The plates become works of post-modern art, food pornography that instills hunger at first glance. Mandarin, pear, and pinenut napoleons so delicate and towered so high that they defy gravity. Coq au vin that commits the transgression of using white wine—and gets away with it. Hazelnut and ginger macarons so perfectly concocted they have to be eaten within minutes of being cooked.
I take as much time over the presentation as over the cooking, raging at chefs who put down a line of cherry preserve on the thyme-roasted veal that’s a quarter inch too long, losing my shit when I see a leaf of arugula on the feta and lemon puree olive salad that isn’t glistening with the exact shade of green it needs to be. I reject several sample menus for being printed paper that doesn’t evoke quality. Two new line cooks quit within days of this baptism of fire, before the third one, a woman who relishes the battle-like atmosphere I’ve created, finally sticks. Broccoli and cheese soup becomes ‘charred calabrese broccolini and stilton soup with walnut-encrusted croutons,’ is served in a bowl the size of an egg-cup, and has fifty dollars added to the price.
I do all this with Willow’s words echoing in the back of my mind. ‘Food should look like food… It should be made with love… It should satisfy…’ I do all this to defy her, to go further in the opposite direction, as if this difference in philosophy might increase the distance between us, between what I feel for her. Felt for her. I do it all to prove her wrong, to somehow numb the betrayal of what she did, what she’s about to do.
I work til my muscles ache, til the skin on my hands goes tough with the heat of pan handles again, until I’m spending so little time at home that my place starts to feel unfamiliar. I don’t have time for days off, or eating out myself—or even Chloe’s lessons, anymore.
It works, for a while. Word spreads that I’m back in the kitchen, and almost immediately Knife has lines that stretch beyond the famous seafood place down the street. The food critics start pouring in with the masses, each of them looking for a reason to stand out by giving our new menu a critical reception, and none of them leaving with it.
Each night, as I agonize over the chicken and pistachio galantine’s imperfections, I have to delete several voicemails from my phone. Offers to return to television and guest star on cooking shows, invitations to exclusive clubs and parties, requests to give interviews on the ‘return of Cole Chambers.’ Knife’s success already reaching sensation levels that almost rival its opening.
Except…
Here I am, alone in the back office, unaware of the time but for the fact that the dish washers have gone, feeling empty and unfulfilled. A gaping hunger inside of me that no food or wine can fill; no glowing, verbose review with a prestigious name on top of it, no celebrity customer’s compliments, not even the cell number of a voluptuous Italian actress, which she scrawled on a cocktail napkin tonight and had Charles promise to make sure I received.
I look at the napkin on the desk, pushing it around a little, with tired, blistered fingers. The number ends with a heart—an insinuation of what lies at the other end of the line if I call. I pick the napkin up and hold it in my hand, as if trying to divine what would happen if I called. The coy flirting, the insinuating chatter, the meeting, the move, the morning after. She’ll play hard to get a little, verbally spar with me as a kind of test, then give in beautifully, as if being typecast as the bombshell in every movie had compelled her to do the same in life. Except all I want to do is fall into bed arguing about the right way to make seafood risotto.
I scrunch the napkin up and toss it into a wastepaper basket, then get up from behind the desk, every sound I make loud in the heavy silence of the empty restaurant. My muscles ache as I move through the place, turning off lights and setting the alarm system. I clench and unclench stiff fingers, callouses re-hardened on hot pan handles, my back cracking when I pull my shoulders back after hours spent hunched over counters.
Locked up, I walk slowly across the lot to my parked Porsche, breathing deeply, the night-released jasmine cleansing senses that have been overwhelmed by flavors and smells throughout the shift. I don’t know why I do it, but I don’t turn right out of the parking space. Right toward the road that’ll lead me to my empty house, where I’ll turn on the TV, pour a glass of whiskey, and fall asleep before I’ve even taken a sip or changed the channel. Instead, I go straight. Straight toward Santa Monica, just a couple of streets…
I pull up across the street. Close enough to see the giant, etched wood sign hanging above the entrance, close enough to make out the familiar sight of a half-furnished restaurant inside, but not too close, because there’s a single light on, and a single figure moving around inside. I check the time. One-thirty-three am—and it’s a weekday. Even here in the middle of the city, the streets are so dead that even the streetlights feel like a waste of electricity.
And yet there she is. The figure could be anyone at this distance, but those movements are unmistakable, that poise too well-remembered for it to be anybody else. And besides, it’s not like anybody else would be up at one-thirty in the morning working in a restaurant that isn’t supposed to open for another couple of weeks.
Chow. That’s the word on the sign. The name of the place. Something about the name makes my gut tighten, forcing me to remember that night out by my pool, the look of joy on her face when I pulled away the cloche and showed her the dessert I’d made her. A memory now tinged with bitterness, where recalling it feels like swallowing a jagged pill.
I watch her a while until I figure out what she’s doing: sanding wood. I see the panels leaning up against the wall, broad and circular, like table tops. She’s working the edges so they’ll curve softly, I realize, and I can’t help smiling. Who else would think about such details? Me, maybe.
For about an hour I sit there, observing her, feeling the knife she stuck in my back twisting a little more with each passing minute. The distance across the street feeling like miles, rather than yards, impossible to traverse. The cold, hard determination that gave me everything in life making me almost hope that the restaurant crumbles, so she’ll come running back full of regret and apologies.
For a moment I imagine what it would be like to go to her now, just talk, see how she’s doing. Maybe help with the sanding. See if she wants to get a coffee sometime.
But no.
I learn my lessons, and I learn them well—even if I have to learn them the hard way.
I start the engine and drive away.
20
Willow
“Where do you see yourself in five years?”
“Um…working here?”
“Right…ok…and finally: Do you have any questions that you’d like to ask us?”
The teenager squirms in his ill-fitting shirt, so starched it sounds like rustling leaves.
“Uh…when would this job start? Like, ‘cause I’d have to give a two weeks’ notice to my manager at McDonald’s if I get it.”
Tony clears his throat. “Well, we’ll get back to you about—”