from under the sink, and Amy drew a mean-looking knife from the knife block on the counter. She laid out the raw chicken across the cutting board, readied her knife, then... paused. Horizontally? Vertically? Diagonally? Gah. This was wayy too early in the process to get tripped up. Her inability to stomach the tedium of prep work was half of the reason why she was so bad at cooking.

But hey, that’s why she was here, right?

Amy cut off an approximate sixth of the meat crosswise and leaned back so that Carmen could check her work. “Like this?”

Cooking was all about process. That was the one thing Carmen's mother always drilled into her head - at the end of the day, anyone could cook anything. There wasn't some magic to it, it wasn't about having some instinctive flair. If you had the right ingredients and followed the proper steps, you could make dishes like the best chefs in the world. The science of hungry people.

Carmen went to work without even thinking too much about it, applying the bare minimum of focus as she went about setting things up, as the oven finished heating. She looked over at Amy, first to make sure she was holding the knife properly - she was - and then to see how she was cutting the stripes. "Like that." She gave a nod of approval, then moved over beside her, bringing some chili powder along the way.

"A little salt and pepper, too." She brought them out of the cabinet above Amy's head, and set them beside the chicken. "We'll season them a bit, then get it all in the skillet."

Carmen took three of the stripes and brought them to one side of the board, using them as an example to give Amy an idea of what she meant. "Punching the other guy in the face is usually a good idea, so you're on a good base, at least." She began to sprinkle the chili powder over the chicken, taking care not to let it dust up and get in her nose. "Anyway, the belt sort of fell in my lap. The previous holders were a couple of..." She shut her mouth tight before she could say the wrong word. "...little people, and they had something against tall wrestlers. Or something. I guess that was enough justification to break into my gym and start a fight." She shrugged. Even as she said the words, she was having trouble believing them.

"So I took on two women half my size. Weirdest fight of my life. Then King showed up, don't ask me why, and we fought, and I took him out long enough to pin the other two and take the title." She began to liberally sprinkle the powder, giving the chicken a decent coating. "You can check out the full fight on the AFW site. Believe me, I'm making it sound a lot more mundane than it actually was."

Before Amy could get out a word of protest, Carmen had salted, peppered, and powdered three of her six meticulously sliced pieces of chicken in a flurry of activity. Worse yet, Carmen didn’t bother to use any sort of measuring device- just a shake of this, then a shake of that, followed by a more sustained shaking of a third thing.

Normally this was fine. ‘Monkey see, monkey do’ was a credo that had served her well in all other domains- dancing, fighting, secret handshaking. But, for whatever reason, when she imitated the chefs on television, her final product seemed to always taste too salty, or too bland… when the food wasn’t made inedible by some other means, that is.

So it was with an uncertain hand that she took hold of the seasoning. She did her best to mimic Carmen’s actions- sweeping passes over the meat with the salt and pepper, then a lingering, more thorough dusting with the chili powder. She didn’t quite manage to match the practiced confidence of Carmen’s movements- or the focused, passionate look in her eye, for that matter; the woman loved to cook- but at least Amy’s assigned strips were visually similar to Carmen’s in the end. Amy set her pieces beside Carmen’s on the cutting board, then went to the sink to wash her hands. This part was going to be hard to put to paper later.

Despite her troubles on the culinary front, Amy heard every word of Carmen’s story. But Amy felt the need to double check anyway, because what?

Amy turned around and faced Carmen, a thoughtful look on her face. “So… a couple of midgets attacked you at the gym because you’re... tall... then King... “ The story wasn’t all that complicated- just incredible- and Amy looked toward the living room as she trailed off, thinking. 24/7 matches- and the all-expenses paid chaos that came with them- were great, Amy thought that much was certain. But it never occurred to her that the fights could be nonconsensual. Surely Carmen didn’t ask to be jumped at her place of business- not by midgets, not by an AFW camera crew, and not by a fucking giant of a man. Amy took a moment to ruminate, then turned back to Carmen. “Wow. That IS a weird story. It’s pretty hard to imagine; it’s almost like a cartoon.”

Carmen kept her eyes on Amy as worked, taking mental note, measure her movements. She was a little nervous. People were always nervous on the first time. She'd been nervous as a child, thinking she'd mix the wrong things and cause the kitchen to explode. The woman beside her was starting out a lot older than she'd been way back then, but a lot of the tells were the same.

"You're doing fine." Carmen smiled at Amy and tried to tap into her mother's warmth. She put Amy's strips in with the rest and mixed in a little oil with them. She started stirring the pot and stepped back, making sure her young apprentice would have a clear view. Back and forth, back and forth, and around and around, getting a good, sizzling mix. Calming, in a way.

"Yeah," Carmen threw her hair back and shook her head with a small laugh than turned into a smaller sigh. "Cartoon is about the right word for it. It's certainly wilder than what I went through with boxing, I'll say that much." She glanced Amy's way, as a small thought struck her brain, then looked back.

"That's my world. What about you, though? Army mentioned you've had some troubles in Tension, lately, too. Anything serious?" Carmen knew a bit more about Amy' situation, but she didn't want to seem like she was prying and monitoring her brother's girlfriend. Even if she totally was.

Amy placed the used knives and cutting board in the sink and ran water over them. “Yeah. I mean, I knew professional wrestling was gonna be crazy coming in, but I thought it’d be all, fun-crazy; I didn’t think it would get stupid-crazy, you know?” Amy watched as Carmen put the prepped strips on the fire, then chased them with an unmeasured drizzle of oil. The ironware crackled happily to life, pulling the ambient sizzle all the way up to the forefront of Amy’s attention.

Amy dried her hands on her apron, then, for a moment, felt lost. Was there anything that she should be doing right now? No, Carmen seemed to have things well in hand. In fact, judging by the distance Carmen put between herself and the stove, it looked like all Carmen wanted Amy to do right now was watch.

So Amy watched. It was a little unnerving at first to be doing nothing. But, slowly, Amy fell to the hiss of the skillet and the graceful rhythm with which Carmen juggled the food- crisp, controlled movements from one arm, and business-like stirring with the spatula from the other. Mesmerizing.

The longer she watched, the more comfortable Amy became with her inactivity. This was new- to be able to let go of the reins for once. To trust that things will get done without her having to figure everything out on her own.

To feel taken care of.

Amy felt her shoulders relax as she watched Carmen work, a growing warmth in her chest. This was nice.

Then Carmen brought Amy out of her reverie with a sudden question, and Amy’s eyes flew from Carmen over to the stove. Shit. Did Carmen do anything special to the pan? Amy had been so caught up watching her teacher do her thing, she’d forgotten to pay attention to the cooking demo. Oops.

Amy refocused herself on the the food. “No, not too serious,” she said after taking a moment to think. “Army’s probably talking about the Valkyries; I've picked myself up some enemies- you know the girls that interrupted Nathan’s first match? It turns out they’re a real-life bike gang, and they’ve been making all sorts of trouble at work. Mostly interrupting matches and being general dicks.” Amy rubbed her eyes. “I really thought that this job would just be… like, get paid to fight once a week. Straight-forward, drama-free, good clean fun, right? But with these guys, especially lately... I don’t know. It feels like they’re monopolizing all of my time, even outside of work. It’s been a looong while since I’ve gotten to get away from Kyoto or Tokyo and sightsee.” Then Amy stretched, shooting her arms wayyy out over her head, and smiled, locking eyes with Carmen. “But I guess I couldn’t call myself a pro-wrestler without a proper feud or two, right?”

Carmen sighed as Amy laid it all out, trying to hide all the worry in her voice. She shouldn’t have been concerned - this was a grown woman she was dealing with, here. Moreover, she was a grown woman who was capable enough to hold up against her brother, a man nearly twice her size. There was no need to fret over Amy like a little child. She could handle herself.

Still. Biker gangs. This was not a conversation she could’ve imagined having a couple of years ago.

She looked over her shoulder as a quiet moment passed, continuing her work on the stove. Amy seemed to be watching, thinking, in her own little world for a moment. That was fine. Carmen was determined to get the lovely blonde adept in the kitchen someday, but she didn't have to rush it. Amy was comfortable, that was the important thing.

”It’s funny,” Carmen stepped away from the stove and leaned against the counter. ”It’s not like I’m any stranger to drama and things like that, but when I boxed, it was always simpler things. Contracts, negotiations, schedules, stuff like that. There’d always be this little stuff, and then this big match, and then back to the little stuff. Like spikes on a heart monitor. Boop. Boop. Boop.”

She reached over and flicked a switch, starting up the ceiling fan about their heads. As long as Carmen wasn’t making fish, she liked to have the smell spread around the apartment, linger for a few days afterwards. ”Now, everything is like a high rise all the time. It’s just going and going and going all the time, and it can be so exhausting. Exciting, but exhausting. I will say you meet a lot more interesting people in wrestling…” She reached over and gave Amy a quick poke in the stomach. “...but the tradeoff is that you have a bunch of crazy people, too.”