“Ok,” I say, making it sound like a sigh. “I’m just making sure everything goes right.”
“Trust me. This is my job,” the guy says, still smiling. He looks back at the restaurant behind me again. “Place looks good, and this location is great. You guys are gonna make a killing.”
I smile, the offhand compliment in his comment somehow feeling way more meaningful than it should.
“That’s the idea,” I say.
“Where do you want these?” the guy unloading says, kicking up the hand cart.
“Oh, just put them in the kitchen. I’ll sort them out.” I hold the door open for him and then turn back to the other guy. “Hey, actually, I wanted to ask something.”
“Hm?”
“Since it’s our opening, and we’re expecting some pretty important people, do you think you could, you know, just make doubly sure that we get good, fresh stuff? Especially the squid—we cook it in this marinade, see, and when it…anyway, we just need really, really excellent stuff—we’d be willing to pay a premium, even.”
“Uh-huh,” the guy says, looking at me as if deep in thought.
“Say…ten percent?”
He thinks about it a little longer, then smiles easily.
“Say no more. I’ll get you the freshest seafood we have. Sign here,” he says, handing me the paper. “You know, usually we charge twenty percent for that kind of…offer. But for an attractive lady like you I’m willing to make an exception.”
I hand the paper back and smile, pretending to be flattered. There aren’t many things that would suppress the feminist in me, but line-caught salmon that can take a yuzu and chive marinade well is one of them.
“Thanks a lot,” I say quickly, spinning on my heels to get back into the restaurant.
I start working through the boxes, refrigerating and freezing some of the seafood for the chef training and run-throughs, then begin to prep the rest for the start of training tomorrow, scaling, gutting, fileting, and marinating to have good examples ready to show.
It feels good, being in a kitchen again, working with my hands. Even if the kitchen is empty, and this food isn’t for a customer. For a month now I’ve been a nonstop negotiating, interior designing, event planning machine—but I haven’t actually been able to cook much, beyond trying out some stuff for the menu. Even the slippery, smelly, cold texture of fish feels great in my hands now, like coming home.
With each thing falling into place, the artists’ work, the discussion with the distributor, the prep for the chefs, I feel my dream get closer and closer to coming true, the line dissolving between my mental vision of what this moment would be, and the reality in all its fish-smelling glory. Like finally adding paint to the elements of a sketch I’d been working on since I first tasted oysters and realized I wanted to be a chef.
But then there’s Cole. Never far from my thoughts. His distinctive outline still standing in the depths of my emotions, so powerful, so suppressed, so ever-present that sometimes I almost feel like he’s standing beside me when I work late at night.
I miss him. As stupid and pathetic as it sounds, I miss him. In the brief moments I have a second to think about anything other than the restaurant, it’s always about him, our time together. Unresolved and ended in that abrupt, unjust way. Only the sheer amount of work that fills my every waking hour keeps me from glancing at my phone, distracts me from playing out how I might call him and see if time has healed anything, if the path back to him is as closed as it was when we parted. It doesn’t help that both Ellie and Asha seemed so genuinely disappointed when I told them how it ended. Both of them were rooting for us.
To make it easier, I try to think of his flaws, but even those end up endearing him more to me. It’s so easy to turn a flaw into something admirable in the people you love. His infuriating stubbornness becomes a commendable strength in his beliefs. The way he makes his decisions rashly and quickly, unyielding to any criticism, becomes the decisiveness of passion, of dedication to his art. Even his ‘secrets’ make a kind of sense when you realize this is a guy who built himself up from nothing. I wish it was easier to hate him…
“Ah, Willow. There you are.”
The voice startles me out of my thoughts and I look up to see our investor Andre walking into the kitchen, politely wrinkling his nose only a little at the smell.
“Oh, hey,” I reply, finishing the filet I’m working on quickly and walking over to the sink. “Sorry about the smell. Just prepping for tomorrow.”
“It’s fine,” Andre says, coming to stand beside me as I clean off my hands. “I was just dropping by to see how things were going.”
“Good,” I say, flicking my hands and picking up a towel. “Though ask me again when I start training the cooks.”
Andre laughs easily.
“I’m sure you’ll do a fantastic job. You’re doing far better than I could have ever hoped anyway.”
I take the compliment with a smile and tilt of the head, though it turns out Andre’s just preparing me for some bad news. His expression goes gentle as he unlatches his satchel and pulls out a magazine, already folded to a specific page.
“I didn’t really want to bring this up, but I just had to know. Is this going to be a problem for us?” he asks as he holds up the magazine so I can read the title while I’m still drying my hands.
Cutting Edge: Why Knife is Still the Best Restaurant in America (if you can afford it)
I skim the article’s platitudes and praises quickly and then look back at Andre, shrugging it off with a smile.
“Not at all. Why?”
My shrug seems enough for him, and he puts the magazine back in his satchel.
“I don’t know. It’s just that this must be the twentieth article I’ve read about Knife. Sounds like quite the revolution going on over there.”
I snort dismissively and turn to face Andre head on.
“The only thing they’re ‘revolutionizing’ is how much people are willing to pay for grilled asparagus on rye. I mean, you could buy half our menu for the price of their soup starter!”
Andre smiles, but his eyes are unsettled, and I can tell the words only make him a little more uneasy.
“Right,” he says, concerned still. “I’m just ever-so-slightly afraid we’re going to be the ‘cheap’ version of Knife, you know? They’re causing quite a buzz and I just hope we don’t end up in their shadow.”
I slam the towel over my shoulder in frustration—with the idea, not with Andre.
“We are not the cheap version of Knife, because my menu is different, and it’s better. In fact, once we get going, Knife will be in our shadow, because everybody who eats at Chow will recognize Knife as the pompous, overpriced exercise in food fakery that it is. In fact, you know what I’d love? I’d love to put my menu against his—no tricks—and have people taste and see which one they like more. I’d love that, because there’s no way anyone could doubt Chow then.”