“There are tons of people who feel meatloaf-deprived right now,” Steve reassured Bick when he came to visit him in the hospital. “I can read you the heartwarming messages posted on my blog.”
“That’s nice to hear,” Bick said. “It’s way better than any news I get from Eunice. The only time she visited me, all she could talk about was the expected insurance payout.”
“Jeez,” Steve said.
After a week in the hospital, Bick had had quite enough of I.V. lines, lung function tests, echocardiograms, and blood pressure readings. Luckily his ankle sprain was recovering nicely. The swelling had gone way down. When a nurse accompanied him to walk the hallways using his new walker, Bick decided he looked a whole lot better than the other patients on the ward.
During Steve’s daily visits to the hospital, he made sure to tell Bick that Oliver missed him terribly.
“He’s clearly in a funk,” Steve said.
“I miss Ollie,” Bick said. He wiped at his eyes with a corner of the bedsheet. “I can’t wait to get out of here.”
Steve was sitting at the foot of Bick’s bed and reading aloud some of the get-well wishes posted on his blog. The late morning sunshine brightened the room. Good news was coming.
“Mr. Armstrong, I have your discharge papers,” the nurse said, cheerily striding into the room. “The doctors say you can go home.”
The nurse went over the sheets of instructions. “The blisters on your arms have to be dressed daily,” she said. “And you’ll need to use the walker until your ankle is completely healed. The doctor wants to see you in two weeks for a checkup. Any questions?”
“Nope.”
“So, let’s get you out of this place,” Steve exclaimed after the nurse left.
“You know what feels great?” Bick shouted above the street noise while waiting for Steve to hail a taxi. “It feels great to take deep breaths of air and not have chest pains or taste smoke.”
“I never thought I’d hear you praise New York City air,” Steve said, smiling.
* * *
When Bick shuffled his walker through the door at home, Oliver barked in a frenzy—first at the four rolling tennis balls pinned under the strange contraption, and then at the sight of Bick pushing it. Oliver raced to fetch his favorite squeak toy, returning to show Bick the purple dinosaur.
“Ollie, you are a sight for sore eyes!” Bick cried and stretched out his arms. “I missed you so much!”
Steve placed Oliver on the seat of the walker to receive Bick’s hugs and kisses. On the kitchen table, he placed the supplies brought from the hospital. “Here are the ointments and gauze pads and stuff,” Steve said pointing to the bag.
“The blisters on my elbows are oozing,” Bick said. “So gross. I’ll need your help to dress them. The nurse showed me how.”
“No problem,” Steve said. He decided this was a good time to confront the elephant in the room. “So Bick, how exactly did the fire start, anyway?”
Bick sighed and turned his attention to Ollie. “Give it a rest, Steve. For chrissake, I’m still recovering.” He planted a kiss on the top of Ollie’s head, then quietly changed the subject. “That was sweet of the gift shop owner, Mr. Chan, to visit me in the hospital.”
* * *
The day the insurance adjustor came, Steve had taken the dogs to the Bronx for a long hike through van Cortlandt Park. They would be gone for hours.
Before he came to interview Bick, the adjustor had gone to the commissary lot in Queens to photograph the burned-out truck. Now there were pages of insurance forms for Bick to fill out.
“So, Mr. Armstrong, let’s start at the beginning. I need you to tell me every detail you recall about the fire.”
The adjustor, a tidy man of sober demeanor, sat at the kitchen table ready to take notes on a fresh legal pad.
“How did the fire start?” He looked directly at Bick.
“Hmm … How did the fire start …” Bick contemplated the rattan light shade hanging overhead and tapped an index finger on the table. He looked at the adjustor and took a deep breath.
“Well, to be honest, it started with resentment.” He took another deep breath before continuing.
“When I left for work that morning—it was Labor Day—I was in a foul mood. The oppressive heat didn’t help.
“By the time Steve and I got to the truck, we were sweaty and pungent and the day was just beginning.”
The adjustor asked what happened next.
“Steve and I weren’t speaking. He’s been cheating on me—but you don’t need to know that.” Bick allowed himself two short sniffs. “My employee, Jessica, showed up late for work looking like a mess. The sight of her reminded me that I’m on the hook to buy an expensive blouse for a customer, thanks to her carelessness.”
“And then what?” the adjustor asked. This was more detail than he needed, but he took notes furiously.
“Once again, Steve forgot to change his gloves while prepping. Anybody will tell you I’m a stickler for cleanliness and Steve is much too lax. And that goes for his sister, too. It irks me when they ignore my hygiene rules which are posted in the truck. He continues to wear ugly stained t-shirts to work and refuses to put on a chef’s jacket.”
Bick paused to give the adjustor a chance to speak. He said nothing, so Bick continued.
“Jessica was especially chatty that morning, which frankly gets on my nerves. Okay, sometimes I do enjoy her stories. But more often than not, I just want quiet time while I’m prepping.”
Bick continued. “It was a holiday, so I was expecting a light lunch rush. But customers kept coming. With our three sweaty bodies jostling around in that small space, the kitchen was like a furnace. At 2:30 we served the last customer and I told Steve every surface inside the truck needed thorough disinfecting. It felt like we had been dog-paddling in a hot cauldron for hours with bacteria spewing everywhere. That’s when Steve decided to take a break. My suspicion was that he wanted to chat with his latest crush. It made me angry. And I resented the two of them, him and his sister, stepping outside when there was so much cleaning to be done. I know they talk about me when they’re together.”
“Ah huh.” The adjustor flipped to the next page of his pad and continued writing. “What happened next?”
“So, I’m by myself in the kitchen and I grab a spray bottle full of alcohol and start wiping down everything like a madman. I wanted to show them! I would clean and disinfect the whole truck—by myself!—before they returned. I suppose I wanted to claim the moral high ground and be the hero.”
“Ah huh.” The adjustor kept writing.
“That’s when the accident happened.”
“Ah huh. Go on.”
“I was spraying and wiping the front of the exhaust hood. That’s when the bottle slipped from my hand and landed in the deep fryer.” Bick paused to decide what level of drama to convey. “The alcohol exploded like a bomb.”
“Why didn’t you grab the extinguisher? I read the fire and police reports. The Class K extinguisher for grease fires was not activated.”
“Well, there really wasn’t time. I barely managed to turn off the propane. It’s all kind of a blur.”
“So,” the adjustor continued, “you turned off the gas and then what? You attempted to activate the extinguisher?”
“Well, ah, no. I don’t think so.” Bick hesitated. “I was panicking and I couldn’t remember where the extinguisher was. It all happened so fast.”
“City fire codes require two different extinguishers to be accessible. Did you have both types?” the adjustor asked.
“Yes,” Bick said. “We had the two extinguishers. In the heat of the moment, so to speak, I forgot they were in a box under the sink.”
“What were they doing in a box under the sink?” The adjustor was now writing more quickly.
“They were mounted on the wall when we passed inspection. But later we took them down because we moved some shelving. They got shoved under the sink.” Bick pursed his lips and sighed loudly. “My partner forgot to mount the extinguishers on the wall again. We’ve been very busy.”
The adjustor wrote for several more minutes and scribbled a couple of rough drawings, before continuing.
“It seems you had not installed a fire suppression system in the vehicle.”
“No,” Bick said. “Those are expensive. The inspector said it wasn’t required for older trucks—at least, for now—so we decided to wait.”
“The bandages wrapped around your elbows … from the fire?” the adjustor asked.
“Yeah.” Bick stared at the ceiling, ready for the interrogation to be over.
“I will need to see a copy of your business license and all required permits. Please send those to me in the next day or two. Here’s my card. You’ll be getting a call from my office in a few days.” He thanked Bick for his time.
“No problem at all, sir. I’ll get those copies sent to you. Would you mind letting yourself out?”
Bick rubbed his swollen ankle and wondered if the permit he had unofficially “rented” from another food vendor would cause a problem with the insurance claim.
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